December 2005 Entries
I've had my first week with the Nikon D200 during my Christmas vacation in Washington DC. So far I absolutely love the camera. It is slightly bigger and heavier than the D70 it replaced, but that has not detracted from the camera. However, take that with a grain of salt, as I am a fairly big guy, with big hands, and I might actually prefer it to be bigger rather than smaller.
As expected, I don't miss the creative modes at all, and when I am looking for an automatic camera, I just put it into P (Programmed Auto) mode, which works great. I should have used this mode more often with the D70, because the auto mode locks down lots of the controls (like focus area) and turns on the flash by defalt in most cases, which the P mode does not.
I specialize in available light photography, so having to turn off the flash every time I switched modes in the D70 really was a pain, and I like the behaviour of the D200 much better, where the flash stays off, unless you pop it open manually.
The larger viewfinder in the D200 is excellent, and really helps for low light situations, also, the larger LCD makes checking for proper composition and focus a breeze. The autofocus speed and volume are much better on the D200 than on the D70. Getting proper focus is much faster. However, the D200 does seem to have more problems with low-contrast focus than the D70 did. I can get it to spin back and forth along the focus range by trying to focus on something that has a color simmilar to the background.
The High speed (5 frames per second) continuous shooting will be a dream for anyone doing any kind of action or sports shots. I will use it a lot in my theatre photography, and it makes it easy to get “the shot”, like the dancer below.
I thought I would be in love with the extra ISO range the D200 offers over the D70. The ISO 100 mode is great. Absolutely no noise in well lit situations, and a welcome addition. However, on the other end of the scale, the ISO 3200 has way too much noise to be really usefull. I will tryplaying with the different noise reduction settings for high ISO in the camera and give a more detailed analysis, and photoshop may be able to recover images, but out of the box the images are pretty painful. On the other hand, a grainy image is better than no image at all, so if you are in a location where you can't use a long exposure, the grainy high ISO may be the answer for you. See the shots below for an example.
These shots are of Washington DC Monuments, and of my little brother's school talent show. I think they provide a good overview of the outdoor and low light shooting capabilities of the D200. All of the school shots were available light, no flash. This is the style I prefer, and was required by the school for any photography. Obviously even the on-camera flash, but especially a SB-600 or SB-800 would significantly improve the exposure overall, but in my opinion might detrat from the asthetic.
The wide shot of the Washington Monument was done with the Nikkor 12-24 wide angle. All of the other shots were done with my Tamron 28-300. The Tamron is very convinient since it covers almost the entire useful range of focal lengths, but it is not as sharp as some of my other lenses. Also, all of these shots were done handheld. No tripods, monopods, and in most cases no bracing.
Update : Matt from Digital Photography Journal made a post that also does some good comparison shots of ISO noise with the D70 and D200. Those posts can be found here - http://www.dphotojournal.com/nikon-d200-nikon-d70-iso-comparison/ and http://imageevent.com/pmattf/d200d70iso Matt's shots are of the same subject each shot, so you can get a better apples to apples comparison of the different settings.
Google recently release Gmail Mobile, a version of their browser targeted at mobile phones. Those of us with Microsoft smartphones or PocketPC phones have already had this functionality for some time, via Gmail Basic. With the introduction of Gmail Mobile, quite a bit of functionality in the basic view was lost. The mobile view isn't all bad, it renders faster due to it light weight, but it chops messages into pages, which is frustrating, I would rather wait for the load time and read the whole message. Also, any links in the email get processed by gmail into reformatted versions as well. The ability to view PDFs and other attachments is nice, but my iMate JasJar (HTC Universal) already has Acrobar installed, but I would have liked that feature when I was using my SMT5600.
In any case, you can get back to the basic view by explicitly using this URL. http://mail.google.com/mail/h/
Note that both the leading http:// and the trailing / are important to make the URL work. If you are missing either part, you get sent back to the mobile view automatically.
I keep a bookmark for the basic view, and the mobile view in PIE (Pocket Internet Explorer) so I have access to both depending on my available bandwidth (GPRS, 3G, or 802.11) and the balance between speed and features that I need at the time.
Marginal Revolution has a great post up on
Xbox 60 Economics The post is insightful, but the comments are what really flesh out the topic. There is a lot of paranoia about Microsoft, and that they might be artifically trying to create a shortage of xboxes, and what their motivations for that would be. Also why if the shortage was intentional, why they aren't trying to price gouge. The discussion then goes into how the fact that a small minority of people are buying the boxes on ebay for $1000+, that dosen't mean that xboxes are underpriced in general. Anyway, I highly reccomend it for anyone interested in Economics.
Welcome Instapundit Readers!
I have been calling B&H every hour about getting a D200, on the hour since the 15th. Every day I got "they aren't in yet". On Sunday, I got told "they are in the building, but not in our system yet".
I started calling every 20 minutes.
Normally, they answered immediately, and told me not yet. Suddenly at around 4:00 CST, I was on hold for 15 minutes. I knew immediately they were in.
I finally got through, worries the whole time my phone would cut out. But I ordered one. I have been charged, and I have a UPS tracking number, so I assume I am all good. But I will let you all know!
Many people on dp review are up in arms. I think this just shows perserverance on my part :) .
Scoble posts about this issue as well, in particular the parallels of D200 shortages with Xbox shortages.
I just learned my lesson that same day by showing up at 2:30 for the xbox line at best buy, and there were already 30 people in line for the 25 xboxes (Making there at least 5 idiots in that line)
So my D70 decided to get intimate with the ice over thanksgiving, and shattered itself, along with my 70-300 lens. I don't use that lens very much anymore, as I have a 70-200F4, and a 28-300 that I use most of the time, but every once in a while that range was nice. Its a cheap lens, so no biggy. The camera hurts me tho. Fortunately I had it insured before my trip to Paris. I am still waiting on the insurance company to decide if they want to replace or repair, but in either case I am going to take the cash, and buy a D200.
Most of the photography work I do is Theatre Photography, so the extra stop of ISO, and the bigger viewfinder will really kick ass. I almost never used the "creative" modes, so the loss of the point and shoot modes of the D70 is a non issue, but the 1/250 flash sync might hurt. The thing I am most excited about tho is the viewfinder, using the D70 finder, in the dark sucks, especially when I compare it to the F100 I used to have.
Then there is the question of who to buy from.... I could buy locally, if they arrive in time for my trip to DC on the 21st, or I might buy it in DC, but there will be more competition there :( I've heard they are supposed to come out the 15th. Adorama has a waiting list a mile long already, but B&H didn't take pre-orders so I might go there. Of course, everyone by now has heard of all the crap with the vendors in Brooklyn, so be safe!
I ended up getting my 12-24 Nikkor from Abes of Maine, which many people call out as one of the scam sites now. I didn't have problems, but I ordered some filters that were probably overpriced. I also am going to recheck my serial number to make sure they sent me the US version, tho what I would do at this point I don't know.
I would like to point out that the John Giordano I am speaking of is specifically NOT the NYC firefighter that died on 9/11, or any of the professors, or others with that same name. This is specifically the IT consultant and ebay seller from PA. Additionally, all of the statements I made on his character were opinions, but the sequence of events was factual.
I recently purchased an iMate JasJar on ebay, to replace my smt-5600. I will have a review up shortly. I was very concerned about buying this item online, because there are literally hundreds of scam auctions for this item, from all over Europe and Asia.
I was comfortable with this particular item, because it was from the US, it was priced right (not too good to be true), the guy had some decent feedback, and had quite a few auctions from the past with simmilar photos, so I could tell he actually had the items.
The best part was, the guy used his yahoo email address as his ebay id (jgitservices@yahoo.com) and I was able to look him up on google, and find a business phone number. I managed to get a hold of him, which reassured me immensly
I called John Girodano, from jgitservices, in Phillidelphia, PA
I did “buy it now” and closed the auction barely an hour and a half after it started. (Around 5:00pm CST on wed the 7th)
I called the guy and told him I did the buy it now, and would paypal him shortly. I also asked for overnight shipping (and offered to pay extra). He said it would ship out first thing in the morning, and that I would get a tracking number automatically as part of him printing his shipping label.
I did the paypal later that night (8:00 or so). The next morning, noon, afternoon, etc. no tracking number. I called him on the night of the 8th, and asked for the tracking number, John said he had a problem with the automatic shipping label stuff, and would send me the tracking number. He did so, and included a note saying to stop calling him, and refer to the sellers policy.
This is his sellers policy :
I accept PayPal for all transactions. buyer must pay for item immediately after auction. NO EXCEPTIONS OR EXCUSES. IF YOU BID AND WIN, YOU PAY IMMEDIATELY OR I GIVE BAD FEEDBACK. DO NOT BID IF YOU ARE NOT IN U.S. I WIL NOT SELL OR SHIP OUT OF UNITED STATES! Additional $20.00 for packaging and shipping in United States. Insurance required and is $5.00 I WILL NOT SELL OUT OF AUCTION! AS IS
Note that it doesnt say anything about not calling, or tracking numbers, or anything else.
In addition to the rudeness, the tracking number did not work. I emailed him saying it didnt work. He responded saying he didn't control the USPS, and go away. I emailed again, and asked if he could double check the number, so I could try and follow up with USPS.
He sent another rude email, told me again to buzz off, but did include a tracking number with more digits this time!
I looked up the item on USPS, and he did send it, unfortunately he sent it at 4:00 on thurdsday, so it wouldnt make it in the friday “overnight“ batch. That sucks, I paid extra for overnight, but oh well.
I finally did get the item on Saturday, a day late, which is no big deal.
I left the guy positive feedback, but did mention he was rude, and that I had trouble getting a tracking # from him.
He left me neutral feedback, and said I didn't follow the seller's policies.
Since I can't retract or change my feedback, I am posting this...
Therefore, I think he is an ass. And I think he has horrible service skills. And he claims to run an IT services company, but his website totally sucks. I won't link to it here, because I don't want to give him the google juice, but you can find it yourself if you care. I wouldn't use him for squat, as he won't go the extra inch, let alone the mile...
And note that everything here is opinions, so you can take your libel and shove it. :)
CAVEAT EMPTOR.
Review of the kickass iMate JasJar (HTC Universal) to follow.