The Urban Cyclist

shot using my oldie but goodie Nikon D7000 and my Nikkor AFS 18-70.  The lens is good enough but I always want a more professional looking one.  Just so I think I look better.  I panned to the right in his direction a bit.  This is from a BASIC jpg, USM, and a crop in Instagram without any filter.

Taxi

Another D7000 test shot, as if ... I am testing. My conclusion is there is some issue with focusing confirmation. But I can't say for sure. Ha ha. That's if I use manual focusing lens, say 28mm f/2 or the micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8, and I pick a focusing point, and the in focus green dot is on, but actually the focus is behind the intended subject, or the so to speak back focus. So you actually better off just trust your own eyes, if it looks in focus in your eye from the focusing screen then it's in focus. For auto focus with my good old AF 18-70, there is no problem locking in the focus. This is totally non scientific from yours truly. When I shoot the D70 using manual, I think I have similar problem in which the selected focusing point actually shift by itself to the center one automagically even when I choose not the center one. In the D7000, the selected focusing point never moves by itself or at least the focusing screen doesn't show it even if it moves and hence resulting in wrong focus or something.

There are really at least two factors in play. Perceived sharpness and in focus. To be continued ...

Car

On the Brooklyn Bridge

Untitled

Snow Day

Special Announcement: New York City Public Schools are all closed due to severe weather condition.

Holy cow, I think my pictures are just breath taking.  If you disagree, you are just wrong.

Happy Holidays

Break Dancing

Shot outside the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue and 41st Street.

Balto In Central Park

Mr. Alex and Balto

Mr. Harry and his favorite dog, Balto.

Mr. Harry was very excited when he read about the story about Balto. The dog that practically saved Sarah Palin in Alaska. So we finally made a trip to the city and let him see Balto first hand. What a magnificent dog, very quiet and very still.

Queens Botanical Garden

Japanese cherry blossoms have done wonder to the parks.

This image is captured using my standard tools. It's monkeyed with using GIMP and UFRaw plug-in. Gimp comes with Ubuntu 8.04 but not UFRaw, I downloaded UFRaw via Add/Remove Program, but Gimp can't invoke that so something wasn't right. OKAY, I should have downloaded gimp-ufraw plugin not just the stand-alone version, so UFRaw can be invoked from gimp. All is well except I still couldn't find the nvidia driver to work with my display. This is loaded via Firefox 3.0b5. I didn't think they could improve on the browser but apparently they could and did.

A Day in Queens Botanical Garden

Nikon D70, Nikkor MF 35~105, Nikkor AF 17~80. The flowers macro shots were shot using the manual focusing lens, with manual exposure, set on a tripod. The people shots were done by the auto focus lens with camera set at continuous dynamic focusing.

Queens Botanical Garden

All pictures shot using an aging Nikon D70, jpeg, aperture priority f-stop set at f5.6, ISO 200. This is like my way of shooting, painless. I don't do any post processing, unless when I am shooting on assignment for National Geographic, which has never happened and has yet to happen. Usually I find pictures come out better from Canon makes, but I find my D70 holding up pretty well, or I just have alarmingly low standard.
The garden is still under renovation, almost deserted, part of it was because of the cold weather. I hope to see some flowers soon, maybe next week or the week after next week.

It's almost Done

picture by Jin taken with a Nikon D70, AF-S 18-70 f1:3.5-4.5G set at auto.
I really have no complaint on my Nikkor 18-70 lens, the sharpness and all. The color rendition and the skin tones, when used with D70, are really pretty good, considering sometimes I shoot everything JPEG fine in auto with no post processing at all.

Hair Cut on July 18, 2005

Just some touch up. Photos look better when I am in front of the camera (Jin took better pictures not that I am photogenic). Photo taken with a Nikon D70, AF-S Nikkor 18-70