Amazing new news, a replacement for D80 has leaked from Nikon.

Universal Vibration Reduction (uVR)

The new D90 incorporates an optional feature called Universal Vibration Reduction (uVR). This turns all lenses into uVR lenses, and offers a 10-stop advantage.

This means a person using a 500mm lens, who would normally have to shoot at 1/500th of a second, can shoot at 2 seconds when uVR is enabled.

The new uVR system isn’t sensor based, and instead requires one of the three optional vertical battery grips (see below). In this case, the MB-D90a is required. This grip provides all the normal controls and extended battery life of a regular grip. It also holds 8 EN-EL4a batteries, along with a step-up transformer.

Memory card incompatibility solved

The D50 and D80 caused some controversy by moving Nikon’s consumer-orientated DSLR models away from CF cards. This lead many Nikon users to resort to unseemly and ungentlemanly language in the forums (expressly forbidden under the terms and conditions of the standard Nikon warranty).

In an effort to avoid such distasteful events this time around, and ensure everybody can enjoy a D90, Nikon now supports the following storage formats…

• SD
• CF
• XD
• Memory Stick
• 3.5 inch floppy
• 5.25 inch floppy
• 8 inch floppy (in MB-D90b only)
• CD/DVD (in MB-D90b only)
• High-speed paper tape to maintain compatibility with Colossus
• Punch cards

New built-in artistic-effect modes

In addition to the regular scene modes, Nikon have included several artistic-effect modes. You can apply these to your image in-camera. Modes include…

• Black and white mode
• 1960s-style fast-film grain mode
• Nikon long-banding effect mode
• Canon plastic skin mode
• KM7D high ISO smearing mode
• Sony Alpha 1.3-stop underexposure mode
• Point and shoot artefact mode

A picture of the Nikon D90

You can read the full article here:

Nikon D90 Specifications Revealed

*Disclaimer - Only camera geeks will really understand this*

A lot of people have been waiting for the Canon Powershot G7 to come out, a solid replacement for it’s very well received predecessors (some of the only PnS type cameras with a f/2.0 aperture! This made then excellent for low light photography).

Basic Features

• 10.0-megapixel (effective) CCD, delivering image resolutions as high as 3,648 x 2,736 pixels
• 6x optical zoom lens, 35mm equivalent of 35-210mm
• 4x maximum digital zoom
• Real-image optical viewfinder
• 2.5-inch color LCD monitor
• Full Manual through Automatic exposure available, including Aperture and Shutter priority and 17 preset Scene modes
• Built-in flash with five modes and an intensity adjustment
• Topside external flash hot shoe
• SD/SDHC/MMC memory storage (32MB card included)

It seems like Canon made a bit of a goof with the G7 and didn’t hit the spot quite right, the build quality is there but the features, the hardware (widest aperture of f/2.8) and the picture quality are definitely not there.

I’ve seen quite a few people buying it with the underwater casing for dive photos, it’s quite a reasonably priced package at around RM2300 (less than US$1000) for the camera and casing, and as it has pretty good high ISO and decent bright lens it should be ok.

I’m leaning towards the more versatile (And cheaper) Canon Powershot A710 IS though, with the underwater casing it comes in at around RM1900.

I also agree with the reviewers who say there is a gap in the market that could have been filled by the G7, by people who don’t need or want to carry an SLR but need more than a PnS can offer, people like myself, and most of you reading this site I imagine.

Personally I was looking forwards to the G7, but I am a bit disappointed, I’m still holding off my purchase of an underwater kit, to see what else comes out.

I’m tempted by the Fuji F31 too, but no stabiliser and only 3x zoom feels limiting.

G7 Reviews:

Canon PowerShot G7 - CNET

Though the reasons for buying the PowerShot G7 have dwindled, they haven’t disappeared entirely. It’s an optimal choice as a second camera, when you can’t or won’t schlep a dSLR with you, if you’re not quite ready to take the leap from a point-and-shoot to a full-fledged interchangeable lens system, or if you need the flexibility of a movie-capture mode.

Canon Powershot G7 - Steve’s Digicams

Bottom line - I was very pleased with this latest addition to Canon’s legendary “G” series line. While we miss the Vari-Angle LCD, the new 6x IS lens is a definite plus. The only negative issues we found were the problem with the optical viewfinder and the higher image noise at ISO 800 and 1600. That said, the G7 is a good choice for the beginner, novice, or enthusiast that wants a less bulky alternative to carrying around a dSLR and a bag of lenses

Canon PowerShot G7 Review - imaging resource

Those SLR owners looking for a second or third shooter should give both the Canon G7 and the A640 a close look. In addition to IS, the G7 has the advantage of a long-lasting Lithium-ion battery, like you’re used to with your SLR. But I have to warn you that you might be disappointed with the speed of the Canon G7 relative to your digital SLR. Once you’re tuned to one type of shutter, it’s very difficult to return to a slower mechanism, but not bad if you’re already accustomed.

DCRP Review: Canon PowerShot G7

While a disappointing G-series camera, the PowerShot G7 stands on its own, and it earns my recommendation. If you don’t mind parting with almost $600 for it, it’s worth a look. Don’t forget to check out the just as capable — and less expensive — competition closely, though.

Canon PowerShot G7 Review - DPReview

Specification aside, the G7 is a camera I’d find a lot easier to wholeheartedly recommend if the cons list at the top of this page were a bit shorter, but as I discovered, once you tame it, most of them can be overcome. It’s not for everyone (and it’s not the best ’social camera’ as the focus can struggle in low light unless you stick to the short end of the zoom), but after a month or so of testing I find myself liking it more and more.

G7 Review - Luminous Landscape

As it is, the G7 will still have a lot of appeal due to its really good noise characteristics and a sharp lens with a decent focal range. A solid metal body and appealing assortment of additional features such as IS and audio recording contribute to its attractiveness. I don’t know of any current digicam that offers as much quality for the money. That same money will now by you a DSLR with kit lens, but then this won’t fit in your pocket, doesn’t have the same reach, and can’t shoot silently. There is a place for both, regardless of Canon’s apparent fears of cannibalization.

News from CES2007, Casio has unveiled ‘the world’s slimmest digital camera with a 7X optical zoom lens’ - the Exilim EX-V7 - at CES today. The new ultra-slim (just 25.1mm thick) 7.2 megapixel camera features Casio’s CCD shift system, H.264 MPEG movies and a 38-266mm equiv. optical zoom.

Impressive stuff.

I’m a great fan of the Casio Exilim and was waiting for them to bring out something with a longer zoom and a real CCD shift technology for image stabilising as their ISO boosting tactics just didn’t cut it with me.

Four blur reduction technologies with new CCD shift system

• New CCD shift system actually mechanically compensates for camera shake.
• Automatically analyzes the velocity and vector of a moving subject and sets the most appropriate ISO sensitivity and shutter speed.
• Anti Shake DSP reduces blur due to shaky hands and subject movement, using high shutter speeds and high sensitivity settings.
• Electronic camera shake compensation function eliminates blur when shooting in movie mode.

Newly designed EXILIM Engine 2.0 image processor

• “Auto Tracking AF” function follows moving subjects, keeping them continuously in focus until the photo is taken.
• Tonal control lets users keep bright areas of the scene bright by limiting the occurrence of dark pixels.
• Offers ability to selectively eliminate noise in designated color regions, such as the sky.
• Boasts faster image processing functions that enable instantaneous color correction or angle adjustment.

Looks good to me, that’s for sure! It might be a good choice over the Canon Powershot A710 IS as this camera has similar features and manual controls but is much more compact and has a little bit of extra zoom.

I’ll really need to check out the image stabiliser though as it’s the first time I’ve seen one from Casio.

I’d estimate this should be around RM1600-1800.

Introduction - Aperture Basics

This is one of the fundemental parts of photography when you advance past a point and shoot, the biggest controls you have how your picture appears is Aperture and Shutter speed. Shutter speed is more obvious in that a slower shutter gives a longer exposure and more movement or motion blur, where as a faster shutter speed freezes action.

We will discuss creative ways to use shutter speed later.

For now we want to discuss Aperture, many people have a vague idea what it means, but don’t know which aperture or f-stop to select for different situations, or why you would chose that aperture.

To start an Aperture is basically a hole in which light is admitted, in terms of cameras the aperture of an optical system is the opening that determines the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane.

You can read more about Aperture in depth here.

F-number or F-stop

The lens aperture is usually specified as an f-number, the ratio of focal length to effective aperture diameter. A lens typically has a set of marked “f-stops” that the f-number can be set to.

(f-number is also sometimes called focal ratio, f-ratio, or relative aperture)

The very basics you need to remember is a big number is a small hole, so f/22 is a very small aperture, small hole, less light so longer exposure. Something like f/1.8 is a very large aperture, more light and faster shutter speed (shorter exposure).

Here you can see a very common 50mm lens with it’s Aperture set at the smallest number f/1.8, remember that’s the largest opening in figure one.

Figure two shows the smallest aperture, or highest number which is f/22 for most lenses including this one.

Most cameras with some manual controls at least have something called Aperture Priority mode, which refers to a shooting mode used in semi-automatic cameras. It allows the photographer to choose an aperture setting and allow the camera to decide the correct shutter speed. This is sometimes referred to as Aperture Priority Auto Exposure, A mode, Av mode, or semi-auto mode.

This is the mode I most frequently shoot in as Aperture has the greatest effect on the picture you are taking.

The common f stops are as follows:

When you are buying lenses generally the bigger the maximum aperture the better, most professional zoom lenses have a constant f/2.8 aperture which makes them very expensive and heavy!

You can read more on F-number and the science behind it here.

Lenses

Cheaper lenses usually have a variable aperture between f/3.5 and f/5.6. When a lens has 2 numbers for f-stops it means it varies as you zoom it, so if a lens is Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G AF-S for example, it means at 18mm it’s f/3.5 and at 70mm it’s f/4.5.

Aperture greatly effects light gathering capabilties, so for low light or night work the lowest aperture possible is preferred, some lenses go as low as f/1.2 or f/1.4!

Prime lenses tend to have bigger maximum apertures as it’s cheaper to build with a fixed optic, prime lenses don’t zoom, the most common and cheapest is the 50mm f/1.8 which we’ll discuss more later.

Depth of Field

The most important thing to understand about Aperture is how it controls depth of field, this will directly effect your pictures and the artistic capability in which you can create the images you want.

Here is an example I took yesterday, Macro photography has a very small Depth of Field as the subject is very large in relation to the sensor in the camera.

Depth of Field is the amount of the picture that is in focus, the basic rule is the smaller the aperture, the more is in focus, so at f/1.8 the Depth of Field would be very very small and at f/22 everything would be in focus.

For this picture the Aperture was f/4.2, the largest the lens can manage during this macro focusing range.

Watch at f/4.2

As you can see not a lot is in focus, the focus point for all 3 is the bottom of the question mark, you can see here only just that is in focus the rest is not. The Depth of Field is small.

The shutter speed was 0.7 of a second.

The next was taken at a medium Aperture f/11 which is normally used for landscapes or large scenes.

Watch at f/11

As you can see more is in focus here, the picture is more aesthetically pleasing. The top of the watch is still out of focus and the background is nicely blurred but the subject is fully in focus and part of the watch.

The shutter speed was 4.2 seconds.

The next is at f/22 which is used for long shutter speeds and macro photography.

Watch at f/22

As you can see now virtually everything is in focus and the shutter speed was very long at 18 seconds.

So you can see as you increase the f-number the aperture hole gets smaller, more of the pictures is in focus and the shutter speed gets longer.

You can use this to control how the picture looks and small apertures are especially good for seperating the subject from the background.

Another example are flowers, these are two shots taken at f/5 and f/22, you should be able to work out which is which now.

We’ll discuss more about DoF as it’s called later and more advanced ways to use it, plus the terms such as Bokeh which are commonly used now.

You can read more about Depth of Field here.

Summary

Aperture is the most powerful tool in taking the pictures you want, in creating artistic effects and interesting eye popping captures of animals, people and flowers.

Just don’t get carried away and use an aperture that is too large (small number), especially on portraits as you can have one eye in focus and one out, or can create confusing pictures that look completely out of focus.

Choose the correct aperture to give the background a nice blur and make the subject stand out.

It will take some practise and you will have to learn each lens, also note most lenses are not super sharp wide open, wide open means the maximum aperture (the smallest number) so stop it down 1-2 f-stops.

So for a f/1.8 lens it should be sharp around f/2.2 and above.

As a rule of thumb for portraits you can use the maximum aperture stopped down 1-2 stops, for group shots try around f/5.6 and for landscapes try f/11-16.

If you need and clarifications please leave a comment below, next to come is What is ISO or ASA - Camera/Film Sensitivity AKA Filmspeed!

Ah finally, Nikon have unveiled the new camera with full specs.

It’s not a great jump from the D70s but there are some nice minor refinements, I don’t regret getting my D70s though as I doubt there will be any stock for this cam until 2007.

We posted our first thoughts after the leak here: D80 leaked shots and thoughts

The major changes are:

• New 10.2 effective megapixel Nikon DX Format CCD image sensor with the power to capture exceptional sharpness and faithful colour at 3,872 x 2,592 pixels size.
• Inherits the industry-leading advanced imaging processing engine of Nikon professional D-SLR cameras. Colour-independent pre-conditioning prior to A/D conversion works in harmony with high-precision digital image processing algorithms to produce natural-looking images that benefit from faithful colour and tone reproduction.
• 3D Colour Matrix Metering II automatic exposure control ensures ideal exposures in most lighting conditions. It evaluates brightness, colour, contrast, selected focus area and camera-to-subject distance. The system references the data against an expanded onboard database created using data from more than 30,000 actual photographic scenes to instantly and accurately calculate the final exposure value for the shot. Variable centre-weighted metering and spot metering centered on the active focus area are also available.
• Refined 11-area AF system packs the same number of focus areas available for the professional D2 series into a space-efficient system that features fast, precise operation. Each of the 11 focus areas can be used individually, the centre sensor can be switched to wide-frame operation for broader coverage and new Auto-area AF mode measures all 11 focus areas. The system automatically determines which are on the primary subject and activates only those areas.
• ISO AUTO mode automatically adjusts sensitivity between ISO 100 -1600 to maximize available light and achieve optimal exposure. Sensitivity can also be set manually between ISO 100 - 1600 in steps of 1/3 EV, plus HI-0.3, HI-0.7 and HI-1. Three levels of High ISO Noise Reduction are available when shooting at high ISO settings. Long Exposure Noise Reduction is also available when shooting at shutter speeds of 8 seconds or slower.

The full specs and press release/pics can be found here.

The preview looks good so far, I’d like to see some sample shots though.

Two and a half years ago Nikon announced the six megapixel D70, their first affordable enthusiasts digital SLR, it proved to be a very popular camera and strong competitor to the Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel). Just fifteen months later Nikon revealed the D70s which was essentially the same camera with a some subtle tweaks (improved AF, wider flash coverage, higher capacity battery, larger LCD monitor). And so just over fifteen months on from the D70s Nikon present the latest incarnation of their ‘enthusiasts’ digital SLR line, the ten megapixel D80.

The D80 slots nicely between the entry-level D50 and the semi-professional / professional D200, clearly based on the D70 design but also different enough to be seen as a completely new model. It features a ten megapixel DX format CCD (the same we presume as used by Sony in the DSLR-A100), the metering sensor from the D50 and numerous other items taken or modified from the D200.

The full hands on preview is here.

They also announced another couple of AF-S lenses to go with the launch of this cam an 18-135mm as the new optional kit lens with more focal range (AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED) and another which I might add to my shopping list after I see some reviews as it’s the exact range I’ve been looking for and it has VR!

The AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED, it’s not f/2.8 but with VR it gives you that couple of extra stops anyway and it’s much more affordable. It’s equivalent to 450mm on a 35mm camera. It should be about RM1500 where as the f/2.8 version is RM6100, a huge difference, but is it really 4 times better? I shall test it out.. but if it’s anything like the 18-200mm VR it’ll be impossible to get hold of.

I’ll talk more about the lenses later.