The awesome new Nikon 70-200 mm f/4 VR

Warning: To those interested mostly in my pictures, please ignore this nerdy gear related post.
After quite a bit of analysis and renting lenses (I like lensrentals.com I settled on the new Nikon 70-200mm f/4 VR lens as a good compromise between weight and image quality. It came in the mail a few days ago and I tested it out the first chance I got two days ago. I knew it was good but I am still astounded at the enormous detail you can get out of this when used correctly. Here is a sample image:

Snowy Canyon. Bigger and prints.
Nikon D600, Nikkor 70-200 mm f/4.0 at 70mm, f/5.6, 1/50s (handheld), ISO 100.

Of course this a web image so you won't really see how sharp this really is, so here is the central portion of the image with the top of the little S in the road showing.

I did not optimize this image for retina displays, nor display sharpen it. The only real adjustment in Lightroom is a +1EV exposure adjustment ( I forgot to overexpose for the white snow). So on retina it will not look as good as it does on normal screens. Just look at that detail. On most computer screens (usually around 100 ppi), you are looking at the equivalent of a 60"x40" (1.5 x 1 m) print.

Here is another example:

Powdered sugar. Bigger and prints.
Nikon D600, Nikkor 70-200 mm f/4.0 at 120mm, f/8.0, 1/30s (handheld), ISO 100.

That is handheld at 1/30s at 120 mm! Now check out the 1:1

Pretty amazing if you ask me.

Clear Creek Canyon

Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm f/2.8 at 11 mm, f/11, 1/30 s. Handheld and using a grad ND filter. Buy a print.
Flickr image. Google+ post.

This image was taken halfway up one of my favorite mountain biking trails - Chimney Gulch - right after windy saddle. I haven't been able to ride my bike for a while now because of the significant possibility I'd wreck the trails. On this evening I strapped on my snow shoes which is always really funny to do so close to the urban area. One of my reasons for this outing was to test out my new Gitzo tripod (awesome btw) but I shot this image handheld as an afterthought.

Black and white sunset

Buy a print. Same image on flickr. Google+ post.
Assembled from 9 images Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX, f/11, 1/100s, ISO 200.
Created on a recent evening walk along Beaver Brook trail on Lookout Mountain near Golden, CO. I photographed the sunset at this exact spot many times before.

Snowy scenes

I finally got a little time from crazy busy work to try and engage the shutter on my camera a little, so I hiked in the snow on the Chimney Gulch and Beaver Brook trails from the windy saddle on Lookout mountain in Golden. The snow was dumping down but luckily my camera is well weather sealed. I took a few images of which this is one:

Flickr link.

This is using a long shutter so the snow disappears to the camera and a little contrast to correct for the white blur. Jeffrey Friedl has a nice demonstration of what shutter speed does to falling snow here. I did not turn this into black and white, this is pretty much what the scene looked like. There is some green in the trees if you look careful.This is looking down a rockslide, which might be hard to see in this image as the snow and clouds are hiding what is behind. To see this, here is an older picture at the same spot:

Some more images from this little hike are in the next post.

New post at inside Lightroom

I wrote a new post at inside Lightroom about the inner rewards of landscape photography. Check it out. I talk about a evening photohike a little while ago on an evening that it was -19F (-30C) where I was. Wonderful evening and wonderful hike. Here is an example image:



Check out the post and check out the hike images. There is a flickr set of the same place here.