Matthew Currie

Today it's nature, red in tooth and claw. I think this frog had an unhappy evening.

I stopped by the mall and outskirts today. Things don't seem to be going too well. Plans for a steak at the Bonanza fell through.... Not much chance of a table to eat off of either, it seems. But there's still a place to relieve yourself. D7100, 16-85 as usual...

My D7100 was initially bought by my wife, with the 18-140 lens, which she still uses on her D7200. Maybe there's sample variation, but I never noticed much issue with it except for the linear distortion. It's a nice carrying-around zoom if you don't mind the limited width at the short end. There are so many variations of the 70-300 it's hard to evaluate. The original D (which I still have from film days) is pretty soft at length, but not so awful. It was a great bargain for its performance back in the day. I never tried the next one, the "G" that is poorly thought of. My wife had the AFS/VR one, which was pretty nice and at least useable even at 300. We both now have the FX version of the latest AFD one, and that's an improvement over all of them, reasonably sharp throughout, and fast focusing. If you like that range, I think it's a real winner at the price.

Speaking of spring, here's a bluebird taking a little breather from nest building, taken about a half hour ago. It's going to get freezing and snow again, but these hardy bluebirds stayed the whole winter, so I guess they are used to it. D7100, taking my old 400/5.6 lens out for a stroll. Both cropped.

My wife has the 18-140 on her D7200 and quite likes it. I like a little wider wide end and have the 16-80 on a D7100. Both make a nice all-round lens if you don't need to go too long. Both are about the sharpest zooms around, so with the generous density of the D7200 you can crop quite a bit. The choice comes down mostly to whether you want the wide end or the long end. We both usually take a longer lens too so it's less of an issue, but on our last trip to Egypt and Jordan we skipped the long lenses. We both did fine without. The 18-140 is a good bit cheaper used. I had a 16-85 earlier, and it was not bad, but it was not notably sharp, and either of the ones above will do better, I think.

As mentioned, the D7x00 family will work with any older AF lenses. The D7500 won't meter with fully manual (unchipped) lenses, but the older ones will with any lens that is "ai" compatible or newer, and the D7100 and up will work with AFP-motor lenses too. I think the sensor on the D7100/7200 is very similar to that on the D5300, but you get a bunch of added features, and a significantly better viewfinder. One little note on the D5000 and 3000 family of cameras: although the instructions warn you not to use pre-AI manual lenses on these cameras, they will not cause any damage, since there are no meter followers and the min. aperture sensor actuates by pushing down (rather than sideways as some older cameras did). I used pre-AI lenses routinely with my D3200. If you need AF you're out of luck, but if you need a camera that can take just about anything with a Nikon F mount, the D5x00 and D3x00 will function at some level with most.

Seconding the above, I have and still use an older Lowepro Fastpack 350, which holds a lot of stuff, and when filled pretty completely still fits under an airplane seat. Mine was used when I got it some years ago, and it's held up well, except for the little net side pocket, which has shredded. It holds camera, several lenses, chargers and whatnot, and a small computer, as well as sundries in the top section. In my case it's not usually clothes, but other supplies, a book and lunch and maybe a raincoat. I've done a lot of international travel, using a carry-on bag and the backpack. I don't think it would work for multiple bodies or for larger stuff but for my D7100, usually three lenses including a fairly hefty full frame 70-300, and the rather fat 16-80, a couple of chargers and other assorted stuff, it's done well, and been just about all over the world. I've found that if one is carrying a backpack on one's back, it's very very rare for anyone to weigh it.

Back to the recent trip to Egypt and Jordan, it's hard to decide what details to see. The colors in the frescoes and stonework have lasted for 3000 years. The old museum in Cairo will soon be supplemented, if not replaced, by one in Giza, but you can still see many of Tut's treasures here. Don't be fooled by these lovely ladies. They literally want your guts in a jar! Legend has it that Moses stood here on Mount Nebo and this was the promised land he saw:

Yes, and also a few other small but useful improvements. A little better high ISO, a little better low light focus, a little faster this and that, some things you might not need or notice, but nothing that used to be in the D7100 is dropped.

It might depend on budget, but a D7100 0r 7200 might be worth looking at. You get a lot of backward compatibility, but they will also work correctly with E aperture lenses and AFD focusing lenses, which gives you considerable latitude. A whole lot more pixels than you're used to, but it's easy enough to downsize, and very nice for cropping.

Just returned from a trip to Egypt and Jordan, and haven't done a lot of processing, but a few... The temple of Philae was first an Egyptian one, then later Roman, and became a church, and also, it seems, a place for graffiti going back a long way. We see plenty of dramatic pictures of the Pyramids, but it's not always so clear how close they are to the surrounding city. And I know it's Ramses II, not Ozymandias, but how about some vast and trunkless legs and shattered visage.... All done with D7100 and 16-80.

I have heard rumors that Winter has arrived. Took a peek off the Mount Horrid overlook and...I think it's on its way. D7100, 16-80, and just for the record this picture is in full color.

Declining to abstraction....(D7100, Tamron "Adaptamatic" 35/2.8)

On the cameras I have, the camera itself is set to 24 hour time, so all times under 12 are AM. If the computer has been reading them correctly, then the problem must be in the phone. I have seen a couple of EXIF editing programs that claim to do time shifts, but I've never seemed to get them to work. EXIF Pilot supposedly will do this with individual files (free version, but must pay for batch) and EXIFTOOL GUI, supposedly will, but when I tried it nothing happened. You might have better luck there.

I have a late pre-AI 105/2.5 (the "gauss" type, single coated), which has done great service for many years, and produces what I think are very nice images even now, though it's less useful to me these days on DX, being a bit long. The later 2.8D is more useful because of its close focusing, and I take that out quite often to chase bugs.

Not too far back here, but I'll clear a couple off the desktop. A group of men meet regularly for coffee and treats at a local bakery. Still enjoying the long autumn here, but I think it's really over now. Not many of those lush green morning views out the back door either. And the dragonflies are just a memory. First two, D7100 and 16-80, third D7100 and 200/4Q on extensions.

If you want width and don't want to stitch, the 10-20 zoom works nicely, answering the need for a real wide angle in DX. I got one a while back and have recently taken that instead of the cheap prime when I travel. I didn't mention it before, because you were setting the condition of using what you had, but if you are willing to spend a little, it's very compact and light, making it a good candidate for hiking.

Must the second be a prime? My wife and I travel with, respectively a D7100 and a 7200, and have found that a pair of zooms works best for traveling if you have the room. I have a 16-80 and an FX 70-300P. She has an 18-140 and the same 70-300. They work nicely together, and are just within the limits for packing in backpacks to go under an airplane seat. For overall convenience, if you don't need the wider angle, the 18-140 makes a better all purpose zoom that gets pretty decently close on a DX with some cropping room on top. If you're backpacking that alone would work pretty well. If you don't need more reach, then a fast prime in the normal range might be nice around the campfire and such. A 35/1.8 could serve well. In the past when possible I've packed an old, very robust and virtually unbreakable FX 35/2.8. At home I prefer the 35/2.8 PC, but it's heavier and not as expendable. But I'm afraid the D7500 will not meter manual lenses as the D7100 does. At other times, I've taken a 50/1.4D, which is very nice for getting people in poor light, and nice and compact. If I had one all purpose zoom, I'd probably go with whatever chipped 35 or 50 you already have. But if you're trying not to have to buy new lenses, it sort of depends on what you already have. One thing you might want to do, when the D7500 comes, is try various crops of what you might expect to run into on the trip, to see how much you can get away with The more you can crop, the less reach you need to carry, but what you find acceptable can vary depending on how finicky you are, and where you are sending your photos. edit to add: with cropping, I found at least on my old D3200 that ISO is very important here. This is less important on newer and better models, but I found that the higher ISO noise on that one attacked the sharpness of edges. At low ISO you could chop lots off and still get a decent image, but at higher ISO, what spoiled it was the ragged edges.

Mother and child reunion.... (D3200. 16-85)

I don't have any TC's that are electronically connected, and the only FX cameras I have are film-era F's, but if you put a DX lens on an FX TC, a DX camera sees what you expect, the lens extended. I tried this with a 16-80 DX lens which vignettes hugely on FX at all focal lengths when wide open, which is the only way it can function on an older camera owing to the E aperture. If you put that DX lens/2x FX converter on an FX camera, the camera sees the cropped image and thus does not vignette, so if you double a DX 80 with a converter it should mimic an FX 160. But I leave it to someone with a modern converter to say if the converter allows the camera to treat it as such, or crops it down despite the full image. The only 1.4x converter I have is a Nikon TC-14, which does not safely clear the rear element of any FX lens I own, so I could not see if it would vignette with any. Are there any DX lenses that have an aperture ring? I know of only G and E aperture ones, none of which work properly with a contactless adapter, so if an AF adapter forces a DX crop, I think you're stuck.

Indeed I see little reason to have the 1.3 option in DX nowadays. It makes a little sense for my D7100, perhaps, because of its extremely small buffer. For the highest quality Raw files, the buffer goes from 6 to 8 (!!!!), and for lossy 12 bit, from 9 to 14 (whoopie, look at all them pictures!). If you spray and pray on this camera, your prayers will not be answered. But already on a D7200 that difference is 18 to 29 and 35 to 67, so the need is far less unless you're really gunning for the perfect moment at bat or something, in which case you are probably using the wrong camera anyway, or should just go ahead and shoot JPG alone. On both of these, the frame rate goes from 5 to 6 in 14 bit and 6 to 7 in 12 bit, best case.

I've never been all that crazy about the way the ratios are presented here. I know it's correct in some way but I'd rather see it presented as percentage of crop rather than percentage of "reach." If you see DX as a crop of FX to 3/4 size, you get an idea of what you're going to get. The "1.3x" option in DX makes an image cropped to approximately 2/3 of the DX. Or to put it another way, it takes 10 percent off each of the four sides of the image. Keep in mind that in the DX camera the in-camera 1.3x crop does nothing at all in terms of image quality. All it does is remove part of the image and make a smaller file size. That's handy if you expect to have to crop an image anyway and don't want to have to do it elsewhere, but if you are processing the files anyway, there's not much to recommend it. On my D7100 it's a bit more useful because it increases the tiny buffer space a little, but that's not an issue in most cases.

And here's the local weather report. Rain tomorrow! This week all pictures D7100, 16-80 DX lens

At a park bandstand the other day, I looked down. There are trees growing everywhere!

Oh poor me. When I wake up in the morning this is what I see out the front door.