My Grandfather's 1954 Leica M3

Due to ailing eyesight, in 1989 my grandfather, Max Wilson, officially retired from being an artist and gave Susan his painting supplies and me his camera gear.  I've had the cameras sitting on my desk for a while, just to admire the design the elegant design.  This is a picture of a double stroke Leica M3 from 1955.  The lens is a unique collapsible Leitz 50mm f2.8 Elmar, still in fine shape with no fungus.  I love the M3, but the reason for this quickie shot was to test the indoor accuracy of the budget Columbus nGPS unit for Nikon DSLR cameras.

The Columbus nGPS clips into the camera's hot shoe and tethers into the 10-pin accessory jack for power and data I/O.  Indoors, from a cold start, the unit locked into position in 30 seconds.  After the initial fix, warm start acquisition is a barely noticeable one second. Positioning was accurate for all pictures taken inside the house, beating a Garmin eTrex, which works only near a window on the South side of the house.

Recorded with each capture is latitude, longitude, altitude and UCT, but not bearing.  

Very thoughtful and missing from most competing GPS units is a remote release that operates through the nGPS plug.  Without this feature on a Nikon D700, you'd have to choose between the GPS and a cable release.  The build quality seems very solid, but only time will tell.

Technical: Nikon D700, Micro-Nikkor 105mm f2.8, ISO 1600, f/16 @ 1s, hand held.  GPS
RAW file processed in Lightroom 3 Beta 2.

Grid #10, Yellow

Another building as seen from the St. Louis City Garden, supplying a yellow grid for my collection.

Technical: Nikon D700, Nikkor 50mm f1.4G, ISO 200, f/8.0 @ 1/640s, hand held.  RAW file processed in Lightroom 3 Beta 2 and Nik Color Efex Pro.

Grid #9, Green

Detail of a building as seen from the City Garden in downtown St. Louis, processed as a heat treated Polaroid transfer.

Technical: Nikon D700, Nikkor 180mm f2.8 "Leni lens", ISO 200, f8.0 @ 1/400s, handheld.  RAW file processed in Lightroom 3 Beta 2 and Nik Color Efex Pro.

Mercury #3

This is a very bronze from 15th century Italy.  It looks curiously modern to me, almost Art Deco.  This rendition is a faux-Fresson.

Technical: Nikon D700, Micro-Nikkor 105mm f2.8, ISO 1600, f/5 @ 1/30s, WB tungsten, hand-held.  RAW file processed in Lightroom 3 Beta 2, Nik Dfine and Nik Color Efex Pro.

Apparition #1

This is really just an upside down reflection of a statue in a highly polished granite floor.

Technical: Nikon D700, Micro-Nikkor 105mm f2.8, ISO 1600, f/5.0 @ 1/6s.  RAW file processed in Lightroom 3 Beta 2 to correct color and contrast, and spots on the floor, then Nik Color Efex Pro for the Kodachrome 64 Professional film effect, finally back in Lightroom, crank up the grain all the way.

Chinese Demon Bust

This piece from 5th Century China would feel at home in a Wes Craven film.  The eyes are amazingly powerful.  The tattoo illustrations are very faded, but the original detail must have been awesome.

Technical: Nikon D700, Micro-Nikkor 105mm f2.8, ISO 1600, f/4.5 @ 1/40s.  RAW file processed in Lightroom 3 Beta 2 and the Nik Suite of tools.  I've been reading some negative criticism about the bokeh for this lens, but I think it is actually very good.

Flooded Trees, Part Two

Kicking the tires on Lightroom 3 Beta 2, the Nik tools now run properly.  This is a mix of Lightroom settings and Nik tools.

Technical: Nikon D700, Nikkor 180mm 2.8 (Leni Lens), IS0 200, f/8.0 @ 1/25s, handheld.  RAW file processed in Lightroom 3 Beta to and Nik Tools.

Lightroom 3 Beta 2 - Tethered Capture

A feature added to Lightroom 3 Beta 2 is native support for shooting tethered.  I could not wait to give it a try, so I am sharing a rather lame, but amusing to me, test shot.


A click File -> Tethered Capture - > Start Tethered Capture launches this spare dialog box that gives you options for naming files and where to save them.

Lightroom recognized my Nikon D700 immediately.  The shutter button in the tethered capture window fires the camera or just capture files as you shoot using the camera's shutter release.  Captures are displayed automatically on a secondary display by default.  Any camera Develop mode preset can be applied as you shoot, which is a real time saver.

The functionality hits the sweet spot for most uses, but a few features are missing.  While Lightroom can read camera settings like f-stop and shutter speed, but not set them.  There is no intervalometer, either.  Nikon shooters will have to buy Camera Control Pro if they need one full remote control or time lapse.

Some other random observations:

• Performance is noticeably better than Lightroom 2
• I left Lightroom 3 Beta 2 open over night.  Eighteen hours later, Lightroom was crawling, running much slower than the previous evening.  Closing and launching again cleared up the problem.  The Beta needs some code clean-up.
• Plug-ins work properly now.  Nik tools, for instance, died during launch with Beta 1.
• The new noise reduction is very effective.  You get a choice about whether to apply it or not.
• The film grain effect is a nice addition, but limited.  Nik software in particular still has a superior grain engine.
• I can't wait for the final product!
• Man, would I have loved this tool when I was shooting catalogs!