Tag - nikon

Photo Challenge #5: The Red Violin

June 26, 2016

I thought of this one yesterday after posting that Instagram snapshot of the violin headstocks at NAMM.

This goes back to 2013, when I’d just gotten my first “full frame” DSLR, the Nikon D600, and was looking for things to do with it.

Ann and I had been to a show at a small music store in in the Five Points neighborhood of East Nashville called The Fiddle House (t’s not there any more, it has since merged with the Violin Shop on Franklin Pike). While we were there, I looked up at a display of violins (just what is the difference between a fiddle and a violin, anyway?) hanging on the wall and noticed this one red-toned instrument standing out amid all the brown ones.

I got permission from the owners of the shop to come back and set up a shot that featured that one red violin. I brought a strobe with me and tried to light the thing, but all I got was glare reflecting off the varnish. I finally had to put away the flash and resort to the room lighting, with a slightly higher ISO and a MUCH longer exposure. Thank god I brought my tripod.

One more note about that Nikon D600: that was my last Nikon. It was awful. The worst designed and engineered camera I owned in nearly 40 years of using Nikons. I bought it for the trip I took to the UK in the spring of 2013 (oh, how I wish I was back there now for those endless sunsets around the Solstice!) I also carried the little Olympus camera that I’d taken when Ann and I went to Scotland in 2012; that was my ‘back up camera’ for that trip. But I discovered that I kept going to the Olympus when I got tired of lugging the Nikon around.

It wasn’t just the size and weight of the Nikon that wore me down (I got to calling it “the Anvil 600”), but there were other aspects of the camera that were problematic – not the least that I’d gotten one of the models that was so poorly manufactured that the shutter sprayed crud on the sensor, and some of my favorite shots with a deep depth of field (like f/16-22) were nearly ruined by the spots in the images.

It was not long after I returned from that trip that Olympus announced it’s Pro-line of OM-D bodies and lenses, and that’s all I’ve been shooting every since.

Not that anybody asked…

Is This a Dumb Idea for a Camera…

November 5, 2013

Paul Schatzkin

commentary, photography

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…or the dumbest idea for a camera, ever?

Ming Thein offers some insights on the just announced Nkon Df – a camera that seems to blend all the disadvantages of digital photography with all the disadvantages of film photography.

I think Ming is mincing his words here.

To be honest, I really don’t quite know what to make of this camera… I’m confused. On one hand, there are very sensible engineering choices – the sensor, for instance; but on the other hand, marketing said that you have to have AF and a full digital set of controls and a retro look, so we land up having too many buttons and knobs and a bit of an F3-collided-with-a-D600 appearance to it.

I’m not mincing mine: I think this is the dumbest thing in camera design/engineering Nikon could possibly have offered.

Starting with the same dysfunctional AF array that soured me on the D600 right out of the box.

Ming talks a lot about the viewfinder. He’s talking about an optical viewfinder. But based on my experience with the Olympus EM-1 so far, I think the whole idea of the optical viewfinder is obsolete. I spent a lot of time while shooting the Barcamp on Saturday experimenting with flash settings – flash on, flash off, flash exposure plus/minus – and never had to take the camera away from my eye to make those adjustments because all the info is right in the viewfinder. I don’t think there is any optical viewfinder that puts that much info in front of your eye.

But better than that, each time I made an exposure, it would appear before my eye in the viewfinder. I could tell without ever looking at the back of the camera that I’d gotten the shot and move on to the next one. You can’t do that with an optical viewfinder, either.

It seems to me that some evil twin of Marshal McLuhan is now running Nikon. McLuhan wrote about seeing the future through a rear-view mirror – using new technology to do the work of the old. He wasn’t suggesting that that is necessarily a good thing – but this camera is a classic example of doing just that. It’s taking digital technology and trying to replicate the film camera experience. Jeezus, if you want a “film experience,” just get an F3 or an F100 off eBay.

And the price… almost $2,800?? That’s the same as a D800… which is possibly the finest DSLR on the market.

I’m with Ming. Totally confused.