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Learning to speak Nikonese

Recently I had the opportunity to use a friend’s Nikon D200 camera.  As most of you who know me are well aware of, I have never even held in my hands a non-Canon camera.  When I was looking to purchase a camera, Canon was the only company that made full frame cameras so the choice was obvious.  However, my friend had just received the camera and was trying to figure it out.  For most of the time he was using it, but then handed it to me to take a family portrait.

Unfortunately I had never had the chance to use a Nikon before and I was rather confused at what all of the controls do.  For those not familiar with Canon and Nikon, they seem to pride themselves in their own languages.  For instance

 

Canon	Nikon
IS	VR
Macro	Micro
Tilt-shift	PC

These are just a few examples, but the camera might as well had Japanese written all over it because I couldn’t figure out how to switch to manual mode.  I did figure out how to adjust the aperture and shutter speed, but I also couldn’t figure out how to trigger the in camera metering.  I’m sure with a few minutes in front of the instruction manual it would not have been difficult to figure out, but I wound up blowing out every picture.

I also had the first look at the SB800 flash.  I have heard many people say that Nikon is generally superior to Canon when it comes to flashes, and this seems particularly true in

terms of Nikon’s CLS system for remote triggering.  I have heard of some real estate photographers who use a Pocketwizard on a Canon camera to trigger a Nikon flash, which then uses CLS to trigger other Nikon flashes.  However, in terms of just the flash, I have to say that I prefer the 580EX - in particular the controls seem much more intuitive and the 580EX II seems like a much better built flash.

Unfortunately I didn’t really get a good feel for the camera as I had it for only a few moments and I did not get much of a chance to try out different lenses or test the optics.  He used the 18-200 3.5-5.6 VR lens, even though I tried to convince him that the 70-200 2.8 VR would be better for events.  I know a lot of people like this lens, but I am highly suspect over a lens with such as large focal length.

In a bit of non-photography fun, I got a big kick out of the following series of events with my four year old Eitan.  He was fascinated by my wife’s cousin’s one year old daughter and decided that he wanted to buy the baby.

Eitan (to baby’s father): Can I buy your baby?

Father (playing along): OK.  Give me 100 dollars and I’ll give you the baby.

Eitan: I’ll give you ten dollars

Father: Surely you must have more money?

Eitan: Papa, do you have ten dollars?

Me (mean papa): No

Eitan: Ok.  Here’s ten imaginary dollars.  Take the money!  Come on! Take the money!

Eitan (much later upon driving home dejected he could not buy a baby): When I’m older my kids will only cost three dollars.

 

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Tags: Kids, nikon, photography