John Champion

High resolution images of it may be hard to find but fast images with the new Sigma 70-200mm APO EX DG OS HSM for both Nikon and Canon which will make you quite happy.

The lens uses two FLD panels which will help it give you a clear image, and it also has three SLD glass plates to help prevent abberation.

Now this lens has a large aperture which means that f2.8 will come in handy with your wildlife, wildflower, and even sports photography. While I would not recommend using this to shoot action on say a football or baseball field, it might work well for hockey, basketball, or other indoor sports.

My how time flies. It was only 13 months ago that Nikon announced its new flagship camera designed for beginners, the D3000. It is a 10.2 megapixel camera with an APC chip which excels as being a beginner’s camera. The camera has been overshadowed by its predecessor, the D40, the upper-end D5000 and the even higher priced D90.

Now Nikon has introduced to the world the new D3100. So what has changed? Let’s see…according to the folks at DPReview.com, the new DSLR has four additional megapixels topping out at 14.2 megapixels. This addition means larger file sizes. How big are the new files? Well that purely depends on your format. If you shoot in a raw format, it could make your file sizes a couple of megabytes larger however, it still is nowhere near the 77 megabyte file sizes of the Canon Mark III series.

It has live view which means that you can use the LCD monitor as a viewfinder and compose your image like you do as when you use a point and shoot digital camera.

In many ways this new camera seems to mark the new standards for Nikons updated line for 2010-11. You can bet that many of the same improvements that we see in this camera will make their ways up the line for at least the consumer grade DSLR’s. So this means that I expect to see similar jumps in the D5000 line and maybe even the D90 line however I would not expect to see this in their pro-sumer catagory which, to me anyway, starts with the Nikon D300s which already has most of these upgrades in this $1500 model.

The best part of this camera is that it can shoot videos at 1080p using any of the existing range of Nikon lenses. (You can see the details of those lenses at Nikon.com or at DPReview.com or any other review site). It also has a wonderful new HDMI output so you can plug that camera into your plasma, LED/LCD, or other high definition telelvisions and view your work before editting it or burning it to DVD.

The camera has more than 2 megapixels in quality

Before we being, I apologize for my absence. I’ve switched jobs, switched lives basically and am just now getting settled into some kind of routine. Thanks for sticking with me during the past month of silence.

Okay…so if you’re like me you shoot in raw or maybe jpg and then rush over to your PC to download your shots and view them in some tool like Lightroom, Picasa, Microsoft Paint, whatever…

There is a reason why you should not save those precious images in a .jpg format for long term.

Everytime you open a .jpg type image you decompress the image and when you close it, you recompress it. It’s in this recompression that you wind up losing data. To understand why this happens you have to understand how compression works.

Compression works by using an algorithm to compute where changes in your file can be safely made to substitute one character for several. Now for you techies…this is a major simplification of the process. There is actually a lot that happens but suffice it to say that the original file that you started out with is stored in a compressed format. JPG uses this to reduce the size of the file and there are two formats…lossless and lossy.

If you are using lossy, you are also using a format that loses data. So everytime you open a file in Picasa, Photoshop, John’s photo viewer, etc…you are losing data. So over time, that image of your loved one, pet, flower, or something else over time, and multiple openings and closings, will start showing noticeable signs of deterioration in the digital version.

So what’s the solution? Save images in a lossless .jpg format or save them in an entirely different format like tiff, or maybe even .bmp (yes…a bitmap). Another option is to save original in their raw format that your camera shots them in, and use a lossless .jjpg for sharing and use a tiff/bmp on those images that you want to save for a very long time.

If your images are already in a lossy .jpg format. save them in a different format like tiff now. If you are just now importing images from your camera in a nice raw file mode, leave them in that mode and work with/use .jpg copies for short periods of time. Of course you can always make digital copies of your jpgs and share them.

So this week I learned a new lesson on how NOT to shoot photographs of falling snow. I took one shot and realized that I needed to crank up the speed of my D40. So I cranked up the ISO instead and still had no luck. So what I have discovered is that I was on the right path but you should try using flash and shooting against a dark background as much as possible. In the end it is smarter to crank your shutter speed as fast that it will go. Then, in Photoshop, GIMP, Lightroom, or Appature open the image and crank up the contrast. I tried those thing and prepped this image in Lightroom and you be the judge. Drop me a line if you have better ideas on how to get the snow to look less like heavy rain.

So if you have a Nikon D40, D40, D60, or similar low end DSLR camera, you will inevitably face the same problem I had finding a lens that will work with it. Sure…you can spend extra and get the Nikkor DX lenses which work great but had a substantially higher price tag. But I am including a list of lenses you can pick up that won’t break the bank and that will help you get that perfect shot.

Any of the Tamron Di-II lenses will work as they have the motor built into them. My experience with this manufacturer is limited to one lens, the 70-300mm f-4.0-6.3 Di-II. It takes great photos and has a built-in macro feature which allows you to get up close and person on some pretty small and detailed objects. I have mostly good things to say about this lens however, its biggest downside has to be its focuser. It is slow and often comes up soft. I frequently find myself kicking the lens out of Autofocus and putting it in manual mode.

Sigma makes a series as well called the DC line. Those are DSLR lenses which are compatible with the Nikon D40′s autofocusing system. While I have not used these, I have read and heard good things about this brand.

In case you don’t know, the thing that makes these lower end digital single lens reflex cameras different (DSLR cameras) is that the motor that drives the autofocuser is not in the body of the camera like it is on the higher end cameras. No…the autofocusing motor for these lies within the lens itself. There is a small opening on the lens mount in front of the camera that allows you to see the drive mechanism that feeds information back to the image processor inside the camera.

Nikon’s Nikkor lenses have a faster response time and focus better in the autofocus mode however…it is my experience that you lose little if you take the time and get used to your Tamron or Sigma lens and allow time for the focuser to kick in. If you are shooting sports or other lightning fast events, you may want to opt to pay a little bit more.

If you are looking to spend aroun $500 on your next lens, allow me to introduce you to the all in one wonder…the Tamron 18-270mm lens. This lens have an incredible amount of coverage and works well with your D40/D40x/D60/ etc….

Here is a series of images that I have taken with my Tamron lens:

 

 

 

Here are lists from the major manufacturers of the lenses that may work with the Nikon lower end DSLR:

Nikon: http://imaging.nikon.com/products/imaging/lineup/lens/af/dx/index.htm

Sigma: http://www.sigmaphoto.com/lenses/lenses_all.asp

Tamron: http://www.tamron.com/lenses/default-photo.asp