Back in August, I told your about the new Hitech filter system. The lack of water in the Sierra kept me from really doing much with their Big Stopper. Well on our K&M Adventure, ME, I had plenty of water so pulled out the Big Stopper. Attached to the D4 and 18AF, I went out as far as I could on the rocks safely and started to shoot. First, you manually focus and lock that in place with gaffers tape. Then it’s finding the exposure. I ended up shooting at 120sec, f/8 using the MC-36 as a timer. I have to tell you, I wasn’t thrilled with what I was seeing on the LCD.
My bud Kevin was shooting next to me and on his LCD, we saw a normal color with his Big Stopper. On my, looked like I was shooting in moonlight. Everything was blue. No matter, I kept on shooting figuring I could deal with the color cast in post. That is what I did, in ACR, simply took the Color Balance tool and clicked on the lighthouse to get the color you see here. What I do like is the blur to the clouds the long exposure. While the Hitech Big Stopper does have the color cast, I don’t hesitate using it just know on the camera’s LCD, the moon will be out.
Note: with time this filter became unusable! I don’t recommend you use it.
The beauty of iMags and iBooks is you can update them, something we like to take advantage of. So our latest digital edition of the BT Journal now has additional video content. The hardcopy should be mailed to folks within the month. mtc
(click on icon) Subscriptions like anything iPad is purchased through iTunes. At this time, subscription to hard copy will not include digital copy. Back issues and issues released before the start date of your subscription not included.
Well, finishing up my 2nd month with the MacBook Pro Retina and to say I really, really, really am enjoying it is an understatement! I’m just getting back in the office after basically a 5 week road trip (I did come home for 38hrs after week 2) with nearly 2TB of new images! I did not change up my basic system since I got the Retina, using 2 ioSafe 1TB USB3 as my digital library and the Buffalo 1TB Thunderbolt as an extension of the internal SSD of the Retina. On the road, it worked great. I did learn a couple of things like, when Bridge is building a cache (I use Bridge to manage all my finished files only), don’t close the lid on the Retina and walk back to your room. Spent the next hour making that all happy again.
On the road, the workflow screamed thank goodness as I was jumpin! Images brought in with Photo Mechanic and filed and backed up on the ioSafe (TSA did not like all the hard drives I was toting!), images to be finished coped to a Temp folder where they were launched in ACR and finished in Photoshop. The speed, the freakin speed of this notebook is bloody amazing and to be honest with you, my older system would have let me down bigtime! I drove Photo Mechanic & Photoshop with the Wacom Intuos 5 which I’ve programmed the Express Keys to speed up things even more. The real life saver to me of all was the battery life of the Retina. Even with the two external drives attached, I had over two hours of operational time with plenty of time leftover. Amazing!
The only new thing in the mix is using Keynote Remote on the iPad to run Keynote on the Retina remotely. Hooking up the Retina to projectors is still a royal pain in the ass. Retina just doesn’t like VGA but is very happy with DVI/HDMI which means I have to stick to new projectors which is a challenge when you’re a guest presenter. The Keynote Remote & Keynote is working great after “customizing” it to do my thing. Now I know the issues, I’ve made a couple of work around to be able to function.
The big test for me though was getting back to the office and the digital library. With all my preroad trip testing, would all the work I did on the Mac on the road be Ok with the Windows 7 digital library. The biggest thing is the ioSafe drives talking to both systems happily. I’m so happy to say, it all worked flawlessly. After 26hrs, all files moved to the network NAS and backed up. Phew! But here’s the kicker. While on the road, a backhoe working on a neighbors home cut through ALL the electrical/internet cables causing an immediate blackout of the office. While everything is on UPS, my desktop, a Dell that is 13yrs old that is my basic office management, writing, email machine took a hit. So now the question is, what do I replace it with. Yeap, I’m looking into a Mac for the desktop. I realize I could use my Retina and in the meantime, I am and it’s doing a great job, but I need the extra machine. I’m a multi tasking fanatic! The bottomline for me, other than the working with a projector issue, the Retina simply rocks!
I’ve shot with the Nikon 1 J2 for a month now and I can say, it’s fun to shoot with and delivers sharp files! I can also say it’s not for me. Prints are just now coming out of the Epson 4900 and they look great, so image quality is not an issue. I have my latest video shot with the J2 playing on another machine and it’s clean and crisp. And the J2 has some cool innovations like turning itself on when you simply unlock the lens to shoot. The two lenses, 10-30 and 30-110 work effortlessly and for some photographers, I can see this being the perfect camera and have no problem recommending it to them.
“But Moose, you can attach your 600 to it and shoot” was one comment I received when I said previously it’s not for me. Really, you would attach this to a $10k lens and go shooting? Isn’t the point of mirrorless is having more lens for less? The 30-110 when zoomed out is about the same as a 300mm on the D4. But 30-110 weighs nothin, it fits in your shirt pocket. So why would you mount a DSLR lens on this little wonder?
“The sensor is so small, the images must suck” is another comment I received. The prints coming out of the 4900 don’t suck by any stretch of the imagination. I would not hesitate sending them to a client (keep in mind, I don’t shoot at ISO 5mil, that feature in any camera is not what I test for). Even with that knowledge, I would be really hard pressed to walk into a client’s office with this as my camera and believe they would take me seriously. I mean, I can’t even attach a SB-900 to the J2.
I can’t say this is the best mirrorless camera on the market, I’ve only shot with one. I can say though I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot with it and put the images out in a 13×19 print and dare any to know it was taken with a mirrroless camera. It is a ton of fun and that’s where in my mind I fill this camera. While shooting with it, I did run into some other mirrorless camera owners shooting with different brands. While their mirrorless cameras had some great features and a bag full of lenses, after spending a couple grand, you’d best have that! But I also saw all these other mirrorless camera owners with big smiles when shooting and even bigger ones when they shared their images. And to me, that’s the best thing about the mirrorless.
I’m not looking at mirrorless. The new V2 has been announced and I’l looking forward to it reaching my desk and shooting with it. You want a fun, easy to use, light, sharp, well built mirrorless camera, you’ll find that and more in the J2.
