Borrowing and trying out the Nikon D750 (Part 1)

(A tip of the hat to my friend John Gunnison, lifetime Nikon user and proprietor of online pulp bookstore Adventure House, for the generous loan of his well-loved D750, AF Nikkor 20mm f/2.8, and AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 GII ED. Results with these lenses to follow in Part 2.)

This morning I had a new experience: I shot with a lens I hadn't used in about 30 years. It was surprisingly fun.

One of the things Nikon does well is lens compatibility. Its F mount lenses date to 1959 and its cameras continue to use the F mount. My second SLR* was a Nikkormat FT3, manufactured around 1977 or 1978 and furnished with a Nikon 50mm f/2 lens. I haven't shot film in decades so the Nikkormat has languished in the garage gathering large amounts of dust. Today I dug it out, dusted off the 50mm and mounted it to John's D750.

Nikkor 50mm, circa 1977

The gorgeous spring morning was pleasant, but the real fun was rediscovering focusing with this old non-autofocus lens. The focus ring on the 50mm turns more than 180 degrees, making it smooth and easy to focus just where I wanted. The viewfinder on the D750 was crisp and clear in the morning light. Very, very nice. At the risk of cliché: I felt like a kid again, and I didn't miss autofocus a bit.

Alas, the passage of time and the dirt inside the lens were unmasked in the images. They are hazy and misty, reminding me of the old trick of smearing vasoline on a filter. The soap-bubble bokeh is rather unusual, too:

Forest Floor

But I'd bet you could find a reasonably clean old 50mm for less than the price of a nice dinner. If I end up buying a Nikon DSLR, I'll be looking for one.

*My first SLR was a Minolta SR-T 101. No idea what became of it, but it was my first love.

Renting and trying the Nikon D810

In the previous post I promised an A/B comparison between my Pentax K-5 and the rented Nikon D810. The Nikon is back with Borrowlenses.com and I've had a chance to compare a number of nearly-simultaneous shots.

Spencer (our youngest son) and I carried the cameras and tripod to one of my favorite locations, the C&O Canal Historical Park. We had lovely, sunny weather to shoot across the Potomac and the many rocky bluffs and islands.

I continued to be impressed with the Nikon's speedy, no-fuss focusing. It's not critical in long landscape shots like these, but it's very nice. The Pentax displayed its typical sluggish-to-nonexistent autofocus behavior. I can't explain it but it's annoying, especially compared to the snappy Nikon. So it may be that some of the Pentax shots aren't perfectly focused. Exposures weren't exactly the same, either. 

We attempted to adjust for the crop factor by shooting images on the Nikon at 1.5 times the focal length of the Pentax (recall that the D810 is full-frame and the Pentax, APS-C). We didn't hit that exactly, so I've adjusted the cropping in Photoshop to give approximately the same image sizes. 

The results are impressive. The Nikon has outstanding resolution and the Sigma 24-105mm f/4 lens seems to make good use of it. Here are two uncropped shots, followed by two crops showing approximately the same area. Remember that these are all JPEGS with no sharpening added in Photoshop.

Rocky Island (Nikon D810, Sigma 24-105mm f/4 at 75mm, f/8, 1/320 sec., ISO 400)

Rocky Island (Pentax K-5, Pentax 16-50 f/2.8 at 45mm, f/8, 1/125 sec., ISO 400)

Rocky Island (Nikon crop)

Rocky Island (Pentax crop)

The overexposure in the Pentax crop unfortunately biases the eye against it, but you can easily see the difference in resolution...look at the trees, for example. Being able to crop that closely without going to mush would be very nice. The largest print you could make would be a lot bigger.

Some of you will say "Use primes! Zoom with your feet!" Fine, but in this location you would need to zoom with a boat. Prime lenses are sharp, low-cost and lightweight, but they don't always get you where you need to go.

One more thing I like about the Nikon: they have an app that lets you easily view manuals on your phone. It's well-designed and pretty easy to use. Nice touch.

Time to decide whether to add this expensive box to my kit. Very tempting.

OT: More Auditions (update)

The search for my next camera has taken a rather scatter-shot approach so far. I've tried mirrorless, iPhone, and small travel-size cameras. I've tried Apple, Fuji, Olympus and Canon products. About the only thing missing has been a pinhole setup. 

I haven't given up, but I have changed course again. Today I get got my hands on a Nikon D810 and a Sigma 24-105 f/4 zoom, rented for a week from Borrowlenses.com. This set-up is neither small (4+ pounds) nor cheap (don't ask), making it appear that I've abandoned my search for a travel camera. Maybe I have. But the D810 has (reportedly) the best resolution of any DSLR on the market at the moment and I'm seduced by that (I've daydreamed about working in medium format). And using mirrorless cameras made me realize that I prefer optical viewfinders.

Others have influenced me, of course. Tony Northrup's buying guide suggests this camera and lens for landscape photographers. My friend and long-time Nikon owner (and proprietor of Adventure House books) John Gunnison has often nudged me toward Nikons and seems quite smitten by his new D750. He mentioned something I'd read about: with enough resolution, you can crop instead of packing a longer lens; a sports pro told John he does it. Even my next-door neighbor is carrying a new D810...I mustn't get left behind, right? 

A week is too short to learn much about a new DSLR, crammed as they are with features and settings. But the demise of the bricks-and-mortar camera shop leaves few options but to rent and try. Even if I was ready to buy today, the Sigma is back-ordered at B&H, so this is the fastest way to try out the combo. At very least I'll have some images to compare against all those others, and I'll know whether I'm still fit enough to lug it all around. Dear God, I hope I don't break it.

Update: The camera arrived and I took it for a walk. It focuses very quickly, even in rather low indoor light, which is a welcome change. Quietly, too. The D810 body isn't too heavy, but with the 24-105 lens mounted it gains a lot of weight. I'm beginning to see why normal lenses are regaining their popularity. Overall, though, it's responsive and fits my grip nicely.

Naturally I wanted to see lots of resolution. Here's a couple of shot and a detail from it, to give you an idea. The shot is wide open. The Sigma has noticeable vignetting at f/4 (look at the upper left corner) that mostly goes away by f/5.6.

Daffodil

And here is a tight crop of the same shot (less than 19 percent of the original pixels):

Daffodil (detail)

These aren't jaw-dropping images, but they give you a sense of how many pixels are in play. Bear in mind that these are JPEGs, though with minimal Lightroom manipulation, and were handheld.

There's a lot more work to do before I know if this camera (and this lens) is for me. I hope to do an A/B comparison with the Pentax K-5 in my favorite landscape location before my week-long rental comes to a close. Stay tuned.

The details:

Daffodil: Nikon D810, handheld, 1/1600 sec. at f/4, ISO 100, Sigma 24-105mm f/4 at 24mm.

Detail: same as above at 3013 x 2260 pixels (original: 4912 x 7360 pixels)

Landscapes of Southeast Asia

We returned from our travels in Vietnam and Cambodia marveling at the people and sights of those countries. In my previous post I described my trials with the travel camera I selected. But now I'd like to return to this blog's objective with a few landscape images.

The first two images were made from a boat in Ha Long Bay in northern Vietnam. It's a body of water littered with limestone islands--some 1,900 of them over 600 square miles--and dramatic karst topography. The scenery reminds me of ancient ink paintings from the East: steeply-sloped hills topped with trees and other vegetation, surrounded by water. It is a major tourist attraction, as you can imagine. Conditions were hazy during our visit so most of my shots are very soft and required a lot of Lightrooming.

Islands in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Islands and Temple, Ha Long Bay

Much of our trip was by boat on the Mekong River and some of its tributaries, but we also went ashore in several places. It was the dry season. Rice paddies weren't flooded, and other fields looked a little dusty.

Rice Field, Cambodia

Field and Palms, Cambodia

 In many places the river is the center of life. Fishing, irrigated farming, transport and commerce of every description depend on it. Vinh Long is one of many towns where channels seem as important as streets.

Landing in Vinh Long, Vietnam

Woman in Boat

Inlet, Kampong Chhnang, Cambodia

The details: all shot with Canon PowerShot G1X Mark II and 12.5 - 62.5mm lens 
Islands: 1/1000 sec., f8.0, ISO 400, 34mm
Islands and Temple: 1/1000 sec., f8.0, ISO 400, 62.5mm
Rice Field: 1/640 sec., f5.6, ISO 400, 25mm
Field and Palms: 1/1000 sec., f9.0, ISO 400, 55mm
Landing: 1/1000 sec., f7.1, ISO 800, 34mm
Woman: 1/250 sec., f9.0, ISO 800, 62.5mm
Inlet: 1/400 sec., f8.0, ISO 400, 24mm

OT: The PowerShot G1X Mark II in Vietnam

Susan and I recently returned from a fascinating tour of Vietnam and Cambodia put on by RoadScholar. Neither of us had been to southeast Asia and we both enjoyed it immensely.

Just before embarking I purchased a Canon PowerShot G1X Mark II to see if it might be the travel camera I've been seeking (see this post, for example.) Alas, the answer is no.

The PowerShot is plenty light (1.2 pounds) and small; probably too small for my hands. One of its biggest flaws is a stupidly positioned Record button that I hit accidentally several times. That alone was enough to disqualify it. 

But there are other problems. The control dial on the back is too small for me to operate effectively. The mode dial on the top right doesn't lock and is easily nudged to a different setting. I sometimes found myself in Manual mode without knowing it. And for some reason, the focus bracket kept migrating to the lower right of the frame (perhaps because it's a touch screen? I'm not sure) and had to be re-positioned. These problems were a constant irritation.

One of my complaints with the iPhone 5s camera is its poor performance in low light. I had hoped the PowerShot's performance would be better, and it is...but not as much as I would have wished. You can see the noise in the boat shot, taken at ISO 800. The focusing in low light was slow and often inaccurate. 

The battery is pretty puny. On several days I was out of power by noon. And the 12.5 - 62.5mm (24 - 120mm equivalent) lens turned out to be shorter than I needed for most of the shooting I did.

So I'm not keeping the PowerShot. But here are a few shots it produced (bear in mind that these are JPEGS; they were raw files originally).

Cambodian Boy

Boat and Paddle, Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Temple Demons, Cambodia

The details: all shot with Canon PowerShot G1X Mark II and 12.5 - 62.5mm lens
Boy: 1/100 sec., f9.0, ISO 400, 39mm
Boat: 1/25 sec., f4.5, ISO 800, 18mm 
Demons: 1/1250 sec., f4.0, ISO 400, 26mm

OT: The hunt for a travel camera, continued

Our next trip will be to Vietnam, and I had hoped to find a capable camera small enough to carry easily but large enough to give acceptable results in poor light. I tried using only the iPhone 5s camera in Italy (described here) but found it lacking in low light performance.

I previously "auditioned" two mirrorless cameras, the Fujifilm XT-1 and the Olympus OM-D EM-1 (described here). Neither impressed me enough to purchase. I felt I could go lighter without sacrificing too much quality, so the search continued.

Friends have helpfully weighed in with suggestions, ranging from the Nikon 1 through the Canon S and PowerShot series. After looking at a lot of specs and reviews I decided to order a Fuji XM-1 body and a Fuji XF 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 zoom. The XM body is light at 10 ounces, partly because it has no viewfinder, but uses the same APS-C sensor as costlier and heavier Fuji models. The zoom covers the focal range I'd like to have, though it weighs a bit over a pound. Still, the combination is half the weight of my Pentax K-5 with the Pentax 16-50mm f2.8 zoom attached.

Fast forward: the XM-1 and lens arrived. I put the lens on the body, and immediately got an error message: "Lens Control Error". An email exchange with B&H suggested doing a firmware update (to version 1.20).  Because the lens was released after the body, the thinking went, this might fix it. I dutifully ran the firmware update but it didn't solve the problem, so the whole lot is going back to B&H.

My wife is telling me that I have the worst luck with cameras. She may have a point. My K-5 was defective when it first arrived, so I waited around while Pentax looked at the body and decided to send me a different body along with the adjusted 16-50mm. I'm not sure the 16-50mm is at full performance anymore (see here). Come to think of it, the only digital camera I've owned that never had a problem was the one she gave me for Christmas in 2003: the Canon Rebel. Maybe I should let her choose my next camera...or maybe I should return to the Canon fold. I grow weary of the chase.

In fact, I wearied enough to order a Canon: the PowerShot G1 X Mark II. It will arrive in a couple of days. Stay tuned.

Around the yard this fall

Fall is a wonderful time for photography. The colors are vibrant and the weather often vivid, with clear skies and that beautiful, low-angled sun that just says "autumn" to me.

This year we were surprised to see pink among the yellows, reds, and golds in our yard. Our landscaper, Mark Willcher, planted a Camellia last spring that is now covered in pink blossoms with amazing yellow stamens. Based on web searches, I believe it is a Camellia sasanqua. I took some close-ups after a rain shower. Strangely enough, I didn't notice the ant in the blossom until I was looking at the image in Lightroom.

Another gorgeous shrub has been in our yard since we moved here, but I don't know its name (update: Euonymus allatus, a.k.a. burning bush). Its foliage turns a brilliant vermilion in the fall, complemented with orange-red berries.

Camellia sasanqua

Vermilion Bush

The details:
(Camellia) Pentax K-5 handheld 1/80 sec. at f/6.3, ISO 800, 45mm (smc Pentax-DA* 16-50mm F2.8 ED AL [IF] SDM)
(Vermilion) Pentax K-5 handheld 1/80 sec. at f/3.2, ISO 800, 36mm (smc Pentax-DA* 16-50mm F2.8 ED AL [IF] SDM)