Today’s photo wasn’t taken in Japan. I took it last week on the SOU campus. It’s one of the few cherry trees in Oregon that look like the sakura so common in Japan.

I don’t have a macro lens for my Nikon D7000. The camera with the 18-200mm lens simply won’t focus on anything closer than half a meter (1.6 feet) from the lens. I thought this would be problematic in taking these kinds of macro shots. That has not been a problem though. Instead of going inches from the target and taking the photo at or near 18mm, I just back up and zoom. This photo was taken hand held with a breeze blowing at 150mm. Not a bad macro, close-up shot for a non-macro lens like this…

Posted on April 10th, 2011 under Japan, Oregon. Tags: cherry blossoms, macro, Nikon 18-200mm VR II, nikon d7000, photography, sakura, 桜. Comments: 1

Given how my prior post discussing my new Nikon D7000 DSLR with 18-200mm VR II lens has quickly become the most popular page on the blog (in terms of hits), I thought I’d give a brief update to that entry.

The first thing is that I really, really love my new Nikon D7000 with the 18-200 mm lens. Even though it is so much bigger and heavier than my old cameras, I take it with me instead of my far lighter Panasonic alternatives. I feel like I don’t want to trade the weight/size/inconvenience for the quality of even a single shot.

The second thing is the vastly improved possibilities with respect to sports photography. Granted, the conditions in the above photo were ideal with lots of sun and blue sky, but still, I couldn’t have captured the ball and players so frozen and in so much detail with my other cameras in these conditions. Not even close. Also, firing off half a dozen shots in a second allows me to capture the perfect still instead of a picture that is a second too early or too late.

The third thing is the detail and lack of noise in photos is so far beyond what I’m used to. Check out this photo on my other blog. I have taken dozens of similar shots from my home over the years with other cameras. The best ones don’t have this kind of detail. Most require some noise reduction in Photoshop and/or Corel’s Paint Shop Pro. The noise reduction makes the detail even worse. I didn’t do any noise reduction to this image taken with the Nikon D7000.

The final thing to point out is with respect to my earlier comment on getting the 18-105mm lens instead of the 18-200mm lens. I take that comment back. If you can afford it, definitely get the 18-200 instead of the 18-105. Although the lens is bigger and heavier, I’ve found myself using that extra 95mm on so many shots. The difference is almost 2X which is more than a little difference as I erroneously said before. Changing lenses would be a huge hassle (and cause missed shots) so I’m very glad with my choice to go with a lens capable of a wide range than two lenses with narrower ranges like I was initially considering.

Posted on April 1st, 2011 under Other. Tags: Nikon 18-200mm VR II, nikon d7000, photography. Comments: 3