PHOTOGRAPHY BLOG

I have occasionally made A3 prints from my photos but, despite being mildly interested, never really put any effort into optimizing my workflow. Prints cost money, and you need to put them somewhere so why bother?

First of all, prints are cool. A 30×45 print of your photo gives a much richer impression of the scene than a crappy flickr page. Not only is it bigger, allowing your eyes to wander around the image, but the color gamut of a printer (= the displayable spectrum of colors) is much wider than what you typically see on a monitor too.

Second, you can make money with prints. Maybe you actually can’t, maybe only after you die, but there is the slight chance that someone pays you 3.3 million dollars for a c-print diptych of a supermarket interior. Thus it won’t harm if you are at least prepared.

Third, if you have a serious camera fetish such as I have, you simply want to know what can be done with the binary data you collect on your compact flash cards.

Consequently, in order to become smarter, more hoity-toity and richer, I am now going to make some occasional print experiments. First of which I did on the weekend. Read full article.

This picture was taken in Sedona, Arizona, USA. To deepen the blue sky and reveal the details of the clouds, I have used a Tiffen 77mm circular polarizer.

Check the Best Photos of the month.

I am glad to have the FF D700 because my lenses can now shoot at their full capability at the wide end. My Nikkor 18/2.8 served me well on the crop body D1x. It is tiny, light (18/2.8 takes standard 77mm thread filters, measured 3.2 x 2.3 inches in diameter and length, weighted only 13.6 oz.), the entire lens barrel has been coated with professionally-look hammered-metal finishing.

AF on 18/2.8 is very responsive (but noisy and I don’t understand why Nikon makes the focus ring rotated when it works in AF mode) because it has a rather very short rotation for focusing. This is a great convenience too if you prefer to run in manual focus, just rotates the focus ring in 90 degrees by my thumb and that already covers from nearest distance to infinity.

These features and high speed performance at f/2.8, 18/2.8 is great lens for dynamic and low light environment, in addition to landscape work. Now, I would only consider the bulky 14-24/2.8 for its widest 14mm and versatile zoom convenience. Though I prefer 18/2.8, who needs 14mm and zoom capability should definitely go to 14-24/2.8, in fact, 14-24/2.8 is one of the most valuable lens Nikon ever made.

See full article at Nikon AF Nikkor 18mm f/2.8D Assessment & Samples.