Nikon Reviews in a Nutshell

Photo: NASA

- From Nikon Press Center - Nikon has spent many years contributing to NASA's study of space through the development and manufacture of advanced cameras and Nikkor lenses.
Nikon’s history with NASA began with the Nikon Photomic FTN, a modified Nikon F camera that was used aboard the Apollo 15 in 1971.
The relationship continued with the transition to digital when NASA placed orders for Nikon D2Xs DSLR cameras in 2008. These cameras are still being used in space today.
In 2009, NASA ordered eleven D3s cameras and seven AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED lenses for use in recording activities aboard the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS).
These D3s are standard consumer products with no special modifications, and were delivered to the ISS with Space Shuttle mission STS-131, which launched on on April 5 and returned on April 20, 2010.

Read more »

Yup, it's kind of hard to understand "конкурса Мисс Вселенная - 2010", except for the 2010 bit.
If the previous is just mumbo jumbo in your browser, you may need to install some Cyrillic typeface on your system. Not that it makes any difference; Russian is still Chinese to the majority of us, right?
To help you out: it's about just another Miss Universe contest; this time the Mexican beauty Jimena Navarrete turned out to be the winner.
The site also reports that Donald Trump is suing the organizers of this Vilnius.ru MU event, for being "non-offical". I wonder what maffia.ru will think about that.

Read more »

Sometimes we run into "Cool Stuff" by accident, as I did with this piece of camera equipment.
However, I will start looking more conciously for particularly "cool" gadgets that might interest you and will try to post my "finds" on a somewhat regular basis.

The GoPro HERO is a high performance, wearable, waterproof 1080p HD video and still photo "sports" camera, even though I can think of a few applications not even remotely sports, but equally cool...
It records 1080p/960p/720p HD video at 30 and 60 frames per second (60 fps in 720p), up to 2.5 hours on a single charge and up to 9 hours total on a 32GB SD card (not included).
The camera can also shoot 5 Mp. photos at 2/5/10/30 and 60 second intervals. Pressing the shutter button once at the start of an activity records up to 2.5 hours of high quality photos.
The outfits include a quick-release HD housing for protection and offer optional mounts for attaching it to different surfaces.

Read more »

Again, as predicted by Nikon Rumors, today Nikon launched its new entry level D3100 DSLR with almost exactly the same core specs as rumored, including the fact that it uses a CMOS sensor instead of CCD, making it Nikon's first entry-level with a CMOS chip.
It also has standard 100-3.200 ISO, expandible to 12.800 (+2 EV).
In addition, it is the world's first DSLR with continous AF in both live-view and movie mode, as well as the first Nikon DSLR to shoot full-hd 1080p videos, with a maximum length of no less than 10 minutes.
The surprise for me, however, is that the D3100 includes GPS support, a novelty in entry level DSLR's and a feature which is - coincidentally - generously supported in the new Nikon View NX2 software with its outstanding Google Maps integration.

Read more »

I thought it could not get any worse after testing Capture NX2 and View NX1.5 - a while ago - but I was wrong.
NX2 is a major problem, at least from where I am standing. So much so, that I have not been able to thoroughly test it; not on Windows XP Pro x64 SP2 (Intel Core Duo 1.6 Ghz., 1 Tb. RAID 10, 4 Gb. RAM, GeForce 7300 GS/256) nor on a "normal" XP Pro SP3 32-bits system.
Do Nikon beta-test any of their programs at all, or do they just throw us to the lions? Worse yet: do they even care about us entrusting our precious images to their cripple-ware?

Add program - dialogue window freeze	Cut-off Edit Menu
Weird colors in Windows x64, akin v.1.5.x

It does not run or crawl. Heck, I'm lucky if it even creeps...
• At first run the program showed a "processing" message, but nothing was actually processing. Clicking on anything made it crash (on both test systems).
• The "Add" button in the "Options Menu" >> "Open with Application" is unresponsive. When the dialogue pop-up finally does open, it is (Not responding) and it is impossible to browse/scroll the available applications; generally, the program freezes.
• The Edit menu is cut off at first launch and you have to manually enlarge it. Still, on the next launch it is cut off again, while most editing operations take ages to previsualize.
• On x64 the colors become really weird (primary magentas, reds, greens and yellows) with certain editing operations, like Brightness adjustment or D-Lighting HS, for example.
I changed the color profile of the program from ProPhoto to Nikon sRGB, to see if that solved the problem (like it does in NX 1.5 - see this article), to no avail.

Read more »