Discovering My 1st DSLR part 2

Discovering My 1st DSLR part 2
( Declaration- I have never owned a DSLR before this & taken some worthwhile snaps only with a Nikon D40, D60 & a D3000. All of which were used for not more than a couple of hours. All of My statements are henceforth in this comparison. )

24th December- What a start to the day !!!
The Gadget of My life was right there in My bag as cool wind refreshed Me while standing @ the door of the train just past midnight. A race back home on My Red Mean Machine got Me the 1st look @ the Black Beast !!! Huge, heavy & built like a tank. No curves like the beautiful EOS 60D, but looks were no more My priority. A resounding click on the F mount, battery plugged in & I was ready to Hear the Mirror go clat clat clat. The bigger & brighter Viewfinder than My Baby Olympus gave a completely new perspective of looking at things..

Well the biggest issue seemed to Me was the weight of the behemoth. Weighing more than 1.1kg is nothing near to what I had used all these years. Well it turned out that My wrists were going to have a good work out !!!
Even the simplest of things are so fast on a DSLR. The startup is almost instantaneous. It can be put to sleep inside 5 inactive seconds & is still ready to AF & click inside 20ms. Shutter lag is non existent in comparison to P&S. This is partly due to accurate metering & super fast AF. The 9 Cross sensors spread across the frame ensure quick & accurate AF, more importantly even in low light & low contrast situations. This basically means ability to capture the perfect candid moment without fail.

Colour rendition, shadow detail, crisp sharpness, extreme ISO performance without Chroma noise are some results that have left Me gaping in some last few months. I can shoot 1600ISO even normally achieving excellent results. I feared crossing ISO 400 on My Olympus. Now that fear strikes Me on ISO 3200 !!! Now That's a full 3 stop advantage. For the normal person it simply means I can shoot @ 1/160 of a second while a non DSLR will struggle to freeze action @ 1/20. Plus I get better image quality & that to at 16.2mega pixels :D

The lens actually has a Mechanical zoom ring which is exponentially smoother than the electronic zoom ring. Zoom effect shots are obviously a charm to snap & look beautiful. Obviously even the Manual Focus ring is a charm. I can Macro shoot, but obviously not life size & not from very near. Reversing My lens is another option but not really feasible. My Olympus allowed Me to Macro @ 1cm range & more than life size owing to the small sensor size. Coming to the sensor size, the D7000 has a huge sensor which indirectly means longer focal lengths on lens & more shallower depth of field :D

1thing is obviously miss on My D7000 is the 520mm of equivalent focal length on the tele side & more so at just f/4.5. An approximate equivalent of about 450mm on a Nikkor will cost Me a cool 3lakhs!!!

The ability to attach filters is another wonderful though I just own a UV filter as of now. A circular polarizer & a ND8 filter are on My radar though. Some special effect n Colour filters tickle My imagination but I can Photoshop the colours anytime.

Speed & Continuous shooting modes are better n worse both @ the same time. D7000 captures @ a mere 6fps while the Olympus did an amazing 13.5fps. But the difference being 16megas vs 1.3megas !! Plus the Olympus was capped @ 30 jpegs while the Nikon is capped @ 100jpegs. The Olympus blanked out once the buffer was full & wouldn't allow Me to do anything except staring at it's blinking LCD, while the D7k still shoots more than 1fps once the buffer is full. It's the Continuous focus in these fast shooting scenarios that is simply awesome in general. I hardly lose focus once locked on !! A feature called 3D tracking auto tracks moving objects in proper conditions.

Metering is simply awesome giving accurate readings on every exposure. Only problem being, knowing what type of metering to use in which condition. The 2048pixels RGB Matrix meter delivers awesome landscape results but jut fails after an approximate 17EVs of ambient light systems. Now this condition is rare considering it would be a real Sunny Day & I would be needing to shoot slow shutter speeds !! Spot metering & center weighted are accurate across all conditions. I haven't considered the use of flash anywhere across these situations though.
Video quality is excellent but inbuilt audio recorder is mono aural & even captures Auto-Focus & zoom creeps. Auto-Focus shifts to contrast detection as the mirror locks up leading to a not very great AF system while doing Video. It's very simple- DSLR VIDEO is not for even Hobbyists. It needs loads of practice on a MF system to get the OOF neat & clean alongwith with sharp in-focus areas. Once that is done then its difficult for a camcorder to beat a D7k in video quality.

Mirror lock up mode, Intervalometer, User Modes are simple features but which add a lot to increase shooting possibilities. The battery life is jaw-dropping giving me approx 1200shots on a single charge with 10% flash usage. The ergonomics are perfect. The buttons are very convenient while 3 buttons give user customisation. The Top LCD is handy while the back one is nice & bright. The dioptric adjustment is sufficient for a normal eye sight.
Coming to the lens & other aspects.

The 18-105mm VR ED lens is a more than decent lens giving a wide angle & decent telephoto range. Enough to shoot a landscape, a portrait or even a candid some distance away. Flare is an issue but it's expected coming from a zoom family with many elements. The Hood does a pretty decent job though. It does block the flash while nearing the tele end leading to a shadowy patch @ the bottom center of the snap. Both the Zoom & Focus ring work flawlessly. A focus distance scale is sorely missed though. The plastic mount is strong enough even for everyday usage. The VR & Focus switch are placed within the thumb's reach.

The Sandisk Extreme III class 6 works great for the video while the primary Sandisk Class 10 Extreme gives an impressive 26-28 MBs write speeds. The perfect cards for a Fast DSLR system, although one might say that the latest CF cards are way too fast. But they come @ a cost and any which ways they are not supported on the D7k.

As far as My shooting exploits go, I've tried doing landscapes, sports photography, basic portraits & a few occasions. Shooting for HDRs is fun & gives a super slide show. Candid Photography needs lots of patience but results have seemingly been good. Sports is a challenge & daylight shots have come out nice. Shooting sports in dark is not that good due to a very slow lens. But a high ISO value sometimes is good enough to compensate. Flash photography is bad considering the power & nature of the pop-up flash. Have tried a few hand made diffusers though with a good diffusing result if not the illumination.

Well this almost says about My ongoing Unique experience with a Masterpiece. I don't say that other camera systems don't take good snaps. They do !!! Be it Canon, Sony. Olympus or on the higher side Hasselblad, Leica or Mamiya Medium format cameras which are drool worthy.
For Me, I am happy with I have got & I'm sure My camera won't let Me down. Otoh I always try & not let My camera down !!