With all this talk about existing Full-Frame photo cameras (Canon EOS 5D, Nikon D3) and about possibly upcoming new ones (Sony Alpha 900, Canon EOS 5D Mk II or some other similar name, etc.) many photographers happy with their existing digital equipment are wondering: “What’s all the fuss about?”
And it’s a good question to ask, but the answer goes with some of the comments about sensor resolution. About the same people who noticed that resolution is not all that counts (despite what is said or implied by some of the major brands on this market) also understand that going Full Frame is a possibly very important decision for the attentive digital photographer.
We have been used to receiving one update of Crysis, the PC FPS video game of the year, for a long time. But it seems that there is now an upcoming change: No update, just a new extension named Warhead or Crysis Warhead.
Crytek was a little imprecise on this, but there is one major advantage to it: It will bring enormous performance increases. It is ssaid to be able to run Crysis at high-quality settings on a $600 or 400€ budget PC. Probably nearly any PC a gamer could buy will be able to get max quality.
Unfortunately, all photos I could find are just plain bad.
While it is difficult to find any ground for these speculations, people keep repeating that Nikon is about to announce simultaneously a Nikon D700 high-end DSLR camera and a lower-end Nikon D90 to provide an able DSLR for most photographers.
It seems that most of the original information comes from Thom Hogan’s web site and is fed by countless comments on web forums. However, we saw recently Chasseur d’Image supporting this rumour within its own Nikon D700 rants.
The most common set of characteristics and features seems to be:
12 MP sensor in APS-C size (x1.5 crop factor)
14-bit A/D conversion and image management
dust-cleaning sensor
3″ LCD with LiveView
5 fps shutter bursts
But it looks a lot like a mere marketing evaluation of what Nikon needs to put in its SLR camera range to fight on the current market and to make it fully able to cover all kinds of photo customers. Everybody seems to expect this to be the feature list of a $1300 camera to reach under the current D300 (or the upcoming D700).
Will this be part of an launch event that Nikon seems readying for the very first days of July (maybe 1st of July)?
A photographer must love his models to make the best possible portraits and to serve completely the models. This is all the more obvious when it comes to photographing celebrities and famous people.
Platon does a great job for this.
Source : Platon.
All photos are Copyright (c) Platon – All rights reserved.
Surprisingly, the information collected about the upcoming Nikon D700 digital SLR camera seems to have been confirmed indirectly by several sources.
French magazine Chasseur d’Image went to the extreme of reporting about it “as a rumour confirming the information they already have”.
And a Nikon representative said that the manual pages that were used to base the disclosure were taken from the printing agency in charge of producing the actual manuals.
We will not get more, but it seems that 99% of what was told about the Nikon D700 is true. But, possibly, the name of the D700 will be actually Nikon D700 FX to clearly reflect the presence of the Full Frame sensor in a near-D300 body.
“When hell freezes over“. This expression has been replaced by “When Duke Nukem Forever is ready for launch” in some circles of PC gamers, of FPS gamers. This video game has been 12 years in the making. Announced about once per year for more than a decade, but never really seen, nobody really expected it to be delivered to the market. But, this year, there is something totally wacky: In a video, the game itself seems to be appearing. As if it existed in alpha or beta status…
As if the guys had really been working on it all these years.
3D Realms may finally be able to launch such a game. But when? Will the game play reaching the level expected by hard core gamers of today? Will the graphic design have stayed back in time with a disappointing quality? Only time will tell…
I was very troubled by the initial annoucement of Far Cry 2. This FPS game, taking after the exceptionally good Far Cry, was not really a sequel and not even done by the same team. So, what would you expect? Probably a major failure merely re-using the name of a previous hit. But, months after months, news after news, we discovered that the development team was really working to make it nice and big. An enormous area where you will be able to move around, a Wild African landscape with lots of efforts put in making the changes to the environment as credible as possible (some day-to-night effects that should make it interesting even after STALKER similar effects).
So, before the full availability (sometime in September according to our latest information), it is important to try and check the PC requirements for the FPS gamer willing to run Far Cry 2.
Minimum requirements
Processor: Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz, Pentium D 2.66 Ghz, AMD Athlon 64 3500+ or better
Memory: 1 GB of SDRAM
Graphics: GeForce 68xx or Radeon X1650
Recommended requirements
Processor: Dual core CPU (Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD 64 x2 5200+, AMD Phenom or better)
Memory: 2 GB of SDRAM
Graphics: GeForce 8600 GTS or Radeon X1900 series (Shader model 3.0 and 512 MB of graphic memory)
Nikon may have succeeded in surprising a lot of people with the next arrival of a Nikon D700 (and not the still-expected Nikon D3x), new digital single lens reflex camera for the high-end stopping in between the Nikon D300 (very nice semi-pro SLR camera) and the Nikon D3 (first great Full Frame SLR from the yellow brand).
The Nikon D700 would be, according to Nikon Rumours [1], a Full Frame D-SLR with a 12.1 mega-pixel sensor taken from the Nikon D3. This means that instead of pushing the resolution, Nikon decidedly wants to keep focusing on image quality with big pixels able to collect as much light as possible. So, this is quite normally leading to the maximum sensitivity of 6400 ISO (and even 25600 ISO in extended Hi2 mode). If the D3 is representative of the result on the D700, the images will be absolutely superbly stunning – and the image management is in 16-bits after a 14-bit A/D conversion.
Interestingly, the camera would be able to use the DX lenses (obviously cutting the image down to a limited frame siwe, which is still a very good solution to use existing cheap lenses; But the buyer of such a beast will probably be willing to attach much more serious glass).
Apart from that, this is really a high-end camera product: 51-zone Auto-Focus (incl. 15 cross-type) coming from the Nikon D3 (this is going to be a competition-ready type of AF), light metering with a 1005-pixel matrix, Flash system borrowed from the D3. On the opposite, there would be a LiveView mode integrated with a contrast detection AF.
Unfortunately, the images are still lacking (remember, this is not confirmed by Nikon) and nobody seems to have the camera (or the NDAs are very tight). However, NR tells us that the price would be $2999. Still expensive (too much for me anyway, even if I was not equipped with Sony), but this “baby D3″ is announcing the Full Frame for all…
It wasn’t anything interesting until it happened but the star V838 Monoceroti, which had simply sat in obscurity, flared up in 2002 to become 600,000 more luminous than our own Sun. It didn’t take long for the star to fade back into the darkness but the Hubble Space Telescope managed to get quite a few pictures of it during its active phase.
In this series of images you can see how the star’s outer layers were first expelled and then cut away by the powerful radiation from the star. The event was made even more interesting by the fact that a “light echo” was seen. During the expansion the object appeared to expand faster than the speed of light – the effect was however merely an astronomical optical illusion.
If you liked my photos about Le Mans, you’re just in time to jump to Michelle Roohani’s web site. Excellent blogger, graphist and photographer, she has just posted a series of photos of Delahaye, Hispano Suiza, Kurtis 500, Bentley, Ferrari, Bugatti.
Canon is definitely an innovative brand for the marketing of photo products. For years, regarding single lens reflex cameras, Canon specialized in products clearly ahead of their time; I think about the Canon EOS 300D, of course, which surprised/shocked the market with a price so totally different from the rest of the digital SLRs that it allowed a whole new generation of photographers to move to digital. But there was also the Canon EOS 5D to bring a Full Frame sensor which is still appealing to many a photographer (wait for a post about this in a few days).
But Canon does not stop here. A few days ago, the Japan brand announced a Digital SLR, the Canon EOS 1000D / Canon Rebel XS opening the doors of the D-SLR market to those who where still staying with bridge cameras.
Of course, nobody could compare the technical features with the high-end products that is catching our attention in most of the posts here.
10 mega-pixels: it’s not much, but largely enough for 99% of the Sunday photographers
7-area AF: just right
Continuous shooting at 3 fps in JPG (or 1,5 fps in Raw): certainly not pro-level, but more than enough to shoot holidays and families
2.5″ LCD with LiveView
Price: 699.99€ / £579.99 with a lens (stabilized 18-55mm) or 599.99€ / £499.99 body only.
Available August 2008 (no date for USA launch)
If this camera is aiming lower than the current Canon EOS 450D / Rebel XSi, it will still find some competition with the Nikon D60 and the Sony Alpha 200.
This is the question or the hope that we can have after the opening of a legal investigation in Japan. A public prosecutor announced on last 19th of May that he decided to explore the observed operations of sale of whale meat to restaurants.
Greenpeace actively participates and there are many people hoping this to be the first step toward a true prohibition of Japanese whaling (even for “scientific” reasons).
After some searching, it seems possible to announce the very probable prices of the upcoming cards from nVidia and AMD-ATI:
GeForce GTX 260: $449 (or maybe $399) in the US, 399€ (maybe 349€) in Europe
GeForce GTX 280: $649 in the US, 599€ in Europe (street price at 575€)
Radeon HD 4850: $249 in the US
Radeon HD 4870: $349 in the US
It is worth noticing also that the performance of the nVidia GeForce cards starts to be evaluated by some web sites. It seems that -for the first time- it will be possible to buy a card able to run Crysis in its highest settings (there was none up to now). The nVidia GeFroce GTX280 should be capable of 30+ fps in High quality settings, 1920×1200 resolution (no AA). Of course, this shows that two GT 280 will be able to run Crysis to Maximum settings, on an enormous screen configuration of 2560×1600 with FSAA4x. That should make a blindingly fast and nice configuration, but power dissipation (heat! burning heat!) will still be enourmous.
At a lower performance level, people want to compare the HD4870 with the GTX 260. But we do not seem to have figures for the best AMD Radeon parts. Only for the Radeon HD 4850. The board should be roughly equivalent to a GeFroce 9600 GTX.
Last minute correction (via The Inquirer): There is a Turkish web site outting details and the Radeon 4870 will shoot the existing nVidia 9800GTX out of its water (performance improvements between 38% and 48%), while the Radeon 4850 is aiming at the 8800GT (performance improvements between 36% and 48%).
All in all, this is going to really create the anticipated earth-quake. All fans of the Green Goblin (nVidia) will find reasons to rejoice about the stratospheric performance point reached by the GT280. The fans of AMD-ATI (and some stock market investors) will remind us that performance is not all; The AMD products are perfectly aimed to grab the central market of most users (around and over $200) in the coming months.
The newest graphics cards from nVidia are upon us. In less than a week, they should be officially launched, but nearly everybody seems to know what there is to know about this new generation of cards targetting both avid video gamers and lovers of cinema-on-the-PC. Let’s do a small summary.
First, there will be a very large line of different cards. There will be a GeForce 9300 and GeForce 9400, both based upon the previous generation of technology, but hitting the market at very low prices – 120$. Higher in the range, there will be first the GTX 260 then the superb (and probably expensive) GTX 280. Performance figures start to flow onto the Internet (apparently many people have difficulties complying with the confidentialty clauses of the NDA signed with nVidia). Both cards will be VERY powerful, but the GTX280 seems to be longer than usual (and so, may not usable in some PC).
Finally, let’s not forget that nVidia should launch all this on June 17th June 16th. Only a few days to wait before every web site will show us all the details.
As you certainly already know if you follow regularly this web site, the Internet addresses will soon be depleted (all used). The end of the Internet world as we know it should be reached around 2011 or 2012. That is the reason why some companies are working to push out the most common Internet protocol (IPv4) and to make space for its successor (IPv6).
This is why, while the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) was preparing a night without IPv4 to reach the largest possible public, Google launched a version of its search engine reserved to IPv6: ipv6.google.com (If you are like almost everybody, you will not see anything at the end of the link).
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So, before the full availability (sometime in September according to our latest information), it is important to try and check the PC requirements for the FPS gamer willing to run Far Cry 2.
The Nikon D700 would be, according to Nikon Rumours 
At a lower performance level, people want to compare the HD4870 with the GTX 260. But we do not seem to have figures for the best AMD Radeon parts. Only for the Radeon HD 4850. The board should be roughly equivalent to a GeFroce 9600 GTX.
