Dave Benham

Nikon D700, 70-200 VR with 1.7 Teleconverter at 340mm, 1600th @ f/4.8, ISO 450

Nikon D700, 70-200 VR with 1.7 Teleconverter at 340mm, 1600th @ f/4.8, ISO 800

Summer’s arriving – which in the sleepy village of Sway in the New Forest means that the sound of willow on leather can again be heard on the village green. Well, the sound of willow wafting at leather anyway.

The second XI were at home to Beaulieu on Sunday, so off I went complete with D700, 70-200mm f/2.8 and teleconvertor, and a monopod to keep me stable. For the second time in as many weeks I was left feeling a little inadequate – filling the frame from the edge of the boundary was proving difficult. This time I was shooting in shutter priority mode, and varied between 1/500th and 1/1600th of a second.  I wanted to make sure the ball was a little blurred to give the impression of motion while the batsmen were frozen in their pose.

Sadly I had to go before Sway’s bowlers began their onslaught, but I’m pleased to say the end result was a well earned 154 run victory. The shots above show top scorers Rick How and Nilantha Atapattu on their way to 74 not out and 52 respectively.

Nikon D700, 70-200 VR with 1.7 Teleconverter at 290mm, 3200th @ f/5.6, ISO 500

Thanks to everyone for their kind comments about the Red Kite shots from a couple of weeks ago, as promised I thought I’d better post a bit more on the technique and equipment behind the scenes.

You might think that we used shutter priority to select a fast shutter speed, but I was worried that with contrasting low light in the background the camera would select too large an aperture, and the bulk of the bird may be thrown out of focus. So I used aperture priority, adjusting the aperture between f/5.6 and f/8, and using the ISO speed to get a quick enough shutter speed to make the Red Kites sharp. For much of the day I was able to use ISO 320 to get a shutter speed over 100oth of a second, but at times I went as high as ISO 800. Fortunately the D700 makes such choices academic.

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Thanks to @JasonDPG on Twitter for this spot – an underwater housing for the Nikon D700 is on its’ way. Although I’m not a diver and rarely even get near the beach (criminal considering we live so close!) I really, really want one of these.

Hold on, they cost $4000. Perhaps I can wait. Here’s what the housing will look like:

Credit on this article, and more details on this and many other aspects of underwater photography can be found at DivePhotoGuide.com. Check out their excellent articles section for a selection of other underwater housings for Nikon digital SLRs.

Moving from a DX sensor Nikon SLR (D80, D200, D300 for example) to a full frame version? You’ve probably got a few DX lenses in your kit bag. These lenses are produced and optimised for the smaller size sensors and when you stick one on a full frame body the resolution is reduced.

By default, when you look through the viewfinder on a D700 with a DX lens attached you see a black outline showing the area that will be captured. This has been criticised in several reviews as not being as clear as with a D3, where the whole area not being covered by the lens is masked out. Well if you read the manual there is a way to add translucent masking to the D700 as well!

You need to go into the Autofocus menu and switch a6 AF point illumination -> Off if you want translucent masking. It’s covered in the manual on page 288 – can’t say I spotted this before!

Credit to Chai at Tech ARP for digging this info out!

From Nikon’s InFrame email update:

Nikon’s GP-1 Global Positioning System records the exact location of your camera when you take a shot, giving you truly accurate records.

The GP-1 can be mounted unobtrusively on the camera strap or accessory shoe and, when connected to the GPS supporting D90, D700, D3x, D3 and D300 cameras, it automatically records latitude, longitude, altitude and time as geotags in the image data.

Geotagging gives you the option of filing images by location, and enables them to be used with mapping applications such as Google Maps. The GP-1 RRP is £202.99.

For more information about Nikon accessories, including the GP-1, download our latest Total Digital Imaging System Brochure here.