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Nikon D300 Test Drive

Brendan

A friend of mine keeps trying to convince me to buy a Nikon. Recently I had the chance to try a D300. (Thanks Paul).

My overall impression is the Nikon has more features, some useful, some not. Quality wise it’s about the same as my old 40D, all though slightly more Megapixels.

I did however notice that Lightroom changed the images a lot more than it would from a picture from the Canon. Not sure why, maybe someone can let me know. (I noticed a similar change from my 300D to the 40D, where the 40D needed less correction).

Being a Canon user I found the Nikon to be fairly unfriendly and not all that intuitive to use, but I’m sure it was just the way it was setup. The lack of the focus / metering Beep was most frustrating.

I just hope with the falling Australian dollar Canon can keep the 5D mark 2 price reasonable. I still have some money invested in Canon glass, and I’d hate to have to defect to Nikon.

I’ve posted a few flower shots on flickr taken from the D300.

Lorne Sunrise (VIC)

Brendan

Lorne Sunrise (PP), originally uploaded by BrendanDavey.

I’ve been fairly busy recently, and I’ve only just found time to sit down and start post processing some shots. This is one of the first to get the Photoshop treatment. I think the end result is quite “dreamy”.

This is the first post to my blog via flickr as well. The inbuilt blog feature is quite nice, and will save me a lot of time. So you should start to see more posts here in the future. 🙂

South Australia & Victoria

Brendan

Portland Sunrise, originally uploaded by BrendanDavey.

Over the past week or so I’ve been travelling the great ocean road, many days were a wash out, but there were a few nice mornings where I managed to be up for some great sunrises.

Portland and Lorne were two towns where I grabbed some great pics, over the comming weeks I’ll upload a few to the store, and this time around I managed to shoot a lot in landscape, rather than portrait.

The attached picture is from Portland.

50mm Goodness

Brendan

It’s been quite a while since I’ve used a prime lens. I think the last one I used was on my Canon AE-1. Even on a 1.6x sensor body it’s still quite somthing special to be shooting at f1.4, and what better place to start than with flowers 🙂

80mm is quite constrictive and you have to be a fair distance from subjects to get everything in, but once you get used to it and the small depth of field it really starts to work it’s magic. I can’t wait to go full frame, and maybe a macro len.

Blurb Book

Brendan

What is the point of taking pictures if you don’t get to enjoy them, and what better way than via a simple coffee table book. I’ve been spending a bit of my spare time recently creating a photo book which is just about finished.

It will only contain about 20 images, I say ‘about’ because there are 20 large full page images, but quite a few smaller ones as well.

I’ve been using their downloadable book software over the past few months to create my book, The software is quite good (booksmart) and very easy to use, allthough not perfect.

I can’t wait to see the results.

Tranmere

Brendan

Tranmere Foreshore, originally uploaded by BrendanDavey.

Sometimes I think a big component of photography is being in the right location at the right time. The sunset I managed to capture from the Tranmere foreshore was quite nice last night. Not the best I’ve seen, but with some post processing it matches the orange rocks quite nicely.

I’ve added a few of the pictures taken to the store. (Even a few shot in landscape) If you would like to see more visit my flickr page.

Mayfield Moonlight

Brendan

I’m currently in the process of creating a Blurb book, and I’ve decided to use this image as the last one in the book.

This image was taken about 9 months ago at Mayfield Bay Coastal Reserve, just south of Swansea.

It was taken at night with moonlight and campfire glow and it’s a 30 second exposure. It’s quite grainy and I’m not sure how well it will print above 8×10″. If the results are good I guess I’ll add it to the store. Because of the moonlight and campfine glow I think this looks great as a sepia.

Tessallated Drama

Brendan

4:19 Soundly asleep.
4:20 Abruptly awoken by alarm.
4:35 Start driving to Eaglehawk Neck for sunrise.
6:00 Arrive at the tessellated pavement, setup equipment.
6:10 Start shooting sunrise.
8:00 Depart.
9:10 Arrive at work.

End result, grumpy, tired and frustrated with nothing more to show than a couple of sepia shots. Why? For some unknown reason all the shots turned out extremely red. From some reason I’m still yet to explain or replicate my new hi-tech filters caused the sky to turn red, resulting in nothing more than b/w usable images. *sigh*

MOO Cards

Brendan

Moo I hear you say?

Moo is a company in the UK that converts your flickr pictures into business cards. The process is very simple and relatively cheap for 50 business cards delivered to your door.

Moo allows you to design your cards via a web browser, then submit your order electronically. Once ordered my Moo cards arrived in a little over a week. The flexibility is great, they even allow every card picture to be different or all the same or any combination in between. I decided on 12 unique cards.

The overall quality is excellent with nice thick card, a semi flat finish (satin) and a very good resolution even though my pictures were relatively low DPI directly from my flickr account.

I can’t wait to give them all away so I can order some more with newer pictures 🙂