Left handed DSLR?

[shire]

In the end I went for the 55-200mm Nikon VR DX lens so I have the 18-105mm and the 55-200. I do have a tripod but it's such a hassle carting it about and carrying the camera too. Maybe when I get right into it I will discover the longer lenses and tripods are a must but at the moment I'm settling for stuff I can hold

[onearmivan]

Never had the pleasure of shooting with 55-200mm and if you don't mind, let me know how it performs, please. Maybe even post some pics at the 55 and 200mm - I'd love to see how it handles sharpness and contrast at those ranges.

I hate the tripod myself too - lol. Agree with you that carrying the tripod is a hassle; hence me hating it - hehe.

Dang, now I'm envying you for that 200mm reach you're having - . I want that lens too.

Enjoy and post pics ASAP!!

[shire]

I've only tried it out once so far and didn't really try to take any great pics, I was trying out the distances and stuff but I have got 3 pics which are from 55mm, 135mm and then 200mm all taken from the same spot. The trouble was it was a bit windy on the island so they are slightly blurred. It was also bright but with a haze and around 4 or 5pm. The ISO was 200 on all three.
I uploaded these at full size (and JPEG Fine) but they are probably limited by Tinypic and may all display at the same size. They will give you an idea at least. They have not been altered by any image editor.

55mm http://i30.tinypic.com/20zv0vp.jpg

135mm http://i25.tinypic.com/29wx17r.jpg

200mm http://i26.tinypic.com/mb1qxe.jpg

EDIT>> As I thought, they are not displayed at full size

The one below is a crop taken from the 3rd one which is the full 200mm length and is from the image at 100% size. It's not very sharp but as I say it was windy so would have been sharper



This post has been edited by shire on Aug 17 2009, 10:39 AM

[onearmivan]

Thank you for the pics.

That lens seems pretty good if you ask me (minus the minor blur caused by the wind and having it hand-held). I really like the 200mm shot.
Trouble is that shooting at those distances even most people with both hands/arms will have problems with blur hand-holding the camera. I'd say you did a fine job keeping it fairly steady, actually (I'd do worse for sure - lol).

Not sure whether you like editing your photos after in Photoshop or some similar program, but you can play with Picture Control settings a bit to boost color, sharpness and contrast a bit in camera so that the pics are fine even directly from the camera. That won't impact the RAW files (if you're even shooting in RAW that is), but it will JPEGs.

I like my photos colorful and what I've found is that setting Picture Control to "Vivid" with some additional tweaking (sharpness at 6, saturation at 3/max) is giving me very colorful and vibrant photographs straight out of the camera when it comes to JPEGs. I mostly use those settings when I'm shooting landscapes, architecture, wildlife, flowers... things in general.
For people and portraits, I like a tad less saturation.

I'm not exactly sure about the menus in D5000, but it should be pretty similar if not the same as in D90. Play with it a bit and see what suits your taste the best. I'm too lazy most of the time to edit my photos in some third party software, so I'm trying to have my photos as best as possible straight out of the camera most of the time.

Thanks for the photos, keep shooting and have fun, and don't forget to post more photos!

[shire]

Thanks. I have Paint Shop Pro but it's very easy to over-do the saturation and brightness and things sometimes. I have ordered a book on the D5000, can't remember what it's called but it's on how to get the best out of the camera. I am starting to get used to the settings now and using Auto mode less and less