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This posting is intended for digital camera enthusiasts or Photo Dogs, if you prefer.
For the past two years Austin and I have been using a Nikon D70 digital SLR and with a Nikkor 70mm-300mm zoom lens. This has been a great camera and we’ve produced some excellent shots but my ratio of good to bad shots has always bothered me. It seems that many of my photos are just a “little off” -- just not as clear as I thought they should be.
Although I could never figure out the exact cause it boiled down to either user error or hardware imperfection. So I figured since it couldn’t be me doing anything wrong
it had to be hardware. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
So in anticipation of shooting at Millville I placed my name on a waiting list two months ago for a new Nikon lens that is so popular it is in short supply worldwide. It’s a 18mm-200mm Vibration Reduction (VR) lens that is made especially for digital cameras. The VR feature is meant to compensate for camera motion during a shot. Like when I’m bobbing up and down in a small aluminum patrol boat while I trying to shoot race boats whizzing by at 65+ MPH. And just days before the Millville race my name came to the top of the list.
But that created a dilemma. At maximum zoom, 200mm is less than what we’ve been shooting with. So the boats in the photos would appear farther away. And I think the close-up shots Austin and I take are some of our best.
So I finally decided on a solution: buy more hardware. I bought a new Nikon D80 camera to go with the new lens. The biggest difference is the D80 shoots at about 10 megapixels and the D70 shots at about 6 megapixels. So my theory was that I could shoot at a lower zoom, 200mm, but crop the photo closer without losing sharpness because the higher megapixels of the D80 would allow it.
This would also solve another problem I was having. Often I zoomed in so much to get the closest possible shot I wouldn’t get the entire rig in the photo. I’m a firm believer that properly cropping an original photo adds drama (see “No Caption For This Photo is Needed” in another thread here in the Photography forum) but when shooting at maximum zoom I was often cutting off the boat when I didn’t intend.
So after taking pictures all day Saturday at Millville I loaded the photos on my Macintosh laptop and sat down to see whether or not my theory was right. You be the judge.
Photo C is the original size photo from which the next two photos were cropped.
Photo B is how most racers like to buy a photo - the entire rig showing tip to tip.
Photo A is how I might crop a shot to make it unique.
Keep in mind, Photos A and B came from Photo C.
So, I ask the few of you who have actually read this far, was my theory correct?
For the past two years Austin and I have been using a Nikon D70 digital SLR and with a Nikkor 70mm-300mm zoom lens. This has been a great camera and we’ve produced some excellent shots but my ratio of good to bad shots has always bothered me. It seems that many of my photos are just a “little off” -- just not as clear as I thought they should be.
Although I could never figure out the exact cause it boiled down to either user error or hardware imperfection. So I figured since it couldn’t be me doing anything wrong
it had to be hardware. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.So in anticipation of shooting at Millville I placed my name on a waiting list two months ago for a new Nikon lens that is so popular it is in short supply worldwide. It’s a 18mm-200mm Vibration Reduction (VR) lens that is made especially for digital cameras. The VR feature is meant to compensate for camera motion during a shot. Like when I’m bobbing up and down in a small aluminum patrol boat while I trying to shoot race boats whizzing by at 65+ MPH. And just days before the Millville race my name came to the top of the list.
But that created a dilemma. At maximum zoom, 200mm is less than what we’ve been shooting with. So the boats in the photos would appear farther away. And I think the close-up shots Austin and I take are some of our best.
So I finally decided on a solution: buy more hardware. I bought a new Nikon D80 camera to go with the new lens. The biggest difference is the D80 shoots at about 10 megapixels and the D70 shots at about 6 megapixels. So my theory was that I could shoot at a lower zoom, 200mm, but crop the photo closer without losing sharpness because the higher megapixels of the D80 would allow it.
This would also solve another problem I was having. Often I zoomed in so much to get the closest possible shot I wouldn’t get the entire rig in the photo. I’m a firm believer that properly cropping an original photo adds drama (see “No Caption For This Photo is Needed” in another thread here in the Photography forum) but when shooting at maximum zoom I was often cutting off the boat when I didn’t intend.
So after taking pictures all day Saturday at Millville I loaded the photos on my Macintosh laptop and sat down to see whether or not my theory was right. You be the judge.
Photo C is the original size photo from which the next two photos were cropped.
Photo B is how most racers like to buy a photo - the entire rig showing tip to tip.
Photo A is how I might crop a shot to make it unique.
Keep in mind, Photos A and B came from Photo C.
So, I ask the few of you who have actually read this far, was my theory correct?
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