Updates, Wave Study, and Nikon D800E photographs

Updates

A number of people have told me that they were unable to open larger versions of my photographs on my website: www.DavidEckelsPhotography.com. I think I have fixed this now and framed images (the vast majority) will open in a second window; close the window to return to the web site. Please let me know if this is not so.

Wave Study

Wave 6

I put together a little series of wave shots from a visit to Cabo San Jose. I needed practice with using the AF-C feature of my Nikon D7000, this learned from way too many out-of-focus shots of moving subjects. This turned out to be surprisingly hard! After about 200 tries, I think I got it about right, selected what I thought were the most dramatic shots, and extensively post-processed them in ACR and Photoshop CS6. All were shot in the early morning at ISO 800 with shutter speeds ranging from 1/800 to 1/2000, mostly at f/8 with Nikkor 18-200 DX at 200 mm. Not exactly what you'd hang on your wall, but a fun project.

New camera!

Sunset 090112

I just got my Nikon D800E from PCNation. It is a 36 megapixel full frame with outstanding technical features. It will take me awhile to get to know it well. It is bigger (obviously) than my D7000 (16 Mp), which I will keep as a travel camera, but not uncomfortable. I paired the D800E with the Nikkor 24-120 f4 VRII and the 50 mm f1.4 "normal" lenses. You can find reviews of the camera and its technical achievements, which are extraordinary (!), all over the net. I have posted a few images captured within the last week or so of receiving the camera (click here). I find the image quality extraordinary along with bit depth, dynamic range, color rendition, and resolution. The image stabilization of the Nikkor 24-120 seems phenomenal too (see album pics "Sulu" and the "Lion Mountain Sunsets", all of which were handheld!) And I really like this lens, which is my first "pro" Nikon lens. There are some tripod shots as well; I was experiementing with some high dynamic range (HDR) merges in Photoshop. FYI, note that "Sulu" and "Sunset 082512d" were captured as indicated, but were exported at the LOWEST jpeg quality (1). I think the quality that you see is due to the pixel density (downsampled obviously).