Day: November 23, 2012

One-Year Ago (23-November-2011) — New Jersey

Black Friday: Nikon 1 V1 Mirrorless Camera.

One year ago (23-November-2011),  I got my Nikon 1 V1 camera. My image database indicates that I have taken over 50K pictures with this camera, and this doesn’t count video. Granted, about half of the images were when I used the camera for taking time-lapsed images while driving on a road trip to Florida last year and New Mexico this year. It is a great travel camera being significantly lighter than the DSLR cameras I use. It does have its idiosyncrasies. I don’t like the location of some of the controls/dial, the propensity for the rear mode selection dial to move/change — I have lost images because the camera  was not in the right mode (mood???). I did get the adapter to use Nikon F-mount lenses, the GPS adapter, the flash adapter, and the remote adapter. I really would like a wider lens for the camera. The field of view for the 10 mm lens on this camera is equivalent to 27 mm on a FX (35 mm sensor) DSLR. A 6 or 7 mm lens would be nice (16-19 mm equivalent). For wider landscape images, I end up taking multiple images and stitching them together in post processing.

Five-Years Ago (23-November-2007) — Hawaii

Gone to See Hawaii. Big Island Photography Workshop with Thom Hogan. Day 6: Kona.

Five years ago I completed a photography workshop on the Big Island of Hawaii with Thom Hogan.  While on the way to the airport to catch our return flights, we stopped at Lighthaus Camera. Coincidentally, it was “Black Friday” and everything was on sale. We noticed that the store just received their initial shipment of the newly released Nikon D300 camera.  Three or four of the workshop participants purchased the cameras on the spot. I have to admit that mine was an impulse purchase. Over the next four years, I took nearly 55K images with the camera (2007: 3164 images; 2008: 20371 images; 2009: 29355 images; 2010: 919 images; 2011: 628 images). This was my last Nikon DX sensor camera. Since then all of my Nikon DSLR cameras had full frame FX sensors.

The last shooting location for the workshop on that day was at Hawaii Tropical Gardens. I reprocessed an image Onomea Water Falls using Nik Silver Efex Pro.

Onomea Water Falls, Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens. Image taken with a Nikon D2xs and 105 mm f/2.8 macro (ISO 100, f/11, 1/1.6 sec). Image processed with Capture One Pro 6, PhotoShop CS5, and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. (David J. Mathre)
Onomea Water Falls, Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens. Image taken with a Nikon D2xs and 105 mm f/2.8 macro (ISO 100, f/11, 1/1.6 sec). Image processed with Capture One Pro 6, PhotoShop CS5, and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. (David J. Mathre)