Launch of Nikon D800 postponed to October 2011 or even later!!!

As a reaction to the earthquake and nuclear issues in Japan, Nikon is postponing the launch of the Nikon D800 along with the Nikon D4. As quesabesde.com writes calling on insiders, the announcement will definitely not happen before October, thus likely fall into the last months of this year.

This puts the announcement of the Nikon D800 far beyond the third anniversary of the D700, now definitely overdue for replacement.

Epic timelapse by Dominic Boudreault, not to be missed!

WOW. That’s about all I can muster here after watching Dominic Boudreault’s! Nearly perfect timelapse titled “City Limits” that begins in the urban landscape and ends in the outdoors. Locations include Montreal, Quebec city, Toronto, NYC, and Chicago, but hey what are you reading this for when you could be watching the movie!

http://vimeo.com/23237102
Check out more of Boudreault’s work at dominicboudreault.com.

NEW Nikon AF-S 50mm f1.8G

Nikon officially confirmed rumors circulating the blogger community that it is adding on 16th of June an updated 50mm f1.8 lens to it's arsenal in the AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G.

In the US price is set at $220 so I beleve that in the UK it should cost less than a £180. It offers Nikon FX camera format users a fast, affordable, compact prime lens with a classic normal focal length. The fast 1.8 aperture is designed for low-light shots and portraits with a nice circular bokeh effect (the older version was not so circular).It is also fully compatible with DX format.

Nikon said the new lens renders "tack-sharp" image quality and "Nikon core technologies that improve upon the original to make a great lens even better."

"The 50mm lens has been a staple for photographers since the 35mm film days, and this new lens enables Nikon customers that shoot photos and movies to discover the creative benefits of this traditional focal length," said Lisa Osorio.

Nikon marketing general manager. "This f/1.8 prime lens offers exceptional image quality and control, and benefits from modern Nikon technologies to enhance performance such as the Silent Wave Motor and use of an aspheric lens - it's a very attractive package for any shooting discipline."
The AF-S 50mm f1.8G will focus as close as 1.48 feet, and will provide wide depth of field control.
The integration of an ultra-compact Silent Wave Motor ensures fast, whisper-quiet AF operation, which is essential when recording movies.The lens is made with seven elements in six groups, with one aspherical lens element to reduce instances of coma and aberration. A rounded diaphragm opening combined with the seven-blade aperture contributes to a substantially more circular bokeh for a more natural appearance of out-of-focus background elements. Nikon said "super Integrated Coatings are employed to suppress lens flare and chromatic aberration while ensuring vivid color balance".

One is for sure we all will enjoy it!

Water splash photography

Hi guys!

I was surfing trought the internet and lokking for a tips and tricks regards to the water splash photography, to be presize - subjetc FRUITS. I come across a fiew nice webistes and photographers who does this jobs very, very well bet they are using very expensive hihg speed duration studio lights from bowens or pro-photo. Anyway, I was very interesting how can get this nice looking shoots of a fruit in the water whit big splash and excellent crystal clear sharpnes :]. Well to achieve this ther is couple of this that I would need a high duration flash (not necessary studio head) like sb-900 or sb-700 and macro lens to get the best possible sharpnes. Well, I have to say that I don't have sb-900 or 700 or any high duration flash so I tried this with my normal studio light GENESIS 400 from Calumet and 50mm prime lens. I can aknloalge that it is not as good as it should be but this is just a begining for me so stay tune for more shoots in the future with better faster equipment as well as little bit better end result. I am lerning but this is what we all should do to achieve our goal!

Nikon Nikkor AF-S Micro 105mm F/2.8G IF-ED VR.

Macro lenses with 100mm focal lenght are offered by nearly every lens manufacturer in the world. I was looking for a macro lens for a while now and couldn't decide which one should I go for. So many brands  and third party lenses you can find here and there, so I decided to rent one from Calumet photo uk. I had this lens over the last weekend and have had some time to play with it. Here you can find my positives and negatives regads to this lens. 

This lens is very bulky, well build with metal casing and metal mount, which make these lens very havey. Presence of a SWM motor and VR-vibration reduction is adding some aditional weight however I found that it is well ballanced while on the camera. Nikkor is weather resistant and teher is no lenght change while focusig as well as back of the lesn is still, which menas that no dust will be sucked inside the lens. What is worth to mention that the Nikon's lens should have a 2.8 aperture and it does, but only from 3m to infinity. If you focuisn 1:1 aperture will drop significantly to as high as f/4.8! Bad Nikon bad!!! VR II works just fine and will gives you arround 3,5 stop of light.

As you should expected from the lens for this price sharpens is on very high level. In the centre of the frame it will score wide open a 40 Ipmm, when stopping down to f5.6 it will go over 44 Ipmm. Same story on the egde of the frame sharpnes will not dissapoint you at all. Below this section you can see the MTF50 chart.

Chromatic  abberation is well controled thanks to the ED glass in the construction however, some high contrast images can be left with some abberation but easy to remove in postprodution process.

SWM works very well an I mean very WELL. I havn't had any problem with focusing on the subject and didn't notice any BF or FF however, on some ocasions he was looking for a focus trought the whole range which can be a we bit anoying.

Reflections are the weak point of this lens. In my opinion this is only a medium level with these type of corrction some third party lenses has better corection, while Nikon has Nano Crystal Coating.

I have to say that I love this lens he performs like a dream. Well build great glass and VR gives you very much in return however, the price uuuu which is a big dowside to the lens as it is as high as £619 way too much! You can have a Tokina 100mm macro for a half of these price as well as Sigma and Tamron and all perform very good in temrs of sharpnes, focusing speed etc... Nikon is takin edge with his focusing speed and VR system and thats it! I will not pay these much for a lens, would you do?

Here is a fiew examples of my images taken with these lens have a look and enjoy.

Hi guys!

Just to let you know that couple of days ago third party lens manufacturer SIGMA rised the price of the 70-200mm HSM II, mainly as a result of 'currency fluctuations and rising costs of production. The extent of the price rises will vary from product to product but will reflect the '40%' devaluation of the £ against the Japanese yen, according to a spokesman for Sigma Imaging (UK) Ltd. In a statement the firm said:

'It's a very long time since prices in the photo/imaging market increased. Cameras and lenses fell in price until they offered incredibly good value for money.
'In times of recession it seems counter-intuitive for prices to rise but that's exactly what is about to happen...'

Sigma added that, wherever possible, it will keep price rises to a minimum and that it may be possible to buy lenses from retailers at the original prices, while stocks last.

That didn't make me happy in any way at all as the new price is way too over. In US this lens normalny this lens would cost $799 and now the price is $949. Here in UK you can buy this lens for as much as £599 in online stores and £699 in local photographic shops., so we are already paying more!

I also can confrim that the price of the new SIGMA 70-200mm OS HSM been droped and you can pick it up one for less than a £1000.

Thsi has had happen recently with Nikon and Canon as well so, all the prices going up, what a life!

 

Smoke photography

What is smoke photography? Smoke photography is basically taking a photos of a smoke simple as that. Nothing hard if you know what you are doing. Setup is very easy what you need is a smoke instrument like: insence which is the easiest way to shoot and after all smels nice, black cloth as background, small light source like a table lamp or flash light to hel your camera easier focus on a smoke, camera tripod and key elemnt is a flashgun with wrieless trigger. Use your additional room in the house on some coffe table or whatever you can find to set this on. Now, what I done is, I cut a 2 cardbords to build a barn door for my flashgun to get more directed light on to smoke it self and mounted them using a elastic band.. Now you are ready to go it is simple like eating an apple but final images can be stunning. You can use your hand to spread smoke and fill the frame so, go for it why wait?

I had done some smoke photography in the past and kind of like it. I had noticed that in some way ther is nearly no limitation regarding to editing this type of shoots. I started digging in my archivum images and upload this smoke photos I took some time a go on to my hdd and start to play with them. Here you can see the final result of some of my images. Hoply you will like it and if you have any question related to this subject just drop me a line and I will try to answear them if I can. To see more of this images pop in to my web site at http://www.peterdudekphotography.com/.

These one is just a simple shoot with an insence visibble on the image which adding a little bit more texture to the picture it self.

These ones are more interesting for me as they have some texture as well as shape and content. Abstract I would say in some dimension.

These ones are just inverted to show them on a white background and achieve different color texture as well as visiblle impact is a little bit different.

Any inf oabout these images just ask :].