Lows hit a new height

I've been off work this week for my birthday present to myself, with the intent that I'd take some great pictures with my new, great camera! I've been planning this time off for months and after getting the Nikon D610 a few weeks ago I was really looking forward to all of the great pictures I'd take while travelling around Arizona.

One picture I was determined to get was Horseshoe Bend near Page, AZ. You should look at this link, or do your own Google search, to see pictures of this place. It's really something, it's right here in Arizona (about a 5 hour drive from Phoenix), and it's free! The Grand Canyon will cost you a little bit to shoot, but not Horseshoe Bend!

For some reason this place has become pretty popular to photograph. It is a cool shot, and it's relatively easy to get to, but I'd only heard of it recently. Now it seems it's a destination for photogs from around the world.

Well, I went there. If you read descriptions of the place which I'm sure are more eloquent than I could provide, you find that the parking lot is about 5 miles west of Page, AZ. I'd heard horror stories of cars being ransacked while you were there but when I visited there was a park ranger there with visibility over the entire parking lot. That was one of the good things about the place.

A view of Horseshoe Bend from the covered seating area

It's about a 3/4 mile hike to the rim from the parking lot, over loose sand and uneven rocks. First you climb up a hill that is loose sand. That wasn't exactly trivial for me being in the shape I'm in, but it was do-able. My dog Elmer and I made it. Walk across the flat top to where the descent starts and you see you've got a bit farther to walk.

You can make out the trail of people along the trail and where they were congregating at the edge. I will admit, there were a lot of people and a lot of them were passing Elmer and I by as we made our way both to the edge and later, on our way back, and very few spoke English as they went past us.

The rest of the walk to the cliff wasn't exactly easy for me either. It wipes in my face my lack of physical capabilities and how beneficial a life of sitting at a desk can be.

When you finally get to the destination, it's a cliff with a sheer drop of 1,000 feet plus or minus a few. You get to the edge of the rock and there's nothing but the drop off. No hand rails, no warning sign, no life guard. I got up to maybe 5 feet of the drop off and my vertigo and fear of heights dropped in. I got (very) briefly dizzy with a quick glimpse down to the river, stopped, turned around, and got about 15 feet back from the edge.



Visitors enjoying Horseshoe Bend

I sat there for probably 1/2 of an hour hoping my man parts would show up (maybe they'd just been slow to arrive). But, no luck. I watched lots of people climb all over the various rocks, walk up to the edge, take the pictures I wanted to take, laugh, admire, and basically enjoy themselves.

I even toyed with the idea of having someone take a few pics for me. There were a LOT of DSLR cameras there. (I noted with some amount of pleasure that the majority of them were Nikons, identified by the Nikon neck straps). 

In the end, I was able to only snap a few chicken pictures well back from the edge. I was also dismayed that I'd forgotten my graduated ND filter which I could have really used while shooting into the sun. But, overall that was a small concern because the pics weren't going to amount to much anyway. If you look at some of the other pics that have been taken there, you'll likely agree my feeble attempt below is not worthy of much. I have aspirations to try again, but for now this was a low point of my photography, arrived at 1,000 feet above the Colorado River at Horseshoe Bend.
 

My best shot of Horseshoe Bend :(

I Want a New Lens

After the few pictures I've taken with my new Nikon D610 (I can't say that enough for some reason), it seems like I'm always wanting a closer shot / more narrow field of view than my one full frame (FX in Nikonese) lens provides. Even when I shot a few pictures of my dogs in the motel room, maybe from only 5 feet away, I end up with the subject only filling up a quarter of the image or so. I want to be able to zoom in.

I was aware of this issue, which is caused by having a prime, or non-zoom, lens. In order to compose a shot with respect to filling up the frame, it requires physically moving the camera closer or farther away from the subject. A zoom lens allows you to adjust the lens to fill the frame as desired (within the limits of the zoom focal length).

The trade off is that primes are usually a sharper picture and usually have a wider aperture (my 50mm is f/1.8 where my widest zoom is only f/4). Because the focal length is fixed, a prime lens can be optimized for sharpness much better than a zoom. Sharpness, and picture quality, are what I want to optimize, so I have decided to try to use primes instead of zooms.

That said, I need something longer than a 50mm.

My plan is to get an 85mm. I think it will be sufficient. Using the Nikon lens simulator at:

http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/lens/simulator/

I can see that the 50mm provides about a 46 degree angle of view, whereas the 85mm is about 28 degrees. The 85mm is close to half as wide, about 44%. If my prior subjects were only filling up a quarter of the frame, or about 12 degrees, that same image would be filling up almost half of the 85mm frame. That's kind of what I'm hoping for.

My other thought regarding this size is that most of my landscape images with the D3200 were done using the 18-55mm zoom. With the 1.5 crop factor, if I shot at 55mm with that lens on that camera it would be equivalent to a 82.5mm lens on the D610. If I got an 85mm I'd be back to what I was used to with the D3200.

And that leads me to my final point.

I've read other blogs, etc., that mention it can take some getting used to both the bigger format camera (FX vs. DX for the D3200, etc.) as well as using a prime lens vs. a zoom lens. I believe it is true for me. So while I struggle trying to accept the wider images I'm capturing I've also gone back and looked at the images I took with the D3200 and I find that most of them were zoomed in more than the 33mm that equates to the 50mm on my D610. It's mainly because of that, of seeing what focal length I have normally been using, that I am ready to bite the bullet and get the 85mm.

New Header Image!

I thought I'd post a pic of some of my gear in the header of this blog page. I may be a bit nerdy but it looks cool to me! I'm very happy with all the stuff I've accumulated and learned how to use in the last year.

On the left of the image is my new Nikon D610 with the 50mm prime lens, attached to the Manfrotto quick release plate. Closer to the right of the image is my Nikon D3200 with the 18mm-55mm kit lens.

In between is, in no particular order, my Yong-Nuo speed light, spare EN-EL15 battery for the D610. A case for my SD cards. White balance cards. Wireless remote (works with either camera). Other lenses. Singh-Ray graduated ND filter. Fotasy camera sling. Eneloop AA spare batteries for the speed light. Rav Power WiFi hub and card reader. B+W UV filter. EN-EL14A battery for the D3200.

Not shown is my Manfrotto tripod and ball head, camera bags, chargers, etc.

If I can't be out using my gear I can at least look at it!

If you're interested, I took this picture as a JPEG with my Kodak EZ something or other camera. I had my gear sitting on some whiteboard panels I got at Hobby Lobby, as the base and background. I edited it in Photoshop by selecting the white background and removing it. I resized the image for this site (768 pixels wide), set the opacity to 95%, and uploaded it, creating the visual wonder you see before you.

A Brief Update

Some Face Time with the Nikon D610

(I still can't believe I have this camera!)

My wife and our dogs and I went out for a weekend drive this last weekend, and spent the night in Pinetop/Lakeside, Arizona. It's at about 7,200 feet elevation and it was nice and cool there - around 60 degrees at night. It's surrounded by pines and is a nice alternative to Flagstaff (where the motels were all booked up). It is a bit farther from Phoenix but still only took about 3-1/2 hours to get there through Globe, AZ. The return route we made through Payson, which is maybe 10 miles shorter, but there was an accident on the highway so it ended up taking a bit longer. Still, only 1/2 of a tank of gas in the Explorer for each direction.

I spent more time just driving and enjoying my wife and dogs than I did taking pictures. On the way home on Sunday we took the Woods Canyon Lake exit and I took a handful of pictures there, but that was it.

But, those pictures were enjoyable to take. They aren't great but I enjoy taking them with the new D610. Before shooting I wanted to make sure my settings were ready to go. Since there are around 300 settings, that may seem daunting. However, I have saved all of my settings in a user setting, "U2" so all I have to do is dial it in on the mode dial and I'm ready to go.

To double check things all I have to do is look at the control panel on the top of the camera to see my ISO, aperture, and shutter. I can verify I'm shooting in RAW and the auto focus and metering mode. Too cool!

I also really enjoy the large viewfinder (as compared to the Nikon D3200). I can see in it!
If there is anything I wish were different, it would have to be that I kind of wish I had a different lens or two. Perhaps even a zoom, but I'm still not convinced I want a zoom. The pictures I got from the prime 50mm are amazing to me.

If you look at the full size version of this picture:

http://www.poppavein.com/wwwroot/randymorter/photos/Landscape/WoodsCanyonLake/index.html#Pinetop-Lakeside_20140720_088.jpg

You can see the individual tree trunks at the bottom of the valley. Again, it's not a wonderful image but I like it because of the detail. Note that it's not really got a lot of post processing sharpening either.

It's Heavy

I did use the camera a bit more to take some snap shots of our motel room and the pups, but they're just for personal memories so I didn't post them or expect much of them. I did, however, play around with the camera. Since I wasn't going to do anything with them, I shot them in JPEG mode. It's so quick to change the format with all of the dedicated controls (compared to the D3200 where you have to go through menus).

I also wanted to shoot our dogs jumping from bed to bed so tried bumping up the ISO and shooting in burst mode. It kind of worked but I never did catch one of them in mid air. However, even at ISO 800 in JPEG the noise was okay.
 
And again, even in a small motel room (well, it was large enough for 2 king size beds) I wish I had a bit longer lens. I really think the 85mm would be perfect.

Panorama in Photoshop

In my last post I talked about the lesson I learned using my new Nikon D610 to take pictures of the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix, AZ. I thought I'd say a bit about what I did with them once I got them...
 

Panorama images are BIG

 

Panorama of the West Face of the Superstition Mountains

A panorama image, in Photoshop and other photography terms, as well as my own, is a picture that is comprised of a number of smaller pictures that have been (hopefully) seamlessly combined to make the one big picture.
 
Panorama images allow you to create a final image that is larger than one single image can be with a given set of equipment. I was using a 50mm prime lens - a lens that is a single length (it doesn't allow you to zoom in or out). In order to control how much of the subject fills up the frame you have to physically move the camera closer or farther away from the subject.
 
I was kind of stuck with the Superstitions pictures.
 
I could have got closer, but not without walking closer to the mountain and I didn't like the looks of things where we were. There were a lot of boulders with holes around them, exactly the kind of thing you know isn't done by accident. I'm guessing they were all snake holes because they didn't have any web around them like a tarantula would make. I might have been okay but I couldn't carry my dog and the camera and tripod and I was worried that my dog might step in a hole and get a nasty surprise. Besides, the mountain already filled up my frame well as you can see. It's not crowded on the right side top, but I wouldn't really want to crop out any more sky.
 
I couldn't back up any farther to get the whole thing in one shot or I'd start getting houses in the picture. Yes, there are houses that close.
 
So, I was at a good distance (maybe 300 yards from the cliffs).
 
A wide angle lens, perhaps even a 24mm, might have got the shot. But, I knew I could take three shots and combine them.
 

Bigness Part Two

 
These pictures are also big in the sense that they are made up, in this case, of three pictures. I shoot in RAW, and each of these pictures is around 23M. Adding them together makes the resulting picture around 60M (some of the individual areas are removed where the separate images are stitched together - you don't need two sets of data in the image file for the overlapping area). My computer starts slowing down and I've got 8G of RAM with a quad core 2.6GHz CPU.
 
Fortunately Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 can work directly in RAW instead of TIFF so the file sizes were kept at the minimum size possible. TIFF files are usually significantly larger than RAW files.
 

Shooting and Processing the Bigs

 
For my panorama of the Superstitions shown here, I used Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 to combine three smaller pictures into the one larger picture. If you look at my online gallery you can even download the full size image (it might take a while download and display, it's a 19M jpeg!), and you can see the three individual pictures I combined to make this one.
 
The trick to shooting panoramas, or "panos", is to make sure that your exposure and focus are in a manual mode so that the individual pictures can be combined more easily and will look the same across the resulting image. That was the somewhat tricky part I had because of my unknowingly using the bracketing feature while I was shooting the pictures.
 
You also likely want to use a tripod and a head with a pan feature like my Manfrotto 468MG. This does two things - gives you a good stable foundation for taking the pictures and allows you smoothly pan from side to side while keeping the camera level and in the same plane.
 
First, by looking through the view finder and panning, I noticed that I could get the face of the Superstitions in 3 images. For example, I composes the left shot so that I got all of the cliff transition to the alluvial fan. Without moving the camera, I noticed a landmark on the right side of the shot. I rotated the camera to the right until the landmark was near the left edge of the viewfinder (did I mention how nice the large viewfinder is on the Nikon D610?). Again, I picked out a landmark on the right side of the viewfinder. And again I rotated the camera until the second landmark was near the left side of the viewfinder, and saw that the edge of the cliff was within the frame.
 
I set up for the shot by ensuring my ball head was level. In my case I have a spirit level built in to the tripod (the Manfrotto 055XPROB). When it's level, the head is level as long as the center pole is in the vertical position.
 
Next, I verified the ball of the ball-head and the camera itself was level. I was able to use the Virtual Horizon feature of the Setup Menu. That thing is slick - easier for me than the bubble level I have (at least it was in the not so bright light). With the tripod, ball-head, and camera levelled, I could shoot the three images as before when I verified I could get them in 3 shots.
 
You don't want to re-focus or change the exposure for the 3 shots either. To help this, make sure the camera is in manual mode, and if I use auto focus I'll take it off auto prior to taking the shots. This, of course, assumes the subject is at the same distance in all of the shots.
 
For processing, you want to make sure you have overlap between the pictures so the software can line them up. I found it interesting that Photoshop did NOT just create a straight line to line the images up, it created a jagged line which helps hide the seam. Cool!
 
I processed the 3 shots into a pano, cropped it as large as possible to eliminate the curved overall image, and got the shot above!

 

A Whole New Learning Curve

I was able to get out with the new Nikon D610 this last weekend a couple of times. Both times I learned a lesson or two.

Lesson 1 - Bracketing

The D610 offers built in bracketing, which is one of the reasons I wanted a camera upgrade. But just because it's there doesn't mean it's easy to use!

I got two e-books for my Kindle, as I mentioned in my last blog. I went through both of them, configuring my settings as I went. Reading about something and modifying some settings is only part of the story however.

I thought I had the bracketing set up the way I wanted in advance of when I would use it. Last Saturday I went to the Superstition Mountains, east of Phoenix, to at least shoot pictures of something. After driving around, I found a location that I could park and shoot the west face of the mountains as the sunset hit, casting them red. Cool!

I got my dog Elmer, found us a little clearing, got my camera and tripod set up. I used the camera's built in level which is really cool. It eliminates the need for a separate level which is nice because the one I have mounts in the hot shoe but I also use the hot shoe for the GPS attachment (it doesn't need it for signal, it just uses it to keep it steady).

I got my exposure set and, using auto focus, I took my first shot of something real with my new D610! I was photographing!

After the shot I looked to take another one but my exposure was different - the shutter speed had changed and I had to change it back. How weird. Maybe it was something I did.

Unfortunately, after each shot I took the shutter speed (and therefore the exposure) was different than before I took the shot. What the heck? Then I remembered...

I had recently seen a post on Facebook/Stunning Digital Photography where someone had the same thing happen to them and I'd suggested to them what the problem was, and I was correct.

It's the bracketing.

The way the settings work is that as long as you specify to shoot the 2 or 3 frames available in bracketing mode, the camera will be doing the bracketing. I was under the assumption that I had to press the bracketing button when I wanted to do a set of bracketed exposures, but that's not the way the functionality was implemented. I guess it makes sense - the way it is implemented the camera will do bracketing until you tell it not to.

To turn it off, you have to select 0 (zero) frames of bracketing. Fortunately, it's not too hard to do since there's a dedicated button. You push the bracketing button [BKT] and turn the command dial to 0 (zero). The little BKT icon goes off on the control panel. I figured all of this out AFTER I got home from the excursion.

Lesson 2 - Mirror Up

After I got home from the Superstition Mountains at about 8:30PM, I loaded the pics onto my PC, did some post processing, and posted some of the pics on my jAlbum site as well as Facebook.

Then I turned to figuring out why I'd had the exposure issue. I pulled out the manual and the two e-books (using my Kindle for PC reader) and solved the problem. By then it was about 3:00AM and I was wide awake. I decided to go try my luck again...

I packed up my dog Elmer along with my 3 camera bags (the big Amazon bag with my extra stuff including the D3200, the LowePro waist bag with the D610, and my bag with the Manfrotto tripod) and got back in the Explorer. We stopped at the QT gas station and I got myself a coffee and donuts, then headed back to Encanto Park.

I've wanted to shoot this one little "island" there to try to get it so it had better lighting and wasn't red. The other time I shot it I used my YongNuo flash but I only fired it once. I wanted to try shooting it again but firing the flash multiple times during the exposure.

When we got to the park, I took my coffee and donuts and Elmer to just scope out the place. We walked over to the location and found someone sleeping on one of the park benches right where I wanted to flash my light. I decided I wasn't going to get that picture that morning.

We walked around more of the park while I ate my two donuts and drank my coffee, just enjoying the almost empty park at 4:00 AM. After the ingesting we headed back to the Explorer, got in it, and drove to the other parking lot closer to the main lake.

I got set up to take the sunrise pictures, this time using the remote and mirror up. I had changed another setting in the camera, the exposure delay (or what ever it's called) so that the camera would raise the mirror, wait 1 second, and then capture the image and thus reducing or eliminating any shake from raising the mirror.

However, I had NOT taken the remote trigger out of mirror up mode. Consequently, when I pushed the remote's button, the mirror would raise and I expected the picture to be acquired a second later. But it took a lot longer. In fact, using my new photography watch (a Casio with temperature, elevation, and compass), I determined it was about 30 seconds of delay.

What was going on now?

This time I figured it out "in the field". Once I took the remote off of the mirror up mode, things worked great and I got some shots.

Wrapping Up

The shots from Encanto park were okay but they really weren't any different from my other shots with the D3200 that I'd taken a couple of months earlier. The Superstition Mountain shots were cool - I'd never got any of them and especially not with a reddish cast due to the sunset. I like the shots I got there, especially the panoramic that I created (even with the struggle over the changing exposure settings I found three that worked well together).

One final lesson I've learned is that I really want a longer focal length lens. I like the 50mm lens a lot. I like the stop at infinity focus. I like the f/1.8 ability. I like the pictures I get with it. I just wish I could crop in more.

Maybe I'm just to used to the crop on the D3200 and eventually I'll be okay with the 50mm. I was thinking I'd want a 24mm and that the 50mm would be too narrow of an angle. Now I'm looking for probably an 85mm although I wonder if that's enough. I think the Encanto Park pictures would have needed about 1/2 of the angle of the 50mm. Well, I guess I've got something new to ponder now!

Ups and Downs

My Nikon D610 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 Lens

The Nikon D610 has Arrived!


I got my new Nikon D610 this last week, on Tuesday, 7/8/2014. Yeah, the date is significant to me - it's about a $2,000 camera after all!
 
I shot the picture at right using my Nikon D3200. I haven't used the D3200 since, and it's kind of sad but kind of exciting. The D3200 has been great - it's introduced me to my exciting and pleasant new photography hobby. It has inspired me to take a good number of excursions including overnight camping or motelling trips for the sole purpose of taking some pictures. It has provided me with memories that will last the rest of my life, especially since they've been recorded in digital images!
 
I've got some good pictures out of the D3200 too, which is what I was led to believe would happen even on the entry level DSLR. It also exposed some weaknesses that generated the interest in moving up the camera food chain. I've mentioned them in an earlier post, but to summarize, I wanted better picture quality above all (no noise in my night photos, improved sharpness without resorting to software and its artifacts). I also wanted some other features that either contribute to picture quality improvement or just make shooting some pictures easier, such as mirror lock up, exposure bracketing, and depth of field preview. So, after looking around at what I thought offered the best picture quality and feature set I could afford, I chose the Nikon D610.
 

Elmer looking at the Nikon D610
Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D, 1/60s - f/2.8 - ISO 800

I haven't the D610 for a week yet, but I have got out to try to shoot sunsets one evening. They didn't turn out great; my best picture so far has been an unplanned snap shot of my dog Elmer the night after I got the camera.
 
This shot was on full auto mode using my Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens and the built in flash. The large version of this has really nice detail. The bokeh of the background is very nice. I don't see noise in it, or at least the noise looks like a more pleasant graininess rather than a irritating digital noise issue.
 
I never got one shot from the D3200 at ISO above 400 that I liked. And, this shot is a crop of maybe 1/3 of the original image and it still has great detail. Finally, after I took this shot I showed it to my wife on the D610's LCD and her first reaction was something like "Wow!". She's not into the photography like me, and to have her see the difference in the picture quality made me know the camera upgrade was worth it.
 
I know I'll post more as I get more time with it, so I'll leave the discussion of the camera usage for now.
 

Learning to use a Camera

 
I decided to get some more information about the D610 than what the Nikon User Manual provides. I had got an instructional DVD for the D3200 in a package deal I got when I bought that camera. It really wasn't of much use or value to me, so I was hesitant to get anything dedicated to the D610. With the wealth of information available online it didn't seem like it would be that valuable.
 
But, I decided to spring for a Kindle e-book, and in fact, I've now got two of them. I like both of them, and thought I'd let you know about them in case you're interested in getting something yourself.
 

Nikon D610 Experience - The Still Photography Guide to Operation and Image Creation with the Nikon D610

 I got this one first and like the information about why to use one setting over another, as well as how different settings relate to each other. I didn't get any of that kind of information in the D3200 DVD (Blue Crane Digital - Introduction to the Nikon D3200 Basic Controls).

The only thing I was wishing was that the author explained how different settings, etc., tie in to Nikon Capture NX 2. It is clear the author is more of an Adobe Photoshop user. There's nothing wrong with that, but one of the cool things about Capture NX 2 is that it is Nikon specific and the RAW manipulation is tightly linked to the Nikon cameras and offers advantages due to the inside knowledge that the software developers have compared to Adobe. This wasn't a deal breaker, just a desire of mine.

The good thing is that I got not just more insight into how the D610 works, but some insight as to how the D3200 works too, and it was information I hadn't found anywhere else. Specifically, the linkage between different auto focus modes and auto focus and exposure meter settings.

Link to this book on Amazon:
 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GKT43W6/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o02_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Mastering the Nikon D610  

After finishing the book above, I wanted more of the type of insight I got, such as why an experienced Nikon user would use one setting over another in different photography situations. My guru Jon (who just purchased a Nikon D7100 to go with his updated D600) got Darrell Young's "Mastering the Nikon D7100" and liked it so I added this e-book to my Kindle virtual bookshelf.

I like this book too. It book covers most, if not all, of the various controls and settings as well as why you'd use one over the others (in a lot of cases). It's a more complete coverage than the first book (and the author of the first book lets you know he's not covering everything).  
Link to this book on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I2YIZQM/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Again, this author doesn't mention how the settings or work-flow can be integrated with post processing software enough, in my opinion. For example, I've read other places that you might as well turn off some settings if you're using Capture NX 2 because the PC will process them better and/or faster and you can save time between pictures on the camera (that is, reduce camera processing time in order to get more pictures written to the card quicker so you don't miss a shot). Neither of these e-books go into that much.

I wish they were both more comprehensive from a work-flow perspective, I guess. Perhaps there's another book with that info. On the up-side, I have gotten information from both of these books that I hadn't got for the D3200 and I'm very glad I purchased them, especially since together they were only about $20 - around 1% of the cost of the camera! If you're spending that much on a camera you might as well spend a bit more to get a better understanding of how to use it - the Nikon manual describes the controls but very little about why you'd use them.

View NEF files in Windows Explorer

One thing I got out of both of the books above is a tip regarding installing some software on the PC to allow you to see RAW (NEF) files in the Windows Explorer. Without this software, when you use Windows Explorer to view a folder containing NEF files, the NEF files will appear as a generic image icon instead of showing a preview like JPEG or TIFF files.

Nikon offers a free bit of software that, once installed, allows you to preview NEF files in Windows Explorer. That is cool! Otherwise, the only way you could see what a NEF file really looked like was to open up Nikon View NX 2 or other software. Now you can more quickly go through your folders if you're trying to find a particular NEF image file.

Here's the link to Nikon's software download page: http://www.nikonimglib.com/nefcodec/

The Downside

Not to get too carried away, but my wife was able to go pick up our Pomeranian Alvin's remains today. I couldn't do it yet. It's been a bit over 3 weeks since we had to put him down and the hole in my heart and life is still too painful to face. I'm trying not to dwell on it but I can't, won't let myself, forget how important he was in my life for 14 years. I know that eventually I'll be able to control the pain and that the fondness will be the dominant emotion, but it's a bear getting to that time.

Anticipation!

It's on its way

I did it. I ordered my Nikon D610 and it's on its way. It is scheduled to be delivered 5 days from today. It is so exciting! I used to feel this way about getting a guitar. Now its a camera that has me excited. It will certainly be an early birthday present to myself, and a present I hope to not outgrow for quite a few years (in part because the next level of camera comes with quite a price jump!).

I had been thinking that all I really needed was the camera and a new lens or two. So I had already ordered a 50mm f/1.8D prime to try out. After talking to my photography guru Jon, I realized I may want to get another LCD protector. That made me realize I also would need at least one spare battery. And then it dawned on my I'll likely want another quick release plate for my tripod. Oh, I have to have the diopter correction adapter. Before you know it, another $250 or so was added to the price of the camera.

I did order the battery and diopter. I know from experience how limiting a single battery is, even though this is a bigger battery than the D3200 uses and is supposed to deliver close to twice as many shots. I experienced running out of battery once while camping and it ruined the rest of the trip. I ordered the Nikon brand even though there are less expensive 3rd party options. I just like knowing that the battery is exactly what the camera uses.

I have to have the diopter. I can't very well use a view finder with glasses and with my eyesight I can't focus without the adapter. I went through that on my D3200, shooting a lot of pics before I realized why they were soft when I manually focused. Fortunately I knew exactly what to get; the D610 uses the same thing that the D3200 does for this purpose.
As for the quick release plate, I'm holding off for a bit. I'm not sure if I'll need one for both cameras yet. I may decide to put the plate on the D610 and use it for the landscape stuff and then use the D3200 for the hand held work. At any rate, I'm waiting another paycheck before I get the plate (my funds aren't unlimited, dang it).

And then its on to lenses. I'm anxious to see how the 50mm prime works.
On my D3200, with its 1.5x crop factor, I mainly have shot the landscape images with the 18-55mm zoom. Very rarely have I shot landscape with my bigger 55-300mm zoom. To replicate the same range of the 18-55mm zoom, I think that the 50mm will take care of the long end.

My idea currently is to get a 24mm prime to take care of the short end and see if I can make do with those 2 lenses for a while. I am considering adding a 35mm prime if need be, but may put that money towards a zoom. The thing is, the full frame lenses are a bit more spendy than the crop lenses so I really need to plan the purchases better. The "kit" lens sold with the D610 just doesn't get great reviews so I'm thinking I'll have to go up another level to a $1300 zoom. Almost as much as the camera itself!

In addition, while it's not an optimum solution, I do have the option of using my crop lenses on the D610 in crop mode. That will get me by a bit. I figure that as long as the images aren't soft, I can take panoramas.

Well, I guess that's it for now. My adventure has once again affected my pocketbook!