Mannat today and the Taichi ladies at Benjasiri Park in Bangkok where we go often in the evenings so Mannat can roller-blade and play. The park is full of kids and people working-out, jogging and then there are two groups of people who are there just around sun-set to Taichi. Their movements and grace are a pleasure to watch, every time.

Borrowed a friends' D300 to test drive. At first impression I like it quite a lot. The 12+ mega-pixel sensor gives clean detailed images, it balances well in the hand especially with 50mm and 85mm primes thought a  bit wobbly with larger and heavier lenses like the 17-55DX and the 300EDIF is quite difficult to handhold on the D300 where as I can comfortably handhold the 300 on the D2Hs. Focusing is fast, though I did not quite like the viewfinder nor the default focusing indicators - I found the viewfinder bit small and cramped, and not easy to get my eye 'into it' after having gotten used to the rubber eyecup and bright viewfinders of the F3HP, F5 and D2Hs. The LCD is nice though! large and bright. But I could not figure how to get the display to give me the same info as I get on the D2HS [warning blinkies and RGB histograms]... it probably has the options right there somewhere and I'd need to dig it out from the owners manual. Ah, one major major gripe: lack of a vertical grip with vertical AF and shutter-release buttons. Guess one could spend the additional $350 or so and fit one optionally.... I felt like my right elbow was a bird-perch when shooting vertically..... these Images were taken with the D300, a Nikkor 85 f/1.8 and an low off-camera SB800. Sunlight was coming in from slightly behind and over Mannat's left shoulder. I overpowered the SB800 a stop or two but the shots were off-the-cuff sort of and I did not spend much time setting-up. Mannat had demanded a massive sitting-fee of 10 Taka a shot as it is! So I had to be quick and fast. LOL! So, will I sell the trusty D2Hs and get a spanking-new D300? Maybe, maybe not. The D3 still is number-one on my wish-list.

Tried many variations while photographing - different angles and focal lengths - needed to get a high contrast image to bring out the detail. Exposed this one by a stop over the meter and it looks good to me in B&W. The color version does not show the detail as much because of the low contrast between adjoining color tones.... interesting.

BTW, I changed the WB in ACR to tungsten and let everything go pretty much blue in the NEF file - and then convert the image to B&W in PSCS3 using a combo of Channel Mixer, Color Balance and Selective Color adjustment layers. Because of changing WB to tungsten, somehow the whites and blacks separate better...

3/30/08 Update on SoFoBoMo
Reading Paul Lester's post on his warm-up-book test for SoFoBoMo, I tried out Scribus this morning. Hey! This is better than simply exporting JPGs from PSCS to a PDF.  Thanks Paul! I now just need to figure out the book size, layout and final image sizes so I do not have to fiddle with the settings at the last moment.

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