http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Guides/hd_beginners_guide_01.htm

Enjoy!

We started using flash photography because the film of the day had ISO equivalent of less than one and exposures in full sunlight were measured in seconds.

Modern flash is a lot more controlled than flash bulbs. But it is still highly intrusive and we now have cameras that can take pictures handheld in candle light. On the other side of the equation we have LED lighting coming along that is vastly more efficient than tungsten and potentially allows for full control of color temperature to boot.

I light my studio for video in any case, only since I began I have discovered that I can make do with 500W of lighting rather than the 1500W I used originally due to the cameras getting better. I would expect that within a few years it will be more effective to use 120W or so of LED lighting.

I have strobe lighting, but I find I do not need to use it. Video lighting is easier to work with, more consistent and easier on the subjects.

Another possibility is that traditional strobe flash will be replaced by an LED variety that has more pleasant characteristics. Instead of releasing the light in a single uneven spike of 1/1000s or less, an LED flash could fire with constant brightness for the entire time that the shutter is open. Under those circumstances the front/rear shutter curtain issue is no longer a constraint and you can flash sync at any speed.

That said, there are other reasons why an electronic shutter would still be highly desirable. One major reason for wanting one would be to automate the process of taking HDR shots by enabling two or more shots to be bracketed with essentially no gap between them.

Definitely the new #1 “dumbest thing I’ve ever read on the net”….congrats!

If the D4/D400 are the same resolution or close to the D3/D300 then we can certainly expect it to be at least a year before a replacement. But more astute obervers will note that we are very close to Xmas now and that the recent announcements were simply Nikon updating the legacy line to maximize the Xmas season sales.

I think that the launch of the D3x makes it impossible for Nikon to launch a camera with less than 24MP as the D4. Such a camera would not compete with the D3s any more than the D3x made the D3 obsolete. There will be some tweak to allow people to realize that you can always trade resolution for ISO response by averaging over a series of sensor sites. Perhaps the max ISO will bump up a notch if you go to 12MP. But it is pretty clear that the D4 will have to be everything that the D3x and the D3s are.

When I was in Costco, I noticed that Nikon is considerably more aggressive than Canon on price this year, about $70 cheaper for the entry level DLSR kits. Clearly they are looking to expand their market there, but it is also possible that they have to cut prices to make up for the fact that the Canons offer 1080p video and the Nikons do not.

For that reason, I am pretty sure that the D4/D400 will offer 1080p video as well.

I don’t think you can read anything from the D3s/D300s launches other than that a D700s launch will happen soon. Clearly there will be a D4/D400 at some point in the future, the only question is when Nikon/Sony can get high enough sensor yields.

One thing is certain, whatever you buy will be obsolete before long.

The second and rather more important side is that 64bit Windows Vista was a lot more picky about the drivers it used. In particular support for a whole range of error-prone techniques that tended to cause XP to crash was withdrawn.

As a result the 64-bit version of Windows was far more robust and far more secure. The downside being that you cannot run quite a bit of hardware from vendors whose drivers are notoriously bloated (HP, you listening) or buggy (nVidia? anyone there?).

I remember when I bought my copy of Windows XP in the hope that a persistent crash problem would go away. Problem was that the 3DFX drivers were not available for XP so I had to replace the video card first. The moment I did so, the crashes stopped completely and I ran under 98 for another three months without a single blue screen. The problem had been that lousy driver.

So if Win7 has workable 64 bit support and can be used with reasonably current hardware in 64 bit mode and still run software written for 32 bit mode, I would be very interested in giving it a try.

Thanks Administrator for this web site!

Pro photographers want cameras with bigger boxes, in a range of fashionable colors.

Canon boxes are so awesome, many pro-photographers think they are better than the camera inside.