Nikon D200

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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Old Hawk Photos Reworked 002

For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow click HERE<<link  When you click the link, it will open in a new window and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button/symbol at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos as this will pause the slideshow.

The first post in this two posts series is at this LINK. In that post, I specified that the photos in the SmugMug Gallery are the same size as what was in the blog post.

Well, no longer . . . these reworked photos were run through Topaz Lab Gigapixels AI to double their size. That means that even a crop of the photo is still substantial For example, this photo (JPG output of the RAW file as it came out of the D7000 camera) . . . .

Turns into this cropped, cleaned, enlarged, and processed photo . . .

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Old Hawk Photos Reworked 001

For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow click HERE<<link  When you click the link, it will open in a new window and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button/symbol at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos as this will pause the slideshow.

Nota Bene: because of the size of the originals, these cropped photos are the same size as what you will be in SmugMug. SmugMug does a better job of showing the photos, but know that you won’t get a larger version than what you see here if you click on the photos or view the gallery and chose so see them full-size.

If you want the full experience, keep reading.

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Luminar AI and a final “U” stories voting reminder

We’re getting down to the wire (whatever that means) with less than a day before the “U” Stories voting round closes.   

If you are a reader of our stories and someone who votes, thank you in advance for casting a vote for your favorite of the three. Links to the stories and the poll for voting for “Alphabet Challenge U-Stories” are HERE(link) Votes will be accepted until noon, Chicago time, on Wednesday, December 16th.

So, today I tried Luminar AI . . . Skylum, the company who sells the Luminar and Aurora HDR photo-processing programs (among others), will tell you it’s not a replacement for Luminar 4 — meaning, it’s not Luminar 5 — and it’s not an upgrade for Luminar 4 . . . it’s a whole new way of processing photos by harnessing the power of AI . . .

. . . so I put the program through some paces (whatever that means). The above photo comes from this next photo . . .

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Another hawk and a “U” stories voting reminder

Super quick post to let readers know there are only two days left to vote.   

If you are a reader of our stories and someone who votes, thank you in advance for casting a vote for your favorite of the three. Links to the stories and the poll for voting for “Alphabet Challenge U-Stories” are HERE(link) Votes will be accepted until noon, Chicago time, on Wednesday, December 16th.

So, another hawk . . . the profile . . .

. . . and the frontal view . . .

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Reworked photos and a “U” stories voting reminder

An uptick in voting has restored the confidence of the writers. With three days left to vote, we hope we’ll see the usual late surge.   

If you are a reader of our stories and someone who votes, thank you in advance for casting a vote for your favorite of the three. Links to the stories and the poll for voting for “Alphabet Challenge U-Stories” are HERE(link) Votes will be accepted until noon, Chicago time, on Wednesday, December 16th.

Today, I’m posting photos from the past. Here’s one landscape photo that says it all . . .

. . . not Illinois . . .

There were a number of reasons why we moved from Colorado . . . but vistas like the above were not among them.

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Stuff, Luminar 4, and a “U” stories voting reminder

Wow . . . Time flies like an arrow . . . but fruit flies like bananas . . . and there are only four days left in the voting block.   

If you are a reader of our stories and someone who votes, thank you in advance for casting a vote for your favorite of the three. Links to the stories and the poll for voting for “Alphabet Challenge U-Stories” are HERE(link) Votes will be accepted until noon, Chicago time, on Wednesday, December 16th.

So, today I’ll be all over the place . . . and I begin with the Kissing Camels . . .

Kissing Camels, real bird, sky by Luminar 4

As the note says, the bird — likely a Red-tailed hawk — is in the original photo. The sky wasn’t . . . that’s one of Luminar 4’s Dramatic Skies.

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Hawk, Topaz GigaPixel, and a “U” stories voting reminder

Voting has picked up some for the current round, a good thing that.   

If you are a reader of our stories and someone who votes, thank you in advance for casting a vote for your favorite of the three. Links to the stories and the poll for voting for “Alphabet Challenge U-Stories” are HERE(link) Votes will be accepted until noon, Chicago time, on Wednesday, December 16th.

So, hawks. Specifically, Red-tailed hawks. There were a lot of them in Colorado, but this next hawk is the subject of the first successful series of photos that included passable flying shots. These were taken with a Nikon D200 with a Nikon 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D VR lens . . .

Don’t get me wrong, the Nikon D100 served me well from 2002 to 2009 (and still does an admirable job if called to perform) but the D200 was a step up in noise reduction and resolution (LINK). I had a few decent hawks photos taken with the D100, but the frequency of “keeper” photos was low.

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