i2iSTUDIOS Blog

I picked up a 105mm Micro lens and went to the Krohn Conservatory for a rundown of how this lens is to handle.

Overall the contrast is fantastic but thedepth of field is super narrow at 1:1 which all of these were shot at.

In March of 2006 I had a chance to go to Europe to study for a shot time.  In that I was able to see this beautiful sight.  I, of course had to bring my D200 with me with the 18-200mm lens and be sure to do my best to capture what I saw, and what a sight it was.  I was taken aside my the size and mass of it.  What a sight to see, really, I mean to live in a place and city where you get to see this everyday would be amazing to say the least.  I have so many photos from the top of Eiffel Tower looking down to the beautiful city below and from below looking up. I love these photos the best. They were all taken handheld at ISO 640 1/15s on my D200 with 18-200mm VR lens almost all of them at 18mm.

Ok, so no I didn’t… I had a request for photos with my 18-200mm VR lens and thought I’d post the ones I took from my trip to France and Belgium. These photos are from the Mercedes Dealership in Brussels. The dealer guy was so awesome, he let me sit in it like I was a little kid, I was grinning from ear to ear!

Purrdy car.

In the back he had this awesome Maybach!

Hey Guys, I desprately wanted the gridlines in the viewfinder so I ordered the focusing screen from an online store and here we go. Now as a disclaimer, I have never done this before nor have I read any instuctions on how to do this. I just opened up the D3 and got to work. This is what I did to replace it, this is NOT a howto guide. Just look at what I did and I took a few pics along the way so make your own judgements, K? K.

Ok, there is the box and the insides.

Inside the D3 is a small leaver, you can press down on that and down falls the tray that holds the focusing screen. The tray will come to a rest at the bottom but will not touch the reflex mirror. With the supplied tweasers I took the OEM focusing screen and place it into the little holder that Nikon built into the E-Type box to the right of the new screen. Then take the new focusing screen and put it back in the holder. With the tweesers lift it back into place and it will latch back up.

I had to do this several times. There was quite a lot of dust and it took awhile to blow it all away.

The grid lines are not “On Demand” They are just there. The screen is a lot clearer than the matte of the OEM screen and the lines are very thin, much thinner than the ones in the D200.

I hope this gives insight into how it’s done.

I stared Carbonite on Oct 23 of 2007 and my computer has been backing up ever since.  Last night it finished!!!  I backed up 426 GB (148393 files).  It’s time for my PC to get some sleep.

It has been a month since my last posting, I have had a few changes in my life, some photography related and some personal. I’ll skip the personal side and go right to the photography side. One Friday the 21st. Fairborn Camera in Fairborn Ohio called and said that my camera was ready to be picked up. I did have my camera on order with Ritz since October 2nd but I didn’t think that I would be able to get a camera in time for a wedding on December 28th so on December 13th I called 3 local camera stores and put my name on the que list and voilà, I got it just a little over a week later!

I was going to visit my good friend in Erie, PA for the weekend so I stopped by Fairborn camera on the way up. All of the folks there were really nice and the two guys who helped me were both watch entusiatest and I would have loved to talk to them about watches too but come on, I’m holding a D3, I gotta get out of here and start playing. While at the store I put the battery in and there was one bar of battery power, play time would have to wait until I can get it decently charged up. 4 hours later I arrive in Erie, PA and I let the battery charge while we go to dinner.

My initial impressions are that my wallet just took a huge hit, but besides that, it was well worth it. The ergonomics of the camera feel very natural and secure in my hands. With the 24-70mm attached the camera is heavy, it really is, adding on the SB-800, and it’s weighing more like 10 lb weight at the gym than a camera, but hey, you have to pay to play right? To me weight adds to keeping the camera stable while hand holding since Nikon doesn’t like to put VR on wider lenses (hint hint Nikon). Coming from the D200 (which I still have) button placement changes were not too difficult to find and get used to. I played with all of the menu settings and started the custom list of features that I was most interested in. I also changed two of the custom front buttons. The lower button I changed that to no flash and the DOF preview button was changed to viewfinder virtual horizon.

I found single focus to be fast and accurate whether it be cross-type or non. Dynamic with 3D tracking is amazing. I couldn’t believe that focusing and color tracking has come to this, what a great feature to have. Now my brides walking up the isle probably won’t need this but dogs dancing left and right fetching a stock another story all together and could really come in handy. I tried the 3D tracking with birds in flight at 200mm, the 3D tracking really helped me as I was a little unstable pointing so high in the sky and the focus tracking really helped.

The color accuracy and and image quality is top notch. I was throughly impressed by the images I saw and the ability to manipulate both negative and positive side of curves to much higher degrees than I was ever able to with the D200. I am shooting on aRGB, 14 bit Raw compressed lossless.

Verdict: The Nikon D3 is a fantastic camera that will suit my needs quite well.

On to the photos, below are this photos over this past weekend, all have been processed, some more than others. All images were taken with the 24-70mm or the 70-200mm lens (14-24mm will be here tomorrow) If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments section. I should note, these imags were shot in RAW and convered in Lightroom 1.3.1. Capture NX was included and I know that it’s the best to use but the workflow is so terrible that I just can’t handle it.

Yup, I’m 25% percent there after 20 days of straight uploading, only 245GB left to upload. I know that the process is slow, but over time after it’s backed up all I have to do is to let it backup any new photos that I add. Waiting 80-100 days will pay off dividends in the long run of much more costly and less secure and safe files.

Ok, back in September I melted the fresnel on my SB-800. I called up Nikon Repair and they sent me Part SS060-27 Fresnel Lens and SS060-28 Acrylic Panel. The parts were on backorder but they finally got to me. Now the flash did work just fine while melted, no problems at all but the parts cost me less than $20 so what the heck.

First off, Nikon says that these repairs should not be done yourself and should be sent to a Nikon repair facility. This is what I did to save me a bit of cash. This should not be attempted. Ok, that’s my disclaimer. I am mechanically inclined and spent years of my childhood taking apart toys and gadgets and years repairing cars.

So here is what it looks like, pretty sad isn’t it? Don’t worry it won’t look like that for long.

As you can see the unmelted flash is on the left and the melted one is on the right. Below is the parts list and diagram for the SB-800 that Nikon was nice enough to include per my request. To be honest, it didn’t help me much, I think it’s missing a few things so it really isn’t all that helpful for me but it might be very helpful to see. Make sure that the batteries are removed first.

Ok, to begin I removed the two screws as shown in the photos, I used a #0 phillips head Craftsman screwdriver .

After the two screws are removed, than remove the rubber pieces on both sides of the flash head and remove 2 screws on the side of the flash head that were on the same side as the 2 that was removed earlier. NOTE: I did not remove all 4 at this time, only 2 of them. (no pictures of that, sorry)

I couldn’t fully remove the lid to the flash head, I have no idea what was holding it together but I was able to make a separation large enough to remove the melted pieces. There is a notch in the housing that the fresnel can fit, it can only properly fit in 1 direction. If it does not close together securely, flip the pieces around. Please see the notch in the 3rd photo below.

During the reinstall, the push button spring and tab will need to be put back in, this is very simple. Just remove all 4 screws on the side, put the spring in, the metal holding tab, and secure it. Following that put the rubber pieces back in, they too can only fit 1 way, look for the notches and they will be just fine.

Then it’s all done. Below is the new side by side shot with the replaced parts and a testing shot of the flash, no problems at all.

Here is it part that melted, they are actually fused together, I couldn’t get them apart. You can also see how much they warped!

Remember, Nikon said do not do this yourself.

Oh boy, the 24-70 was supposed to ship on Nov. 30th but look at where we are, Nov 10th, FedEx says I should have it by Tuesday. Yippie! Full testing to occur when I get it, I can’t wait. This certainly bodes well for the D3, but I highly doubt that too many people are going to be getting that camera too early. It is sad to think that this lens is nearly the same price as a D300, I hope it’s worth it. Hmmm…

The 3 8GB Extreme IV cards have arrived.

I mentioned this in a previous blog, but it is very important to have these UMDA cards when shooting with the D3, as seen in this article on e-Photographia.com there are big differences he does lots of testing so be sure to read up!

Nikon D3 - Cl (RAW + JPEG) - 20 seconds of shutter actuation
Card time to buffer full shots MB buffer flush
ATP Pro Max II 7 s 76 350 88.1 s
SanDisk Extreme IV 15 s 97 447 100.4 s
SanDisk Extreme III 5 s 54 249 69.1 s
Apacer III pro 150X 5 s 59 272 73.3 s