Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Upgrading my camera gear (tech. gurus welcome)

In September 2003 i jumped into the digital waters of photography. Well, i should better say i moved into another world... but anyhow...
That time, my first D-slr was a 6Mp Nikon. It served my quiet a good job, very reliable although i was missing some features on that.
For instance:
- ISO settings below 200
- Mirror Lock-up
- better behave in low-light ( color noise )
- faster series shooting ( only 3 frames a second )
- better and bigger Viewfinder
- Sandwich exposure ( shoot multiple times on the same picture )
- Faster shutter ( 1/4000 only )
- faster flash synch. ( X-synch 1/180 only )
- more battery power / longer duration
- better white balance ( Need to work it out to get colors right )
- better dynamic range
- no cable connection for Studio Flash
- more buttons for functions instead of scrolling through the menu
- Less vibration from the mirror when releasing the shutter

Wow, now i am wondering myself how did i work all those years with that camera...
Although its not all that bad, but it could be better...

My new 10mp camera is better in many things but still not quiet the right camera that i want. Propably, the only solution to solve my problem will be to get a deep gap in my pants and buy the Nikon D3 ( about 4000,- Euro ).

But finally, i found another "solution"
My new camera in details:
- 18MP resolution
- ISO settings starting from 25
- Mirror lock-up
- Better behave in low light / less color noise
- series shooting up to 5,7 frames per second
- one of the best viewfinders i ever look through
- Sandwich exposure as often as you like
- X-synch 1/250
- fast Shutter of 1/8000
- long battery life
- No probs with white balance,filtersets for every light
- very good dynamic range
- cable connection for studio flash
- All important functions with buttons
- Camera vibration from the Mirror and shutter is minimal

And there is my new Working tool:




It`s the old toy-boy Nikon F4s. This analog film camera, manufactured from 1988 until 1996, was one of the most succesfull and reliable pro-slr ever made. It is a real pleasure to work with it. Get it in your hands and you might understand what i mean.

The mentioned 18mp resolution will be reached, if you scan the film with the filmscanner Nikon coolscan 5000 or 9000. If using high-end scanners like Imacon flextight, you will get results far above 18MP.




Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Samos presentations in high definition (HD, 720p) quality

Here is the link to my new channel concerning Samos, which I will use for publishing high quality (HQ) and high definition (HD, 720p) media via the internet:

"Experience Samos!"

I have already rendered some of my presentations in HD (720p) quality and published them on this channel.
Please pay a visit!

Since the HD video files now have large sizes, anything between one hundred and several hundreds of megabytes, I recommend to start the download of the stream and wait until at least two thirds of the stream have been downloaded before starting to watch the video. Of course, it all depends on the speed of your internet access and your computer.