The Branson Trip

The weekend started at 12:00pm Friday when me and one of my co-workers left for Branson, MO. I knew very little about the town before this trip, so I was excited to go out and see some of Missouri, at least as a passenger for once. The first thing I noticed was the shear amount of trees and hills on the way, things I didn't really notice while driving to STL. As we neared Branson, my co-worker kept cracking jokes about the show signs which made the last two hours of the trip more interesting.

Branson Landing is a pretty nice place. We stayed at the Hilton there, which is also quite nice. The hotel is connected to the strip and made going from the room to "the shop" pretty easy.

The shop is actually really cool. My co-worker was telling me that I'm pretty fortunate to see a shop so early because he didn't see a shop until 7 months after he started working for RZ. It really does make a difference to see your work in the shop. There were so many little kids, mostly boys, on Friday night. It was refreshing to see people so excited about something. You definitely can't find that kind of enthusiasm just anywhere.

Fortunately, Friday night was only a sneak peek for those who RSVPd, so we were able to go at about 8. Around the same time, Kelsey made her way down to join me for dinner at the Landing. We noticed quite quickly that there weren't that many restaurants that really sounded good. We eventually settled on Garfields, the last restaurant on the strip. After the drive and working around so many kids and dinner I was pretty tired. Good thing the hotel bed was so awesome.

Saturday

I got up at 7AM thinking why the eff am I up so early. Oh yeah, I gotta be out there at 8. Damn. I started by making some product to be crushed by our main feature of the day: Big Foot the monster truck. The truck it self was pretty impressive, especially when its on. I'll just show you the pics.

Here is the front of RZ during the Sneak Peek on Friday.

The "ZEO" Larry cuts the chain to the new store on Saturday. Open for business.

Big Foot the monster truck, complete with RZ flag on the back, crushes a row of old cars as part of the weekend's festivities. Needless to say, it was loud.

Big Foot crushed some cars as part of the marketing thing. Here are the RZ cars with the real ones in the background. Big Foot made a mess out there.

After the show it started to rain. Luckily we were pretty much done so we left right after. My co-worker and I stopped at a few places for some really bad food and made our way back to STL. I was quite tired and still am at 4PM on Sunday. Maybe I'm just tired regardless of what I do nowadays.

Sunday marks one week in STL. I recently learned where the nearest mall is and made a trip down there for some stuff. I got some shoes and made my usual stop to Pac Sun. That store isn't good for me. I wish I had one more day for the weekend. Oh well.

Maybe I'll try and work out later tonight. Gotta get some energy first.

That's all for now.

Monster Trucks and Movies

Friday I, as well as others from RZ, will travel down to Branson for a big store opening. I will assist in making sure everything is set for the sneak peek as well as the grand opening. The interesting thing is that there will be a monster truck there crushing old cars to celebrate. Not sure how I feel about monster trucks...

Of course, I have been recruited to shoot a little bit alongside another guy from the office. He's never held a DSLR let alone used one to shoot an event. He said the camera they were renting looked like "the effing Millennium Falcon." Not sure if you can compare a Canon 1D Mark III to a space ship, but if you were going to pick a DSLR model to resemble one, that beast would be the closest thing to a space ship. Whatever Canons resemble, they're ugly. If you ask me they look like giant magnesium and rubber turds.

I will also use this opportunity to hang out with Kels after she conducts her own business in Branson. Who knows, maybe she'll be able to check out the new store haha. We got into this discussion a few months back about how all I ever watch while at Kels and Breia's apt is chick flicks and horrible reality television. To combat this, great britten agreed to start watching more masculine movies. We started with The Bourne Identity, which of course is a great movie to kick start the guy movies. I only mention all of this because Kels said she was going to see Sex and the City in theatres and made some reference to how I would enjoy it. I'm sure it has its redeeming values, but I'm kind of on this guy movie thing nowadays (I'm sure I'll revert back to the old ways when the semester starts again). I think maybe Iron Man would be worth seeing at some point since I've heard good things about it.

Anyway, I just noticed that the TV has is on and has been on the whole time since I got back to the apartment four and a half hours ago. ::Reaches for remote:: There, that's fixed.

Here are my predictions for the NBA Finals and Stanely Cup Finals:
NBA - The Celtics will meet the Lakers in a battle royale. Celtics in 7 games.
NHL - Red Wings will take it in 5 games. Simple.

While watching the news earlier I was reminded that I have major league baseball games at my disposal. Maybe I'll go see one at one point. I have plenty of opportunities since they play about 600 games every season.

Hmm... what else can I blab on about...

Nothing.

See you later.

P.S. Kelsey, you can't feel bad about getting a new computer and I have more justification. My bro informed me that my old computer is slow as shit now, even after upgrading RAM. No matter what he does it just lags and lags. Good thing I upgraded. Justice served. 

Work - Day Two

Not a bad second day at all. I guess it's true that the first day is always really hard on people. Maybe I was just lucky to have a good day or maybe it's just me settling down and getting used to my surroundings.

Today was also a productive day. I was given many tasks and even have a list of things to start on in the morning. Awesome! Now maybe I won't be twiddling my thumbs. Today was really interesting because one of the designers took me into the BaB headquarters which is right next door. The business complex where the garage resides is pretty inconspicuous, but don't let that full you. The garage might be a bit small by corporate standards but the BaB HQ was HUGE. Everything you see reminds you of the store, and I mean everything. The walls, trim, all the doors, everything is painted in a pale yellow/navy blue color scheme. Needless to say, it was hella bright in there. On top of that, they had elevated ceilings and skylights. Jealousy! It seemed like a great work environment (if you can stand the yellow) and the office space was filled with a maze of people and material. They also had a wall full of their product, sort of like a hall of fame timeline thing. It was just a really impressive setup. Who knew? The building looks so plain. Never judge a book by its cover. There were a ton of people in there. Now I know where all that traffic comes from on the main street. It's all from them.

I ate at Burger King for lunch while talking on the phone with LP for the duration of my lunch break. BK wasn't exactly my favorite venue but it was the closest thing and I didn't feel like going out and looking for somewhere better.

I also talked to Breia via email all day, and even convinced her to open a gmail account so we could talk on gmail's IM feature (Kels, you need to hit that up, I can talk to Breia and Carter on gmail now. Look alive). Hooray for email. I wonder how anyone in America did business before email. It seems like the world revolves around email in the professional world. Must have been horrible.

Sorry there haven't been any photo updates. Hard to shoot when all I do is work and go home and be lazy. Maybe if I get enough energy to do something after work I will. I did, however, find the energy to go to a camera store that is actually in the plaza right outside my apartment complex. Great, a camera store right next door for me to play in. I got to play around with the Nikon D3 and 14-24 f/2.8! Exciting! That lens is ridiculous on a full frame sensor. Just insane. The store employee seemed to be just as much of a dweeb as me when it comes to camera system enthusiasm. Turns out he freelances live events in the area. I ended up talking with him and this other guy for like a half hour, just standing there in the store and farting around with the D3. I will make another trip there to see how much I can get for my D200.

Anyway, that's really all that's going on.

More to come later.

Work - Day One

I will make references as RZ and "the Garage" to speed up the writing and reading process.

6:45am - I get up wanting to be sure I was up and ready to go for the day. Yes, a bit early for my taste, but a necessary evil to get settled into a routine.

7:20am - I leave for RZ quite early to be there at 8 just because yesterday's excursion didn't hint at traffic patterns and I didn't want to be late because of that. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) traffic was not heavy at all and I got there within 15 minutes. Not good. This meant that I had to wait in the parking lot for quite some time. Keep in mind that I was ready to go for the day, fully charged with caffeine and natural wake-up chemicals my body released on its own. Turns out that no one really gets to the office until 9am. Damn it, BP, you had me waiting like an idiot. Luckily a woman in the office came in a little early that day to catch up on some work and she let me in at about 8:10am. So, for about another hour I chilled in a room alongside this woman in marketing and made very very small talk while waiting for someone who would know what the hell to do with me.

*Ask me about this woman's laugh and I'll tell you about it in detail. It's a trip.

10:00am - The office was now full with everyone that needed to be there. Within ten minutes I was notified by four people that there is coffee brewing in the break room. Too bad I'm already buzzed and actually feeling the after effects as the caffeine wore off from being bored all morning. I sit with some web guys, both seem pretty comfortable in their rolls at RZ and really nice. In fact, everyone in the office is really nice and I got along with them great.

*Ask me about the web guys and I'll tell you about them in detail.

11:00am - My first legit assignment. I had to photoshop (Ps) stickers on an RZ product. Riveting. It did, however, require me to summon Ps skills I actually learned while at Gazette. Weird how that works. Anyway, so I'm doing this stuff and I have one of the web guys and one of the designers looking over my shoulder. Pressure. I tried really hard not to look like an idiot. I think I pulled it off. I actually showed the web guy a few things that might have made is PS workflow a little faster. His method for this particular thing require some handiwork with Illustrator (Ai) components but I bypassed all that crap and used Ps functions for the whole thing. Even after trying to avoid it today, I used Ai more today than I have in about a year (last time was at Gazette).

11:30am - Put together some products in a back room. It reminded me of a sweat shop without all the Asians...well, except for me. It was just a bunch of boxes and products, and I mean a shit ton of boxes. Funny thing was someone opened a connecting door and I saw BaB's back room. Looked very similar haha.

12:00pm - Lunch with some of my new co-workers. The marketing women are pretty cool, they were the ones that mentioned lunch and asked if I had plans. Naturally I had no idea what I was going to do for lunch so I went along. We went to an Italian place and I have to say that was some of the best Italian food I've ever had. Beats that place we went to in NYC, granted that wasn't really the best representation of Italian food from what I hear. It started raining earlier in the day and there was even rumor of a tornado warning. A few calls were made and it turned out there were reports that there might have been a tornado in the area we were just in. Luckily we weren't there. I'm passed the point of being even a little concerned at such a warning nowadays anyway, so even if it were for real I probably would not freak out until I felt the suction on my ears.

1:30pm-4:00pm - My computer started to get sluggish. Weird that it would happen to mine because I was on a refurb Mac G5 with some bad ass speed capabilities. So, I try to restart it, and no one knows my user name and password for the machine. Not just any person's will work apparently, and of course I don't know my own because I'm a nube. So I literally had to sit at my computer and stare at the user name and password window for about two and a half hours while someone tried to figure it out. It didn't all go to waste tho, I helped an illustrator brainstorm on some new things for some stuff coming up and went back to the sweat shop to do more Asian labor.

4:00pm-5:08pm - Finally figured out the computer issue. Didn't fix my lack of work to do on it tho. So, I went through my email and facebook rounds for about the 14th time and did more looking around at blank finder windows while listening to my co-worker literally yell at his action script code. Web stuff looks pretty confusing so I didn't blame him.

Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell.

Now I'm tired and running out of free time before I have to go to sleep and do it all over again.

Free time in STL

Today is Memorial Day and my first day free in STL. I started with running some errands around the area I knew. I had to get groceries so I could live on my own for once. Before I did that, however, I made the trip down to where I will be spending 40 hours out of my week - they call it "the garage." Not too bad of an area. It is only about 15 miles round trip so I'm pretty excited about that. Now, on to the grocery store. The price tag quickly added up. Kelsey first estimated somewhere between $50-75, but quickly changed her final estimation to $48 after seeing a picture I sent of my cart. My grand total was about $80. So off.

After shopping and eating, I finally mustered up the energy to go out and see the city. I started with a route from google maps to Washington University in St. Louis, my friend Ben's area of expertise. Turns out that I am about nine miles from campus. Sweet! After that, I had this bright idea that I could navigate my way from west STL to downtown. I made my way there alright. The city got old and ghetto very quickly after the WashU campus. The roads followed the same theme. I had no idea where I was. All I knew was that the neighborhoods I went through were a bit scary and there was no sight of downtown at all. I eventually got there and parked not knowing what the game plan was. I started walking around and found nothing of any real interest. It was overcast and dark, which made shooting buildings and the ubiquitous arch difficult. After a few minutes I switched my attention to flowers and landscaping. Lame. I'm in downtown St. Louis and I'm shooting flowers.

That got old, so I got back in the car and started driving around. I found my way down to the river, in a park between the arch and the Mississippi. Shooting opps started to look up. There were a lot of people, many from all walks of life, so I think this area might be fruitful later in the summer. It got me thinking about doing some kind of "Faces of St. Louis" series, but seriously let's not get too ahead of ourselves.

After that, I got back in the car and found a highway... and eventually found my way back. I drove about 50 miles today and had a lot of fun doing it. Getting lost in the ghetto was actually pretty cool. I'll try not to kill myself out here.

There was this park with a fishing pond just west of downtown. This old man, as well as many other older residents, relaxed and watched the water.

This was in a pot in a pavilion area in front of some downtown buildings.

Sights.

Again, a flower in a pot in front of a statue.

Next to a sidewalk.

More pot vegetation.

Pretty greens.

Chain link on the river.

Tourists can rent bikes and other wheeled machines to enjoy the riverside.

Gateway to the West.

Water level seems to be OK. I could be wrong.

Two older dudes use the top step to the arch stairway to relax.

The arch at some angles looked like it was fake.

This horse is one of many that offer carriage rides along the Mississippi. They seemed pretty mild mannered.

The windows atop the arch. I'm sure the view is nicer from up top.

On my way out of downtown, I noticed all of the old industrial buildings. It was probably a mile of nothing but old abandoned buildings similar to this one. I hope to come back to the area and shoot, since all the rust, dirt and layered textures make for some cool photos.

That's it for now.

The trip to St. Louis

Pretty eventful weekend I must say. Let's start from the beginning

Thursday: Packing

I didn't start packing until about 8:00pm. I now know that was probably not a good decision seeing as how I feel like I could have brought a few specific things had I really sat down and thought about it. Like for instance, instead of bringing things like trash bags, shampoo/body wash and snacks, I had to go out and buy those things and others late at night when all I really want to do is blog and sleep. We'll get into that more later.

I loaded up my car with everything I thought I might need in the next three months, including some things I need for future plans. I brought all of my camera boxes and whatnot in case I am able to sell my D200 from here. I pretty much have everything I need to ship it out with me. Now all I have to do is set it up on ebay with my friend Ben's account. His account proved to be useful in high school when I sold one hubcap (yes, just one) from my Honda Civic (I had a bit of an accident and had that wheel replaced, thereby giving me a busted hubcap as a spare). Surprisingly I got rid of that thing pretty quickly and made about $8.50.

Friday: Departure and the Mishap

I made it on the road at about 10:30am with plans to meet Breia in Tulsa for lunch. I had the schedule strategically timed so that she could leave at a decent time for lunch. Uneventful drive up until I got into the Tulsa area. I gave Breia the play-by-play as I watched towns pass by. Briea told me to stay on I44 and follow some signs down to Subway on Peroria St. Well, the signs gave me the option "I44 Tulsa" and "I44 Joplin." On a split second decision I chose the Tulsa exit. Wrong. After some unplanned turns and confusing sinage I actually found myself looking into downtown Tulsa. The preconceived Subway location would have led me to avoid going into downtown, so this was all very bad. I took some random ass exit, which you should never do, and found myself in the shady neighborhood right next to the bigger buildings. Breia called me back after a few words with her mom and eventually pointed me in the right direction. It ended up that I was a block from where Breia originally left. So much for convenience.

So, finally I made it to Subway. Hooray! Now I can eat and finally see Breia. I forgot that she has to dress business casual for Tulsa People, so seeing her get out of the car in a black dress had me confused for about a half second. I was telling Breia about what I all I saw on my little detour and she mentioned that the bigger arena is where she and Kelsey will see Celine Dion. Sweet! Excellent looking structure. I'm sure that concert will change their lives.

After being flustered by Tulsa it was time to get back on the road. Breia went back to work while I traveled on I44 with Springfield, MO on my radar. Kelsey's directions to her house was like night and day compared to trying to navigate Tulsa with Breia's plan. Thank you Kelsey haha. I was looking forward to the fact that my trip was over at least for the next couple of days. What was on the agenda? The lake.

Kelsey's 80-lbs. lap dog was pretty cool. Carlye seemed a little bigger than I was thinking in my mind. I'd never seen her in real life until then, so I'm glad to see she is a real person and not just some girl in pictures haha. Kelsey's step dad Gary was really excited about his new pool. The pool has about a week more of work so he eloquently asked, "Mike, have you seen my hole in the backyard?" I remember thinking, "That's quite a hole you have" but I never said it out loud. I must say, the pool does look pretty good so far. He also has many other plans with the pool area which apparently Kelsey will be helping with at some point... much to her displeasure I'm sure.

Anyway, after picking up Kel's friend Brittney, we headed out to their lake. Table Rock Lake according to them has gone up 40-50ft. from normal since the flooding a couple of months ago. Politics have made releasing that added water a bit more difficult than what the property owners, including Kels' dad, hope for. The flooding prevents direct access to their lake property via road, so we have to go by boat. Easier said than done. Since it is mostly trees and whatnot right below most of the risen water, we couldn't take the boat straight. So Kelsey, her dad, step mom, Brittney and I, along with all of our stuff, loaded up on an inflatable boat effectively named "Fish Hunter."

The great Fish Hunter

Kelsey holds the outboard that propelled us at a blistering 3mph down the lake.

Kelsey and Brittney nervously look on as Dan, Kels' dad, mans the Fish Hunter's motor.

It was all too funny. I'm sure it would have been funnier to see five other people and stuff packed into such a small area and traveling so slowly.


For being so small and at some points mildly embarrassing, that thing was freakin cool. I kind of want my own actually. It’s not a bad way to get around some water.

We safely made it to their cabin with no time to spare. The sunlight was all but nonexistent when we got settled. Not a bad way to end the day. The Fish Hunter treated us well.

Saturday: Boat Times

I was greeted in the morning to the sweet sounds of thunder at 6am. I remember thinking it better not be raining by the time we have to go on the Fish Hunter to get to the other boat. Luckily we didn’t have to suffer that fate. The clouds moved on, and after a quick trip in the skiff, we made it out to the lake lake in Kels’ dad’s boat. Not a bad boat I must say. Granted, I’ve only really been in one other boat on a lake ever in my life. It’s kind of sad to say that when all of my company on the boat had practically been born on the water. Oh well, I’m a nube.

There’s not really much to report on the actual time we spent on the lake. Just a bunch of chillin and listening to half drunk older men talk about random things while sucking down Coors Lights on coozies. The three of us went tubing, which was pretty fun. I was the only one not thrown off. I was, to be honest, in the middle and had the best possible chance to stay on.

Men with beer. Their names escape me.

One of many lake front properties. The lake is littered with large and expensive ones like this.

One of many trees that now makes it's home in the middle of the water. Damn lake level.

Taking the D300 on the boat came in handy. Again, name escape me, but they are the daughters of one (or both, I don't know) of the beer guys. The ride was extremely bumpy for shooting, so it was actually a lot of fun to see what I could do with the conditions.

Brittney takes in some sun.

Kelsey contemplates peeing in the very cold water. This was the position she decided to take for about ten minutes.

Dan threatened to push her in if she didn't get a move on.

Kels didn't find that proposition all that funny.

Finally... relief.

We eventually made it back to the cabin and enjoyed some burgers from the grill. They bought 20 burgers and buns since we expected more people. Still, 20 would have been a bit ambitious with the original projection, but with just us five it was just funny to think about. We enjoyed the night’s feature presentation: Titanic on TBS. Brittney was probably one of only five or six people on earth that hadn’t seen Titanic, so that night was extra special. She was really good at predicting what happened (besides the obvious – the ship sinks and everyone dies). Throughout the movie we discussed things wrong with the plotline and production along with my occasional worthless factoid. I’m surprised I remembered as much as I did about Titanic the movie and factual event. Time to turn in for another day.

Sunday: Weightlifting and Part II of the Trip

While trying to find something to watch in the morning, we stumbled upon women’s weightlifting Olympic Trials. In the course of about hour, we learned and found an appreciation for the sport of women’s weightlifting. Let me tell ya, these women aren’t fuckin around. This was some serious weight with serious technique. I can say that we left looking forward to at least one more sport in the upcoming Olympics.

We loaded the Fish Hunter again, but now with our stuff. I wanted to leave the lake in time to make it to St. Louis before sundown. Kind of sad because I was having a lot of fun despite the Fish Hunter difficulties and soaking up more sun than I’m used to (I hate that fucking sun...). Oh well.

We got back into Springfield and I once again headed toward St. Louis. Maybe I’ll make it. The drive wasn’t too bad. One thing I noticed was the difference in landscape. Oklahoma is just soooo flat and actually driving up and down hills kind of took me by surprise. Some of the hills and rocks were more beautiful than I was used to seeing by the highway. I was beating storms the whole way, so the clouds also made it quite nice.

Those storms eventually caught up with me.

I pulled into the apartment complex with the help of LP’s dad’s awesome directions. It was easy as cake. I was a bit nervous to see what the place looked like, but after spending a few hours in it I can safely say that it is quite nice (especially for being absolutely free the entire summer).

Here is what you see as soon as you open the door.

From the kitchen.

From the middle of the living room. The ceiling is about 20 ft. high surprisingly.

Kitchen.

From the stairs looking at the kitchen. The door on the left is the bedroom and the one in the back is the bathroom. Funny, it opens to the kitchen so I really felt like it I could put something on the stove and watch it while I took a shit. Doubt that will happen for real, but it's nice to think that I have that option.

Bedroom. It's pretty spacious. What you don't see in frame is the vast closet space (to the right).

There are, however, a few things that are annoying about the area.

1. It rains like a bitch. I haven’t even been in town for two hours and I’ve already been hailed on.

2. The roads are IMPOSSIBLE to navigate in the rain. There are no streetlights and the lane marks aren’t reflective. Because of this, I ran a stop sign and found out that I was driving in two lanes for about five blocks only after passing a set of lights.

Anyway, all is well. I am typing this at the head of the dining room table, comfortably settled in the apartment. I shall make this my home until mid August. I have many things on my agenda for tomorrow.

That’s it for now. I have to cut it off at some point, or Kelsey won’t sleep tonight. Sorry Kels!

More to come tomorrow.

Last Day in Norman

I'm trying to tie up loose ends here. Of course, I have a page or two left to build as a freelance designer for HSC Sower and of course Maggie takes her sweet ass time getting to the office to tell me what to do. Oh well, I'm okay with that. Gives me time to write this, read everyone else's entries and eat a sandwich. I'm ready to work now, Maggie, get your ass in the office!

You will be glad to know that I am quietly observing the dynamic between people left in the office. I'll use code just in case they read all of our blogs but don't tell us (I'm sure they have no clue but using code names should be more fun). Dwight seems to tone down the weird-ass factor when he's talking to... hmm, what name should I use... ah, Rashita. As soon as Phyllis gets in, the office will be more awkward.

I'm really tired of being in the office without the usual suspects. The office in the summer already has an empty feeling regardless, but since I've been stuck here for the past few days without any real attachment to anyone present it has been doubly lame.

On another note, I really love reading everyone's blog. This project seems to be going really well. I have yet to make my trip to St. Louis and share my interning experiences but as soon as that ball gets rolling I'll be in business. Social networking is a really nice thing to use. I'm glad I'm growing up in the generation that I am. If not, I'd be writing eloquent letters to all of you. Now I don't have to ha!

Uhh... it's windy here in Norman. Oh! Someone - don't let me forget my allergy meds. If I go up to Missouri without them I'm not going to see anything because I'll be sneezing the whole time. 

Oh yeah, I saw Baby Mama last night. "BITCH, I DON'T KNOW YOUR LIFE."

First Impressions: Nikon D300 - Part 2

WARNING: NERD STUFF BELOW
I know that a vast majority of you won't care about anything I'm about to say. Bear with me, I don't get to share this stuff with a lot of people so it has to have some type of outlet.

So, last night's shooting alongside Adrian and Quach allowed me to notice a few more handling characteristics of the camera. First off, the camera is an all magnesium body, much like my old D200, but this body feels more solid. The body along with the battery pack feel like one piece of metal unlike my D200 which felt very much like two separate pieces of electronics screwed together at the bottom.


Here is the D300 magnesium body shell. Photo from dpreview.com.


The MB-D10 vertical grip battery pack. Photo from dpreview.com. This pack allows for three battery options: original battery taken by the camera (shown on the left), a battery used in either the D2X or D3 (shown on the right) or a pack with eight AA batteries.


The MB-D10 on the D300 body. This battery pack is an exceptional piece of equipment. It is miles ahead of the D200 battery pack. It is made of magnesium like the camera body, whereas the D200 battery pack is made of a very obvious and frumpy plastic. The MB-D10 is specifically shaped to fit one's hand perfectly. I really does feel like butter. I was extremely impressed with the vertical grip upon first handling and still am right now.

The battery pack also opens the D300 to an 8 frams per second burst.



With makes shooting sports or performances a little easier because I have that peace of mind that I can shoot a reliable burst without missing too much in between. This is not an excuse to be trigger happy, however.

New with the D300: Picture Control Functions

Picture Control is Nikon's new color formatting interface. Picture Control allows the user to customize their shooting parameters according to how the user would like to shoot the scene as far as color and contrast is concerned. It comes in five functions: Neutral, Standard, Vivid, Monochrome and Custom. The amazing part is that each can be fine tuned by the user to give more or less saturation or contrast according to how the user wants to set them.

Here is the Picture Control menu screen. Easy.

I am able to pick a picture setting and adjust further from there. For instance, here I picked Standard, but now I can adjust individual settings to better suit my needs. Push the arrow left or right on "Quick adjust" and I am able to set the camera to be more saturated or sharpen with three seconds of adjustment time.

Ability to customize gets crazy from here. In this screen, I am able to use a curve graph and set adjustments much like I would during post-editing in Photoshop. Damn!

What does that all mean while shooting? Well, here are a few examples...

I set up this bottle of Vault energy drink in the office and shot various pictures with the D300 set on the table and 50mm set at f/2.8. From here, I took a series of shots, each one adjusting the picture control to -3, 0 and +3 on Neutral, Standard and Vivid. Here, you are able to see just how much contrast and saturation the camera is able to do by itself:

I cropped the Neutral -3 imaged with the Vivid +3 image to show how much the green changed:

This is a crop of the same area of the bottle in each picture. Neutral -3 is on top while Vivid +3 is on bottom. Pretty big difference considering this is the same part of the bottle and the camera was not changed in any other way other than Picture Controls.

What Does This All Mean?
Since the D300 has a "My Menu" function in the menu, I can put whatever I want into one screen for me to adjust. So, for instance, if I am shooting a portrait or a scene with a lot of faces, I can very quickly adjust the camera from shotting really vivid colors to shooting more natural tones so as not to make everyone's face look orange (which I've done many times beings stuck in one picture mode). Now I can comfortably switch saturation and contrast settings without missing the action or effing up the shot, which means less editing on the back end which means faster work flow. I love that thought.

Live View

Live view allows me to view what the sensor sees from the back LCD, much like a point-and-shoot camera. This is new to modern DSLRs. The D300 has two modes of Live View - Hand held mode and tripod mode. For me, tripod mode is most interesting because I can auto focus while in Live View mode, something that Canons cannot do (usually to auto focus, the camera has to close the mirror, auto focus, then bring the mirror back up and open the shutter door to go back into Live View. With Nikon's tripod mode, there's none of that time-wasting stupidness).



Will I use this? Probably not on a regular basis. The cool thing about tripod mode Live View is that I can zoom in on the image and fine tune the focus manually. So, if I'm shooting macro and really need a spot-on focus to achieve what I want, I can do that by zooming to 100% and adjust accordingly instead of shooting a frame and looking at the image review.

Whew, that was a lot. More to come.

P.S. I sat in the office and wrote all this up because I am so bored. There is really no one here to hang out with and I finished all my work hours ago. Everyone is working their internships already and I still have about a week of waiting around. This week sucks.

First Impressions: Nikon D300 - Part 1

Warning

Most of this post has camera technobabble that may or may not make sense. I'm doing the best I can to explain what I am experiencing with my new camera and if there is anything that doesn't really make sense, let me know and I'll try to be more clear on later posts.

Arrival

After anticipating the arrival of my new D300 all weekend, it finally came in via UPS Ground on Monday. It was really like Christmas morning for me, but there was no one else around to really be excited with. My dad was in the back weed wacking and my mom was at work. Tough.

The D300 box. Woot!

The camera body, nicely packaged in clear plastic.

Oh Shoot! For $1700 it sure does look small in this photo, doesn't it? It's more of a handful than this makes it out to be.

After the initial shock, I settled down... literally. I'm so lazy, I didn't even attempt to go shoot with it since that day outdoor Lawton was about 98 degrees. Sorry camera, we'll have to wait. In the meantime, I watched four movies: For Love or Money (starring Michael J. Fox), The Queen, Everything is Illuminated (Warner Independent film, you should really check it out) and Awake (starring Hayden Christiansen and Jessica Alba... it sucked, don't watch it).

Tuesday I traveled back to Norman for some work-related activities. We got proofs back for Sooner and they ended up being more of a bitch than anyone anticipated. Too long of a story for this entry. Maybe some other time. Anyway, after my day of work I felt like I finally had time and energy to go out and shoot a little bit. Having it for a couple of days without doing anything legit with it made me feel a bit useless. Time to make up for that.

So, where can I go in Norman to see what this thing can do?... wasn't too sure, so I just went to the Duck Pond. Pretty generic - the usual foliage and wildlife shots, but it seemed like a good place to at least experiment with the acclaimed color saturation of the D300.

Colors

I read everything I could and looked at plenty of shots from other people's D300, but having one in your hand really makes a difference. Boy was I surprised. THE COLORS ON THE D300 ARE ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. This camera pops everything. I NEVER see colors like this until I bump the shit out of it on Photoshop. This is awesome.

All of the following photos are straight out of the camera.

The water tower on Lindsey St. The blue sky was not this blue with the naked eye. Nikon D300, 38mm, 1/2000 at F/4.2, ISO200, Picture Control VIVID +3.

Greens and blues are particularly striking. Nikon D300, 42mm, 1/400 at F/4.5, ISO200, Picture Control VIVID +3.

Contrast is well controlled alongside the amazing color saturation. Nikon D300, 200mm, 1/160 at F/5.6, ISO200, Picture Control VIVID +3.

The sun at low horizon made for amazing orange tint on the trees and leaves. At sunset is when the camera's colors really dance. Nikon D300, 18mm, 1/640 at F/3.5, ISO200, Picture Control VIVID +3.

ISO Noise

The D300 is said to have the best ISO performance of any prosumer DSLR. I can safely say that I agree with that statement. While out at the Duck Pond, I experimented at ISOs 200, 400, 1600, 3200 and H1.0 (equivalent to ISO6400). I was comfortable with the noise levels at 800 and 1600 but also really impressed at the noise levels at 3200. I didn't expect it to be as clear as it was. It helped that I was outside and shooting subjects with bright colors. I experimented with different conditions indoors and with people's faces later in the night and was less than impressed with the noise at 3200. Might just me being very picky.

Anyway, here is an example at ISO3200. Again, all photos are only cropped and are not level edited.

I know, this is a small photo, but can you see any visible annoying noise?

Take a closer look. here is a 100% crop

Amazing! I wouldn't dream of running a D200 photo at ISO3200. Colors still look good and the noise is very manageable. 

Needless to say, I have much more shooting to do with the D300 to really put it through it's ropes. This was only an hour's worth of shooting, so I have much more to show. Hopefully the next few days with prove as fruitful as my hour at the Duck Pond. 

You may have noticed I get a real kick out of the technobabble. Hopefully it made sense.

More to come. Thanks!