It’s a quiet Monday, so, to see you your last hour at the office out (by which I mean our last hour at the office, of course), here’s a link to a gallery full of NASA photos taken with them D3s’ your favorite camera blog mentioned were doing time in outer space.
Is it fun to watch $5,200 evaporate from your savings account? Hardly. But being able to elevate your game to new heights can only be good — nay, great — for business, and if you’ve had the D3S on your mind, we can’t say a single word to stop you from pulling the trigger. Any minor annoyances that might irk you — the lack of a 1080p movie mode, a smaller-than-desired 12.1 megapixel sensor and the dearth of inbuilt wireless flash support are the only ones that come to mind — pale in comparison to the stellar low-light images you’ll be able to acquire, and we’d surmise that your worries of spending too much on a camera would all but vanish the first time you capture a noise-free, blur-free handheld shot of a couple’s first kiss… at ISO 10,000.
-Darren Murph, Engadget
Read their in-depth thoughts about ISO performance and handling niggles via the external link, but that excerpt was too good to pass up.
From Nikon’s Firmware update page:
The following improvements have been made in A and B firmware Ver. 1.01
- Movie recording specifications have been modified as follows and an issue that, in some rare cases, caused movie playback to appear to have stopped has been resolved.
- When exposure preview is enabled in live view tripod mode, information + histogram display is possible, but the histogram is no longer displayed while movies are recorded.
- When the live view button is pressed with the Audio Video Cable EG-D2 connected, the image is displayed in both the television and camera monitor, but the camera monitor now turns off during movie recording. The camera monitor turns on again when the Audio Video Cable EG-D2 is disconnected from the camera.
- Some simplified Chinese menus and help displays have been revised.
- When some memory cards were inserted in the camera, “CHA” was displayed in the top control panel and images could not be captured. This issue has been resolved.
Woo hoo. As always, check your current firmware version prior to downloading and installing the update because if it ain’t broke…
Well everyone, it’s that time of the year again. Christmas (and other winter holiday) shopping. And, like last year, we’re back to help. Not necessarily by just pushing the products we want you to buy (D3s, 7D, *cough cough*), but by giving you useful, more sweeping tips to make you a more savvy shopper, able to sift through the seas of numbers, specs, and options available.
OK, ok, we’ll probably plug a specific product or two as we go along. We sell camera equipment, it’s what we do, you know?
But, let’s start with a simple one: image stabilization.
Image stabilization is known by many names (basically a different one for each manufacturer), but is ultimately down to the same idea. Some of the more common names for this technology include:
So, what does it do? Well, when you hold a camera, it’s subject to slight trembles and other shakes from your hands. These are natural, and how bad they are depends on your age, physical condition, grip, stance, camera, and more. But, what is means without fail is that at longer exposures, the natural movements from your hands will move the camera a little, and make pictures look less sharp.
There are three ways image stabilization works: electronic, optical, and in-body. Of those, you should only ever choose optical or in-body. Those two help reduce shake using complicated gyroscopes that shift elements to counter for your hand shake. Electronic stabilization, however, works by simply pushing your ISO up, which introduces grain and noise and color shifts, and in general trades one problem for a different one.
Also, because it just counters your movement, image stabilization doesn’t change exposure. In low light, you will still need longer exposures which means moving subjects will still have motion blur. But, if you’re shooting largely stationary subjects, or family portraits around the Christmas tree, image stabilization will help keep your shots crisper. Recommending a camera or lens with image stabilization over one without is easy, we’ll recommend it every time.
Around the end of the month, Lexar will be keeping up with the neighbors and releasing 600x speed CF cards in 8, 16GB sizes with 32GB on the way later. They’ll be shipping with a new ExpressCard reader that supports up to 133 mbps transfer speeds when slotted into a Mac or PC’s, ahem, express card slot.
With the D3s sporting a 48 RAW image buffer, the 5D Mark II, 7D, and 1D Mark IV all featuring HD video in varied frame rates and the 1D Mk IV shooting ten stills a second- high speed data transfer will obviously not go out of style any time soon.
0:22 – Fotorosa
1:12 Nikon D3s
3:37 – Sandisk Extreme, Extreme Pro
5:23 – Nikon AF-S 85mm DX Macro
6:24 – Lensbaby Props
7:00 – Facebook Fan Shoutouts
Right around two years ago Nikon shook up the camera business when it announced it’s first full-frame DSLR, the D3. Focusing on overall image quality and low-light performance instead of the then-popular (well, more so than now anyway) megapixel race, the D3 came out with a higher megapixel count then previous models, but nowhere near the count Canon and Sony were gearing towards. And it paid off, Nikon carved out a strong following of people who loved the low-light performance and the amazing speed the D3 offered.
Now, in 2009 Nikon is taking a less revolutionary tack, opting to revise and improve the already highly critically reviewed D3 with the new D3s. Introducing some reported tweaks to a new 12.1 megapixel sensor, sporting a boosted ISO range fro 100 to 102,400, a 720p HD video mode, and an increased buffer (now holding 48 raw files vs 18 in the D3), the D3s doesn’t tweak much else. The body design, LCD, and most of the specs remain as they were. But, put it to yourself, with how solid the D3 was at what it aimed to do, what else could you ask for but some intelligent revisions to an already stellar camera?
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