Photography

In the past year and a half (ever since I got a more serious camera to replace my previous basic digital point and shoot) I've been rediscovering an old passion of mine, last really nurtured back in high school in the late 1990s when I shot black & white film through a Minolta SRT-100 film SLR and developed and printed it in my school's darkroom.

Now I have an even more serious camera and a couple of lenses. As a result, I've started to really get back into photography - especially when considering the performance I can get at high ISO settings compared to what I got with film emulsions.

As a Nikon shooter, one thing that's fairly exciting for me is that Nikon has a few big things planned for July 1st. They are:

- Potential release of the Nikon D3x ($6-$8k full-frame camera with 24 megapixels, the landscape and studio shooter's dream machine).

- Release of the Nikon D700 ($2.5-$3k compact full-frame camera, 12 megapixel sensor like the D3, usable ISO 12,800. Yes, 12,800. Clean ISO 6400 and ISO 25,600 looks like 400-800 speed film in black & white).

- Potential release of the Nikon D90. This is the most shadowy of all the releases, so I'm going to give a few predictions on specs: 12.2 megapixel DX (1.5x crop) sensor from the Nikon D300 with similar high ISO performance (hello usable 3200 and acceptable 6400), 5 frames per second shutter from the D200, carry-over 11-point autofocus system from the D200. Price for body-only should be $999 at time of release.

The D90 is the most exciting to me. This should really drive down prices on used D80 bodies, which may encourage me to get a D80 body so that older Nikkor autofocus lenses with AF and I can gain wireless flash control.