Central Park - monochrome prints

I added some images to the limited edition monochrome book I am doing on New York's Central Park. The technique I use simulates the darkroom style I used to make selenium prints of my images when I shot negative black and white film.

Nikon Lens Firmware Update - 1.009

Nikon has a new firmware update, version 1.009, that performs in-camera correction for barrel and pincushion lens distortion during shooting and editing.  The update applies to these cameras: D4, D90. D600, D800, D800E, D3100, D5000, D5100, D5200, D7000, and D7100.

I just updated my cameras. It was the easiest, quickest update ever, with very clear instructions from the Nikon installation site.

You can download the update here for MAC and for WINDOWS

You can read the instructions for this firmware here: for MAC and for WINDOWS.

Walden Pond - the look of summer

My project to photograph Walden Pond is spread out over a year so I can capture it in each of the four seasons that Thoreau would have seen. On this trip I wanted to capture the look of a typical, sunny summer day. The sun accommodated me with temperatures in the 90's. Normally, this is not my favorite time to photograph nature, but I wanted to show the pond in all its myriad aspects and a mid-summers day is one of them.

Not my favorite light by which to photograph, but this is what the pond really looks like on a summer day. This is a panoramic composite of two images taken with a 24mm focal length lens. 

For this photograph I switched to an extreme wide angle of 12mm of the Sigma 12-24mm zoom on the Nikon D800. This focal length is currently the widest rectilinear available for a full frame camera and the Sigma does a nice job of handling it.

The star burst from the sun is particularly sharp with many shooting rays. Taken with a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom set to 24mm and aperture of f/8, an ideal setting to produce this type of star effect.

The green vegetation around the pond is still lush and colorful due to the many rains we had in the late spring.

I carry an early edition of Thoreau's "Walden" on most of my trips to the pond so I can photograph it within the forest environment as the seasons change. 

Walden Pond - The Meadow

At the far end of Walden Pond, near where Thoreau had his cabin, is a swampy, mosquito infested area called the Meadow. The day before, when I went there I was eaten alive by mosquitoes, so it makes me wonder why I would go back again the next day to photograph it in the morning light. Since my goal for this project is to do a book and prints that reflect the pond and forest life as Thoreau might have experienced it, I guess that means mosquitoes and all.

The photo below is a composite of three photos assembled as a panorama in Photoshop. The resulting image is approximately 150mb in size. Considering that each of the photos were taken with a 36mp Nikon D800 and 24mm focal length lens, I calculated that the resulting panorama is equivalent to having taken the shot with a 50mb camera.

The composite was made from the three images below.

I find it amazing that Photoshop was able to effortlessly combine the three photos above, including the complexity of the fallen tree, into one panorama.

Summer on Walden Pond

I am back at Walden Pond to capture it in its summer look. It is very hot and humid with plenty of insects to let me know what summer is like on the pond. Here are a few images from today.

This is Wyman Meadow at Thoreau Cove near the upper end of the pond where Thoreau built his cabin.

All of these images were taken with a very small aperture of f/16 to maximize depth of field.

Quiet skies

Over the past few weeks New York City has been permeated with heat and occasional thunderstorms, which has given it a soft, misty sky in pastel colors with strong cloud formations to add variety. I decided to record these hazy summer skies using a quiet, minimal look. Here are a few samples I did with the Nikon D800.

Nikon D4X - myth or reality?

There is quite a bit of chatter going around the internet on if and when Nikon will announce a D4X camera model. Most indications are pointing to a fall 2013 announcement with a year end delivery, but the bigger question of sensor resolution is all over the place -- everything from 36mp to a high of 74mp.  Suggestions of 54-56mp are probably closer to the mark.

If you really think about it, Nikon will need to score the same shock it did when it announced the D3X with its 24mp sensor, and the  D800 with a 36mp sensor. Simply incorporating the 36mp D800 sensor into a D4x body isn't going to do it, even if Nikon can add some processing speed so the drive can travel faster than the slow 4fps of the D800. To justify the huge price difference between a D800 and D4X model something bigger is going to have to be offered.

I'm speculating it will be in the 54-56mp range. My reasoning is that, first of all, this will be a shocker size, something that Nikon will need to accomplish for its PR value. After all, there is already a 41mp smart phone camera out there making a 36mp full frame camera yesterday's news.

Second, 54-56mp isn't so large that the camera will be bogged down transferring information from the sensor to the card. A larger memory buffer, similar to what Nikon added to the later D3s and current D4 will be necessary to improve the processing speed and consequently the fps of the camera, and ,although expensive, will be justified in a high end, high priced camera. Even so, I'd look for 4-6fps as a maximum drive speed.

My third reason for choosing the 54-56mp size is that Nikon is not ready to make its own D4 obsolete. A smaller 36mp sensor combined with beefed up processing speed is going diminish the differences between a D4 and D4X. There was never a question of D3 or D3X because the gap between them clearly defined their particular uses. For a similar gap between a D4 and D4X the megapixels will need to jump to where the speed of use is different enough not to compete, thereby turning an "either-or" decision between the two bodies into a "both-and". That feeds better into the strategic nature of marketing.