gary payne

<p>I know they are in short supply, but the AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED is what you want, as you originally planned. That lens is awsom with the D-700. It's on mine 90% of the time. If I were you, I'd keep hunting.</p>

<p>I haven’t been able to get out much lately, but got this shot of some hungry deer just outside our backyard here in San Antonio.</p><div></div>

<p>I have the D700 and the 14-28mm f/2.8. Great superwide lens, it is incrediable sharp and, well, what Drew said.</p>

<p>I'm running it on a Macbook Pro right now.</p>

<p>View NX will also convert NEF to TIF, and that is free from NIKON or perhaps it came in your camera package. I've not used it for conversion, but my understanding is it uses the same conversion process as Capture NX2.</p>

<p>The 70-300 mm f/4.5-5.6 VR is a great, affordable lens. I bought it for my D200, and now use it on my D700. As noted above - on your camera you get an equilivant of 450mm, still a little short for birds, but gotta go with what you can afford. I can tell you that at 450, even with VR, handholding is a challenge for most of us. 16 year old hands and nerves may be different, but I would definitely consider a monopod, or a tripod, for sharper pictures.</p>

<p>I have a D700 and use my 24-70mm, f/2.8 as my "walking around" lens. Granted it is a large heavy lens, but the quality of the images are simply great. Along with it, I also use the 14-24mm, f/2.8. It makes a perfect companion lens for interiors, narrow city streets, etc. The D700 and these two lens leave me with no excuses, any bad images are strickly my doing.</p>

<p>Great work everyone. Wednesday has become my favorite day. I’m still working on my close-up photography, this time with lilies in our front yard.</p><div></div>

<p>Keep in mind that DX lens on a D700 not only crop as your D70 does, it also drops from 12 to 5 Megapixel. I can't imagine why you would want to buy a near $3000 camera to shoot 5 megapixels given that a D300 has essentially the same capabiliities.</p>

<p>I can't help with your decision (I shoot a D700), but thanks for the link to your canyon images. I'm going to the Grand Canyon in September, and your gallery is certainly inspirational. Thanks</p>

 

<p>We made the trip in September, last cruise of the season. We flew to Fairbanks and included a land tour through Denali and down to the cost - and I highly recommend that leg of the trip. Shooting the shoreline from the ship is fun, but the land excursions obviously are the way to go. September is great except that is the rainy season, which provides photographic opportunities and challeges all its own. Some of my images are at:<br>

http://www.photo.net/photos/Gary%20Payne</p>

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<p>For "residential scale buildings" which I asume means 2, posisibly 3 stories, the lens should work well. I bought the lens when I had a D200 and found it very useful in shooting in urban areas, and it's even better on my D700. My only caution, if you've not used a wide lens before, is to pay particular attention to the position of the lens in relation to the building. The front of the lens needs to be as close to parallel to the building as possible to minimize perspective distortion. Avoid shooting up at a building if possible. There is software useful in correcting perspective error. PT Lens is quite good and has a free trial offer from its website.</p>

<p>To reaffirm John's comment NX2 does offer some added capability over Vier NX. I use your workflow, except I down-select to the images to be further processed in View, then process the RAW files in NX2. This allows adjustment of "in camera" settings, i.e., white balance, exposure, picture control settings, noise reductions, etc., before moving to the other more PS like functions. I then convert to JPG out of NX2. However, there is nothing magic about this. My recommendation is find the tool that works best for you and stick to it. The learning curve is quite steep in PS but it certainly has more capabilities than NX2. As a final point, however, I would highly recommend converting RAW to TIF or JPEG out of one of the Nikon products. The concensus on this forum seems to be that better results are achieved out of View NX or NX2 than from other software.</p>

<p>B&H has three pretty good video's on their web site that are free to watch. Just look for their tutorial video's on their home page. Beyone that, I've found Ben Long's "Real World Capture NX2" to be very usefiul.</p>

<p>Jose - the WedNEsDAy PiC is a wonderful idea! Great to see the amazing images from all around the globe. My contribution is a butterfly from the Wildseed Farm near Fredricksburg TX taken Monday.</p><div></div>

<p>Ken - I did try after reading your post, and I could not. The convert icon was greyed out. I don't know why, hopefully someone will offer an answer. But, if your converting 400 images, batch processing in NX2 is the way to go. Click on batch, then run batch processes. In the window that comes up, select the source directory your edited RAW files and in, then 3/4 down the page, click on JPG at the "select file format" button, then at the botton, select the file where you want your JPGs stored, and click on "start". Now go find something else to do because converting 400 files is going to take awhile! The workflow that works for me is importing all files from the camera into a RAW file. I bring them all into the NX@ browser using the "open files in the browser" file select command. I edit and save into a separate file called Edited Raw. After I'm happy with the edited files, I batch convert to JPG, saving the converted files into a JPG file. Takes space, but works well. Let me suggest Ben Long's book on Capture NX2. Also, B&H has three tutorials on NX2 on their website that are quite good. Good luck.</p>

<p>I use NX2 as my only post processing editor, but I really don't consider myself an expert. However, keep in mind that NX2 is "non destructive" in its edits. It builds the edit list and appends it to your RAW file. So, after editing you have your RAW file plus the edit list - and a much larger total file. When you convert the edited RAW into JPG or TIF, the conversion program uses the edit list for the conversion and does alter the file, obviously, resulting in a much smaller JPG file. As to why NiewNX wont convert edited RAW, I'd never noticed that until your post and I don't know. I convert my edited RAW files to JPG using NX2 batch processing procedures which work great.</p>

<p>I've been to Rome and to Florence, and my only comment is I seriously doubt you will find a use for the 70-300. I would definitely take the 17-35 and, or, the 28 f/1.4. In Rome, but most especially in Florence, the streets are narrow and the wider the lens, the better. If your into the interiors of the old, wonderful buildings and churches, f/1.4 would sure be a help also.</p>

<p>I love this lens. As noted, it is not a walk around lens, except in unique situations. I used it extensively in Italy, walking the narrow streets and dropping in on the beautiful churches. For interior shots, unbeatable. You cannot use filters, but with post processing capabilities, I don't find that a limitation. As far as the size and bulk, once on my camera, I don't notice that at all. It is very well balanced on a D700. My walk around lens is the 24-70mm, and this lens is no heavier. As to the front element, one needs to be aware, but not overly concerned. I've found I really dont think about the risk as much as I did when it was fresh out of the box and the invoice still on my desk.</p>

<p>An interesting question with, I'm sure, many different answers. I was a film shooter who switched to the D200 in 2005. Great camera but it "felt" different that my 35mm camera. Specific to your questions, when I took the D700 out of the box, put on one of my current lens, and started shooting around the house, it felt like my old film camera. Something about the perspective, or field of view with my familiar lens, just made me feel at home. Technically, the D700 is a wonderful camera, but to your point, I've simply felt at home with it from the very beginning.</p>

<p>Thanks for the link. I'm on B&H fairly often, and never knew they have instructional videos.</p>

<p>Trying to learn more about close ups. Nikon D700 with 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 VR and Kenko 12mm tube.</p>

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<p>I have been trying to improve my ability to take close-ups of flowers. I'm shooting a D700 and using a Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 which focuses to 1.2 ft, and recently added a Kenko 12mm extension tube. I'm struggling with focus, camera/subject movement, plus other issues. But the issue that has me puzzled is oversaturation of reds and pinks, primarily, to the point it wipes out the details of the image. I shoot with all in camera tricks off or neutral, shoot RAW, and use Nikon NX2 for post processing. Often, if I reduce the saturation in NX2 to the -80 -100 (max reduction in NX2 is -100) then I can restore some details. Sometime nothing works and the image is useless. Color on my non-close up landscape images is great, and in NX2 I normally set the white balance, often choose a picture control setting, and tinker wiith exposure and contrast. I rarely play with changing the color settings at all. But in close-ups of red flowers, all bets are off. Any insight into what I'm doing wrong will be greatly appreciated.</p>

<p>If your interest in is correcting images as opposed to special effects, I think you should definitely try the free 60 day trial of NX2. I find it is all I need, and is basically very easy to learn Shooting RAW your ability to "correct" a photo is excellent in NX2. Adjusting your white balance, exposure, selecting picture effects, D-Lighting, etc. are all easily done. The control points makes local edits very, very easy. The only downside to NX2 is it does requre a lot of computer memory.</p>

<p>Calvin. Sure, the 24-70 is sometimes to short. Time for the 70-300 when that happens. I guess the reason for my satisfaction is that I started out in SLR photography with a Pentax Spotmatic years ago, a 35mm, a 50mm and a 135mm. Graduated to a Nikon N90S with a 20mm, 28-70 and a 70-300. It's all a matter of what your used to, or what your comfortable with. I still use my feet for a zoom when required. As you can see from all the comments above, lens choice is largely a personal choice, and one where group agreement is unlikely to happen.</p>