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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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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!

This is a DX format sensor, with the benefits of the improved auto focus mechanisms of the Nikon D3. It still uses the battery from Nikon D200, the EN-EL3e, which is known to have a very poor battery life.

Priced at about USD 1,900, the body is expected to hit the US & UK markets in November 2007, the same time as the D3.

You could read the Nikon D300 specifications on their official website here.

Here’s a brief of what the D3 has to offer:

• 12.1 MP CMOS sensor
• FX format (thats a full frame 36 x 24 format)
• Continuous 9 fps in FX mode and high speed 11 fps in DX crop
• Noise reduction in extreme 25,600 ISO
• 51 point auto focus with 3D focus tracking and improved Scene Recognition System

Here is the link to the detailed specifications on the Nikon’s website.

I recently saw one of the documentaries by Dr Alan Rabinowitz made by the National Geographic Society – titled In Search of the Jaguars. It details the life and the heroic work of Dr Alan from his early days growing up in Brooklyn, NY to the rest of his life spent in an undying effort to save the Jaguars in Central America.

Although the Jaguar project of Central America has taken up the most of Dr Alan’s better life, he is also known to discover the smallest deer species – the leaf deer and communicating with the Tarons – the Mongolian pygmies who faced  near extinction. The documentaries are published in his book “Beyond the Last Village“.

While you read and see his work, you get to realize what an immense source of strength this person had been throughout his life. Refusing to  give up at daunting challenges, he has fought over twenty five years of his life for the safety and preservation of some of the most fragile species and cultures of our planet.

Today, while his Jaguar project has gained some momentum and has interested similar minded conservationists, Dr Alan Rabinowitz  is facing a harsh reality. He has been diagonized with Leukemia. But not deterred by his physical challenges, Dr Alan Rabinowitz continue to lead the conservation initiatives till today.

You could read more about him on the web at Save the Jaguar. As a last note, the Wildlife Conservation Society runs completely from donations and some of their most critical projects are funded out of donations from people who want to save this planet.

Celebrating this occasion,  the President Michio Kariya laid a clean vision for the next decade – “Our Aspirations – Meeting needs. Exceeding expectations” as Nikon steadily moved ahead to its 100 birthday.

Nikon will retain it’s brand logo of the hashed yellow square, meant to represent “Transforming imagination into creativity“. The sequential white rays symbolize “infinite possibilities within the domain of optics” while the yellow has an emotional significance of “depth” and “passion“. The bold black name of Nikon within the logo emphasizes the solid “trust” and the “commitment” of the company.

Quite truly, Nikon has evolved as an institution of creativity. Starting with the F mount cameras in 1959, and the 3D color matrix metering of the early 2000, Nikon has shelved competition from Canon, Sony and Panasonic. Albeit the staunch followers of Nikon are more than willing to bear the high prices for the quality they offer.

More news available on the Nikon Corporate website.

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When digital technology and advances made in digital sensors have created excellent cameras, it has constantly challenged the ability to store digital files – be it images or movie files. While Tera Bytes have become cheaper and softwares are becoming more efficient in retrieval of files, the main challenge that digital photographers and video makers face is that of an era of evolving file-creation technology.

The traditional CDs have slowly given way to the more efficient DVD format allowing us to store more images on a smaller media. The DVD format has constantly evolved and is going through another major evolution right at this moment! The Blu-Ray is in! Developed by the Blu-Ray Disck Association and funded and supported in various capacities by close to 200 world renowned electronic device & movie makers.

Contrary to the current disk writing technology of using the red laser beam (that has an effective wavelength of 650 nano meters) the Blu-Ray will use a Blue Violet laser (with an effective wavelength of 405 nano meters) allowing the technology to pack more content within the same space of the disk. A single-layer Blu-Ray disk can store 25 Gigabytes of content compared to 4.7 GB of a DVD and a double-layer Blu-Ray disk can store as much as 50 GB compared to 8.5 GB of a DVD!

While the Blu-Ray technology is supported by a large array of disk makers and industry leaders including:

Apple Computer, Inc.
Dell Inc.
Hewlett Packard Company
Hitachi, Ltd.
LG Electronics Inc.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Pioneer Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
TDK Corporation
Thomson Multimedia
Twentieth Century Fox
Walt Disney Pictures
Warner Bros. Entertainment

a competing technology, named the HD-DVD, is extensively developed by Toshiba & NEC.

Although at this time, the Blu-Ray evolution is backed up by the largest number of the world’s leaders of electronic device manufacturers and movie makers, the capacity advantage is surely in favor of Blu-Ray. With a larger Numerical Aperture of 0.85 exceeds that of HD-DVD’s 0.65, allowing it to put in more data on the same disk. As a comparison, a single-layer Blu-Ray disc packs in 25 GB vis-a-vis 15 GB for a HD-DVD while a double-layer Blu-Ray disk packs 50 GB compared to 30 GB for a HD-DVD.

To match the camera, the digital back comes with impressive writing speed of 300 MB/sec & an ISO range from 500 to 10,000 ASA. The special sensor is produced by DALSA Corporation exclusively for Seitz. Ref: http://www.roundshot.ch/

SanDisk has aggressively produced CF cards to go along with such a massive electronic device. In 2006 Photokina it launched the 12 GB and 16 GB Extreme III CF cards with writing speeds of 20 MB/sec. Not to mention the cost that pro’s shell out for such gadgets – a whopping USD 800.00 for the 12 GB and USD 1050.00 for the 16 GB.

And yes, with such a capacity, you can shoot without the worry of running out of space!

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.