• Nikkormat EL with Vivitar 55 – 135mm
• Nikkormat EL with Nikkor 135mm

The Nikkor 43 – 86mm was in production from 1963 to 1976. It has been discontinued since. The range you may have noticed is quite unconventional & hence the interest in owning & using it.

People have reported mixed feedback on this Nikkor 43 – 86mm f/3.5 over the years. In the simple spot tests I did, I was watching more for the issues that made this lens so questionable for use.

I shot 5 rolls of Kodak 400BWCN consumer grade film & developed them for 5 bucks at the local CVS stores (they scanned them for me too). These images are not touched up or digitally manipulated in any way.

For the complete set – Click Here for the PhotoDuniya Flickr page.

• the focus was soft – quite soft for street photography but will work great for impressionistic pictures
• the camera metered perfectly under all conditions of natural light
• the camera & the Nikkor 43 – 86mm lens combination was quite heavy – close to 1.5 kg
• did not observe any distortion (as many photographers have commented earlier)
• did not observe any flares under normal shooting conditions (though I did not take any picture right into the sun!)

Overall, I do not think I will be using this lens as frequently for street photography as the 18 – 35mm f/2.8. But it will work nice for me especially in creating natural impressions. I would rather use the fantastic 135mm on the Nikkormat EL for grand portraits & street photography.

I shot over 3 rolls of Kodak 400 BW CN film with this camera & lens combination. All shots were indoor in ambient, almost even lighting, except for a few situations where the light was sharp & abrupt.

You can see all the test shots on the Flickr Set Here.

• Vivitar 55 – 135mm f/3.5 is half stop slower than the Nikkor 135 f/2.8 I tested last week
• The lens is fairly sharp – all the test shots are hand held at very low shutter speed of 60 or below which is not recommended for this lens & camera
• The lens has a tack sharp focus. I would attribute any haziness to hand shakes
• The lens + camera weighs over 600 lbs making it hard to hand hold over extended periods of time

The Vivitar 55 – 135 mm f/3.5 will work as a good portrait lens & will be very suitable for street candid pictures. The Nikkormat EL has a center weighted metering & does not have exposure compensation. As such, I would use this with films for street candids & portrait shots rather than using it with slide films.

A brief on the Nikkormat EL Manual Camera:

Since the debut of the original electronic Nikkormat EL more than 25 years ago, there were many events, happenings and changes of course in the direction and philosophy of camera design.

Come to think of it, back in those days one would imagine how a leading trend-setting manufacturer like Nikon has to play it safe to explain and lead the consumers to embrace the advantages of automation in photography while not losing identity.

The first Program AE was the FG in 1982 and the first Shutter Priority AE was the FA in 1983 and this EL was the first Nikon which provided Aperture Priority AE – in 1972.

You can view them on the Flickr Gallery here.

Pipes & Cigars put on a very sombre make up & coupled with un-brushed shoulder length hair, could provide a very promising model.

In this image, Ed, who happens to be an extremely good photographer himself, posed for the club’s “hands on” night. It was the evening where we all had to try different images with all available models & props.

Ed, to put on a more realistic look of a medieval scholar used a pipe, but on hindsight, a cigar would have gone well along too.

Cigars have a been the prime prop of many of the interesting shot of Hollywood & French movies, but setting up a model with a smoking cigar isn’t easy.

The smoke has to be right, the light has to be positioned right so as not to reflect too much & the wind should be mild enough to provide a smooth wave instead of a blur.

Use of reflectors & dark background slides for these types of shots are essential. The white smoke show better on a dark background. In similar lines, a black & white image turns out better instead of color.

This one is taken with a medium lens on Nikon F-100 film camera. The original shot was on Fujichrome & later desaturated in Photoshop.

The picture is taken on hand held Nikon D200 with fill flash and a wide angle lens.

A perfect showman who just found a great way to earn money just by dropping his clothes. And the confused tourists, not knowing what this is all about, is more than willing to shell out a couple of bucks for a picture to carry back home as a souvenir.

The picture is taken on hand held Nikon D200 with a wide angle lens.

The D700 was built on the success of the Nikon D3 professional D-SLR camera, the D700 offers pro-level performance and an extensive array of features and innovations.

A few of the newer improvements, mentioned in the press release, on the Nikon D700 includes:

• large pixel size of 8.45 µm allows for an extremely low signal-to-noise ratio
  wide dynamic exposure range
• 12-channel readout enables accelerated information transfer
• shoots 8fps at full image resolution
• ISO range from 200-6400 but can be expanded to range from ISO 100 (Lo-1) to 25,600 (Hi-2)
• Nikon’s first self-cleaning system designed for the FX-format sensor with 4 distinct vibration frequencies
• Nikon’s Scene Recognition System
• enhance their pictures during or after capture with the Picture Control System and Active D-Lighting
• 2 live view modes

The Nikon D700 is sold at for USD 2,999.

Following my experience in San Francisco in documenting Street Musicians, I have started a similar project in New York City too. While most of the usual musicians are still playing in the subways, this group was one of the few that added a nice flavor to the city.

The image is taken on hand held Nikon D200. I did not use flash which could have distracted the musicians.

The rumors about Nikon D700 suddenly picked up a couple of weeks back with pictures & news running all over the internet. The stories mainly came in from Chinese websites. But UK was the first to make a sensible announcement with a date & a specs list. Although the prices have been taken down to avoid confusion, the news of Nikon D700 news is now holding back potential Nikon D300 buyers.

Here is a snapshot of the UK shop announcing the arrival of Nikon D700 for sale.

You can check the prices on Digital Depot website by the first week of July. The specs released by Nikon to another UK retailer mentions that the Nikon D700 is a hybrid of the Nikon D300 & the costlier Nikon D3. It also mentions that the new Nikon D700 is a 12.1 mega pixels full frame camera.

Here are the other features released to some of the reputed UK retailers:

• 36×23,9mm CMOS sensor FX format 12,1mp effective
• RGB Color filter array, build in low pass filter
• EXPEED processor, 14-bit
• NEF, NEF+jpeg, TIFF, Jpeg file formats
• Auto crop when using DX lenses. All other lenses usable.
• 51 point AF, 15 cross type sensors
• Live view mode
• 3D Colormatrix II metering modes
• ISO 100 – 25600
• CF card slot FAT32
• Accu and grip same as MB-D10 (from D300)

Nikon is yet to come out with a press release, but shops in UK believes that it will happen sometime on July 1 2008. And most of them have already started to stake in orders for the new Nikon D700. You can also order your Nikon D700 here at the danish dealer Photografica.

For a price list released by Photografica earlier & now removed, see post on Journal Image.

While Ken Rockwell seems to have published another picture of Nikon D700 on his website too, there has been no confirmation from Nikon or any of the large Nikon USA dealers on a possible date of release.

Meanwhile, the specifications of the rumored Nikon D700 is also shared on the internet.

Here is what came in from Ken Rockwell.

The specs, listed here are quite impressive. Although there is no mention of the price here, it is said that the prices would be comparable to the Canon top-of-the-line Mark 3 cameras.

The lady here takes a quick break from her restaurant work and takes a peek at the afternoon edition of the news paper. The picture is taken on a hand held Nikon 200 on Lexar Pro media card.

While people are spending hundreds for the latest designer clothes on one hand, just on the other side of Times Square, another group of tourists is paying anything between two to five dollars to the naked cowboy’s agent to have a picture with him.

This picture is taken on hand held Nikon D200 on the divider in Times Square.

The picture is taken on Nikon D200 with a wide angle lens on Lexar Pro media.

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There is off course a prize, not apparent if you are new to this environment. It is the satisfaction of an afternoon well spent outdoor in the company of people who love nothing but playing chess!

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The hawker refused to be photographed, so I was just content with taking the pictures of his road side wooden stall. The picture is taken on hand held Nikon D200 without flash.

This picture shows a rickshaw puller resting in the slow weekend. The picture is taken on hand held Nikon D200 without any flash.

The Joubert family has settled in Botswan to film and photograph the African Wildlife in it’s natural environment. Giving up a luxurious city life, they have been working for the National Geographic for over 15 years now. And they have produced some marvelous films over the time.

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Stalking the big cats on their jeep and following the faint sounds that could only be picked up by an expert, they have captured primitive hunts and predatory behaviors. Derreck mans the movie camera while Beverly works the sounds. And while she is not on her usual role, she captures the moments in her still camera.

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While each of these videos will show the passion and compassion of the film makers, it will also be an immense tutorial on various aspects of wildlife photography for all.

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Vincent has been playing the pan for over 25 years and about a decade in New York City. He is from Trinidad, but has been entertaining the New York City tourists for over a decade now. On my request, he played the Jamaican Farewell. I had first heard it on the pan in San Francisco by another street musician by the name of Jonathan.

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I shall post more on Vincent in my later blogs. This picture was taken on a hand held Nikon D200 with fill flash & is part of an extended documentary on Street Musicians. Read more here.

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I have used a watermark on the above image. I apologize for the inconvenience but I am using it since the time I found out that Musicnation.com and a few others have violated copyrights & copied my images while being very insensitive to the musicians all in the name of driving more traffic to their websites.

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Taking pictures while driving at high speeds is very similar to taking the picture of a deer running very fast from where you are standing. I have used three techniques for all those pictures.

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1) For pictures where I did not have something in front of me to lock-focus, I set the focus manually at infinity, and set the shutter speed at over 100 for most of them.

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2) For pictures where I had an object in front of me, like a vehicle or a sign post or a high land, I locked-focus and took the picture.

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3) For pictures of landscapes, I again set the focus at infinity and shot through the wind shield.

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All the pictures are taken through the windshield, with the camera held up high enough to avoid the bonnet. Note that none of those pictures have been cropped (they have been re-sized for sharing over the internet). So did I miss any shot? Yes, certainly. There is a certain amount of unpredictability with taking these sort of pictures. But since I have been doing it for long, I could get 8 or more good pictures from 10 gates.

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The camera was Nikon D200 and I had used a wide angle lenses from 17 mm all though 120 mm. The higher the focal length, the better the composition and lesser chance of getting your car’s bonnet in the frame. But that also increases the chances of camera shake. You got to do the balance somewhere in between.

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Since they were all taken from behind the windscreen, I did not use any flashlight. The ISO was held between 100 & 200 so as to get sufficient resolution in case I needed to crop.

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Nikon announced the launch of Nikon D60, a 10.2 megapixels camera, today with a street price of about USD 700.00. The camera has been launched in Europe today & is supposed to hit the US shelves by March 2008.

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With the D80, D40 & the D40x targeted at the same market segment of amateurs & advanced amateurs, the camera bears a significant trend of the market – help more in-camera processing & reduce the dependency on a computer. In terms of technology though, it bears the same high level of Nikon techniques as in any other along with an advanced dust cleaning mechanism. People have been known to depend on their computer mostly for (a) cleaning up images (b) changing saturation levels & (c) cropping. Having an advanced dusting mechanism would certainly help those who would prefer to spend more time with the camera than with the software!

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Here is a detailed report from DP Review on the camera along with it’s specifications.

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We are now integrated with our website, photoduniya.com. We have moved over to http://www.photoduniya.com/photography-blog/. Although we shall keep this blog up and running, most of the future posts will be on the Photoduniya Blog.

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Please take a moment to view the new site and let us know your feedback.

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Nikon had announced the launch of the Telephoto VR lenses late last year. The Nikon 600 mm f/4 AF-VR (estimated street price USD 9,500) and the Nikon 500 mm f/4 AF-VR (estimated street price USD 7,900) were announced late last year by Nikon and are yet to hit the market. It had always been a question as to whether one needs a VR with these long lenses for an additional price of between USD 500 to USD 700 and an increased weight of the lens. But looking into the way Nikon is trying to get into the Canon sports market, probably the thought is that many of these “nature” & “field” lenses would now be used in the sports arena easily.

Having said that, the 2 other lenses that automatically come into the discussion are the Nikon 400 mm f/2.8 AF (street price of USD 7,000) and the Sigma 500 mm f/4.5 AF (street price of USD 4,200). Nikon would definitely discontinue the non-VR versions of all the lenses that are already made with VR. The Nikon 500 mm f/4 (non-VR) had been a favorite of most of the nature photographers and had performed superbly for ages would be gone in a few months of time.

Personally, since I do not do sports, I have not much use of the VR in these tele lenses. That leaves the proposition for the Sigma 500 mm f/4.5 AF extremely enticing, especially if I weigh the positive price and the weight factors to the only negative brand factor. But a difference of USD 4,000 does a lot of justification for a small time photographer like me! The reviews had been excellent over years together. And apart from the Service related cribbing that many people reported as a pain point with Sigma, there have been no complaints on the quality or the operations of this lens.

The other brand lens that appears very enticing at least from the price point of view now is the Nikon 200 – 400 mm f/4 G-AFS which comes with a VR for a price of USD 5,100. I have recently sold my very favorite Nikon FM 3A and probably would not have much need of the “D” versions anyway. The Nikon F5 and the Nikon D200 works superbly with the Nikon 200 – 400 mm f/4 G-AFS VR. The zooming ability of this lens, for my needs, out-weighs the benefits of the 500 mm prime.

I have thought of the Sigmonster (Sigma 300 – 800 mm f/5.6) for over a year now. It is probably an excellent value for the money (for a price of USD 7,000) but since I have started doing a lot of streets now, I have to finally get this lens off my mind for good!

Pennsylvania landscape on I-80 @ photoduniya.com

The images on this journey are taken mostly while driving on hand held Nikon D200. More on the trip will come up later on the Travel section of photoduniya.com.