Like always, most people seem to be very happy about their Nikon D300 but there are some that are not. Here is a collection reviews of the Nikon D300 digital SLR.
This list will be continuously updated as more reviews come out. Last updated: December 14, 2007.
Posted in
Digital SLR Cameras on December 14th, 2007.
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Do you always believe what you see? Is a picture worth a thousand words, or nothing? Where is the line between being artistic and truthful? It could be fun to make fake photos, but it could also be dead serious if you lose your job for that. Follow this link for a list of famous fakes in the history and the stories behind them. Digg users have also chipped in some other great fakes in their comments.
Brian Auer of Epic Edits Blog has just written up another very popular post on portrait photography techniques. Illustrated with some great flickr photos, it should be an inspiring read if your portrait photography is lacking in styles.
Posted in
Photography blogs on December 11th, 2007.
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Some people are reporting a weird bug in Nikon Capture NX software. Enter a small value for the exposure compensation (e.g. 0.01) and the photo becomes less sharp. I had trouble reproducing this bug on my own using Capture NX 1.3 and NEF from my D200. So it appeared to be related to specific circumstances.
I then downloaded a D300 NEF file and to my surprise, it happened! I also found that if you change the exposure compensation in Raw Adjustment, you will no longer be able to change the sharpening setting in the Picture Control: dragging the sharpening slider will have no effect. If you do not perform the exposure compensation adjustment, you can adjust the sharpening level using the sharpening slider in Picture Control. As soon as you do any exposure adjustment, the sharpening will disappear. You can get the sharpening back by unchecking the Apply checkbox next to Exposure Compensation.
I think this is related to the Picture Control system in the D300. According to Nikon, the unique Picture Control system makes it possible to share image processing settings among compatible devices and software. It is likely that there is a bug in Capture NX related to the Picture Control. Nikon D200 does not have Picture Control system and is therefore not typically affected. However if you turn on the Picture Control on a NEF file from D200, you can experience the same bug! It doesn’t seem possible to turn off the Picture Control for NEF files from a D300.
Posted in
Photo editing,
Software on December 10th, 2007.
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There are some people who claim the Capture NX is slow, buggy, and don’t ever want to touch the software even though it comes with the new D300 and D3 free. How wrong is that?! There may be some truth about the slowness if you have an old computer or do not have sufficient memory. However the program is a great piece of software that consistently bring out the best from NEF raw images effortlessly. Here I am going to illustrate the unique control point and selection brush features in Capture NX and show you how easy it is to touch up a landscape photo in a couple of simple steps. Read More…
Posted in
Photo editing,
Tutorials on December 9th, 2007.
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Many people are very concerned with the high ISO noise performance of their cameras. If you are a frequent visitor of online forums, you will see some very heated debates on which camera (especially Canon vs. Nikon) has the best noise performance at high ISO settings. Typically some examples will be shown and conclusions are drawn based on those samples.
Often, people who post these kind of tests match their shooting conditions and camera settings so the comparison would seem fair. However very often the comparisons are not scientifically valid and cannot stand up against scrutiny.
For example, many people omits the sharpening settings in their tests. Noise and sharpening are strongly correlated with each other. Here is an example that compares the noise of Nikon D300 photos produced with different in-camera noise reduction (NR) and sharpening settings.
It is not strange to hear things like “Photo from camera A is a little noisier but retains more details than camera B”. How about apply some noise reduction on the photo from camera A then compare to the photo from camera B? Or apply some sharpening to the photo from camera B first?
It is also a moot point to compare the “raw” performance of cameras, with no in-camera noise reduction, sharpening, etc. Who knows what camera manufacturer does in the circuits or on-board graphics engines and there is no guarantee that the raw converters are performing the same on the raw files.
Posted in
Digital photography on December 8th, 2007.
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I ran across this post on DPReview and thought it could be useful for other Nikon D300 users. It sure sounds like a great technique for JPG shooters. If you shoot RAW, you should be able to do similar adjustment on your computer in post processing.
Posted in
Tips and techniques on December 7th, 2007.
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Nikon has released the update to its ViewNX photo viewer and browser software. It has a long list of fixes and improvements to its glaring weaknesses in the previous versions, mostly related to user interface usability. Finally I can delete a photo in full screen mode! Read more and find the download links after the jump. Read More…
Posted in
Software on December 5th, 2007.
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