Spectacular Strobe Sale: Godox Ving V850 and V860

The Godox Ving is a unique speedlight that uses rechargeable Lithium batteries instead of AA batteries.  As a result, you get a far greater battery life (650 full power flashes -- claimed to be the equivalent of 12 AA batteries), and you have faster recycling times.  It's almost like having an external battery pack, but built-in to the speedlight itself! Check out this demo video by Gadget Infinity:



The Ving currently has three variants: the V850 is a manual flash, while the V860N is for Nikon i-TTL and the V860C is for Canon E-TTL.  Godox has its own wireless radio system: the FT-16, which can adjust flashes remotely, and which is compatible with the Ving and several other Godox products, such as the Witstro and their extensive monolight lineup.

The Ving has received positive reviews from Fstoppers (reviewing the rebranded Neewer TT850), Flash Havoc, Lighting Rumors and others.

SALE
The good news is the Godox Ving is on sale: buy 1, get the 2nd at 50% off, through eBay seller "zeniko_online_store":

This sale applies only to Zeniko's U.S. eBay stores (they have items listed from their stores in China, which have a lower price per unit but aren't included in the sale).  To avail of the discount, just select "2" under quantity.  The price will be updated automatically.

Note: I'm not affiliated with Zeniko or eBay, and we receive no commissions on this.  I'm just passing along this tip!

Move to Mirrorless? Mirrorless vs. DSLR; mirrorless systems comparison

Sony recently launched an ad campaign called Move to Mirrorless.  Should you?  Mirrorless cameras are becoming increasingly popular, so much so that DigitalRev recently parodied the enthusiasm about mirrorless.  In this post, I'll post my reasons for shooting with mirrorless, and also discuss situations when I would prefer a normal DSLR.

Radio-based wireless TTL for Sony, Nikon and Canon

image by Nissin Group

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Nissin is producing an affordable radio-based wireless TTL flash and trigger for Canon, Nikon and, starting this summer, for Sony as well.  There are already several radio-based TTL systems for Canon and Nikon.  However, for Sony, this is a welcome addition because the only such system available thus far is the Phottix Odin, and Nissin's system appears to have a lower total cost.

2013: The Camera Year

Blockbuster

This year has witnessed an incredible range of very interesting camera releases (can you guess how many?), there are a lot of tidal shifts in the market, players that are becoming stronger, and others that are referred to as stagnant and old fashioned. I am not attempting to analyze the market and company strategies in this post, instead I will be thinking aloud, analyzing what is going on around, what to do regarding any further camera purchases, and where to head to. The more I think about the new camera releases in 2013, the more I get confused, so I decided to get a white paper and a pen, and jot it all down so I can be able to make a clear analysis. Hit the jump to continue reading, and be astounded with the sheer amount of cameras released in 2013.

Nikon D600 vs. Nikon D7100 comparison (daylight)

While I'm still analyzing the D600 and D7100 low light shots, here are more comparison shots between the D600 and D7100, this time in daylight.  For this test, I used the Sigma 35 1.4 on the D7100 and the Tamron 28-75 (at around 52mm) on the D600.  I know, your first reaction is that it's not a fair comparison because the Sigma is considered one of the sharpest lenses, whereas the Tamron is sharp in the center but it's not in the same league.

Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels

Last year, I had a chance to visit the cathedral of Los Angeles, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels, which has amazing post-modern architecture.  Here are some photos I took (click on any photo for a higher-res version).

D600 Dust-Spot Drama: Low Tech Sensor Cleaning

And so the Nikon D600 dust spot drama continues....

Last weekend, I had to take photos at f/32.  As a result, spots that normally don't show up in my shots did show up.  However, I was able to clean them using a very low tech way.  Before I talk about the method, here are the results (click to get a high-res version):

BEFORE CLEANING
See the hair-like strand on the top left corner and the new speck in the middle of the upper left quadrant:

AFTER LOW-TECH CLEANING:

Note: both shots have had clarity boosted to 100% and other Lightroom adjustments to make the spots easier to see.

NOTE: Please ignore the EXIF.  I was using a totally manual lens which had a maximum aperture of f/5.6 so that's what the manual lens database stamped on the EXIF.  I was actually at f/32 for both shots.

Hit the jump to see what method I used :)

Cheap Battery Grip for Nikon D600 - First Impressions

UPDATE: As of 12/29/12 my grip stopped working!  See below.  As of 1/6/13 it's working again.

I finally received the cheap battery grip that I ordered for my Nikon D600.  Here are my first impressions.

UPDATES: See under command dial -- missed clicks and direction of rotation.

Update on Nikon D600 Sensor Oil/Dust Spots Issue

One of the few issues about the Nikon D600 is its propensity to get dust on its sensor.  It has been documented by Roger Cicala of LensRentals here.  In addition, some say the sensor gets oil (not just dust) on its sensor.  Roger did not notice any oil on the 20 units of the D600 that he examined, and I personally have not observed it.

Anyhow at around 2000 shots I noticed that there were spots on my shots, even at a not-so-narrow aperture of f/8.  I blogged about that here.  I thought the spots were oil based on the characteristics I observed but it turned out that the spots were only dust.

That was about a month ago.  I'm now at around 4500 shots, and although I haven't seen dust on my shots, I decided to reexamine the sensor.  Here's what I found.

Nikon D600 + Nikkor 24-70: A Day with My Precious Ones (and my kids too)

Last weekend I took our kids to Disneyland - just the three of us.  It was my first time to bring them there by myself, so instead of my usual two camera combo, I just brought one camera and one lens - the Nikon D600 and the Nikkor 24-70 2.8G.

In this post I will discuss how the combination performed in terms of:
- versatility
- image quality
- autofocus speed and accuracy
- low light performance (autofocus and image quality)
- dynamic range

(Click on the pictures for higher-resolution versions.  FYI no additional sharpening was used - only LR defaults.  All shots were handheld with no flash.  Except as otherwise noted, I did not apply noise reduction, clarity, vibrance or saturation.)

Nikon D600 autofocus: speed, accuracy, low light, and clustering

10/11/12 UPDATE: Added Nikon D3 shots for comparison
10/22/12 UPDATE: Added shots showing AF speed

Nikon D600 + Sigma 50 1.4 @ f/2.0

Because my subjects often move, one of the most critical components of any camera for me is its autofocus system.  What's the use of a very high resolution sensor with extremely low noise if the shot I capture is blurry - not because of subject movement but because the subject is out of focus?

In this post I will discuss my experience regarding the Nikon D600's autofocus speed and accuracy.  I will also discuss the clustering of autofocus points.

(And even though you may not be in the market for a D600, you may be interested in reading about a couple of alternatives to focus-and-recompose.)

Cross-Camera Profiles for Lightroom

When Lightroom 4.2 was released, it included raw support for the Nikon D600 (hands-on review here), albeit in beta.  One of the issues is that there was only one camera profile, unlike other Nikon cameras, where you could change the camera profile to Standard, Neutral, Vivid, etc. to mimic the picture styles of Nikon cameras.

I found out that you can apply the camera profile for one camera to another.  In this case, I used the camera profile for the Nikon D800 to create a profile for the Nikon D600.  The concept can be applied to take the camera profile of any camera (not limited to the same maker) and apply it to another for some interesting effects.

Nikon D600 vs. Fuji S5 Pro highlight dynamic range

Many recent DSLRs from Nikon have been tested to show a very wide highlight range.  For example, DPReview reports that the Nikon D800 has as much as 5 stops highlight range with Active D-Lighting at Extra High.

The D600 looks to have promising highlight range.  The D600 has been tested by DXO to have a dynamic range similar to that of the D800.  In my own testing, the D600 also appears to have a fairly wide highlight range, based on the latitude I have seen for recovering highlights.

In this post, I compare the highlight dynamic range of the Nikon D600 with that of the Fuji S5 Pro, a unique DSLR that has unparalleled highlight range.  I wanted to see whether the Nikon D600 has met or even surpassed the S5's highlight dynamic range.

Sudden slow motion effect using a Nikon D600

Many cameras offer video at a 60fps frame rate, which I find very useful for smooth slow motion.  Here is a sample shot with the Nikon D600 (shot at 720p, 60fps).



After shooting the video, I edited it in Photoshop CS6.  I split the video at the point where I wanted the slow motion to start, then split that second half again at the point where I wanted slow motion to end.  Then I right-clicked on the middle slow-mo segment to change the playback speed.  (I also had to adjust the ends of the middle and last segments to provide a smooth transition from slow-mo to normal speed.)

Although the video segments now have different frame rates, I didn't have to change their individual frame rates to make them consistent.  I just rendered the entire video to a specified frame rate, making the frame rate consistent throughout the video.

RELATED POSTS:
Nikon D600 Hands-On Review

Further Experiments with the Nikon D600's Exposure

This post is a follow up to my earlier post about experiments on the Nikon D600's exposure.  In that post my observation was that the Nikon D600 appeared to have a tendency to not give importance to highlights.  For some shooters, the resulting image looks fine.  For me, I like to protect highlights and there were way too many blown highlights even with ADL (i.e. the exposure is too "aggressive").

I posted about this observation on DPReview.  Here is the thread.  I received many helpful suggestions.  I tried out the suggestions, and I will discuss the results in this post, learning a few things in the process.

Experiments on Nikon D600 Exposure

UPDATE:  I posted about this on DPReview, got some helpful responses suggesting that there are issues with my shooting method.  That DPReview thread is here if you want to check it out.  I have done follow up experiments that are inconclusive as to the advice given in that thread.  The D600 still appears to overexpose.  I will do a followup post about it.

UPDATE 2: 2nd set of experiments here

I've shot with a number of cameras and they all tend to have different exposure tendencies. For example the Pentax K100D and Fuji S5 attempt to avoid blowing highlights, often producing straight-out-of-the-camera (SOOC) images that appear underexposed.  The Nikon D80 doesn't seem to be very concerned with highlights and produces SOOC images where the subject is correctly exposed but the image often has blown highlights such as in the background. Then there are cameras such as the Nikon D70 and Nikon D3 which in my opinion have a balanced exposure (taking into account the limits of the sensor's dynamic range).

In this post, I took some test shots with the D600 to evaluate whether the D600 has a tendency to overexpose or underexpose. All shots were taken in raw and processed in View NX2.

The Full-Frame, Large Sensor Bonanza!!!

Credit: photokina.com

 
THE YEAR 2012
 
This year's Photokina exhibition certainly was different, a few months ago, both Canon and Nikon each announced two new high-end full-frame DSLRs (Canon 5D Mark III, Canon 1DX, Nikon D800, Nikon D4), then just before the end of the year each of them announced a more affordable (not really) full-frame DSLR again (Canon 6D, Nikon D600). And to make matters more exciting, Sony announced the revolutionary A99 full-frame DSLR, and the sweet, expensive RX1. A full-frame Leica completes the picture. Do you see a trend here?
 

Nikon D600 Hands-On Review (Part 1)

10/10/12: added link to post re D600 autofocus; note re colors; battery life; circular polarizer in live view
9/30/12: added grip; workaround for instant zoom; lowlight autofocus
9/28/12: added effect of using filters in Live View Photo
9/25/12: MORE UPDATES HERE.  Now incorporated into this review.
9/23/12: added: Live View Photo Sigma 50-150 AF issue; info re Live View Photo exposure controls and visibility; LV warm tint?
9/21/12: added preliminary observations on exposure

9/21/12: added: hinged covers for connections, corrected the description of buttons for the D3, cautionary note about noise, moved Live View Photo to its own section (there will be a separate section for Live View Video as well, added info about Live View AF modes, added info about Sigma 50 1.4 focusing in live view.
9/20/12 UPDATE: added a video of a 2nd test of continuous shutter buffer.
9/20/12 UPDATE: fixed links to videos (quiet shutter and buffer), added photos of monitor cover and sync speed tests

OVERVIEW

The Nikon D600 is the lightest and most affordable full-frame DSLR in Nikon's lineup.  In my opinion, it is the true successor to the highly-acclaimed and versatile Nikon D700.  I'd like to give my preliminary review of the D600 from the point of view of an amateur taking mostly candid photos of people. 

*If you would like to know more about my photography experience, it's at the end of the article.

Preview of New LAX Terminal

Los Angeles International Airport is in the process of renovating its international terminal, partly to accommodate larger aircraft such as the Airbus A380.  If you'd like to get a preview of what the new terminal will look like, check out the fly-through video (warning: 230+ MB) which uses the same autoCAD files that are used for the construction.

I had a chance to join a tour of the construction site.  If you watched the fly-through video you might recognize some of the structures.

BTW for these shots I used the Nikon D90 and Tokina 11-16.

About the last shot - it was taken about 10 feet above the platform where we were standing.  There were no ladders or other surfaces to climb on.  Instead, I took it with the aid of a gadget that I will be reviewing next week.  ;)

Have a great weekend!

Choosing the Exposure for Dynamic Range

Over the weekend, we visited Knott's Berry Farm, one of the first theme parks in the U.S.  What I like about Knott's is that the lines are much shorter than those of Disneyland therefore we get to experience more rides within the same amount of time.  I also think Knott's has a more interesting variety of rides for young children like our 5-year old, and has more thrill rides (though not as many as Magic Mountain).  Although the production value is not as high as that of Disneyland, it is still quite high.

During our visit the heat was intense, reaching 95°F (35°C), just one degree below the all-time record of 96 for that area, and 10 degrees hotter than the average for this time of the year.  With the sun blazing overhead, the dynamic range was very wide.  I used two different exposure strategies to deal with the dynamic range.