A tribute to Milan, Italy
If you are lucky enough and visit Milan on a sunny, windy day, some good memories of this city will easily stick to your mind. Give it a try.
D800 plus Astro 700 mm: astronomic pictures!
For the second night a bright light is visible from my bedroom window. What is it? I just mounted my Astro 700 mm telescope and set my D800 on 1/40, f/1.4 ISO 3200 and … it is an astronomic alignment!
Please, appreciate the two black bands on the planet and the four moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto! I can imagine what Galileo felt that night around 400 years ago.
I tried to take the picture with the Canon 450D, no way. I am glad I can use the D800 for astronomy, I did not have this possibility before. Thanks pals for gifting me this cheap telescope when I finished university in the last millennium.
Here below how Galileo wrote about the four moons, click to enlarge.
Nikon Service Switzerland and the D800 Left AF issue
This morning I drove up to Egg and brought in my defective D800 to the Nikon Service. I could talk to the responsible in English and I did not need to show any “proof” of the asymmetric focus problem, neither they required my AF fine tuning values (-20 for the left AF giving blurred center and right points). They told me they are aware of the issue.
Most important, they told me they can solve the issue.
They will need 10 to 14 days, because of the amount of adjustments they are carrying on at the moment. They also informed me they can do the required adjustments in house. So, for the moment I got a kind welcome, a very much appreciated full understanding of the problem, plus the important assurance of its solution.
Stay tuned, in the meantime I cross my fingers and drück mir die Daumen 🙂
D800 dynamic range: a test in Arosa (CH)
Click on each picture to watch a bigger size version (around 2-3 Mb in size)
It was never as easy shooting awesome panoramic pictures. The D800 horizontal/vertical tilt sensors let you shoot series of pictures perfectly aligned. Just set on Aperture priority, focus once, remove autofocus, shoot partially overlapping pictures. Assemble and crop them with Hugin or similar free software. No additional changes required.
I am impressed by the fantastic dynamic range of D800 pictures, even in high contrast / misty situations.
Picture reportage: a few tricks from artborghi
Back home from holidays and thousands of pictures to show. Avoid losing friends: organize a story with your pictures, so that even those who were not with you can enjoy your experience.
The most difficult part is setting up the story and sorting out the pictures. The story could come out while sorting the pictures or the other way round. I usually sort out the best looking ones, see which story could be written by going through them a couple of time. Eventually, recover some pictures you discarded in the beginning if steps are missing.
Do not exceed with pictures, around 20 to 30 is usually more than enough, unless you had a tour around the world. Follow logical steps while building up the story, cut out redundant pictures, make it easy to follow.
Most important, hook your flow of pictures to a thread line: it could be a person,a colour, a shape, an action … whatever, but it must be present or, instead of a reportage, you will get a patchwork.
Enjoy and show us your results!
