David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Turkey Vulture in a tree waiting to warm in the morning sun. Image taken with a Nikon 1 V2 camera FT1 adapter and 70-200 mm f/2.8 VRII lens (ISO 160, 200 mm, f/2.8, 1/1600 sec). I think I am going to like this camera.
The mirror-less Nikon 1 V1 (N1V1) camera has been upgraded to the Nikon 1 V2 (N1V2). The first thing that I noticed about the N1V2 is that it is smaller than the N1V1. Ergonomically, it is easier to handle. The mode selector has been moved to the top — it was on the back of the N1V1 in a position that was too easy to accidentally change modes. A couple of negatives – the battery is new, and lower capacity than the battery in the N1V1. Also, the interval timer mode has disappeared. I won’t be able to take time-lapse videos with this camera. I took the camera out for a walk at the Sourland Mountain Preserve this morning and caught this Mallard duck taking off from the pond. I don’t know if it plans to stay for the winter, or is about to go south.
It was foggy when I woke up this morning. I took this picture using the Leica X2 using the in camera high contrast B&W mode. I find this useful to envision what a scene will look like in B&W in real-time rather than waiting till I get back to my computer and start processing images. Thom Hogan mentioned in one of his recent blogs that he often does the same thing.
I took this image from my back deck using a Nikon 1 V1 camera and 500 mm f/4 VR lens connected using the FT1 adapter. With the smaller sensor size in the N1V1 the effective field of view (FOV) is equivalent to using a 1350 mm lens on a 35 mm FX sensor camera. This image is not cropped — almost too much magnification to have the whole deer in the frame. The lens was supported on a monopod, and VR was turned on to help stabilize the image. The mass on the lower part of the doe’s neck appears to be a deer fibroma, thought to be caused by a papilloma virus infection. I am seeing more of these abnormalities on the local herd of deer.
It has been a long, but mainly productive day. I got up very early to get a picture of the last quarter moon. I wanted to try out photography of the moon through a 500 mm telephoto lens using the Nikon 1 V1 camera. Because of the smaller size of the image sensor vs. a 35 mm (FX in the Nikon digital world) the effective field of view with this setup is equivalent to using a 35 mm camera with a 1350 mm lens (~2.7x). Since the N1V1 camera does not have a mirror (the mirror in a DSLR needs to move out-of-the-way when taking pictures) and has an electronic shutter mode — there is no mirror slap or shutter motion when taking pictures. This is important when taking pictures through large telephoto lenses where any motion or vibration will blur the image. I had hopes that this would help to get a sharp image of the moon. One limitation with the N1V1 with the FT1 adapter is that it can only autofocus through the center autofocus sensor. For this image I manually focused the lens (and set the camera to manual focus so it would not try to autofocus before releasing the electronic shutter). I used the remote (IR) shutter release so I would not be adding additional vibration to the system. I was impressed with the result. I did take several images trying different settings, and this was one of the better ones.
