On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 04:11:05 GMT, "RG" wrote:


At my price point, I had the choice between a used D200 vs. a new D80.
The D200 is sooooo much better than the D80. I'm glad I went the way
I did. I got the used D200, a brand new 18-200 VR lens and a brand
new SB-600 speedlight for less than the cost of just a D300 body.


You have an awesome package that would serve just about anyone's needs for
years to come. My strategy is to use my D200 until there is a significant
price drop in the D300. Maybe that will happen by the end of the year,
maybe it won't. I don't much care. I just got an email a few weeks ago

That's a good strategy. I'm sure the D300 price will drop as soon as
the next one in the series, I'm guessing a D400, comes out. Then
you'll see the same thing going on with the D300 that is going on now
with the D200. Of course, you'll probably want whatever new goodies
are in the D400. lol

[...]
filters, the SB800, and other goodies still get to keep on working. In 2007
I dropped a little over $1k for a very nice tripod and ball head. It's made
a very noticeable improvement in my landscape work. I was never much of a
tripod guy, but I got tripod religion in 2007.

A tripod is definitely a necessity for great landscape work.
Especially if you're going to stitch together multiple shots for a
panarama. I have a half decent tripod. No, not $1k, more like $100.
But it works for me.

As another D200 shooter, I'll share with you another revelation that came to
me in 2007. Always shoot raw, and use Nikon Capture NX as your raw
converter and primary editor. It's a huge improvement over using Adobe
Camera Raw. Capture NX won't completely eliminate the need for PhotoShop or
similar, but it's the best place to start, and more often than not you'll
have no need to do any further editing in another application.

If I was a pro I'd do that. I shoot some things in raw and some in
jpg. I use jpg most of the time but I'll shoot in raw if I'm in a
tough situation as far as white balance or exposure is concerned. It's
easier to adjust those things later when shooting in raw. I'll also
shoot raw if I think there's any chance of making large size prints,
like over 8x10. Otherwise, I shoot jpg normal.

For those shots in that New Hope slide show, everything was shot in
jpg normal except for some of the train photos which were raw and
converted.

Capture NX is pricey. I just use the free Nikon PictureProject for
basic raw editing and conversion It does all the things I normally
want to do, like adjust exposure, crop, etc. It uses the same
conversion engine as Capture NX. It just doesn't have all the bells
and whistles. If I want a little more capability for raw files, I use
RawShooter Essentials. When I want to do "photoshop type" editing, I
use PaintShopPro 9 because I already have that and it works well. It
only works in jpg though, not raw.

If you get the white balance correct with the camera, for anything
8x10 or less, I can't tell the difference between shooting in raw and
jpg. And there's absolutely no way you can tell the difference if
you're just looking to post pictures on a website. But the caveat is
you have to have the camera set up right for jpeg shooting. And for
that, here's a hint for you:

This may be why you're seeing a big difference between raw and jpg and
I'm not: go to Shooting Menu-JPEG Compression and change the file
compression from the default of Size Priority to Optimum Quality. For
some strange reason, Nikon thinks the default should be to make all
the jpeg images around the same size. If you have a bland scene with
no detail it will take up as many bytes as a complex detailed scene.
Of course, the complex detailed scene image quality will suffer. If
you change that option, pictures with little detail will make little
files and pictures with a lot of detail will make bigger files,
preserving the quality.

If you make that change and just shoot jpeg normal (not even fine)
quality, you'll have a hard time discerning the difference between raw
and jpeg.

Steve