Mois : février 2021

This sounds pretty obvious, and easily done – until you discover that NIKON very thoughtfully HIDE the settings to do this in the setup menus of their mirrorless cameras…

I use the three user programmable ‘U’ settings on my Z series mirrorless cameras – with a growing stable of camera bodies, I like to make sure they’re all using the same values, so I want to back up my settings to the memory card, put the card in another camera body and read and install the settings from the card.

Easy-peasy…or so you would think. Except that when you check the SETUP Menu (the one with the spanner logo) there is no mention of the SAVE/LOAD settings option.

Nikon decided to make this visible ONLY when the mode dial is set to a PSAM (not U) setting! After this, it’s plain sailing – pretty much every setting is copied to the memory card so having duplicate bodies with duplicate settings is easy to do. Until they change it….

Nikons ‘Holy Trinity’ of f/2.8 lenses are now all finally available in ‘S’ variant form – and they’re VERY good.

I’ve specialized in photographing circus performances, and frankly these lenses make a difference to the quality of the images I can make. The mere fact that they’re all f/2.8 means three possible ways I can improve the chances of getting a shot:

1 : I can increase the shutter speed – 1/125s shoots up to 1/500s – capture movement

2 : I can increase the aperture – f/2.8 goes up to f/4- more depth of field

3 : I can decrease the ISO value – so 6400 ISO becomes 1600 ISO – less noise

As I have a tendency to shoot wide open, this is a real gain. It’s true that the current EXPEED processor and post processing can reduce noise (grain) artifacts, it’s nice not to have too much to start with…

In terms of weight, I find they are well balanced – they’re not light but I prefer a bit of weight as I find it better absorbs slight movements and is much easier to hold. The physical size doesn’t make the small body overbalance, so shooting, for me at least, is comfortable.

The tiny OLED screen showing focus point/aperture/depth of field is a bit of a gimmick, but doing a large amount of work in near total darkness I must admit that it has been handy a couple of times – the rear ring on each lens lets me change aperture easily, so seeing the value on the lens was nice…but in no ways vital.

The second lens hood (HB-97) on the 14-24mm now lets us put filters on this lens – albeit HUGE 112mm – this is useful too, particularly to be able to use a polarizing filter.

The proof is in the pudding – I’ll be posting some images soon.

You’re probably lost if you’ve arrived here. Sorry about that.

A man I used to know (and who has a propensity for photographing local prostitutes) recently informed me that no-one reads this bollocks anyway, or indeed looks at any of my photographs, so what’s the point of putting a button to have access to all this dross.

In case you’ve been living in a cave, you’ll probably already know that we’re about to embark on our second year of « the » pandemic. You’ll probably be sad to know that, as yet, I have not been infected – again, my apologies.

I continue boring the rocks, sorry, socks off everyone with my photographs of circus performers. A couple of new lenses, and a new camera body (soon) but you’re not here to read about this nonsense.

If you were looking for McDonalds, it’s here – bon appetit.