Had a great time on a show for my nephews school 90th anniversary yesterday. There were some really talented kids singing and dancing.

But what was really cool for me, was when they turned down the lights, and just had some very dim blue spots from the ceiling, lighting some dancers in white suits. Ah, perfect time to test the ISO performance of the D700.

I'm pretty sure people was thinking; 'What a dumb-ass!', I understand that, because it was dark, almost pitch black, you could almost not see the dancers on the stage, and there I was firing off frames like a mad man, the only mad man I might add, and without flash.

As it turns out, I really got some images out of it, despite dialing -2 EV into the camera, operator error I know. Shot this at ISO 1600, which basically is a normal value these days. I also have one frame shot at ISO 6400, will process that tonight. Should be fun to see what I can get out of that file.

Right, that's one more meaningless post. Got to keep the blog alive. :)

Yes, it's tool time again. I've been watching this lens for a while, it's cheap, so the price was never an issue, the question was rather, 'Did I really need one?'. I'd say yes. Not that my workhorse AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 is bad or anything, but there is something special about how that f/1.4 renders bokeh, it's just gorgeously smooth.

So, I'm attending a school play for my nephew this week, will test it in some dim lighting there for sure, really looking forward to that. And of course I get to test the ISO performance on my D700 properly, have'nt really done that, despite that I have had it since november 2008. It's my back-up, and has just 500 clicks on the shutter.

I will not take the D3, I'm travelling light for a change. I realize I have too much equipment to lug around. I have a stuffed Lowepro CompuTrekker, I'm impressed with what it can actually hold.

In my CompuTrekker I got the following equipment:

• One D3
• One D700
• One AF-S 14-24mm F/2.8G ED
• One AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED
• One AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED
• One AF-S 50mm f/1.4G
• One SB-800
• Two SB-900's
• One Zoom H4n Handy Recorder (for sound)
• Two SC-29 TTL cables
• One Nikon Monarch Binocular
• Extra batteries, CF cards, light modifiers (Honl stuff),and various maintenance gear.

That is really quite impressive considering that it's not really that big on the outside, but it sure is spacious on the inside. My favorite bag of all time without question. The Lowepro Slingshot 300 AW on the other hand has not seen any use yet. It sits firmly on my floor, with the labels still on(?!). I've asked my self the question if I really need that one. If I were to recommend a bag for someone, I would definitely recommend the Lowepro CompuTrekker. I think Lowepro even has a new model out now.

Well, that is todays post, I'm trying to be a more frequent poster in the future, it has been way to quiet here now.

Time for a little status update on what's going on with the images on this blog.

There is still problems with some images. I have no idea what is happening, but I will look into this again tonight. Right now some images a showing, and some are not. As far as I can tell, everything looks to be correct, I have no idea why there actually is a problem.

I believe that some of the image problems that are happening might be related to a WYSIWYG editor issue, not quite sure yet though, but I have reasons to believe that it might be the case.

Because of me hunting for bugs, the site might be a little rough thenext few days, you might see various content pop-up here and there, that's just me shifting things round a bit. I hope to resolve this issue soon.

UPDATE: Image problems are now resolved. It was an WYSIWYG editor problem.

Obviously I'm quite aware that I'm yapping about the D3 again, but you see, I just have to (grins). I'm just sitting down to test Lightroom 3 Beta on some high ISO shots from the D3, I'm still stunned by the quality that the D3 delivers, this is what ISO 6400 looks like from the D3. I know ISO 6400 is not really a lot these days, considering what has been announced by the camera manufacturers the last few weeks. First the Nikon D3s, with ISO boost up to a 102,400, and then a few days later, the Canon EOS 1D MarkIV, also with an ISO boost to a 102,400. ISO 6400 on paper seems like a toy now.

I'm really looking forward to see what comes next, I think the ISO race is getting ridiculous, this is the megapixel race all over again. What's next?, I'm guessing video resolution, we now have cameras shooting 720P and 1080P, what comes after that?, film resolution?, 2k?, 4k?, that is the most logical path to take, I think we'll see that for sure. And when so happens, that again will be another race and huge amounts of money lost and spent on old and new hardware. I think it's about time to look what one really needs, and instead focus on taking pictures. This is too much of an tempo to really be a part of. I quit!, I'm not going to take part in this tiring survival race any more. Enough is enough!

The first image is of course resized, so you eliminate a lot of noise that way, below is a 100% crop from the same file, no noise reduction is applied to this file. What is really stunning about this, is the noise handling in the shadows, I can honestly say that there is no noise there to talk about. I remember back to the D70 just a few years ago, this kind of quality was unheard of back then. I know now that I have all the equipment I need now—and in years to come. I can say I will keep my D3 for many years, and enjoy it as much as I can.

So I'm done venting some frustration, puh! :)

Image captured by D3 with AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED @ f/2.8. Written to SanDisk Extreme UDMA compact flash card.

I guess many of you have noticed that there have been some image link problems with my blog lately, especially with images inside the tutorials section. The SEF feature in Joomla! has been really weird the last few days, I don't know what is wrong, so I've disabled it for now. So until there is a new version of Joomla! available, I will run this blog without SEF. It should be okay, but if you have bookmarks somewhere, they will of course be broken, I apologise for that.

I intend to return to SEF links, I just hope that the Joomla! team can fix this, apparently this has been an issue for quite some time, though I have not seen it before.

We're all good for now.