I've used Canon digital SLR cameras since 2004, and my choice of film camera maker for the twenty-two years before that was Pentax. My only experience with Nikon was the Coolpix 990 and 995 I used for shooting real estate a few years ago. But since the studio I work for partners with Nikon for digital imaging, if I'm shooting something that corporate is going to print, it has to be shot with a Nikon.
Which is why I found myself taking home a 10 megapixel Nikon D200 and an SB-800 speedlight on Monday, with two days to play (er, familiarize myself) before the shoot on Wednesday. Quick review: Though overall quite comfortable to hold, the control dials are located in such a way that changing settings becomes awkward at times. Nikon also likes to put function buttons and switches all over the camera back and top deck, which I find distracting. So I'll be sticking with my Canons for a while longer. But Nikon has the coolest and most distinctive sounding shutter. I can always tell a Nikon shooter in a crowd. I just can't tell him much...
The 10.3 megapixel CCD sensor delivers very good color range and excellent detail as evinced by the shot of Molly, above. It's hard getting detail in such a black cat, but I was very happy with these results. (D200 - AF-S 18-70 @70mm - f8 - 1/30 second - 200 ISO - Flash bounced off ceiling)
We adopted Legs about a year and a half after we got the triplets. He started hanging around the back door in Long Beach around December of 2000, and we took him in and cleaned him up just before Christmas. He seemed, and the vet seemed to think, too, to be about the same age as our kids, which was around two.
But in the last year I've begun to have my doubts. The gray patches of his coat are flecked more and more with stray white hairs. He moves a lot slower than the others, he sleeps more, too. While he's always been an extremely lazy cat, I'm thinking he may be at least two years older than the others, if not more. The triplets were nine this spring, so I think he's closer to 11, maybe 12. It's been suggested I start giving him glucousimine supplements, which I'm going to look into.
Do you think portrait above makes him look like a wise old sage? Like Betsy's picture here, it was taken out the back door. Unlike Betsy's picture, the light was overcast, and so better suited to the short depth of field. Keeping the sharp focus isolated on the eye and surrounding fur and whiskers adds a sense of murk and mystery. Or you can think of it as 'Emo cat poses for his MySpace'. (Canon 5D - 70-200 2.8L @200mm f2.8 - 1/320 second - 320 ISO - existing light)
June 2008
Does it seem like I'm taking a lot of cat pictures lately? It feels that way to me, but the days are longer for these few weeks which means I get a little more light late in the day in the back of the house. Since it's the only good light I get here, I might as well take advantage of it.
I haven't posted any recent pictures of Clark because there haven't really been any recent pictures of Clark. Until this evening, at least. Betsy was sitting by the door, so I went downstairs for the 70-200 f2.8. The late afternoon light was very delicate; I needed the length and speed of that lens if I hoped to get any usable images.
They are quite impressive, these waterfalls, especially from a hotel room 21 floors up. And the hotels are all on a cliff with the ground floors about another two hundred feet above the river itself, so the overall panorama, when you first walk into the room, is quite striking. Even on a hazy, overcast morning with the mist rising and obscuring the lower part of the gorge, the scene is quite overwhelming.
Later in the afternoon, when the sky has cleared, a rainbow rises from the basin as the sun lowers in the sky. I thought about going down to the gorge, but I wasn't sure whether the angle would be right to catch the rainbow. It would also have taken me about half an hour to make my way down there, so if there wasn't a shot, I'd lose an hour overall, as well as any chance of getting anything from this vantage point. What I don't like about this picture (and the one above) is that blue tarp-covered walkway. But there was no way to avoid it, save for waiting until dark...
Somehow or another, the hokey concept of shining colored lights on the waterfalls has endured for decades. Of course, like just about everything having to do with Niagara Falls, this looks better from the Canadian side. And they don't even light up the entire Horseshoe Falls, just the parts you can see from Ontario. Take that, New York. 
She has it good, this little ingrate, and she knows it, too. She'll sit up there in the rafters, on her little wool-covered pillow, while I stand on the desk below and rub her ears. She really likes having her ears rubbed, though she'll make it a point to spit every now and then, just to keep up appearances.
Centre Block and the Peace Tower, Parliament Hill. 
This is a bad name for a restaurant. A very bad name. I do not want to go somewhere and be made to eat yesterday's food. (But good for them on their punctuation.)
