D7000--- W0Ws and BOOs

A few first impressions.

First WOW--My eyesight isn't what it used to be. Partly this is because Scrib can now be called Old Scrib. Partly it is because Scrib in his youth was too friendly with a high power UV YAG laser . (For the scientific minded readers. YAG lasers become UV lasers when you frequency triple and quadruple the normal IR output. Focus that radiation down in air and you now have your own $10,000 to $15,000 firecracker simulator)

But back to the WOW; Scrib's conversation does slide away from the topic at times.

One of the first things I did at the Camera Company was fiddle with the diopter adjustment on the viewfinder. And guess what, it has a wider adjustment than my D60 does. Now I don't have to wear my reading glasses to check the camera's focus. From that moment, I began to feel warm and fuzzy about the D7000.

a WOW and boo. A while back I discovered a smaller version of ebay where lenses could be bought cheap cheap. With several I paid more for shipping than I paid for the lens. If I did my homework and googled around to discover their IQ--Image Quality in the lens spec world--some of them even turned out to be good lenses.

One attraction of the D7000 was that unlike the D60 it was designed for legacy lenses. The focus dot and range finder arrows that tell you which direction you should twist to manually focus are big and bright in the viewfinder. You can also register up to ten legacy lens and have exposure and focus info in the pic's EXIF file. Or for that matter not register the lens--it still works without the info. So when I mounted one of my best manual lens, a Vivitar series I 35-80mm f2.8, and saw how well that lens worked--the big warm and fuzzy feeling became even fuzzier.

Now the boo. My D60 will mount just about any F-mount lens that Nikon or a third part ever made. AI, AIs, auto focus or NonAI, it don't matter. Unfortunately my D7000 won't mount NonAI lenses. So about a third of my manual lens collection won't work with the D7000.

With some lenses, I don't care that much. For others, my 400mm and and two 500mm, I bought a new AI T-mount adapter that should arrive tomorrow. But all my macro stuff, extension tubes, bellows, Nikon 55mm 1 to 1 macro and other goodies, are NonAI and won't mount

Some work-arounds are obvious. Keep the D60 as a backup and use that for macros, something I was thinking of doing anyway. Buy new macro stuff, a clean solution but expensive. Or a DIY project I came up with. Not quite so clean a solution, but cheap because I already own everything I think I need. Will blog what happens when Xmas is over and I have the time.

And finally the BIG WOW--the low light low noise images.

There has been a lot of talk in the forums about a D7000 hot pixel problem. With some sensors the problem is real. Nikon is working on a firmware update to make the problem less obvious. But because of the talk, people are pushing some perfectly good D7000s to the extremes. If they see even a slightly warm pixel, they start screaming. "Nikon screwed up big time."

So, since Scrib likes to show off his knowledge, I spent some hours last weekend posting about what you could reasonably expect from any digital camera. Thom Hogan did the same thing, only with far more authority, in his review of the D7000 yesterday. http://www.bythom.com/nikond7000review.htm

In the process I learned a new fact. To be an official hot pixel it has to be be 4 standard deviations brighter that the noise. Or in talk less geek, it has to be bright.

I also pushed my D7000 up to near its limit with a ISO1600 30 second dark frame. With any big problem that should have brought the hot pixels out of hiding. As I hoped they stayed hidden. I had to drag the dark frame into Photoshop, add a levels layer and bring the slider down to 8 from 255 before a few out of 16.2 million became bright enough to pass the 4 STD test. That works out to shooting at an ISO of roughly 50,000. Not shabby, Nikon, not at all.

to be continued.
Better and more comprehensive noise tests will be coming

Impulse--thy name is empty the checking account.

Don't even want to look to see how many months ago I said I would be blogging more often. So on to the news of the day

Bought a Nikon D7000 today complete with the 18-105mm kit lens.

Was I planning to do it. Yes, after reading the early buzz I told myself, and my wife, that in some far future when the D60 died, died (I'm up around 40,000 shutter actuations) I be looking for deal on a good used camera. One like the D7000. But not now.

After all, it's the photographer not the camera that takes.....blah, blah, blah.

Then this weekend when I was down with a cold, I decided to toss in my two kopeks into a flickr discussion on RAW workflow and histograms. Before I started to write that post I needed to check a few facts about Raw Therapee, the free GIMP converter.

I was not expecting to see much new so I was pleasantly surprised to discover a group of camera hackers were hard at work on version 3. An alpha hack at the moment but near a beta release, I download the latest build. And since dpreview had the D7000's noise images up on their site and RAW Therapee handles jpgs like they are RAW I downloaded dp's ISO 25,000 noise test.

And after I pulled that image into RT and ran the default noise routine to see... HOLY DAMN DOGGY.



The screen crop is a bit hard to see and having the globe in the center of the gray scale didn't help, but you get the idea. The noise reduced ISO 25,000 line profile is on the right. Old Scrib didn't pound the noise in the ground either. He had to stare hard to find traces of smudged detail in the cleaned up image.

Today started as a future planning day. Up at auction was an Nikon 85mm f1.8 with a price that hadn't quite reached the e-bay stratosphere. One of the earliest non AI mount ones. Since I had to go by the Camera Company on another errand, I packed up a Viv Series I AI lens and a non AI lens and decided to stop by and take a few test shots.

And--the only problem is that the West Side Camera Company was sold out and I must wait til 10:00 tomorrow to pick up the one that is coming in from the East Side store.

Stats and Other Matters

Now that Blogger has its new stats widget I discovered this blog does have occasional readers. My scribbles aren't falling into a black hole. So I shall blog more often. Photography will still be the main focus but I shall try to be a bit less technical.

PhotoMidwest opened last Friday with the Seven State juried show at the Memorial Union. Once again I paid my entrance fee and submitted a set of photographic masterpieces; once again all were rejected by the juror.

Only this time I had slammed up against the juror's prejudices. All my photos were people pics. And out of the forty seven pictures selected only one could be remotely called a people pic. In the two or three others that included a human figure, it was there as an accent to a landscape.

To see what I mean, click on http://photomidwest.org and watch the slide show. This year landscapes and still-lifes ruled. The juror also didn't show up for the traditional speech to open the show. All I can say is "BOO!"

But PhotoMidwest isn't a total washout. I have nine people pics up at the CPM Human Interest Group Show. If you are in the Madison area the show is hanging at the Social Justice Center, 1202 Williamson Street through October 31st.

Three photos formed the large Young Shakespeare Players triptych I hung when the Human Interest Group was the Photographer of the Month at CPM earlier this year. Rehanging that show was the original plan, but since we had double the wall space at the Center, a call went out for more photos a few weeks ago. I contributed four. Finally when we hung the pictures yesterday morning we still ended up with an empty gap at the end of the main hallway. Since I had two large photos that fit the theme--What Makes Madison Unique-- already framed I brought them in and hung them just before the reception opened. May have ended up with more than my share up on the wall but that happened honestly.

Williamson Street being Willy Street, three street people showed up to open the reception. One heaped up a plate and filled a couple glasses of wine before moving on to another reception. Yesterday was Gallery Night and he had fifty or so other openings to visit.

The other two dropped their packs and decided to stay. One was quite tha talker. He kept us amused with a long confession on how cocaine and booze had cost him the $500,000 house and the fancy cars and 36 foot boat and how he was now born again and straightening out his life. As to how much of the tale was story and how much was true...? But I will give him credit on straightening out his life. He kept away from the free wine and beer.

The last one was much quieter and genuinely interested in the pictures. He studied them all before settling in a chair in front of one of mine.



"The best; the best" he told me in broken English. "Going to come out and roll all over me." A man down on his luck but still with a good eye.

All and all, not the usual gallery opening.