Back to DX?

Ever since Nikon's new D7000 has arrived, I'm thinking about switching back to a DX (APS-C) camera body. And guess what, here's why:

• Dynamic range! The D7000 offers 13.9 EV of dynamic range (only beaten by the Pentax K-5 with 14.1 EV at the moment - in fact, these two cameras with their APS-C sensors leave ALL the other cameras behind, dynamic-range wise. Including medium format and the D3x!). And I've always cared a lot more about dynamic range than anything else - it was the reason why I went with the Fuji S5pro (at the time when I reached some limitations of my first DSLR, the D70s.) I just don't like fiddling around with ND grad filters, I prefer to expose to the right without blowing the highlights and then work on the shadows in post.
• Weight and size of the body. The D700 fits my hand nicely, I really like the handling - but the weight of that thing, combined with the glass... man, it certainly sums up.
• Money. Yes, it's that simple. Full frame glass simply costs a lot more money than DX glass. My current lens setup is nice, but to be really happy I'll need two more lenses: the 16-35/4 (which, unlike my Sigma 12-24 can take filters, and has VR) and the 24-120/4 (which has VR, meant to replace my Tamron 24-135 which is terrible in backlight situations) - and both of them together will set me back over $2k. Ouch! It's not that I really need these lenses right now, but on the other hand, Shuwen and I already have almost the exact same lens setup for DX! (and a couple of lenses are dupes at the moment...)
• More Tele! Darn, I can really tell how much I miss that crop factor when I mount my 70-300mm lens on the D700.
• 100% viewfinder. You'd really think that this is not really important, but damn I can tell you it's just plain annoying to compose a scene and then find that a stupid twig or a persons head or something is sticking into the frame. I don't like throwing away resolution in post to remove elements that I did not see in the viewfinder.

What will I lose?

• As it seems, just one stop of usable ISO. This wouldn't hurt me much - my always-on lens is the Tamron 24-135 at the moment and it's not stabilized. My photography doesn't require a fast shutter and I benefit a lot more from stabilized lenses (VR) than I do from high ISO.
• A separate AF-ON button on the body. I never use the AE-L button on my D700, so I might just as well reconfigure the AE-L button on the D7000 to be my AF-ON, just like I did on my old old D70s.
• The charming lens performance on the 12mpx FX sensor of the D700 with it's huge pixels. The D7000 crams 16mpx of resolution on a sensor thats less than half the size. To fully utilize it, you need to both work more carefully and have good glass. This one indeed keeps me thinking.
• The big viewfinder of a full frame camera. Oh yes. I know this would hurt.
• The fast 35mm lens. I'll need something like a fast 24mm prime to get the charming 35/85mm combination on DX (24/50mm sounds reasonable.)
• Memory cards, spare batteries, and accessories like the cable release.

If anyone of you has any thoughts on this, please share them with me. Just leave a comment. Thanks!

Lifesigns

I know, I know. I haven't posted here for a what-I-consider very long time since I left Germany. For those of you who follow my activities on Buzz, or in my Picasa Webalbum, no lifesign is really necessary I think, but just in case someone out there is really just reading this blog, here it is. :) And it took me a while to be inspired to write again. I mean... I could've easily started a hefty rant about pointless "project 365" or "photo diary" things. Which would have pissed some people off, I think. But hey, I'm German. I've learned that I'm way too direct for the English speaking world, anyway. I might as well keep it that way. :-P And besides that, I still have quite a lot of photos from Germany that want to be sorted, processed, and eventually shown to the public. While I continue making photos here in Southern California. :-)

But I digress. Back to topic.

Back in 2007 when I became more interested in photography and began to approach the process of making photos more consciously, I often thought "man, if I just lived in some place that was more scenic, like, eh, with some ocean." Or something like that. And you know what? Now that I actually live in such a place, I don't know yet how to really approach it, photographically.

OK, I'm not talking about the ocean itself in particular - if life and the weather treat you with a gorgeous sunset like this on a November afternoon, there's probably one or the other shot amongst a set of photos that could be worth showing to the public...


Kelp & Surf (NIKON D700, 1/60s @ ISO 2000; f/8, 35 mm (in 35mm)

No, what I mean is... in Germany, I was familiar with my surroundings and I knew which photographic opportunities they offered. I could visit the Huckinger See a hundred times, and I still would not become bored with it. It would always reveal something different, something new, or something familiar that could be approach photographically in a refined or new way. While I do think that I have developed a little bit of a photographic eye (at least I hope so!) in what's almost 4 years of "conscious photography" now, it's still new and unfamiliar terrain for me here in Southern California.

It will take time to regain the confidence that I had in Germany (and photography is just a small part of the whole thing as you may guess.) But it's also an opportunity. Eventually, I will learn how to adapt to my new surroundings (again: at least I hope so!). I began working on it already! :-D

PS: I changed the layout of the blog a little bit. I removed the sidebar entirely and set the width to 1000px so that a photo with 912px width would fit there nicely. No more Lightbox and stuff for a larger version of the photo. Small screens of smartphones and such aside, I think it's pretty safe to assume that most screens out there today have a width of at least 1280px or something.