i2iSTUDIOS Blog

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!

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.

Well I finally took my first vacation of the year with two of my friends Ben and Alex. Although you’re not going to see any pictures of our camping just yet, we roughed it backpacking 5 of the 7 days. Our trip planning had us seeing the Tetons for 2 nights, Yellowstone for 4 nights, and the last night in Jackson Hole.

I’ll try to limit my talking for now of the trip for later but focus on the photographs first. Ok, first the gear.

1. Nikon D200
2. 2 Batteries
3. 18-200VR
4. Velbon Tripod
5. Nikon Polarizer
6. SanDisk Extreme III 8 and 4 GB

This is a shot of the start of our climb to our 6500 ft camp site half way up towards that tall mountain you see beyond the trees.

Grand Teton - D200 18-200mm @ 22mm ISO 100 1/125 sec / f 5.6 on a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB

And our hike out the next morning onward to Paintbrush Divide and one on our way out of the Tetons the following morning.

The photo below is the morning that we camped on Ice Lake. This is the sight that I woke up to around 6:00am. We had been hearing Elk talk to each other all night long and I couldn’t lay in bed any longer, I got up, saw the fog, grabbed the camera and this was the first photo I took of it.

Yellowstone National Park - Ice Lake Nikon D200 18-200mm @ 18mm ISO 100 9 sec / f 3.5 on a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB

The colors of the hot springs.

Yellowstone National Park - Hot Springs Nikon D200 18-200mm @ 56mm ISO 100 1/200 sec / f 7.1 on a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB

A common scene in Yellowstone.

Yellowstone National Park - Nikon D200 18-200mm @ 18mm ISO 100 1/250 sec / f 8.0 on a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB

From our camp site the light night, what a view.

Yellowstone National Park - Nikon D200 18-200mm @ 24mm ISO 400 1/45 sec / f 16.0 on a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB
Burnt trees by our campsite on the last night as we hiked back from Fairy Falls to our camp site.

Yellowstone National Park - Nikon D200 18-200mm @ 62mm ISO 200 1/60 sec / f 4.8 on a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB

The Bison that invaded our camp site, this dude was not happy with us.

Yellowstone National Park - Nikon D200 18-200mm @ 200mm ISO 400 1/45 sec / f 5.6 on a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB

That morning’s beautiful sunrise.

Yellowstone National Park - Nikon D200 18-200mm @ 31mm ISO 100 5 sec / f 22 on a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB

Another photo of our last morning there

Yellowstone National Park - Nikon D200 18-200mm @ 18mm ISO 100 1/100 sec / f 5.0 on a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB

Can’t go to Yellostone without posting a photo of Old Faithful

Yellowstone National Park - Old Faithful Nikon D200 18-200mm @ 70mm ISO 100 1/320 sec / f 9.0 on a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB