So its been over a year (14 months actually) since I dove into the world of Photography. What a wild ride learning about exposure, composition and tons of other tidbits of information. I recently purchased some lighting equipment and have been getting into that now too. I am learning photography much faster rate than I originally planned on and really enjoying it. My accelerated learning is due a few things that include forums, books and a very nice gentleman who has been mentoring me over the internet. I will make a more detailed post later on how I figured the basics out so others can grab tips and tricks from it.
I have also learned that the weekly photo thing just isn’t working with my available free time. I have bursts at work where I am much more busy at sometimes compared to others so my available free time is more sporadic and doesn’t work well with the weekly photo task I set for myself. So I m going to rename it to Weekly Photo – Archive and just post to the general category when I have something to share. It was getting to feel a bit forced, some of the pictures I posted I was not as happy with as I think I should be to be posting them.
Now that I am feeling more comfortable with my knowledge I will be writing more about my thoughts, opinion and not just pictures with the settings. Its really funny how this hobby has engulfed all my other ones in time and budget. My car which was my previous hobby that took most of my money has since been put into maintenance mode with no new additions and video game purchases have also significantly dropped. I think this is a good thing as photography is much more rewarding and easily shared with others.
The D3100 I purchased a little over a year ago now has over 10k actuations on it. Its been a solid camera but its time for an upgrade. I am missing features on the D3100 I would like to play with like Flash Commander, time lapse, better low light sensor, more robust focus system, bracketing, in body focus motor and more. Anyone who knows me knows that when I even have the hint of wanting something I research it to death before making a decision. Months ago I started this process and it came down to the D600, but that is A LOT of money for me to spend. The D7000 was so tempting but just wasn’t updated enough on recent technology for me to conciser. I wanted a significant upgrade over my current D3100, not just an upgrade, I want this next camera to last me a good long while and not be outgrown as quickly as the D3100 was.
Then Nikon announced the D7100 and it was exactly what I wanted. It hit the check mark on everything I was looking for including and especially price. At a little over half the cost of the D600 it was an obvious choice. Yes its still a DX sensor vs FX but do I really need a FX sensor? I honestly couldn’t think of a single reason why I NEEDED one, oh sure there was plenty of reasons why I wanted FX but not needed.
The D7100 released on March 14th and I have been reading the reviews and its been nothing but fantastic. The few worries they have are negligible to me. The first being the removal of the low pass filter like the D800E. This is great because its one less filter to unsharpen your pictures, but the filter also prevents the moiré effect. You can read more about moiré here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern Nikon believes that with megapixel count and technology advances being what they are, moiré should not be a big problem anymore. Moiré can also be fixed pretty easily in post processing.
The next thing everyone is complaining about and is honestly a hindrance is the small buffer the camera has. Have you ever taking a lot of pictures in succession in burst mode and had to wait for your camera to catch up downloading the files to your memory card? This is because your buffer cache is full and cant write fast enough to your memory card. The people complaining about this are typically sports photographers. The new Auto Focus system in the D7100 has them very interested but the cache is way to small even shooting jpeg for them to catch all the action. But I think they are trying to make the D7100 something it is not. Its not a professional camera, its kind of like a bridge camera between enthusiast and pro DSLR. It has features from both sides and doesn’t quite fit into either category, the D600 also falls into this category.
With all that said the D7100 is on order and should be arriving tomorrow. I am very excited and hope to be able to use it this weekend. The D3100 has already been claimed by my girlfriend who is interested in learning photography. I am going to pass down a lot of the original equipment I purchased to her so she has a nice start. I will add another update once I have time to play with the D7100.
