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What's Been Updated Jan - May 2006
all © 2006 KenRockwell.com

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31 May 2006, Wednesday

Pentax Spot Meters no longer seem to be available new. I added this to my report on light meters. That's OK; I've used my digital cameras as light meters for my film cameras for the past couple of years as you can read here.

25 May 2006, Thursday

Amplified my explanations of QUALity settings on my How to Use the D70 and How to Use the D50 pages. Also added clarification to the Optimize Image commands on the Shooting Menu pages of each.

24 May 2006, Wednesday

NEW: Stock Photography

23 May 2006, Tuesday

Rewrote my How to Make Great Prints page and added detail pages:

NEW: Printing Online

NEW: Printing Serious Gallery Art

NEW: Printing Black-and-White

NEW: Inkjet Printers

NEW: Walk-In Printing

22 May 2006, Monday

NEW: Wide Dynamic Range Night Shots with Any Digital Camera

21 May 2006, Sunday

Added clarification to focus scales at Determining Optimum Apreture on a View Camera.

19 May 2006, Friday

Added a B/W film lab to my film page.

18 May 2006, Thursday

Added example and clarification to 18 - 200mm Flash Shadowing.

17 May 2006, Wednesday

Added photos and examples of my 18 - 200mm zoomed out to different focal lengths.

16 May 2006, Tuesday

NEW: Radio Interview and Podcast

NEW: D200 Goes Skydiving!

NEW: exciting report on the 18 - 200 VR Hood

NEW: Why Images Look Crappy Played on a TV

I added a zoom trick to my 18 - 200 VR review.

15 May 2006, Monday

Updated Should You Buy a Digital Camera for this century.

14 May 2006, Mothers' Day

Added specifics about setting manual PREset white balances in my Nikon D50 Guide and Nikon D70 Guide.

11 May 2006, Thursday

NEW: The Importance of Timing in Getting Great Color. Live examples from Hawaii!!

02 May 2006, Tuesday

NEW: How to Use the Nikon D50. Every button and menu entry explained, free!

NEW: Nikon D50 Infra - Red.

30 April 2006, Sunday

NEW: Casio EX-Z1000 10 MP pocket camera

Updated Epson 4990, V700 and V750 scanner info.

Updated Apple Aperture review.

29 April 2006, Saturday

NEW: Example Shots: Nikon 18 - 200 VR on D200

NEW: Loads more on the Nikon 18 - 200 VR, especially Sharpness, complete with direct comparisons to my 17 - 35 AF-s. I split everything from one giant page into many more reasonable sized pages.

27 April 2006, Thursday

Rewrote and added a diagram to clarify Why Sync Speed is Critical.

25 April 2006, Tuesday

NEW: Nikon 18 - 200 VR Macro Performance

24 April 2006, Monday

Added instructions for power for exposures many hours long with the D200.

Added more observations about the D200's viewfinder, batteries and LCD.

22 April 2006, Saturday

Clarified zoom creep observation for my 18 - 200 VR. It's about halfway down the huge page under "Zoom Creep."

21 April 2006, Friday

Added observation that new 18 - 200 VR lenses now seem to come from Thailand.

20 April 2006, Thursday

Added reference to an eastern-European psy-ops technique at the wireless section of Why Pros Use Mac.

18 April 2006, Tuesday

Added link to sunset and sunrise preditcions at How to Get Great Colors

Added flash sync modes, which are very important, to How to Use the D70.

Added a funny video to Why Pros Use Mac.

14 April 2006, Friday

NEW: How to Get Great Colors

Added a quote from myself, "Photography is the power of observation, not the application of technology," to How to Make Great Photographs.

13 April 2006, Thursday

Added some more to the bottom of The Two Kinds of Photographers, quoted from Cervantes in How to Make Great Photos and added clarification to my choices of format in How to Use the D70.

11 April 2006, Tuesday

Updated What's in My Bag. I just bought a Casio EX-Z850.

10 April 2006, Monday

Added how to edit image comments in the D70. See D70 Set Up Menu under Image Comment.

NEW: The Two Kinds of Photographers. I distilled The Seven Levels into two.

Updated The Zone System.

NEW: Nikkor AF-s 9mm f/2.8G DX speculation

06 April 2006, Thursday

Added explicit detail about the D70's Optimize Image menus at D70 Shooting Menus.

05 April 2006, Wednesday

NEW: How I set and use the D70 and D70s Here's every secret trick for how I set my D70, how to use it and decipher all the menus. This is an eBook free for the reading! It starts off simple and gets complex.

NEWS: Apple Computers Run Windows! No joke!

Added a small section on flash to my Sports page.

04 April, Tuesday

NEW: Remember to Reset Your Camera's Clock for Daylight TIme

03 April 2006, Monday

NEW: What's in My Bag Who cares? I don't, but here's the list if you do.

NEW: D200 Owners' Manual reviewed, also added a link to it online.

NEW: D3H predictions. Updated D3X and overall D3 Series predictions.

02 April 2006, Sunday

NEW: D200 Clock Accuracy

Added more praise and clarity to the intro of my 18 - 200 VR review.

01 April 2006, Saturday

NEWS: Dell PCs to run both Windows and Mac OSX

29 March 2006, Wednesday

Added sharpness observations to my D200 review.

Added the D200 to my Wireless Flash page.

Added the old Sigma 12 - 24mm f/4.5-5.6 to my Digital Wide Zoom Comparison.

NEW: DVD Movies on my Apple 30" Cinema Display

NEW: Casio's Custom Color Charity Cameras.

NEW: My observations of the Oakland Airport.

24 March 2006, Friday

Added to my 18 - 200 VR review that of course it works great on a the D50 or other digital Nikons. I just happen to use it on my D200 most of the time. I'd rather have a D50 and an 18 - 200 VR than a more expensive camera with a lesser general-purpose lens.

Added a caveat to my Adding Dynamic Range article.

23 March 2006, Thursday

Sorry to be amusing myself here, but I just added a link at the Windows Vista section of Why Pros Use Mac. to videos showing lat year's Apple's Mac OS 10.4 doing everything Bill gates was showing off about a prototype of Vista which may or may not become available in 2007. While I'm laughing another friend had their Windows hard drive crash yesterday and destroy everything due to a virus. Some people never learn. This was their office computer' it's sad that large corporation's IT departments are so inbred with Windows just to save their own jobs fixing all that. Life goes on.

22 March 2006, Wednesday

Updated Workflow page to reflect my new procedure with my D200.

Microsoft still can't get Windows Vista to work, and pushed back introduction of its sorry copy of Mac OSX to 2007. More on Why Pros Use Mac.

Minor update to Logitech S530 keyboard. I found out how to add some more configurations to it.

21 March 2006, Tuesday

Added a link to a Nikon page with more instructions about wireless flash at the bottom of my wireless flash page.

Confirmed that the Casio EX-S600 really is made of stainless steel. It's one tough and sharp camera.

20 March 2006, Monday

Buying new gear does not improve your photography. For decades I thought "if I only had that new lens" that all my photo wants would be satisfied. Nope. I still want that "one more lens," and I've been shooting for over 30 years. There is always one more lens. Get over it. I just added a new link to an article called "The Station" from my Why Your Camera Doesn't Matter page which explains this better than I do.

18 March 2006, Saturday

NEW: Adding Contrast and Color in Photoshop.

17 March 2006, Saint Patrick's Day

Borrowed two new Casio cameras and added first meat to the reviews of the EX-S600 and EX-Z600.

Added a Focus Performance page to my 18 - 200 VR review, and added a note from Nikon about some incompatibilities with some old firmware on old cameras at the bottom of the Focus page.

Updated and clarified Lens Recomendations.

16 March 2006, Thursday

NEW: How Much Nikon Pays Me.

14 March 2006, Tuesday

Added new info to How to Shoot Sports. I added some camera and lens suggestions to the previous how-to.

Updated Teleconverters page for recent lenses.

12 March 2006, Monday

Added new information to Copyrights for Photographers page.

Added a hot package deal for the Nikon 70-300G to it's review.

11 March 2006, Saturday

Added a lot of new information to my D200 vs. Film test.

07 March 2006, Tuesday

Added a third-party manual focus screen supplier link to my D200 review. Se the second performance page under viewfinder.

06 March 2006, Monday

Added performance measurements to 105mm VR review.

03 March 2006, Friday

NEW: Intel Processors in Apple Computers

01 March 2006, Wednesday

NEW: Logitech S530 Wireless Keyboard

NEW: Live Coverage of PMA 2006

NEW: Casio EX-Z750 firmware uddate adds free "restore faded photo" mode.

21 February 2006, Monday

NEW: Nikon 105mm VR Macro lens

18 February 2006, Saturday

NEW: Nikon D200 in Siberia at -39ºC from our freinds in Russia

17 February 2006, Friday

NEW: All Digital Wide Zooms Compared! I've spent the past four weeks working on this exhaustive comparison. I compare Nikon, Tamron, Tokina and Sigma, There are about 70 pages if you print the entire article, of course prohibited by copyright since I'm always updating it. Let me know if I made any typos or missed anything.

16 February 2006, Thursday

NEW: Search Page! Now you can find anything on my site, easily.

Added info on Intel processors on Apple Laptop and Desktop pages.

15 February 2006, Tuesday

Adding more to my unpublished review of all wide zooms for digital cameras. It's up to 68 pages if you print it all out! Coming soon.

14 February 2006, Tuesday

Nikon replies to D200 banding issue.

Still working on wide digital zoom comparison and D200. I've been busy shooting with over 13,000 images on my D200, and I'll eventually be adding all I've learned.

Added minor clarification to AI-s definition at Nikkor Lens Tech page

10 - 12 February 2006, Friday - Sunday

Away photographing on Rt 66 Workshop

07 February 2006, Tuesday

Added a hot deal to my CF Card page.

06 February 2006, Monday

Added color and luminance measurements to my Apple 30" Cinema Display Report. I nearly went blind because it's so bright.

02 - 05 February 2006, Friday - Sunday

Photographing along California's central coast.

01 February 2006, Wednesday

NEW: Ken's new Quad G5 Mac

NEW: Ken's new 30" Apple Display

31 January 2006, Tuesday

NEW: D200 Hour Long Exposures

Updated Nikon Flash page.

30 January 2006, My Birthday!

NEW: Field Backups how I copy from my cards each day while traveling

29 January 2006, Sunday

NEW: Focusing the View Camera

Brought my 2-year old 18 - 70 mm review up-to-date and put it in perspective with the latest lenses.

Updated D200 banding article. I've made over 8,000 shots on mine and have no problem.

Added FontExplorer to my Font Management page.

28 January 2006, Saturday

Added a lot to the first page of my D200 review with important impressions and battery life info.

I'm still working on the comparison of the Tokina, Sigma, Tamron and Nikon ultra wide zooms. I've got about 20 profusely detailed and illustrated pages under construction and way more information than anyone will ever want to know. I discover whether I got ripped off paying $1,000 for my Nikon when the others cost half as much.

I may make you wait a week or two till my new computer shows up with a big enough screen for me to see what I'm doing on all these comparison images and enough horsepower to calculate all the distortion coefficients for about 25 shots. My 12" 800 MHz laptop is all I've used these past two years for photography and this website.

I just sold my unused desktop machine and then had to do all the math to calculate these coefficients. Having an empty desk and all this data to crunch I bit the bullet for all you folks and bought a quadruple processor 2.5GHz Apple Mac and a 30" screen. No one needs this for photography (my old laptop is fine), but I do need the bigger machine for jockeying around all the comparative data. This will help me get more done for you all. It takes forever to run successive approximations in the Lens Distortion filter and scroll around on a tiny screen. Once I calculate all the coefficients on the big machine it's trivial to pop in the numbers to do the corrections on a laptop. Many thanks to those of you who help me get this equipment to help out everyone.

27 January 2006, Mozart's 250th Birthday.

NEW: D70 in Cold Weather

NEW: D200 Compared to 4 x 5" Film - in ITALIAN!

24 January 2006, Tuesday

Making tests comparing Sigma 10 - 20 mm, Tokina 12 - 24 and Tamron 11 - 18 mm against my Nikon 12 - 24 mm. Look for a thorough comparison test soon! I've been working on it all day.

I've made over 7,500 shots on my D200 and love it!

23 January 2006, Monday

I just got a Sigma 10 - 20 mm, Tokina 12 - 24 and Tamron 11 - 18 mm to compare against my Nikon 12 - 24 mm. Working all day on a comparison.

21 - 22 January 2006, Saturday and Sunday

Out shooting in Death Valley with my D200. I got some great stuff which I'm working on sharing with you.

20 January 2006, Friday

NEW: D200 High ISO Noise Reduction

NEW: D200 Long Exposures at High ISOs

19 January 2006, Thursday

NEW: D200 Compared to 4 x 5" Film

NEW: Minolta SRT-102 Test

NEW: Minolta Gives Up

18 January 2006, Wednesday

NEW: D200 Preliminary Noise Tests

NEW: Zeiss Lenses for the D200

17 January 2006, Tuesday

Updated my Lens Suggestions page to add the new 18 - 200 VR which I suggest for everyone.

Added a new tool to my Panoramic Software page.

NEW: My wife got an iPod so I got to fill it up with music. I researched and share my Recording Engineering Secrets of iPod and iTunes. That's what I was doing yesterday, in addition to the D200 noise tests I'm still writing.

14 January 2006, Saturday

I just ordered myself a spare D200 battery and new SanDisk CF card to add to the reviews.

Added section on dust to large format page.

Update to Compact Flash page.

Usual updates to D200 page and added how to use the VR system to my 18 - 200 VR page. My apologies: I have so much more to write and add to these pages that I'm waiting till I get most of it done and then I'll break it all into logical pages. Unlike commercial review sites who take 5 minutes to run a camera through the same set of standard lab tests I've been shooting, learning and writing about my D200 these past 5,000 shots.

Friday the 13th of January, 2006

NEWS: I'll be teaching at a Route 66 Workshop in February.

Update and solution D200 Banding.

Added some card speed tests to D200 High Speed Performance.

Added multiple filter vigneting info for 18 - 200 VR.

Updated much of the Nikon dropping cheap film cameras article.

Clarified why I have ads on my site and dropped some ads from the D2X page.

12 January 2006, Thursday

NEWS: Nikon Drops Cheap Film Cameras into the Dumpster of History

11 January 2006, Wednesday

NEW: Font Management

Added comments about iView, what I use to sort my images instead of Aperture or Lightroom or iPhoto or Picasa etc.

Updates to D200 and 18 - 200 VR, my daily work. Added example images for D200 exposure and 18-200 bokeh.

Added distortion measurements to 80 - 400 VR review.

Rewrote beginning of Film vs. Digital.

Added new ColorVision Spyder2 Express to Colorvision Spyder review.

10 January 2006, Tuesday

NEW: D200 High Speed Performance

NEW: A Complete 100 MP Digital Camera System for Under $2,000

Added acoustic noise info and a VR example to 18 - 200 VR review

Added battery door and noise info to D200 review

09 January 2006, Monday

NEW: Studio Lighting and Strobes

NEW: How to Use Studio Lighting

NEW: Filing and Retrieving your Images.

Minor update to Aperture review. It runs fine now.

Update to D200 Banding.

08 January 2006, Sunday

NEW: The D200 Striping, Vertical Stripe, Banding and Corduroy Effect.

NEW: Using the D200 with Manual Focus lenses.

New D200 folder deletion trick.

Also added a lot to my D200 pages, like buffer depth and battery tests.

Added ghost information to 18 - 200 VR review with example image.

07 January 2006, Saturday

Minor tweak to noise article.

Added an example photo to the distortion section, VR performance and falloff info to bottom of 18 - 200 VR review.

Added freedom-from-blooming and exposure and color info to D200 review, performance pages.

06 January 2006, Friday

Updated D200 page. At the end of the performance section I added links to hackers who have found some way to elicit aa minute invisible image flaw in the D200.

I then noticed all the images which have this flaw just happen to suck, regardless of the flaw. Sorry for the coarse language. It's been a long week. I added:

I think this striping issue is an great new feature where the D200 automatically marks shitty images for deletion. Not that my photos are all winners, but I can't think of any reason why anyone wouldn't just delete a shot of a sloppy office or a direct-flash shot of junk on top of a pet cage. The real problem with those shots is that the subject sucks; the heck with the minute banding!

Updated Minolta 20 mm page.

05 January 2006, Thursday

Update to D200 and 18 - 200 VR pages. Some Sigma lenses have design flaws and don't work with the AF button on the D200.

04 January 2006, Wednesday

NEW: Fallacies of Noise Measurements.

Many updates to D200 and 18 - 200 VR pages.

Added this link to a free Nikon D200 online class.

Update to Raw vs. JPEG page. I'd been making the mistake of capitalizing raw, forgetting, duh, that raw is a generic phrase for a range of undefined proprietary formats, not a uniform format and not used as a file suffix.

03 January 2006, Tuesday

Update to Batteries page. I added that I'd never buy a non-name-brand replacement rechargeable camera battery. The cheaper ones sometimes skip important safety features and explode. That's not worth the $10 saved.

02 January 2006, Monday

NEW: Serbian translation of The Megapixel Myth.

Updates to D200 pages.

Added this quote from Andreas Feininger (French, b. 1905 - d. 1999), to my page about why your camera doesn't matter: "Photographers — idiots, of which there are so many — say, “Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great photographs.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It’s nothing but a matter of seeing, thinking, and interest. That’s what makes a good photograph. And then rejecting anything that would be bad for the picture. The wrong light, the wrong background, time and so on. Just don’t do it, not matter how beautiful the subject is."

Daily Updates from 2005

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