Got the tax refund last week. Following up on my decision in the ER, I dropped a large chunk of change on a D4, which came in yesterday. It just got real. I decided that I am going to treat myself like a pro- fake it till you make it time. Last time I took a gamble on life and went all in, I wound up with an unbeliveably awesome girlfriend and the coolest son ever.Here's hoping this gamble will pay off as well. The camera is amazing, it has more buttons than Joanne's Fabrics does, and a 456 page instruction manual that I have spend all day reading, because I am pretty sure if I press the wrong combination on this thing I can manage to launch nuclear missiles at someone. The one thing that is entirely clear now is that I have no more excuses. If I miss a shot or get it wrong with poor lighting, framing, focus, etc, there is no way to blame my camera. It's all on me. I need to step up my game to be able to keep up with this camera. I think I may even have to name it Excalibur, the best sword around, waiting for me to become a knight worthy of wielding her properly... ok- maybe that's a bit much, but in my defense, you try reading 456 pages of camera manual in one day and see how sane you wind up. But you get the idea. It's quite an intimidating piece of gear and I need to up my game to be deserving of it instead of just some lunk who bought an expensive camera thinking it would make me a great photographer. It won't. What it will do is give the tools to succeed. A good cyclist is still a good cyclist on a beach cruiser, just like a good photographer is still good with the worst point and shoot, but that cyclist isn't going to ride that beach cruiser in the Tour de France.
I've been testing it out and playing with it, and it really will bring some awesome capability to my work. The low light performance alone definitely lives up to the hype. ISO 204,000. It's noise as hell, but just for S*&ts and giggles I took some shots of my kid sleeping at max stupid ISO last night and they are no noisier than ISO 6400 on the D3200 was, and just as cleanable with noiseware. At 6400 and below on Excalibur I may not even need to bother with off camera NR unless I am going to really blow something up or do a tight crop. The speed and the control layout are also amazing. I'll throw in a plug here, I got Excalibur as a refurb from KEH Camera, a pretty large and well reviewed shop that does a large volume of used gear. Their customer service is great, and their gear ratings are quite conservative. The guy warned me the camera wasn't going to be in new condition, but damn if I can find anyway to tell that by looking at it or using it, the shutter count was 0 when I took it out of the box. The only downsides I can find to it are that it is HUGE compared to the D3200, and louder in operation. No problem at gigs with loud music, but probably too loud to shoot live theatre unless it's a dress rehearsal. It does have quiet and silent modes that I still need to play with to see if they are actually useable in the real world.
The only real negative from playing with the D4 is that in testing it, I have come to the conclusion that the used 24-70mm zoom I picked up (not from KEH, this was from a CL person, so nothing I can really do about it now) is apparently a lemon. It's not sharp. I test shot it against the 70-200 and there is no comparison, it just doesn't focus in sharply at any aperture or zoom. I noticed this a bit using it on the 3200, hoped I could use the D4 AF fine tune to correct, but that seems to have no effect. I'll have to hope this is an easily correctable thing, but I won't set my hopes too high, apparently there were a few bad ones that managed to slip through Nikon quality control.
One the good side, I have already picked up my first paid gig. I will be shooting a race later this month. The application required a full frame body as minimum equipment, which would make sense, except I got the company's instruction packet and looked at their required settings, and it makes no sense. I mean, the settings make sense for what I'll be shooting, but limiting me to using small jpeg resolution and pretty much program mode, single shot shooting, it makes no sense to require a pro body, the 3200 would have handled that just fine. Requiring the pro body is sort of like saying- "you need a Ferrari to enter this race, but you can't drive it above 55mph." But still, it's my first paid pro gig. So, can't argue too strenuously. Have to take the cookie cutter gigs and give the client what they want so I can afford to shoot what I want.
Which leads me to my next quest, which hopefully will be ongoing. What do I want to shoot? Obviously performances. I love shooting circus arts. I want to be able to really capture the essence of a performance, show the artists' soul coming out in what they are doing. That's pretty non-specific. But at least it's a start. Also really looking forward to IgnightFest in June, in addition to getting a weekend of awesome classes in the various flow arts, I'll also get to spend two or three nights shooting some of the best fire spinners around showing off and playing, so lots of chances to experiment.
Yeah, I'm all in. Hear that universe? I'm throwing all the intention I can muster into this, let's see what you send back my way!
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