I’ve been bad; very bad

After trying, with only partial success, to cull my camera collection, I ended up returning one camera to active service, buying another camera, and had a third camera boomerang back, from 2012. This probably isn’t good.

Originally, I had put my Fujifilm X-M1 up for sale, but it sat without interest over the winter months. Then, on a whim, I decided to send it away to be converted to infrared. It came back from Oz at the end of October, just as we were leaving for Oamaru. 

Oamaru public gardens - Fujifilm X-M1, 720nm Infrared.

I loved the results, so that’s one camera that's now back on active duty.

Probably, my greatest sin (though not the most costly) was pressing the “Buy Now” button on a Fujifilm FZ-3000. This is a somewhat bizarre-looking film camera from the early 1990s. My excuse was that it was brand new and still in its original packaging - a rare find for $60.

Auto everything, the camera was light to carry and simple to use. When I want to shoot 35mm film without the hassle of carrying around the Nikon FE, this is surely the camera to use. 

West Oxford Hotel - Fujifilm FZ-3000, Ilford FP4+, Rodinol.

Unsolicited, my son returned the Nikon D80 that I had given him in 2012. He had replaced it several years ago and it had been sitting unused ever since. Who wants a 10Mp digital camera in 2022?

Nostalgia beckoned and, after kickstarting the battery into life, I took it out for a walk. Low expectations here. But, what I hadn’t factored into my thinking was that software has improved leaps and bounds since I last used this camera.

So I ran the 10Mp files through Topaz Photo AI, and out popped some stunning 40Mp images that compared very well with my current cameras. I was a bit gob-smacked, to be honest.

View to Mt. Oxford, across Pearson Park, Oxford, NZ - Nikon D80.

Now I’m in a bit of a quandary; I have a perfectly usable DSLR camera which won’t be worth much (because, low specs) but produces beautiful images for anyone with the right software (e.g. me). Should it join the other nine cameras on active duty, each wagging their tails like dogs in a pound awaiting adoption?

What to do?

Nikon D600 - a year on

Well, perhaps a few days short of a year, but it was this month a year ago that I acquired the D600. I remember, on one of the first outings being blown away by the dynamic range of this camera: with my old D80 I had become quite used to blending three bracketed shots to capture a high dynamic range scene. In the last year, I cannot remember ever having to blend shots with the D600 - I shot bracketed many times (an old habit) but never used more than one shot in final production. Today's shot of the Oxford Farmers Market is a case in point - one exposure (actually a four-shot stitched panorama) and everything from the distant clouds to the shadows under the market stools is well exposed (shot RAW and developed in Lightroom).

So, a year on and I'm still loving the D600 - can't blame the tools any more :-)

Shovels and clarity

This weekend I've been testing a new Topaz filter, "Clarity". It's not yet released (perhaps 2-4 weeks away) but it looks very promising and a worthy addition to the Topaz toolbox. I used it on this picture (in addition to other filters) to restore what was a rather flat 6,400 ISO RAW file, to what I remembered seeing:

Nikon D600, 1/5 sec (hand-held) @ f11 and ISO 6,400 28-300 Nikkor lens @ 62mm. Processed in Lightroom and Photoline using a variety of Topaz filters.

Autumn leaves

Annette brought home these beautiful autumn leaves from the hospital where her Mother is recuperating after a heart operation. So, under the camera they went.

Nikon D600, 6 seconds, f22. ISO 100. 300mm on a Nikkor 28-300 - natural light.

Show the show jumper

A couple of posts ago I included the 'straight out of Lightroom' version of this picture (as I usually do on this blog). However, after blogging, the better pictures then go into my 'to be processed' folder from where they are given a fresh and more careful development in Lightroom and a fairly intensive going over with other software tools (in this case Photoline, Topaz and OnOne). The best of these pictures then go on (hopefully) to be sold. This is one of those pictures.

A superficial glance at the before and after versions may possibly show only minor changes, but print them big and the improvements in clarity, detail and depth are quite amazing. I just wish I could show that at web sizes but you'll just have to take my word for it :-)

D600, 1/1250 sec, f5.6, 116mm on a Nikon 28-300 lens.

Spring time

Spring has arrived accompanied by the usual Nor'West gales and an abundance of daffodils.

As well as gales and new flowers, Spring also brings us 'Photokina' (the world photographic trade show) and, along with many others, I eagerly expect the announcement of the Nikon D600 full-frame DSLR which is likely to become the replacement for my aging (but lovely) D80. On top of all that there has been a new job, and learning a couple of new software programs (Adobe InDesign and PhotoLine), so this spring is really turning out to be a time for new things.