Rodney Campbell's Blog

Archive for March, 2011

Lunging Seal…

by on Mar.31, 2011, under Life, Photography

More from our recent trip to Taronga Zoo

This time a timed image of one of the seals lunging at full stretch towards his target ball hanging from up high.

Lunge

NIKON D7000 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 70 mm, 1/500 sec at f / 4.5, ISO 125

Look Here

NIKON D7000 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 70 mm, 1/500 sec at f / 4.5, ISO 100

and who can resist those Meerkats 🙂

I’m Looking at You!

NIKON D7000 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 195 mm, 1/250 sec at f / 5.3, ISO 100

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Street: Week 12 – Look!…

by on Mar.29, 2011, under Life, Photography, Street

Week 12

Look!

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 165|260 mm, 1/320|160 sec at f / 5.0|5.6, ISO 400

Waiting

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 95 mm, 1/2000 sec at f / 4.5, ISO 400

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My Nikon D7000 Settings…

by on Mar.26, 2011, under Life, Photography

I’ve recently upgraded from my Nikon D90 to a Nikon D7000 D-SLR.

Since I’m a compulsive researcher and ADD list maker I’ve done some research on all those little settings which are available in camera and I figured I might just share the result of my detailed study and how I’ve setup my D7000 for daily use (basically all my default settings).

Firstly I should say that I primarily shoot in Aperture priority mode – basically because I like to be able to control my depth of field (or rather the lack of it) – possibly because I’m mostly taking shots of people, portraits or things.

So on to the D7000 camera settings I use…

Playback Menu:
Display mode: Highlights
Image review: On

Shooting Menu:
Image Quality: RAW
Color space: sRGB (default) (Adobe RGB)
Active D-Lighting: Off (Auto)
Log exp. NR: On
High ISO NR: Norm (Off)
ISO: ISO 100, Auto ISO, Max 6400, Min Shutter 1/60 (1/30)
Remote control mode: Quick-response remote

Custom Settings Menu:
a5 Focus point wrap around: On
a7 Built-in AF-assist illuminator: Off
a8 Live view/movie AF: AF-F
c1 Shutter Release Exposure Locking: Off (default)
c2 Meter Off Delay: 8s
c3 Self Timer Delay Setting: 2s
c4 Monitor Off Delay: 20s, 1m, 20s, 10s, 10m
c5 Remote on duration: 5m
d1 Beep: Off (default)
d2 Viewfinder grid display: On
d3 ISO Display: ISO
d6 CL Mode Shooting Speed: 3 fps (default)
d8 File Number Sequence: On (default)
e1 Flash sync speed: 1/250s (Auto FP) (if own external flash) < -- I only do this since I own an SB-600 flash which supports Auto FP high speed sync e3 Flash cntrl for built-in flash: Commander mode: TTL (if own external flash), Channel: 2 < -- I only do this since I own an SB-600 flash which supports wireless mode f1 Illumination Switch: Both f3 Assign FUNC Button: Top Item in My Menu f5 Assign AE-L/AF-L: AF lock only (AE Lock (Hold)?) f8 Slot empty release lock: Lock f9 Reverse indicators: -O+ Setup Menu:
Copyright Information: …

Setup MyMenu:
Setup -> Virtual horizon
Shooting -> ISO sensitivity settings
Shooting -> Long exp. NR
Custom -> e3 Flash cntrl for built-in flash
Custom -> a7 Built-in AF-assist illuminator
Shooting -> Active D-Lighting
Remote control mode

On top of this I also use the two User settings slots (U1 and U2) to store extra customised shooting settings for quick access (e.g. one tailored for Street Photography and one for tripod style shooting (night time, land and sea scapes, etc).

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Snow Leopard – no not Mac OS X 10.6… or D7000 High ISO Heaven…

by on Mar.23, 2011, under Life, Photography

I took my girls to Taronga Zoo here in Sydney last Sunday (yes the day with torrential rain and extremely dark overcast conditions!).

Unfortunately we didn’t have a great deal of choice in the timing – my girls “really!” wanted to go to the zoo and we’ve a visitor staying with us and they’re leaving soon. The girls all had a good time and one upside of the inclement weather was that there were relatively few people at the zoo (for a weekend) so it definitely wasn’t crowded.

We were reasonably lucky in that it didn’t rain heavily for much of the time we were there however the conditions were extremely overcast and it was quite dark as a result. The overcast skies is good (for photography), the dark and rain not so much 🙂

It was however a great time to try out the higher ISO capabilities of the D7000 since I wanted a reasonably fast shutter speed to capture the animals and I was sporting a slower long lens (my 70-300mm f4.5-5.6). I also took my 17-50/2.8 but it was a bit too rainy and windy for me to bother switching lenses back and forth so I stuck with the longer lens for the whole day.

I shot mainly in Manual (sometimes in Aperture Priority) and selected my desired Aperture and Shutter Speed and used ISO to provide good exposures.

What follows is some of the better (compositionally) higher ISO images – some of the shots (not posted here) were even taken out to ISO 3600 and even those look reasonably clean and usable 🙂

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay gallery viewer.

Lizard in Blue

NIKON D7000 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 145 mm, 1/160 sec at f / 4.8, ISO 1250

Snow Leopard (no not Mac OS X 10.6…)

Snowy Leap

NIKON D7000 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 165 mm, 1/250 sec at f / 5.0, ISO 560

Looking at You

NIKON D7000 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 270 mm, 1/250 sec at f / 5.6, ISO 1000

and a portrait of my youngest just after having a very nice face painting job done…

Tigress

NIKON D7000 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 122 mm, 1/200 sec at f / 4.8, ISO 1600

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Street: Week 11 – (not) Angry Birds…

by on Mar.21, 2011, under Life, Photography, Street

Week 11

Walking on Light

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 300 mm, 1/640 sec at f / 5.6, ISO 400

Standing Proud

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 300 mm, 1/500 sec at f / 5.6, ISO 400

Sleeping on Feathers

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 220 mm, 1/100 sec at f / 5.3, ISO 400

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