Nikon Reviews in a Nutshell

With the imminent release of Photoshop CS6 – which includes the latest Adobe Camera RAW converter v.7 – the ACR 6.7 Final Release is the last Camera Raw update for CS5.
Contrary to what I expected, this version does not include support for the Nikon D3200, which means that this camera will, at some point, be included in ACR 7.x and CS6.
Potential D3200 buyers who are planning on shooting NEF (RAW) should therefore consider that they will have to live with View NX2, upgrade either to Photoshop 6 (from $ 199), Lightroom 4 ($ 149) or Elements 10 (from $ 80) or – alternatively – go DNG (see this article) with the next upgrade of the DNG Converter (v.7.x), yet to be announced, let alone released.
Note that the D3200 is not included in ACR 7.0 (CS6 - shipping since 2012-05-07), either, even if the D4 and D800/800E are.

The Adobe Camera RAW 6.7 final release adds support for the following cameras:
· Canon EOS 1D X, EOS 5D Mark III, PowerShots G1 X & S100V
· Fuji FinePix F505EXR, F605EXR, F770EXR, F775EXR, HS30EXR, HS33EXR, X-S1
· Nikon D4, D800/E
· Olympus E-M5
· Pentax K-01
· Samsung NX20, NX210, NX1000
· Sony Alpha NEX-VG20, SLT-A57

Click here for a complete list of supported cameras, and here for my Nikon DSLR-ACR compatibility chart.
The 6.7 FR plug-in for Windows can be downloaded here, the Mac version here.
Keep in mind that ACR v.6.x plug-ins are ONLY compatible with CS5, and that installing an incompatible version will cause problems in your Photoshop, Lightroom or Elements installation.

With the launch of this lens Nikon completes it AF-S full-frame (FX) line-up of relatively fast and reasonably affordable f/1.8G primes: 28mm, 50mm and 85mm.
The lens finally fills an obvious gap left in 2006, when both the f/1.4D and f/2 AI-S versions of this wide angle were discontinued.
With the proliferation of DX at the time, this made perfect sense, because this focal length (42 mm equivalent) is all but useless on APS-C crop-cameras.

However, with the rise of FX this f/1.8 incarnation comes at long last, first of all because 28mm is the “de facto” standard wide angle for 135 format and, second, because the currently available f/2.8 versions (AI-S and AF-D) simply don’t cut it: both optically and in lower light situations.
It is fair to expect the new f/1.8 to render far better IQ while it is also a full stop faster.

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UPDATE. D3200 sample images, now available on Dpreview.

Today, Nikon launched its new, “entry-level” D3200 camera, a dedicated wireless mobile adapter and the full-frame 28 mm f/1.8G wide angle lens.
The D3200 is Nikon’s third camera launch in 2012 – after the D4 and D800/800E – and most likely the penultimate, short of the D300S replacement.

The D3200 makes a D800-akin resolution jump in comparison with its predecessor, featuring a 24,2 Mp. CMOS sensor, compared to the D3100’s 14,2.
The camera has a maximum shooting speed of 4 fps., includes full HD 1020p video @ 24, 25 and 30 fps with full-time auto-focus (AF-F), manual exposure control and stereo sound, plus 720p @ 50 or 60 fps.

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It is quite amazing how everything that the Yahoo boys try to do ends up dead in the water, eventually. Even if they make a truckload of money while at it.
Point in fact: strategically speaking, it should have been them who bought up Instagram, not Facebook.
However, with Yahoo just scuttling 2.000 jobs to save about one third of what FB spent on the company, clearly they were not in a strategic position nor had the balls to make such a move, even if it would have strengthened their position considerably.

Anyway.

When Flickr started out, it was kinda cool.
Then, it ended up contributing to the killing off of my favorite photo-sharing websites, like Web Aperture and Harphampix. Even so, the latter happened not because of Flickr, but mostly because it was bound to happen.
The people who ran these sites were volunteers who got tired of the effort, the negative economics, the nagging, infighting and everything else that makes humans interrelate on the Web the way they do.

The people who used to “live” on these sites never quite found what they were used to, afterwards, but wrote it up as just another sacrifice to tech.
Flickr unfortunately never quite understood the social role it had gobbled up and, therefore, never changed its business model - nor its interface, for that matter...

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Rob Galbraith, who has been testing and comparing memory card performance for years, recently published an article with read and write speed comparisons of XQD and Compact Flash on the D4.

He reports that write speeds of up to 92 Mb/s with XQD allow for uninterrupted bursts of 160+ full resolution JPG fine @ 10 fps, while the fastest CF card, the 1000x Lexar Pro 32Gb is no laggard either: 62 Mb/s. The latter would be good for bursts of up to 140 JPG fine.
In other words: the D4, combined with fast cards allows for between 14 and 16 seconds of continuous shooting at its maximum frame rate!

This makes the D4 + XQD about 3 times and the D4 + 1000x Lexar CF twice as fast as the D3X in combination with its top-performer, the Sandisk Extreme Ducati 4Gb, a CF card which Rob reports to max out at 30 Mb/s with JPG and about 32 Mb/s with RAW (NEF).

Being the D4 the first camera on the planet with a built-in standard Ethernet RJ-45 100Base-T connection, he also tested the D4's WiFi (with the WT-4) and “cabled” performance, which he reports to be “a little” disappointing at between 4.8 and 5.6 Mb/s.
For more information, click here.

See also: Dpreview - Nikon D4, first impressions.

On March 6, Adobe Labs released the Camera Raw and DNG Converter Release Candidate v.6.7. The RC indication means this software may still undergo changes before final release; however, I have never observed any problems with previous release candidates.
Apart of the support for recently launched cameras (see below) the program also adds a slew of new lens profiles for F-Mount, mostly for our beloved Tokinas: 11-16, 12-24, 16-50 and 50-135, amongst others.

Keep in mind that lens profiles are only supported in ACR 6 and above, and therefore only compatible with Lightroom 3 & 4 and Photoshop / Bridge CS5.
PSE users are out of luck with this RC; they will have to wait a while for the final release to come out.

Apart of the Nikon D4, D800 and D800E, the Camera RAW and DNG Converter 6.7 RC adds support for the following cameras:
• Canon: EOS 1DX and 5D Mark III; PowerShots G1X and S100V
• Fuji: FinePixes F505EXR, F605EXR, HS30EXR and X-S1.
You can download ACR 6.7 and the DNG Converter 6.7 here (separate downloads).
See also: Adobe publishes Camera RAW and DNG Converter 6.7 final releases. The last for CS5.

After the break:
Nikon updates View NX2, Capture NX2 and Camera Control Pro. All include D4, D800/800E and native x64 support.

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