Nature Travel & Street Photography

For almost 2 years I have been worried about developing my films. Not only have I tried a lot of commercial developers but more frequently have I promised not to go back to the last one! It was very frustrating waiting for days for my chromes to come back and then not be able to use the most of them because the developers lacked the training to correctly process them. Worse still, in many of these developing shops, the machines that does all the work, have not been repaired for a long time. Fuji, which is one of the largest makers of these machines, have raised their costs and in some areas have completely withdrawn on-site maintenance work.

Had things not gone as bad as it did one weekend, I would have waited for a couple of more years and gone for a pro grade Nikon DSLR. But now the situation is different. I have a Nikon D200 DSLR. I had determined that I would be using this digital equipment only for street, candid and black and white shots, and hence there was no need for me to switch to any other brand. I still have a large stock of Fuji chromes for my art work. But had I not done that study, and for those who wants to do landscape on digital too, the Canon high end DSLRs would probably a suitable option.

For the first few days, it rained continuously in East Bay. The camera laid on the table completely ready to go but I just could not take it out. For the next week, I was so tied up with my regular job that I could not even think of anything! Finally, I managed to bring out the camera on the open.

My first few hundred shots were a disaster. It was not the camera, it was my lens. I was using about 800 mm handheld! I brought the camera out from chasing the birds and the bees into the streets of San Francisco. And it created wonders. I tested the exposure rapidly in all possibly drastic conditions that the city would allow me and I have to say, I am very pleased. I am yet to test the high ASA range though - I have used it only upto 200 ASA.

Below are three images from my tests - and if you see the tonal range, they are 5 stops apart! But as I said earlier, the metering is right on. So what did I like about metering? Ah! The ability to chose your exposure area in the center weighted option. Thats just brilliant.

And what I am no happy about so far? Well, since the first few days the camera was lying in my house, I tried a lot of shots in a lower Kelvin situation. I am not happy with the ambient range that is provided on the White Balance options - I would have loved to go down to 1000 K if possible!

The lady on the train

The bicycle man

The Tram Cars in Powell, CA

Except for the last image The Tram Cars in Powell, CA the other two had f/stops difference of 4 - 5 and yet the camera handled it graciously. I had not used any filters and the shots were hand held.

Unfortunately, D200 is not compatible with the SB50 DX - my pet filler that I have so grown used to. A SB600 or the SB800 would cost another US $ 400 to upgrade. I have also lost 1 stop and 50% of the wideness on my Tamron’s 17 - 35 f/2.8 lens. Thankfully, most of my lenses are Nikon’s and will not suffer from such a problem.

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