Photo'd by Don » Portraits and Family Photography in Toronto

So, I purchased a second hand Sigma APO 300mm F2.8 EX DG/HSM this week. I used to own a manual focus Tamron 300mm f/2.8 SP lens for my Pentax system. It was an adaptall lens so I could have kept it and used it on my Nikon, but for some foolish reason I sold it (much to the new owner’s delight).

If you are pretty serious about photography and have the money, you need to purchase yourself a 300mm f/2.8 lens. I don’t think it’s important whether it’s manual or auto focus, the lens is just a joy to use that how it focuses is almost second. For the record, I used my manual focus Tamron for things like trips to the zoo and for airshows and it worked great.

This Sigma is actually much smaller and lighter than my old metal Tamron lens. I’d get tired of carrying the Tamron after a couple of hours – not so with the Sigma. I packed the Sigma around for about 3 hours last night and an hour and a half this morning and no problems either with my arms or my back.

I purchased both of Sigma’s teleconverters to use with this lens, the 1.4x and the 2.0x. I’ve now tried them both out.

Last night I attended a concert. The singer was Sara Westbrook, a brilliant voice with songs of strength and happiness. I was positioned about 100 feet away and used the 1.4x teleconverter on the lens most of the time. I cannot really see a difference in sharpness between photos taken with and without the teleconverter. There is some CA in the photos with the teleconverter, I’m not sure if they would have been there without it. Note, the CA is in the specular highlight in Sara’s eyes and in her diamond ring (both clearly defined in the photos, even from 100′ away).

You can see more photos from the concert on my Facebook page:
Facebook photos

I also got out to High Park to take photos of some birds. Unfortunately, the birds were no into doing anything interesting this morning, probably because of the dull, overcast weather. Note, these shots are fairly soft. They were taken with the 2x teleconverter, are at ISO 3200 and both are taken handheld with the shutter speed less than the recommended 1/focual length. I will need to try the lens and teleconverter in sunshine and see if the results are better.

This lens seems brilliant, really sharp, even at f4 and pixel peeping. If you look at photos on a 20″ monitor, even f2.8 is really sharp. At f5.6 the lens is brilliantly sharp. The HSM focusing is fast and accurate. The lens is shorter than others in this class and very light, comparatively speaking. I would highly recommend this.

No, the jail’s not named after me, just wanted to get that straight off the top

The jail is 145 years old. Decommissioned in 1977, it was the site of 34 hangings during the years that Canada allowed capital punishment (1908 through to I think the late 60s). Prisoners were housed in 3′ by 8′ cells that had no plumbing. Toward the end of it’s use, each of these tiny cells held as many as 3 inmates.

We got to enter the jail as part of a photography competition. Each photographer had one our in the building to take pictures. We needed to pay a $25 donation to get in, were asked to submit up to 5 photos and a print and the Don Jail gets full rights to the images. Hey, what a deal

I wanted to get something a little different than what others might try so I brought a flash along with my tripod and camera.

	The medial ward of the facility. I thought I would use a long exposure to catch me as I walk through the frame. At the end of my 5 second walk I turned just in time for a flash to light me up. The flash was placed in one of the cells, sitting on the floor and pointed up. Strobist info: a single SB-900 speedlight placed in a cell to camera right. I timed my walk so that I would stand for a moment beside the cell and the firing flash would light me up. Oh, I set the camera to rear (trailing) shutter curtain flash to do this. Triggered using FlashWaves.
	Many rooms had exposed pipe, but it was often rusted out with green, flaking paint on the walls. This room was relatively white and monochromatic which is why I decided to play. I wanted to add a bit of interest to the lighting so I light up the door with a flash to the side. Strobist info: a single SB-900 speedlight placed at camera left. The flash was on a tripod and set to wide angle. Triggered using FlashWaves.
	An unidentified room, this one had pillars separating it from the room next to it. I thought that blasting some light from the room off to the right would make for some interesting shadows. Strobist info: a single SB-900 speedlight placed on a tripod in the next room with the diffuser panel down for the widest spread. Triggered using FlashWaves.
	Death Row really struck me as a somber place, especially since prisoners did their final walk down this hall to the gallows (the open, iron door) for execution. Strobist info: a single SB-900 speedlight with a red gel placed on a tripod in the gallows at camera left, pointing out through the door. Triggered using FlashWaves.

It was great to see this old building and to be able to explore it with only 9 other photographers there at the same time as you. Being in death row and in the gallows, though, really had an impact on me and I had a really hard time sleeping over the next few nights.

I recently bought a D700 to use as my main portraiture camera while my Pentax K100D Super will be used for outings to the park and such. I used to use a Pentax K20D for all my needs. I thought I would share my experience of switching systems.

Design

The D700 ergonomics are quite good – controls are easy to reach and pretty intuitive in function. It took a while to get a hang of the front and back dials as they operate in different directions from the K20D. I find the D700’s larger size (compared to the K20D) makes is pretty easy to use without a grip as I have pretty large hands. That said, I do need a grip for the D700 as most of my shots are in portrait orientation.

The K20D is miles ahead of the D700 with respect to the doors that cover the batter compartment, memory slot and cable plugs. The D700 is horrible all round, with a pull and flip door for the memory card, a flimsy door over the battery and some strange rubber door over the cable plugin area that keeps popping open on me. I wish the USB cable port was much better thought out on both systems, especially since I’ve been keen to shoot tethered. Somehow, a USB cable sticking out perpendicular to the camera and keeping a door unlatched just doesn’t seem ’safe’ nor sleek.

I found the menus on the K20D very usable. I’m slowly getting used to the Nikon menus but they seem a bit of a mess, by comparison.

Lenses

My three most oft used lenses are a ~50mm field of view, a ‘headshot’ lens like ~85mm/~120-135mm and the 70-200mm field of view.

On Pentax this was: FA 31mm ltd, FA 77mm ltd (and some DA* 55mm at the end) and the DA* 50-135mm.

On Nikon this is: 50mm f/1.4 G, 85mm f1.8 “D” and the Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 “D” lens with tripod mount.

The shallow depth of field with my 50mm f/1.4 on the D700 is unmatched compared to my experience with Pentax. I thought the 31mm is a little sharper, but the Nikon 50mm has proven to be every bit as sharp (I can crop a headshot out of a 3/4 length photo, no problem). The 50mm and the 31mm both give great focusing, though the D700 body starts outpacing my K20D when the light gets really low (not just kinda dim, but really low). I like that the 50mm on Nikon is weather sealed – would have liked the same with my 31mm.

For headshots, the 77mm was fantastic in good light and horrible in low light. When in the studio and the ambient light dropped (ie, the sun set), the 77mm hunted like crazy – often taking 2-4 seconds to lock focus. Often it would fail to find focus. It frustrated me to no end. I picked up a DA* 55mm as soon as it became available hoping it would solve the issue. It did lock focus a lot more often, but still took about 1 1/2 to 3 seconds to lock on sometimes.

The 85mm on the D700 body is a completely different experience. Not as sharp as the 77mm, it still gives a good rendering and the lens/body combo focuses quickly and accurately. I think Nikon’s 85mm f/1.4 will be in my future, both sharper and faster to focus. I’ve found 85mm a little short for many portraits and might consider a 135mm f/2 DC.

The battle of the zooms is similar. The 50-135mm lens is just stellar. Nikon’s 80-200mm gives a very similar experience, just as sharp and creamy bokeh. Nikon’s lens is, of course, larger and heavier, but with a stubby lens hood that makes the two lenses about the same size when I’m out and about. The odd time that the 50-135mm hunts, though, it takes quite a while to racket through the entire range. The 80-200mm is much faster in that respect, and even has a focus limiter to help improve things. If you need to go from close focus to infinity, it’s noticeably better on the Nikon gear than on Pentax. But clearly you won’t be in that situation all the time…

SR vs VR/OS

One small point about OS in the lens vs shake reduction in the camera body… I’m quite shakey and had a Sigma 150-500mm for use with my D700 for the weekend. It was REALLY nice having the OS in the lens as it really helped me with my composition. With my K20D a long lens, I got a clear picture but it was often really hard to compose the image tightly because of my shake. I ended up firing 3-5 shots in continuous shooting mode to make sure I got the composition I wanted. With the Sigma OS, I could always get the composition I wanted on the first shot. I think that is why they are going to start releasing OS in their Pentax lenses – it’d be nice to have the option of which one to use.

Pentax and Nikon in the Same Photoshoot

A friend of mine and I shot for Wynn Fitness (one of two shoots for them) a few weeks back, me with a K20D/31mm and he with a D700/35-70mm f/2.8. My shots where sharper (ltd prime vs zoom), but his had more dynamic range to my eye. Other than that, shots looks quite similar between the two cameras. I shot at a slightly slower pace, but really didn’t miss any shots – even when it came to athletes jumping over balls – used prefocus, f/8 and got it every time. Because of baby oil and sweat, we did have some overexposure (1/2 to 1 1/2 stops on a few shots). The shots from the D700 seemed to ‘recover’ better in Lightroom – less of that artificial gray tone when you bump up the recovery slider.

Shooting Tethered

I really, REALLY tried to shoot tethered with my Pentax cameras. I tried with the K10D and had moderate success. It took a VERY long time for photos to transfer from the camera to the computer and I had to stay close to the computer at all time and press ‘enter’ after each photo because the software prompted you for a photo filename on saving. The K20D did much worse, I often shot ‘too fast’ and the software would crash. I’d have to kill the process via Task Manager and restart the software to continue. Pentax never did remove the ‘feature’ of having to confirm the filename when saving each photo.

I downloaded a trial of Camera Capture Pro 2 for Nikon and shot with it last weekend (part two to the Wynn Fitness photoshoot). Not only did it work seamlessly, it was really fast – photos would come from the camera, through Camera Capture Pro and load up into Lightroom via auto-import in about 6 seconds. I used two active USB cables so I had about 35′ of cable between the camera and my laptop. My client was able to look at photos as I took them and give me immediate feedback on what she liked and didn’t like. What a difference.

Conclusion

So, for me, Nikon gear gets me much better auto-focus in the studio when models are in motion (my main reason for going to a D700) and it’s faster to pull the camera up to your face and get a shot of something unexpected/interesting. I find a greater range of tones in images from the D700 and will love it when I finally get the 17-35mm f/2.8 (my DA 12-24mm was one of my fav lenses when on vacation but I REALLY would have liked a constant f/2.8 version of the lens). That said, my K20D served me really well 90% of the time and is really a fantastic camera for it’s price.