My 2008—Use D70 as F70
I have been using a Nikon D70 since last May, which is my first DSLR. I inherited it from my father when he decided to go with D200. I have to say it is a great camera. I love it. However, the thing that I don’t like the most is its performance at high ISO’s: higher than 800, the pictures taken are not acceptable. Other than this, it is totally fine.
I am not rich, which means I don’t have much dollars to buy super lenses. I only have three “dog lenses” in total: 24-120 mm/f3.5-5.6 lens, an old heavy lens from Nikon F70; 50 mm/f1.8 standard lens, I bought from B&H during my trip to New York; 55-200 mm/f4-5.6 VR. That’s all, no fancy. I am planning to get a 70-200 mm/f2.8 though, from either Sigma or Nikon, only when I have spare money.
Sometime last year, must be after the summer break, the LCD viewer is broken. But the camera is still fine. I don’t know why this happened. I knew that was not my fault, but I still felt happy that my dad didn’t accuse on this. I tried to contact Nikon for a replacement; however, they charged me over $200 bucks for part and labor because the warranty has expired. So I decided not to fix it. Therefore, I could not be able to do any adjustment to camera settings; also, the digital camera doesn’t give me an instant view of the pictures I took. Haha, this is really interesting because I am using a D70 as a film F70. I have to metering very carefully, adjust the aperture, think about everything before shutter, and sometimes take as many pictures as possible for one scene. However, this gave me a good “training” though: It gave me a chance to use the techniques I read from books; I forced myself to guess what the final photo should look like before taking.
When I got this camera, I was very interested in flying birds, insects, and all kinds of animals. The main reason of why I buy 55-200 mm VR is to catch flying stuffs. Some of them are not caught in 2008, but I still like them quite much.
Animals
A dragonfly stands on the tip of a flower. It seems that it is pretty comfortable to be like this. To me, I feel also satisfied because I captured this moment up.
A butterfly stands on a rock. I sort of envy my friend who has a 300 mm/f4 macro lens. He could capture this very easily. But that’s fine; I enjoyed my 55-200 mm too.
Head of a seagull. Captured in Hawrelak park, Edmonton, AB. 55-200 mm VR is a relative cheap lens, however, it gives me very sharp photos.
A flying seagull, took in Drumheller, AB. It is my first successful capture of a flying object using this lens. Feels easy, comfortable, it focuses very fast, though it is not as fast as Cannon’s.
I don’t know why I took a many pictures of seagull. Maybe it is the most popular creature in Edmonton. As I said, 55-200 VR gives me very sharp images, you can see it hah.
A duck stands on a plastic tube in Hawrelak park, Edmonton, AB.
Another duck in water. I like this background. The water looks like a cloth.
A squirrel capture on a tree. He is busy with eating lunch; my friends and I are busy with taking pictures of him. I was really thinking of a SB-600 when I found the camera built-in flash was not power enough.
Flowers
I was told that only macro lenses are good at capturing flowers. However, I still tried to use 55-200 mm to do this task. It seems working, right?
Another flower photo with 55-200 mm. Unknown name…
Besides animals and flowers, I would like to take some pictures about humankinds of course, especially celebrities.
A famous singer-Wei Jin Dong
Famous talk show performer: Jiang Kun and Dai Zhi Cheng.
I came to the States at the beginning of this year. Study and work is much busier than before. I started to find that it is very hard for me to squeeze time to takes photos. It makes awkward to write this article. It seems that I don’t have many photos taken in 2008. But I will try to at least fill every month. Well, let me go straight to the point now.
December/2007 and January/2008 Vancouver, BC, Canada
I went to Vancouver, BC for Christmas break with my girlfriend. Vancouver is a great place to live, as well as for visitors. It is very clean (except Chinatown), peaceful (at least during Christmas), easy (small population with slow paces), and beautiful (oceans, gulf, and mountains. How can it be not beautiful?). But it seems that it has a serious problem in drug-dealing. In some regions, all public phones are removed because many drug dealers were using public phones to communicate, which made police extremely difficult to track down.
I captured this raccoon in world famous Stanley park, Vancouver, BC. It was the first time that I saw a raccoon; I thought it was a kind of Bobcat until friends told me it’s a raccoon. He got his left front leg broken when I saw him. He felt so helpless. Let’s make believe that he have healed up.
This is taken in a local decoration store. A great place for girls. I took some pictures when my girlfriend is searching for girls things. I like this various colors with gradually changes from one to another. I finally feel that it is a place not only for girls, but also for me.
In front of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen (Sun Zhong Shan) garden in Chinatown, Vancouver, BC. This is a typical Chinese style: lion status, Chinese Kung Fu, etc.
February/2008 West Lafayette, IN, USA
It’s my first month in the States. It happened to have a spring festival show of my school. I am asked to take some pictures for it.
Gu Zhen Solo. It is a typical Chinese instrument. 21 strings, many touching songs were made out of it.
Two young girls are singing Chinese traditional Opera: Huang Mei Xi. It origins locally but now becomes nationally. The costumes girls worn are cheong-sam (Qi Pao). The most famous traditional costume in China.
-_-!………………………………………………….zan, 嗯