{"id":366,"date":"2022-11-26T10:52:18","date_gmt":"2022-11-26T18:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/packdude.org\/blog\/?p=366"},"modified":"2022-11-26T14:46:49","modified_gmt":"2022-11-26T22:46:49","slug":"back-into-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/packdude.org\/blog\/2022\/11\/26\/back-into-photography\/","title":{"rendered":"Back into Photography!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently I gave a nephew my Nikon D3200 digital SLR camera to use for a high school photography class.\u00a0 Was kind of hard parting with it at first.\u00a0 But he’s got such a knack for bringing out good poses in portraits that I figured it was at least getting put to very good use.<\/p>\n

Being pretty old-school, having taken film photograph in high school which included darkroom work, I missed having a DSLR around.\u00a0 Even having the great photo capabilities of modern iPhone at my disposal, it’s not the same.\u00a0 Also figured it was time to graduate from consumer grade DSLRs like the D3200 into more professional gear.<\/p>\n

Whilst researching newer cameras, I stumbled across Ken Rockwell’s<\/a> incredibly thorough and long-lived website.\u00a0 He provides so much good information about cameras, lenses, technology, technique, and even life skills!<\/p>\n

After many days of reading reviews on Ken’s site and others, I eventually settled on a 45 megapixel Nikon D850.\u00a0 It is one step below the uber-professional flagship camera, the Nikon D6, but certainly leaps and bounds better my old D3200.\u00a0 And it is on sale now for $500 the orignal MSRP.\u00a0 Bought it from B&H Photo using one of Ken’s affiliate links, so hopefully he got some reward for all his website work.\u00a0 No doubt, this D850 is an absolutely stellar<\/em> camera in terms of features, build quality, and image quality.<\/p>\n

\"Nikon

Nikon D850<\/p><\/div>\n

Since I’m also a collector at heart, I could not resist the urge to get a “backup” camera! Back to Ken’s site to pore over reviews of “legacy” DSLRs, all the while crusing eBay for good deals.\u00a0 Since the “mirrorless” cameras are all the rage now, there are a LOT of DSLR cameras and<\/em> lenses on the used market.<\/p>\n

To my surprise I found a very<\/em> gently used 12 megapixel Nikon D2x, with only 8,000 shutter actuations.\u00a0 This was the flagship professional grade camera almost twenty years ago, and cost over $5000 new.\u00a0 Many of the flagship D2, D3, D4, etc. series cameras on eBay have over 400k shutter actuations, and are still running fine.\u00a0 What a find!\u00a0 It had no bids and was ending soon, so I offered the seller $200 and they accepted.\u00a0 Sometimes it really pays to buy from individual sellers who don’t feel pressured to add mark-ups to used gear like the brick-and-mortar resellers akin to Robert’s Camera<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This D2x seems to be 100% functional and looks mint.\u00a0 Takes great photos, too.\u00a0 I am finding that often the lens is what makes the shot anyway.\u00a0 Like Ken has said quite a few times, one really doesn’t need much more than 6 megapixels.\u00a0 You would have to print your photos on a giant<\/em> piece of paper to see the difference between a 6MP and 12MP sensor.\u00a0 The autofocus and shooting speed of this D2x is absolutely phenomenal<\/em>.\u00a0 One of the reasons I am staying with DSLR technology is because the compact point-and-shoot cameras just cannot keep up with my shooting pace.\u00a0 I have a couple of the Canon SureShot ilk, and they are slow and poky; the iPhone will outdo them easily<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Nikon

Nikon D2x<\/p><\/div>\n

I will post some photos in follow-up articles.\u00a0 Right now I’m spending a fair bit of time just learning the features of these more advanced cameras!\u00a0 And I have a long way to go to learn better artistic photo techniques.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I gave a nephew my Nikon D3200 digital SLR camera to use for a high school photography class.\u00a0 Was kind of hard parting with it at first.\u00a0 But he’s got such a knack for bringing out good poses in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gear","category-hobbies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/packdude.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/packdude.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/packdude.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packdude.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packdude.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/packdude.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/packdude.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packdude.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packdude.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}