Nikon Showcase Post Nikon Df Photos

With the Nikkor 85/1.8, factory Ai'd. Shot wide-open, ISO6400, 1/100th second.

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Skate and Fun Zone by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

1/50th My Daughter doing her "Shoot the Duck" pose. She's moving fairly fast.
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Skate and Fun Zone by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

1/60th
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Skate and Fun Zone by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

1/160th- Disco lighting was all over the place, I used Auto +1/3rd stop.

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Skate and Fun Zone by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

Nikon made a prototype monochrome Df, using the sensor from the full-frame microscope camera. It did not make it into production. The monochrome version of the D4 sensor is in production, but only used for the microscope camera. What a pity. But I would have used the color camera for these shots anyway.
 
Quite a few from the last few months.

From Today:
Paid $99 for a Tamron 20-40mm f/2.7-3.5 Took it out on a hike today. I'd say its worth the money.
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Yeah, very nice. I was unaware of the Tamron 20-40 (and I guess Sigma also made a constant f2.8 version of the same focal range). Sounds like a lens I could get a lot of use out of. Sort of the DSLR version of the little Nikon 18-50 compact that they keep not bringing to market. Nice results too. Maybe I'll pick one up someday...

-Ray
 
beautifully rendered B&W's!

Thanks. I mainly use onOne Effects 10 and sometimes Nik Silver Efex.

Yeah, very nice. I was unaware of the Tamron 20-40 (and I guess Sigma also made a constant f2.8 version of the same focal range). Sounds like a lens I could get a lot of use out of. Sort of the DSLR version of the little Nikon 18-50 compact that they keep not bringing to market. Nice results too. Maybe I'll pick one up someday...

-Ray

I had not really known about it either until recently. I'm currently working on writing up a review of it. I just want to get some more test shots. We have a holiday display in downtown Columbus that I want to shoot and see how it handles points of light. I was wanting something wider than 24mm, but everything else seemed more expensive than I wanted to pay for such a lens that I would use rarely. Saw the Tamron at KEH and it was listed for $99. I did some web research and there are very few out there but the ones that I could find spoke positively about it.

So far it has lived up to the positive reviews.
 
Don, that's a beautiful photo of your son...

We had an ice storm here the other morning. The best kind, it was pretty for a few hours but melted quickly. So what're you gonna do with an ice-storm? Stay inside where you won't wind up on your ass, and shoot photos of stuff encased in ice through the window with a long lens. These are all with the 70-300, at about 300, wide open at f5.6, which isn't all that wide open, but with a full frame camera at 300-ish MM, it's enough for plenty of subject isolation, particularly with a fairly distant background...

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Ice Storm 1
by Ray, on Flickr

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Ice Storm 2
by Ray, on Flickr

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Ice Storm 3
by Ray, on Flickr

-Ray
 
I was right not to commit to SIJ - as much as I've been leaning on the RX1 (II), I knew there would be times I'd be pulling out the DF. Here are a few from our time in North Carolina (we're spending a couple of months down here this year, near one of our daughters). Two of the beach with the Zeiss 25 f2.8 and two rainy day indoor shots with one of my favorite old MF lenses, the 135 f2.8 AI. This and a few other older lenses were given new life after I sold off a bunch of AF lenses including a 105 f2. Forced to use MF, I don't mind it at all. I only have three AF lenses for the DF now, two zooms which I don't use often but are indispensable at times, and the 85 f1.8D, which is my only faster than f2.5 portrait length lens now and only AF portrait length lens...

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Carolina Beach
by Ray, on Flickr

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Carolina Beach Crime Scene
by Ray, on Flickr

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Puzzling out a Puzzle
by Ray, on Flickr

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Still Life with Woodpecker (or Seagull)
by Ray, on Flickr

-Ray
 
I did a bunch of family shooting over Thanksgiving and, despite having the 58 f1.4G and 105 f2 DC lenses in the bag, I ended up doing the vast majority of shooting with the 24-120 f4. Based on not actually using them much (which that holiday was just a confirmation of), I sold those two lenses and a few others to help finance the RX1R II I recently bought. I kept the relatively inexpensive 85 f1.8D as my only AF portrait length prime (I also have a sub-$100 50 f1.8D as my only other AF prime) for lower light situations that the 24-120 might not be adequate for. So last weekend I found myself at another family gathering with my adorable little grand-nieces, one of whom I hadn't seen since she was 5-months old and the other I'd never met. The light was such that I did all of the shooting with the 85 f1.8 and it handled the situations quite well. It may not have the sublime bokeh of the 85 f1.4 (D or G, take your pick), but f1.8 is fast enough for about any low light situation and the DOF is narrow enough to work for subject isolation. I'm happy with this more limited setup. Here are a few sample shots of the little girls...

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Turpins-74-Edit
by Ray, on Flickr

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Turpins-66-Edit
by Ray, on Flickr

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Turpins-58-Edit
by Ray, on Flickr

-Ray
 
More street stuff from President's Day holiday.
Nikkor 28-105/3.5-4.5D and 80-200/4.5-5.6D

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Finishing up our time in Wilmington, NC this week, I finally got around to touring the Battleship USS North Carolina. The ship was only in commission from 1941-1947, so it's frozen in the WWII time frame. I was actually surprised that the ship wasn't bigger than it is - I guess I had an impression of battleships of being huge, and they were the largest ships other than aircraft carriers. But I guess I'm conditioned by the massive cruise ships I've seen in ports in recent years. My Dad was a naval officer during that war, but he served on a destroyer, which was significantly smaller than a battleship, so seeing the tight quarters and small spaces on this ship made me think about what his life was like about an even more cramped ship during wartime. I can tell you I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere below decks on one of these things while it was taking fire - it's claustrophobic enough without thinking about explosions and/or sinking... Another stark reminder that of all of the many things I have to be enormously thankful for in my life, never having to have fought a war is near the top...

Here are a few shots, with more in my flickr feed... I took three lenses with me, but I only ended up shooting with the Zeiss 21, which helped open up some of those tight spaces...

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NC Battleship-8-Edit
by Ray, on Flickr

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NC Battleship-3-Edit
by Ray, on Flickr

The Bridge, tiny by modern standards...
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NC Battleship-30-Edit
by Ray, on Flickr

The engine room, a few levels down:
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NC Battleship-51-Edit
by Ray, on Flickr

Surgical area, for those wounded and seriously (and one presumes, suddenly) ill:
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NC Battleship-88-Edit
by Ray, on Flickr

Didn't really get a count of just how many enlisted men bunked in this one large compartment, but it was a LOT, in very very tight quarters...
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NC Battleship-80-Edit
by Ray, on Flickr

They had a barber shop, dentist's office, post office, shoe repair, etc also on board. A small town out at sea, involved in pitched battles and always in danger of being sunk, with several close calls for this ship...
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NC Battleship-73-Edit
by Ray, on Flickr

-Ray
 
Ray, you have to promise me to keep this camera and lens! :)
Thanks Peter. And not to worry. It's the first camera I've owned in the digital age that I've never even THOUGHT about replacing. For what and how I shoot, I haven't seen and can't even imagine a camera that would do everything I want/need it to do better, and before now I could always at least IMAGINE a better camera! After shooting with one for over three years now, that feeling is only stronger, even as plenty of other stuff has come down the pike. And the lens is maybe my favorite single lens ever. Not my most used, because I don't think a 21mm could ever be my most used, but I've never enjoyed and been more impressed with a lens than this one.

-Ray
 
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