I finally got the chores done so I can write about this. Last week I got the Nikon D610 from BnH to play with for a while, so you might notice me talking about it from time to time. I love trying out new toys and this is definitely one of them. Since I had a new toy I figured the best way to play with it is to go to one of my favorite places, Yellowstone.
It’s really hard to beat Yellowstone in the Winter time. The low temperatures cause for massive freezes on the ground and in the air. Since the whole place is covered with geothermal activity it makes from some amazing photography with frost covered trees and steam baths. It didn’t take long to find a good spot, with a name like Mammoth Hot Springs it kind of invites itself. Now I’ve photographed here a number of times, including these trees. This is part of the lower terrace. Standing on the boardwalk below you can look up and see these three trees on the ridge above. If it’s not too windy the steam can be great. Well it was one of those days where it was cold and not too windy.
Now I was impressed already with the camera being so light and small, but what I was curious about was the image quality. I’m used to the 12.1MPix of the D3, not the 24.3MPix of the D610. Also I’m used to 200ISO being the basement not 100ISO. This extra range of light and capturing capability really had me intrigued. These steam baths are great example of what this camera can pickup. The steam is entirely back lit. Having any of that information from the steam in the image will make anything else go into shadow. It’s just too great a range. But as you can clearly see there is a lot of information in that hillside below the trees. Now I did run this through ACR but it really didn’t need much. The information was there and the noise was not.
Now I mentioned chores earlier, well because of the bigger file size I had to create new blog poster actions for the D610 files. I’m still playing with them so you might notice them change a little bit.
In the Camera Bag:
Nikon D610, 70-200 VRII, on Lexar UDMA Digital Film