Roesand.com

So I'm back from my short trip. Not everything did go quite as planned though, but still it was a nice break from everyday life.

I got to experience the ocean and costal life, and ending up in the mountains on the Aurland Mountain Road to Lærdal.

There is a spectacular view platform from the mountain side over Aurland, definitely worth the trip, even if it was just for a few minutes.

What I liked more though was the trip over the mountain from Aurland to Lærdal.

I did say previously that I was going to ride through the Lærdal Tunnel, the worlds longest road tunnel, but as faith should have it, I chose to go over the mountain instead, way better to experience the open air instead of a dark hole in some rock. I don't regret it at all, the mountain road was fantastic. I had really nice weather too, so that was good.

Here are some images from the ride over the mountain. I am quite sure I'll repeat this ride some time again later.

Spectacular scenery, and all from the comfort of your own car, really quite something.

Up till now my blog has basically been a 'news blog', where I would surf the web and post interesting news related to what I do. But now I feel I need a change. I'm playing with the idea on how I can make this a proper blog, with posts that are my own experiences while travelling and photographing landscapes around the country.

That being said though, I'll be the first to admit that I love gadgets, so I will continue mentioning equipment and news here as well. But my main focus, as best as I can, will be on my own experiences.

First off, I am soon to go on vacation, so for two weeks I will be travelling around in Norway, and I have some ideas on what I would like to photograph. I start my joureny in Stavanger, and continue to Voss, Aurland, Stryn and Geiranger. These are great places to see and photograph.

Geiranger is on the World Heritage List, so there is a lot of things to see there. While in Geiranger I will also be going to Dalsnibba, 1500 meters up, and what's really great, is that you can drive your car all the way to the the top. It's a spectacular view over Geiranger from the top there. This is a trip I've done before, so that should be fun again.

On my way from Aurland, I will also be driving through the Lærdal Tunnel, the worlds longest road tunnel measuring 24.5km, I've never been there so that should be interesting. I suspect the Tokina will work it's magic here.

On this trip I will be taking my usual equipment, that is Nikon D2Xs and Nikon D200, the glass will be AF-S Nikkor 17-55mm ƒ2.8, AF-S Nikkor VR 70-200mm ƒ2.8 plus some older Nikkor glass (AIS 28mm ƒ2.8 and AF 50mm ƒ1.4) and a fun Tokina 10-17mm ƒ3.5~4.5 Fisheye Zoom. I am quite sure that I will be able to do some nice stuff with the fisheye.

For a more detailed list of the equipment please check out my equipment page.

I should also mention that I have a plan to upgrade my equipment this year to a Nikon D3 or a D700, plus some new glass, the AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm ƒ2.8 wide angle zoom that should be great for landscapes. Planning ahead for next years trip. :)

Ok, that should be it for now I think, more when I'm back from my trip.

So it seems Nikon is really releasing a smaller sized body full-frame DSLR after all the rumours that have been floating around in the last week.

Apparently a German magazine has published some pictures of the wonder. Check out the forums at DPReview for the low-down. So now we'll have to wait until July 1st to see if it really is true.

Not are there 'just' a new DSLR, but Nikon seems to be upgrading their SB-800 flash as well; the Nikon SB-900, I just hope it comes with RF instead of CLS for better reach and more stability, the CLS system can be a bit vulnerable at times. I have my doubts though, since the D700 comes with a pop-up flash, that hints in the direction of CLS.

UPDATE: An now it is confirmed. DPReview already have a preview of the Nikon D700.

Well, it seems I'm back to Joomla!

Although I liked WordPress and the K2 theme, I have decided to continue this blog using Joomla! 1.5. I really like the versatility Joomla! give in terms of customized menus and plugins available, plugins that I have missed since converting to Wordpress.

But now I'm back, and I start the task of getting all the information transferred to my Joomla! site. The posts written under Wordpress should be in place already, there might be an image missing here and there, and some of the dates are kinda funky, but I am cleaning that up as I go.

I am also working out some new galleries, they are not quite ready yet, but soon I will have Panorama/VR and Zoomify galleries. I am looking forward to that because they are Über cool!

The DSLR rumour mill is working overtime at the moment. The digital photography discussion forums are literally bursting with rumours about new Nikon cameras soon to be announced apparently.

We all know of the D3X rumour, it has basically been floating around since the release of the Nikon D300 and D3. But now, we are hearing rumours about the D3X obviously, but we also are starting to hear rumours about a D700.

The D700 is supposed to have the same imaging sensor as the D3, so we are talking about a full-frame sensor with incredible noise characteristics inside a D300 sized body, Yummy!

That sounds really interesting. I do own both a D200 and a D2Xs, and I must say that many times I favour the smaller size of the D200, so a full-frame sensor in such a body mounted with a beefy Nikkor 14-24 ƒ2.8 would be really nice and easy to handle for street and journalism photography.

You can read comments and view some photos (real or fake, who knows?) in this thread at Fred Miranda's forums.