New Gear!

Last Summer, when I wrote about the sad plight of our Nikon D200 digital SLR, I mentioned that I thought my good Karma was starting to turn bad. I may have been a bit premature. Just a month later, Nikon introduced the D3 which, at $5000, I can only dream about, and its little brother, the infinitely more affordable D300. The two cameras are nearly identical.. the major exception being the D3 is Nikon's first "full frame" digital SLR- it has a larger sensor than all the preceding models- and it can shoot at ridiculous resolution at nearly night-time conditions.

Since that fateful immersion in July of last year, we've struggled along without a high res camera. Our old D70 was obsolete even before the D200 was introduced. (It's for sale- make an offer!) Our workhorse D2H's only advantage is a very useful high shutter rate.. (8 frames per second). Unfortunately, in the last two weeks, the D2H started showing signs it was reaching the end of its useful life. Not surprising, in that we fire the shutter off 2-3000 times a weekend. Do that for 4 years and the shutter starts resisting my commands that it do its job. It's begun hanging up on a regular basis. I got through last week's trial, but knew something had to be done. And soon. Even though we couldn't afford it.

Last Monday, we ordered up a D300. It arrived Wednesday. And I love it. It makes obsolete everything we've used before, and most everything else on the market, excepting the D3. The most striking difference? Color. Color like I've never seen. The following images were all basically point-and-shoot snapshots, at my brother's house, and Margaret's parents' house. Also, check out the "white-on-white" dog statue... last year's technology wouldn't be able to capture that tonal gradation without completely blowing out the highlight areas. And it all works without me having to think a whole lot about what I'm doing. And that's the most valuable advantage of all.

UPDATE: Apologies to those who looked and found no pictures. A Blogger problem. I've had to reduce the file sizes significantly, so the resolution isn't quite what you'd see if you looked at the originals, but the colors are still there.