commtrd

OK try this one:

 

http://www.photo.net/photos/commtrd

 

I found that link under my profile maybe that will work? My learning curve since getting into digital photography has been vertical! And haven't had more fun since surfing last time!

I tried to find a way to post a link...I don't know how to do that. The photos are under presentations which is in the gallery. I will ask an administrator how to do a link.

Finally figured out how to post some photos representative of what the 105 VR

lens can do. What I really like is that the lens is extremely flexible to take longer-

distance shots and absolutely beautiful portraits as well. Some here have

expressed an interest in this lens due to some "controversy" as to lens

performance. This lens is far and away the most favorite lens in my bag.

 

The photos if anyone interested are in the presentations area of the gallery titled

Nikkor 105 VR macro_D300 photos. BTW the bumblebee was shot while flying

AND the camera is handheld. Not the easiest shot to get; this shows the quality of

the lens and camera, which is the point of this post to show someone interested in

this lens some of what it can do.

Sure... get the camera you will really enjoy learning and it does all start to come together the more you keep at it. The D300 is a great camera; it just takes some time to gain understanding about how the camera and the lenses acquire light and handle light. After the learning curve, you won't regret buying the camera at all. Adobe Lightroom will import raw files and it is probably a good idea to shoot in raw to enable working with the pictures to get 'em right. The CF card should be at least 4 gB preferably bigger for shooting raw.

 

The photographers on this site are a great resource and super supportive so it's not like being totally on your own.

Rene,

 

The colors look the same on the LCD display as they do on my computer monitor. My monitor is not calibrated but it is driven by a very high-end graphics card; the monitor is new and I think the resolution is 1900X1200 if I remember right so probably not the problem. I do intend to find out how to calibrate the monitor, that is on my list of things to do.

Jim,

 

Camera was set to srgb in the menu. What is confusing me here is maybe I don't fully understand where WB ends and correct exposure begins. If the pictures are all washed out looking AND the greens in the shot look like nasty olive-drab when they should look nicely back-lit green I thought this meant the WB was all wrong...does this indicate that something might be wrong with the exposure also? I have tried different shutter speeds and aperture settings but this did not change anything except for depth of field. Setting for spot metering vs. matrix metering does not seem to make any difference either (as far as I can tell). I really wish I knew what the heck I was doing! I am an artist (went to Art Inst. of Houston for commercial art and have done professional mural art on surfboards and auto, motorcycle, etc.) so I do understand color theory but this camera has proved to be much more difficult to master than I ever thought it would be.

 

Do I actually have unrealistic expectations? Maybe these cameras are designed to only be able to acquire raw information and then manually "develop" the pictures with post processing? If that is the case, then I will just shoot in raw and finish the pictures in lightroom and be OK with that. On photosig and other websites I read the critiques and observe that every photo posted is always massaged pretty heavily in photoshop so evidently this is the way it works. I guess I need to get photoshop and learn it to be able to make great photos.

OK here is what I did: I did a reset all according to directions. I switched over to shooting raw and experimented with all the white balance settings including "K". It would go from blue at the coldest setting to brown at 10000. I took a series of shots at all these settings in raw (BTW it did seem to matter what the K temperature setting was in raw) and then another series of shots with WB in auto. I did not try this set to shoot in JPEG. I will try this also just to see if I can still correct the WB afterwards in lightroom.

 

I had downloaded the raw viewing update for Lightroom and imported the pictures into lightroom and adjusted the raw files there. What a major difference! I can adjust the WB there on a file-by-file basis and it works great. Ideally it would be nice if the camera just did the WB automatically correctly but I guess that is asking too much because it won't do it. As long as I shoot in raw I can fix it and get good pictures again. Maybe the tutorial material from Thom Hogan will go into how to do all this stuff. As long as I can fix the WB and dial in extra vibrance I can get the pictures to look like I am seeing it.

 

I read somewhere when researching for which camera to buy (originally was going to get a Canon) that this D300 would drop you on your ear if didn't know how to use it...boy is that ever right! This camera is very intimidating. But I figured that it was no use starting with a D40 because migrating up from there still have to learn the camera controls anyway so might as well get the tool I need and get it over with. The learning curve has been vertical but it will get better.

 

Thanks for helping out an inexperienced user.

Thanx for replies...I am getting a weird greenish-olive-yellow cast to any shots (usually but not always) to any subject matter that involves plants, leaves, trees, etc. and generally washed-out overall results which I can mostly fix in Elements 6 or Lightroom but it takes a long time to do this when I have 3 or 400 photos to work on. I already deleted all the bad pics from yesterday except for 7 which were impromptu portraits of kids and dogs from the trails. Out of 269 pictures I could keep seven...typical for the results I have been getting. I hope my flats-fishing and surfing photos turn out a lot better or I will be seriously bummed.

 

I have used the picture control menu set to vivid with everything cranked up to max and then everything does not look washed out and green is really green...unfortunately anything red or purple gets totally blown out also. When I shoot with picture control set to standard, I get great portraits with good realistic skin tones (still washed out but can fix) but go to shoot anything else in nature and on the same settings I get that washed-out olive green that looks horrible. Using the different WB settings just seems to make varying degrees of horrible results...is there any way at all to just make the camera take pictures that look like what I am seeing? Is this too much to ask?

 

I bought Thom Hogan's guide to the D300 but it is at home and I am out of town until next week. Will take these suggestions and work with it today...I think it is the way I am not using the settings right, not the camera malfunctioning because SOME of the pictures I have taken have been really beautiful. Just not very many. If there were video tutorials or a class I could attend available for the D300 to explain all the settings I would buy it immediately. In the meantime I will just go trial and error using the settings one at a time to observe the effects and eventually I will get there; been doing this and haven't figured it out yet.

Please help! I am having terminal problems with really nasty white balance

symptoms. I did a search for fixing white balance issues with the D300 but cannot

find anything camera specific.

 

I cannot seem to get correct exposures no matter what I try...auto, or preset for

sunny, cloudy, fluorescent, incandescent etc. nothing works right. Every once in a

great while I can get a picture that the color looks correct but very rarely. I have

spent several hours working with the camera to attempt to get it to shoot

something that vaguely resembles what I am seeing.

 

I have tried running EV settings up and down, using picture control on standard,

neutral, vivid to enable more saturation, I just can't get it to work right. I am sure it

is something I am not doing right but what? Today I was shooting outdoors in the

woods (temporarily in Ohio) with bright sunshine. I set the white balance for

sunshine and auto and tried EV settings all over the place and even tried a

polarizing filter on and off the lens to no avail. I had to delete all but a handful of

pictures because they just looked like crap. Almost every time I go out to shoot

this happens, no matter if it is sunny or cloudy or whatever. I feel like if I do get a

good picture, it was purely an accident. I mainly use the camera on program auto

settings unless I need aperture or shutter priority for some particular composition,

because I can't trust the camera to render the white balance correctly so it throws

off what I perceive the settings to be doing. I have tried all the different metering

modes as well but nothing seems to help.

 

Can someone PLEASE tell me what I am doing wrong? Or is the camera

malfunctioning? I have had the camera a little over a month so I figure it is operator

error due to inexperience. I just can't figure out what to do about this problem. I

spent WAY too much money on this camera to be getting results like this.

Jose,

 

Agree 100% on capabilities of 105 VR macro. The lens amazes me more each time I use it. Today I was able to catch a bumblebee hovering next to a wall and captured the image with the bug flying and me hand-holding the camera...picture was amazingly sharp and clear plus I used the autofocus! I will post a picture if I can figure out how to size it correctly.

 

Some may have issues with this lens, but really it is my favorite lens in my bag at this time. I do have one important question though: Will these lenses I have purchased transition well to service on a FX format sensor (D3x) and work OK? It was always my intention to get lenses that would be usable for many years and if eventually cameras migrate to FX format sensors, I would like my lenses to be usable with new camera bodies. Hopefully the D300 DX sensor will be supported for many years...probably to be my backup camera when I go to a D3 someday. That will not happen any time soon though.

 

This is one of the main reasons I think I will wait a while to saee if Nikon comes out with a new 85 / 1.4 AFS and new coatings before getting one. In the meantime, I think my 105 will stand in OK for the portraiture I want to do with the 85 and I still have the 50mm also...

Todd,

 

Thanks this was exactly the feedback I was hoping to get. This is just what I suspected would be the case...for shooting in available light the fast primes supplement existing lenses to cover the range of light conditions and subjects composing for.

 

Now I need to figure a stealth way to get the 85 / 1.4 and keep the boss happy [;-)

Does anyone have any idea when Nikon will get around to introducing new 28mm and 85mm f1.4 primes with modern coatings / AF-S?

 

That would be some much-appreciated information.

Points well taken. I think for now what I will do is stick with what I have and use 'em exhaustively and think about what I need vs. want. The 50mm makes some very good photos and at 1.5x factor on my D300 is at 75mm; not quite as fast as the f1.4. The 105 is an awesome lens as well because I really do enjoy macro work; the issue with the AF hunting is kind of a bummer but it does not do it much when not in macro range either so it is a keeper for me. When shooting macro just manually focus and it's OK...Plus the bokeh is really nice with that lens as well. It would really be interesting to see if Nikon does an upgrade (or newer) version of the 85 / 1.4 in the near future.

Thanx for replies...my 105 does have some focussing problems, particularly trying to use auto-focus in macro range which I know better than to do that but sometimes I get a little lazy or in a hurry and do it anyway. I wanted a lens with some magnification and generally I am pleased with this lens. I thought about the Tamron 90mm for my macro lens but decided on the nikkor instead because of the VR since I knew I wanted to use it for more than just macro work. It may be that the 70-200 would actually be a better lens for what I am doing...I will keep researching. Appreciate the help.

 

I am still kind of intrigued about that 85 / 1.4 though...

I have been reading some incredible reviews of the 85mm f1.4 and I have the tell-

tale symptoms of a new lens fixing to happen...however I just got a new 105mm

f2.8 macro with VR and magnification to 1:1 because I have been getting more into

deep close-up shots and I really wanted a lens to do this vs. using my 18-200 at

200mm to try to do macro work with it. Well the 18-200 is a pretty good lens but I

started feeling like maybe it wasn't the best lens for the direction my photography

is going. Plus I am really starting to get into fast primes...the 18-200 is a fair lens

for walk-about and general work it does pretty well I think. But it definitely is not a

prime!

 

So the question is: How would the 85mm f1.4 compare to the 105mm f2.8 as far

as portraiture etc.? I also have a 50mm 1.8 prime and that is a sweet little lens

also. I very much appreciate the use of natural lighting whenever possible vs. the

use of a flash and as such a fast prime just takes my breath away looking at the

resultant work. The 85 / f1.4 is actually more expensive than the 105 was. I think

my wife may have a fit if I get another lens so soon! Anyway, since experiencing

good fast glass, it is like an addiction and I just want faster and faster primes.

 

I want to get into weddings, quinceaneras, taking pictures of kids, etc. and this

lens would fit between the 50 and the 105 nicely. Plus the reviews I have read have

reflected reverence for this lens the likes of which are rarely encountered! I am

almost thinking of selling the 18-200 and getting the 85 instead. Later maybe I

could get the 70-200 or 70-300 for longer-range work like surf photography and

wildlife etc. Or just keep the 18-200 and get the 85mm prime...

 

Does anyone here own both the 85 / 1.4 AND the 105 / 2.8 macro with VR? I

would really like to hear from someone about a comparison and if the 85 would be

that different from the 105 because it is fairly pricey...well I already think it will

probably get done someday because I like fast glass but nice to have some input

on this. The reviews I have read are just gushing about how awesome this lens

is...

I needed a faster lens than my 18-200 for shooting portraiture primarily indoors...grandkids, pets, etc. I looked at many reviews on the net for recommendations and the 50mm prime at f1.8 looked like it might fit what I needed. It does. Another plus is that the lens does encourage correct composition and helps build good camera skills. I have found that zooms -can- sometimes lead to getting a little lazy ;-)

 

Agree that any lens purchase should be based upon actual need. Otherwise a lot of money can be spent needlessly. Of course this lens is very inexpensive (relatively) I spent $110 for mine on Amazon. I love this little lens! Hard to go wrong with this lens IF there is a need for a faster lens in this focal length. Works beautifully on a D300. I like shooting indoors with this lens with no flash and it excels at this. Of course I have used it outdoors with nature photography including some close-up work as well and it produced some wonderful images so a very flexible lens IMHO. It has really made me appreciate what a good fast prime lens will do. No way would I be without a 50mm prime now...and the price really seals the deal.

 

BTW this lens is not really a macro lens. It does produce beautiful bokeh but does not provide magnification to 1:1 so if that is a priority then possibly a 105 or something like that may be in order.