I've been taking a lot of bird photos lately, mostly around my house, honing my technique. These are a few collections of some of the birds in my area. This Blue Jay was pulling this string around our tree in the front yard. The string was used during Halloween to hang decorations and I originally …
DxO PureRAW
In my post about improving my bird photos, I talked about increasing shutter speed and stopping down my lens to improve sharpness. Doing this requires increasing the ISO to gather enough light to expose the image but adds additional noise to the image. Images at ISO 5,000 and 10,000 are common, which destroys detail and …
A Week with Jada
It's been almost three years since we've had a dog and at least seven since we've had an active one. After Holly passed away in 2018 we decided we would wait a "long time" before getting another dog. Her last two years were incredibly taxing and we wanted a break as the boys started to …
Improving My Bird Photos
I bought a Sigma 150-600mm super zoom four years ago so that I could take photos of the deer and birds in my back yard. It's definitely served its purpose and allowed me to capture the animals that we are fortunate to have, but the results have been of a far lower quality than I …
Nikon Battery Grips are SO EXPENSIVE
One of the major differences I noted when moving from Canon to Nikon in 2016 was that everything was just a liiiiitle bit more expensive. Unless you need a battery grip. Then it was waaaaay more expensive. I ran into this last year when I bought a battery grip for my D750 and I'm running …
My New Photo Closet
Last year, one of my pandemic hobbies was buying old Nikon digital SLRs. I bought several models from the turn of the millennium and ended up with a bit of a problem: I had nowhere to put them. I already had my Pentax film and digital SLRs to store, in addition to my 16 lenses, …
Autofocus Issues?
I added a Nikon D500 to my collection recently and initially I was very happy with it, but as I started reviewing images I became concerned. Many of the images, while focused, did not seem very sharp. They lacked the detail I was used to seeing on my D750 with the same lenses. I initially …
Nikon 28-300mm VR Lens Review
Ken Rockwell is a well-known photographer who's been reviewing Nikon equipment since the era of film. He's a bit... opinionated but provides a wealth of information on his site and believes that the photographer, not the equipment, makes the image. His reviews were part of the reason that I switched to Nikon and purchased my …
Nikon D500 First Impressions
I've had my D500 for a couple weeks and I've been putting it through its paces. My criteria has been two-fold: first, as a used item to make sure all of its functions work as expected, and second, as a new camera with unique features compared to my D750. These are my first impressions. It instantly …
An Additional Camera
I bought my Nikon D750 almost five years ago and switched from Canon to enter the full-frame photography world. Over that time I've been very satisfied with the camera and have amassed quite a collection of lenses for it. Outside of swapping some slightly better quality (and significantly more expensive) lenses into my lineup, I've …
Relatively Ambitious 