iOS and Mac developer
I took a few shots of tonight’s very spectacular sunset using the D90’s exposure bracketing and created an HDR image from them. I tried both the Hydra plugin for Aperture 2.1 and Photoshop with the Photomatix tone mapping plugin. I found that Photomatix produces a much more vivid image with more detail.
 Hydra Plugin |
 Photoshop + Photomatix Plugin |
Pixelpipe is a new service that lets you upload your photos & videos to multiple services at the same time. You set up all of your photo & video sharing sites with Pixelpipe. You can then either email a photo or video to a personal address at Pixelpipe or use their free software to upload it. The photo or video will then be sent to all of your chosen sites.
Pixelpipe has an iPhone app, a Mac uploader app (based on Flickr Uploadr), a Firefox 3 extension, and an iPhoto export plugin. Unfortunately the Eye-Fi card doesn’t currently support it.
I haven’t been using my Eye-Fi card because I prefer using a higher capacity 8G card with the D40x & D90’s large file sizes. I also prefer to choose which pictures to upload and do any necessary touchups rather than just upload everything immediately.
When I heard about the D90’s Eye-Fi support I decided to give it a try. The D90 recognizes an Eye-Fi card and adds a new item to the setup menu which lets you choose whether you want it to upload automatically. The D90 also adjusts its power settings to avoid shutting off while pictures are uploading.
When I do upload from the Eye-Fi card, rather than uploading to Flickr, where I prefer to be a bit more selective, I always used Picassa as sort of a dumping ground. I also have it upload to a folder on my MacBook Pro, where I can import it into Aperture, do any necessary touchup, and upload the best to Flickr.
Nikon has announced a new 50mm/f1.4 AF-S lens, their first prime lens with an internal auto focus motor. Unlike their current prime lenses, including the popular 50mm/f1.8 AF, this new lens will support auto focus on the D40, D40x, and D60. One of my reasons for upgrading to a D90 was the D40x’s lack of internal auto focus.
The new lens will be available in December for $439 in the US.
Flickr Blog introduced Yahoo’s new Start Wearing Purple campaign. I sure hope they got permission from Gogol Bordello to use that name.
Today I went to Lauderdale-by-the-sea, the same place we had the photowalk, with my D90 to compare it with the D40x’s performance in a similar situation. I find that the move from the D40x to the D90 is as big a jump as switching from a point & shoot camera to the D40x.
In general, the D90 gives much sharper detail and better color than the D40x. Although it’s noticeably bigger & heavier than the D40x, I didn’t find it at all uncomfortable to use.
The D90’s battery life is excellent. When I started, my battery was one bar below fully charged. After taking over 600 shots and 4 movies, it was only down two more bars.
You can see the difference in quality very dramatically in this side-by-side comparison.
The ocean was fairly rough from the storms and there were a few skim boarders, but they stayed pretty close to shore, so I didn’t catch any spectacular jumps or wipeouts like I did at the photowalk. Besides doing continuous shooting, I also recorded a few D-movies.
You can see the full set of photos I shot today here as well as the D-Movies.
The D90’s exposure bracketing feature is great for HDR imaging. When you turn on bracketing, 2 or 3 consecutive shots will automatically use different exposures. If you use continuous mode, simply press and hold the shutter release to take the 2 or 3 bracketed shots. The resulting shots are exactly what you need to merge into an HDR image. I used the Hydra HDR plugin with Aperture 2.1 for this one.
After using the D90 for a few days, I’m very impressed with it. Live view is a lot better than I expected and I really like having dedicated buttons for settings like white balance, quality, and ISO so I don’t have to keep going to the menu as I did on the D40x.
This evening I tried using it in low light and I found that it performs beautifully at high ISO settings. All of these pictures were taken when it was almost completely dark and without a tripod. I shot in JPEG and didn’t do any noise reduction or other processing.
Taken at ISO 1600, shows very little noise.
Taken at ISO 2000, shows some noticeable noise but still looks good.
Taken at ISO 4000, shows quite a bit of noise but doesn’t look too bad. Passable at smaller sizes.
The Nikon D90 officially became available today. My local Best Buy got in only 3 and I managed to get the first one this morning.
The D90 is quite a bit larger & heavier than the D40x, but it’s still comfortable to carry.
Unlike the D40x, the D90 has an LCD screen on the top, where you can see most of the settings without having to turn on the display. The D90 has dedicated buttons for most settings such as white balance, ISO, AF mode, etc, so you don’t have to access the menus too often.
Unlike the D40x, the D90 has an internal AF motor, so autofocus will work on non AF-S lenses, such as my 50mm/f1.8. That alone is almost worth the price for me. I found the lens contacts to be a bit tricky, though. I had to jiggle the lens slightly from the fully locked position until I felt the AF screw snap into place before AF would work.
I didn’t get to try all of the features yet, but I’m very pleased with what I’ve seen so far. Using auto mode, it take beautiful, sharp photos. Recording video is very easy. No dedicated video mode is needed. Simply switch to live view (using the Lv button to the right of the screen) and press the OK button to start recording. Press the OK button again to stop recording. Movies are saved as AVI files with a default size of 640×428.
Keep reading for unboxing photos, sample images and a sample video.
