Category Archive: Throwback Today

Throwback Today — 008

The Throwback Today posts are a chance for me to get my D100 and D200 out, make sure the batteries are charged, that there’s a fresh CF memory card waiting to receive photos, and go out and shoot with them old workhorses.

But, sometimes, it’s me revisiting past captures to see how they might benefit from postprocessing techniques and tools that were not available back then. Today, we’re looking back eleven years to photos captured in 2011.

Specifically, to the day when a Tarantula walked from my forearm to my fingertips across my palm.

I should mention all these photos were already shared in THIS post, where I documented our visit to the Butterfly Pavilion in Denver, Colorado.

I always feel weird adding the state when I mention cities. I mean, sure, if I say Marion, there are a number of them strewn throughout the US, so it makes sense to say Marion, Illinois. But, Denver? OK, there are 19 places named Denver in the US, but how many readers know the other 18?

Anyway, let’s continue.

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Throwback Today — 007

The Throwback Today posts are a chance for me to get my D100 and D200 out, make sure the batteries are charged, that there’s a fresh CF memory card waiting to receive photos, and go out and shoot with them old workhorses.

Today it’s all about the D200 coupled with the Nikon 80-400mm zoom (a lens from around the same era, about 20 years ago) and the Nikon 105mm macro. Once again, I’m pushing the camera and lens combination and doing so more than I would have when the camera was new.

By that, I mean that while the D200 was a significant improvement over the D100 in terms of noise, it was still fairly limited by today’s standards. Once you went past the ISO 800 range, you were in severe noise territory. Of course, we now have much better tools to handle noise. That means I can shoot higher ISO values (1600 was the max for this camera) and fast speeds (1250/sec) and not worry about getting unusable photos.

Some of these photos have significant processing, but not all that much more than similar photos with newer cameras.

A few things about the D200 . . .

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Throwback Today — 006

As mentioned, these posts are a chance for me to get my D100 and D200 out, make sure the batteries are charged and there’s a fresh CF memory card waiting to receive photos, and go out and shoot with them old workhorses.

This is all about the D100 coupled with the Nikon 80-400mm zoom (a lens from around the same era, about 20 years ago). Unlike last time, I picked some easier subjects to shoot . . . maybe.

D100 — Find the Hummingbird

You thought you were safe, didn’t you? Just because I’m shooting an ancient camera, it don’t mean I can’t take decent photos. Or, at least, no worse than usual.

So, on this day, I sat outside in the patio and watched hummingbirds swarm the feeders. It will be interesting to see how much longer they will be doing it since they started early, and it’s 18/31 of the way through August.

Two things about these photos. One, they are cropped, but because the D100 is only a 6MP camera (which, at the time, was quite the luxury), the originals are not as big as what I get from the D7500, and hence the crops are smaller.

And, two, while I mentioned hummingbirds and other birds, those are not the only things I photographed. When the photo departs from those two subjects, I’ll let you know. For instance, the photo above is not of a bird, but a wasp.

A wasp that was competing with a hummingbird and keeping it at bay . . .

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Throwback Today — 005

As mentioned, these posts are a chance for me to get my D100 and D200 out, make sure the batteries are charged and there’s a fresh CF memory card waiting to receive photos, and go out and shoot with them old workhorses.

So, this is the first of these posts where I’m actually doing what I said I would do . . . namely, photograph stuff using the old cameras. Unfortunately, I picked a very difficult subject — ice!

D100

Worse, I made a couple of rookie mistakes (didn’t have VR on, didn’t check my speed and ISO settings).

And of the two cameras — the D100 and the D200 — the D100 suffered most. I’m still going to use these, but the next effort will be more representative of what the cameras can do.

One other thing . . . the D100 is a 6MP camera. That means that a full-size photo is ~3000×2000 pixels. The D200 is a 10MP camera (~3400×2300 pixels). In contrast, the D7500 photos are ~5500×3700 pixels. The dimensions are approximate because I’m rounding the numbers.

While it may seem those dimensions are not substantially different, in practice, it makes a lot of difference. For instance, the above photo is 60% of the full-size version. If I do a full-size crop, this is what I get . . .

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Throwback Today — 004

As mentioned, these posts are a chance for me to get my D100 and D200 out, make sure the batteries are charged and there’s a fresh CF memory card waiting to receive photos, and go out and shoot with them old workhorses.

Instead, once again, I decided to continue with the photos recently salvaged from the D200’s memory card. Today, more photos from 2013. A few photos from Yellowstone National Park that I missed last week, and flowers from our yard in Colorado.

Yellowstone 2013 — Bighorn Sheep (female)

Per my current workflow, that’s been processed through PureRaw, Luminar AI, Color Efex Pro 4, and Lightroom. It sounds like a lot, but most of it is automated. It’s only the finishing touches in Lightroom CC that are interactive.

All these shots were taken with the D200 and the Nikon 80-400mm lens at maximum zoom (600mm equivalent) . . .

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Throwback Today — 003

As mentioned, these posts are a chance for me to get my D100 and D200 out, make sure the batteries are charged and there’s a fresh CF memory card waiting to receive photos, and go out and shoot with them old workhorses.

Instead, once again, I decided to continue with the photos salvaged from the D200’s memory card. Specifically, photos from our 2013 visit to Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone 2013 — Raw image processed in DxO PureRaw

That’s pretty much the photo as it came out of the camera, and before I post-processed it. It’s worth reminding readers that I set my cameras to neutral settings (no brightness, contrast, noise reduction, sharpening, etc). Hence, out of the camera, the photos look kind of blah (as evidenced above).

However, I have a number of processors at my disposal, so let me try a few . . .

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Throwback Today — 002

As mentioned, these posts are a chance for me to get my D100 and D200 out, make sure the batteries are charged and there’s a fresh CF memory card waiting to receive photos, and go out and shoot with them old workhorses.

I did go out and shot about 10 photos each with the D100 and the D200, specifically for this post. The thing is, it was cloudy and there wasn’t a whole lot of interesting stuff to shoot. I’ll probably share the photos eventually, but for now, something more interesting (I hope).

I went to check the memory in the D200 before shooting, and there were photos on the card from 2015, 2017, and 2019. These photos are from 2015.

Specifically, from the United States Air Force Academy 2015 graduation Thunderbirds show.

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