Thursday, April 23, 2009

The Results Are In. The Nikon D90 Kicks Ass.

Here's the set of photos I've gotten so far with the new camera (all photos zoomable via clicking on them, or try this alternative view). The Tamron 17-50 2.8 lens was already darned good on the D40; on this camera, it is absolutely splendid.

When I used to (try to) play electric guitar, I soon noticed the difference between a solid state amp and a tube amp. The D40 is the camera equivalent of a solid state amp. The D90 is pure tube. The image sensor can capture so much more visual tonality without either blowing out the highlights or having the shadows buried in noise. The available contrast, colors, and sharpness (assuming you work in RAW) are astonishing. The resulting photos look like something you can swim in.

4 comments:

Warren said...

Matteo,

Totally off the subject, but here's another book recommendation for you: "Atheist Delusions" by David Bentley Hart. Magnificent - another mighty weapon in any Christian culture warrior's arsenal.

I must say, the "New Atheists" may be clowns, but they have caused a number of books to be written in rebuttal that range from good to brilliant, by people like Berlinski, Feser, D'Souza, and now Hart.

(BTW, I only recently discovered the "Beware the Believers" video on YouTube. I assume that you saw it long ago, but if you somehow missed it, it's required viewing - utterly hilarious!)

Matteo said...

Warren,

Thanks for the recommendation. I added Hart's book to my Amazon wish list about a week ago, and greatly look forward to ordering and reading it. I also recently reread Feser's book. Many parts are absolutely brilliant, but I wish he'd laid out the Aristotelian/Thomistic case in a bit more detail before launching into the final two chapters, in which he seems to be correct in his conclusions, but didn't exactly have me along for the ride since I wasn't completely up to speed, especially when it came to having a better intuitive grasp of final causes. It helped somewhat that I'm not completely unfamiliar with Aristotelian thinking because I took an upper division course in Aristotle when I was getting my engineering degree at Berkeley. That class was one thing that kept me from falling into too much New Atheist-style sophistry in my thinking from that point on. However, Feser didn't bring the whole thing back to life in my mind as much as he could have.

john said...

Back when I was taking photojournalism classes in college our teachers would always tell us that it's not about what camera you use, it's the user.

Warren said...

Well, sounds like you were better prepared than I was for Feser's book - I've never had a philosophy course in my life! (I just read a lot.) Possibly Feser's new book on Aquinas would help fill out his argument for you (I haven't read it).

Hart's new book is a bit dry in places, but its cumulative impact on me was immense. It might be the most profound meditation on how Christianity changed the West that I've read since "The Everlasting Man". (Not to compare the two books, which are totally unlike each other in many ways.) I would also recommend Hart's little book on theodicy, "The Doors of the Sea".