Lithiumstate

I am playing summer catch-up … so much had happened; yet I blogged so
little. But here’s an attempt at writing up a few high-lights starting off with
the Sail 2010 event!

On a casual Thursday afternoon I happened to have my camera with me at
the office .. it was beautifull weather, and SAIL 2010 was going down in
Amsterdam; nice opportunity to snap some pictures !
Since I was there relatively early (first day, 3 in the afternoon) there weren’t
many boats yet, but that also meant that there weren’t allot of people either.

Without further delay; onwards to the pictures!

It’s been a while since the last update ! Life’s been busy but i’m excited to tell you guys that I’ve finally broken the 6 month discussion I had with myself wether or not I should upgrade my camera to the full-frame sensor, low-light shooting Nikon D700; or go with the D300s; having a traditional sensor (and thus not as good in low-light) but bringing with it some nippy usability features including the ability to shoot HD video in sexy sharpness due to the lenses I have. It was a very hard choice as you can imagine; with the D300S having been favored quite a few times for it’s additional features and far cheaper price. Yet I knew that would limit my creativity in setting up shots; because I couldn’t really bring it past ISO1600 without making it seem like I was shooting a grainy snowstorm.
So yeah; mostly also being inspired by Alan’s urban photography as seen on www.shibuya246.com I made the decision to just bite the bullet (err.. pay the bill) for the D700 for it’s low light ability; and better ability to resolve the light from lenses on it’s full format sensor. Phew ! To go with the new camera, I deceided to also get the 28/2 AIS lens, which is the perfect wide-angle for shooting great urban scenery. Below is a picture of the new set; sorry for the crappy picture, I was a bit lazy. But you get the idea

Match made in heaven

Now let’s hope Nikon doesn’t announce that the long rumored successor to the D700 will cost as much as the current D700 but will have video added to it; i’d seriously get a migraine from that haha ! ”Where’s the pictures you took with this beast man ?” is what I can already hear you think. Sorry; the weather has been ridiculously  crappy the last few days; so aside from just tinkering with it indoors; I haven’t really gone out to take proper pictures with the new setup; tough it struck me as quite surprising that the built-in pop-up flash and the metering is really quite good ! For simple fill purposes I really don’t even need to grab my bulky (and awe inspiring) SB-900 speed flash.

I hope I’ll be able to take some pictures after work today, or tomorrow; providing it stops raining. Expect to see soem pictures taken with this heavy bad boy sooner than later !! But for now, despite being broke for the next 3 weeks I’m as happy as can be !

There’s alot of interesting stuff in the history of my country such as the 80 year war with Spain, mastering water to create new land and use it as a force of industry. These days you can still find alot of history in Zaandam a small city on the border of Amsterdam seperated only by a few bridges. Having “been there done” that extensivly in the past (and whilst showing friends from abroad) i haven’t really went to the old parts of Zaandam like the world famous “Zaanse schans” area to see the 200 year old windmills, which to this date are still producing  products like Mustard or Mayonaise.