The reason I got a NIKON D700....

I have a thing about shooting in low light conditions, especially band and stage photography. The challenge of such low difficult lighting with the complexities of movement, pushes the boundaries of what cameras see. In days of film, we would get more grainier shots because of the use of higher sensitive films or as we say today "Higher ISO" setting. In today's digital cameras,the improvements of lower noise is allowing us to shoot in very dim lighting and not suffer too much from digital noise. My OLYMPUS gear is fantastic and have a number of fantastic lenses but I found that at higher ISO settings, eg like 2500,the digital noise it produced was higher than other cameras, namley the NIKON D700 or CANON 5D MK2. I chose the NIKON for a number of different reasons that I will bring up another time. So with my NIKON I was able to get my hands on 2 lenses from TAMRON. A 28-75 F2.8 and a 70-200mm F2.8 lenses. Both of these lenses have had a great history and having the opportunity to try out these lenses was a great opportunity. The lack of stabiliser in the system I am using (the OLYMPUS stabilises all lenses attached as the feature is built into the body of the camera) has made me realise how much small body movements stabilisers actually fix! Well these are the first shots that I took with this combination and have been happy with my low noise results, but need to be aware a lot more of "my" movement! First images HERE

Black and White photography with TAMRON

Today I picked up a TAMRON 70-200mm f2.8 lens to use with my NIKON D700. The first few shots I took today were of some of the neighborhood kids with the camera in Black & White mode. I like using the setting like this as against doing it later so that I can adjust exposure to my liking straight away with the B/W vision. The lens also has a macro /closeup setting so that you can get as close as 95cm which makes this a versatile lens for a number of different uses. One of the features that is great on this lens is the "push/pull" movement you do on the barrel to go from Auto to Manual focus.Very convenient indeed! Whether it's bird watching,sports,portrait or close up photography, this lens is great value at under $1500 The lens is not as fast in focusing as an original NIKON but for the price, the quality of the optics is second to none...the photos speak for themselves.More info on the lens HERE To see more photos from this lens,click HERE

DR Function in RICOH CX1

Today in the local park I saw this great tree with a whole lot of moss. I had the CX1 in my pocket and took the shot you see. I used a function called DR photos at different exposures and then "put" them together. This is especially good if you have a high contrast situation where you can get can achieve a photograph that has details in the highlights as well as the shadows.. You can have the camera just give you the end result or you can let the camera take 2 shots in where you get to choose from the "original" shot or the processed shot. I think it's pretty clever and gives you less time at the computer! Have a look at the 2 shots and see the difference here

LENS BABY

I have just started using a different type of lens known as a LENS BABY. There are 3 different types of these new "fun" type of lens. The one I am using is "The Composer". Able to suit a number of the most common camera mounts,this rotating ball lens has a unique way of adjusting depth of field in some pretty wild ways. Look for your "sweet spot" by rotating the lens and focus. The link takes you to LENS BABY WEBPAGE and you can see some of my current images taken with a Nikon D700 here