Jun 8, 2015 | Field Reports
I couldn’t bear it anymore with all the cloudy skies at night so I started to squirrel around with the D810A as an everyday camera. Sorry, I couldn’t pass up the bad pun start, but this weekend, we started our Sierra Bird weekend with a 1yr Black Bear and then it just kept getting better from there so had plenty of opportunities to put the D810A through normal shooting situations. I’ve had a WHOLE bunch of emails asking if the D810A can be used for normal photography. So the quick answer is, Yes/No!
Taking a step back, understand the D810A is NOT designed nor intended for everyday photography! Using the D810A for general shooting may result in a red cast in certain scenes – you can see well what the outcome may be in this site dedicated to the D810A. I’m being told some people are trying to “correct” this by using a hot mirror filter in front of the lens – theoretically it would bring down the IR portion so that it is within use for general photography but you take your risks whenever you put a filter in front of a lens in terms of quality (I’ve not tried this). Personally, I dialed in +2 Saturation in the Picture Control and then dialed out the remaining red cast in post. So the bottomline is, if you are very Color Management savvy and don’t mind spending your time doing that, then the D810A works just fine. If this is not your cup of tea, then the D810A IS NOT for you for everyday photography. Of course, I’m dying for clear night skies to put this bad boy to the real test, what it was meant to do. So more to come!
[envira-gallery slug=”d810a-pano”]
When comes to these photos, the Black Bear (brown phase) came through the property and the folks were able to photograph it point blank when it climbed tree three and said hello and then I photographed it once it came back down. I shot it with the 300PF which works great on the D810A. The Douglas Tree Squirrel was also photographed on tree three with the same gear with the addition of the TC-17E II. And the pano shot down on the flats was taken with the 24-85AFS which is a sweet lens. All these images were taken as mentioned and processed through ACR.
Jun 2, 2015 | Field Reports
The bright folks at Cornell Labs has introduced a great resource for wildlife photographers. Merlin Photo ID which is in beta, is a website where you can have your bird photos IDed! It is in beta right now and the database have only 400 birds species (there are over 600 species in NA alone), it’s a great start and way for you to learn who you’re photographing! I tested it by giving it a hard one, the front view of a Allen’s Hummingbird which looks exactly like a Rufous from the front. I’m impressed! So those of you who are bird ID challenged, here’s an easy way to figure out who you photographed!
Jun 2, 2015 | Field Reports
As you read this, my best friend and long time shooting partner Kevin is laughing, very much out loud. That’s because it was probably a year ago he first showed me, in a bragging way, the Nikon WR-T10. Technically, just the transmitter is called the WR-T10 but they have no one name for the three pieces that make up this really great, tiny, camera remote system.
The Transmitter, WR-T10 connects with either the WR-A10 (10 pin connector) or WR-R10 (USB connector) to fire a camera. In the top picture, you see the WR-R10 inserted into the WR-A10 into the ten pin socket of the D4s. When used this way, you have three channels available to you so three WR-T10s can be used at once and not tripping other cameras. What is cool is, you can leave the WR-A10 in the D4s, place the WR-R10 in the USB socket of another camera like a Df and when you fire the D4s, the Df fires at the same time. You shoot weddings, you can place the 2nd camera with a wide angle and shoot remotes while shooting close ups with first camera. Or shooting star trails? Shoot one camera really wide and the 2nd camera more telephoto. The amazing thing is, this accessory is really reasonably priced. So, don’t be like me and take a year to buy one (and a lot of teasing). This a great little tool that should always be in your bag!
Jun 1, 2015 | Field Reports
Many have emailed asking about the progress of my IoSafe 1515+ migration. Well, it was a slow start but goin now and here’s the update. After asking many, moving files drag and drop is what I was advised. Working on a Win box, that didn’t make sense to me but with all advising it was that simple, I tried it. Wrong (it is on the Mac though)! The D&D ended up farting on me after three and a half days. I then tried D&D differently but got the same results. So now I’ve turned my favorite program, SyncBackPro which is doing it’s usual great job. Now with that said, I’m on my first of six NAS units migrating files. The first box has 438,228 files to move and has 13 DAYS of it’s 18 DAYS left to complete the task. Why so slow? The computer can only work as fast as the slowest link and that’s the old NAS units. That’s just one of the many reasons I’m going with the IoSafe 1515+. Can’t wait til it’s done and I can give you a real read-write speed times. So, that’s the update. How I got this far, you can learn here:
IoSafe 1515+ – Journey Begins
1515+ – What’s Inside That’s Special
IoSafe 1515+ – Connecting
