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Nikon and Roberts present a Special P7000 Photo Walk Bonanza


 

Nick and myself are pleased to be working with Nikon to offer you all a chance to come to a very exciting photo walk special. Nikon is going to come out and bring up to 25 of their top-of-the-line pro Coolpix P7000 compact cameras for people to borrow and use for a couple hours. There’ll be a short presentation at the beginning from their tech rep, a cool guy named Jason, to get you familiar with what the cameras are capable of, and then you’ll be free to grab one and roam around shooting whatever you care to for a couple hours. And then, oh yes, and then we’re going to have a photo contest for people who attended to submit to, and the winner will get a $100 gift card to their favorite camera store (no, us, sillies). All attendees will also get a special coupon from Nikon for $25 off a P7000, in case they decide they’d like to add one to their own collection.

This’ll make the second photo walk Nikon has made it out for, and the last one was a blast. I expect this one will also be great. Plus, come on, chance to win a gift card and play with someone else’s toys. You know you want to.

The details are:

Wednesday June 29th, 2011

6pm – ?

Holliday Park (6363 Spring Mill Road, Indianapolis, IN 46260)

As always, no cost to attend. We might have to reserve slots, though, because of the limit on cameras, so, RSVP to us in the comments, on the FB, on Twitter (@robertscamera) or email me at dmartin@robertsima[email protected] Let us know you want in.

And, be sure to thank Nikon for generously making this event possible.



Nikon AF-S Nikkor 50mm f1.8G Now In Stock

If you’ve been saving up your moneys and patiently waiting for Nikon’s new, pocket-book friendly nifty fifty, the AF-S Nikkor 50mm f1.8G… well, you’re in luck. It’s in stock now. And, I think that’s all that needs to be said. What? Post a bit short? OK, fine. But I tried to end it with civility, remember that.

Ahem.

Saved my pennies and I saved my dimes

For I knew there would be a time

When I would buy a brand new fifty-prime.

Thank you everybody, and good-night!



Nikon Comes Clean With New 50mm f1.8G

So, Nikon’s finally gone real with its new AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G lens. But that’s not the impressive bit, no sir. What impresses me is they managed to eke out four paragraphs of press release about this refresh to a very established lens type. Notably, in this case, the biggest thing to see is the “AF-S” sitting out front of the name that indicates that this lens has it’s own internal silent-wave focus motor, which’ll let it work with their entry level bodies like the new D5100, and the D3100. Really, though, you should be switching to AF-S even for bodies that can use the old system, because AF-S is much quieter and faster anyway. Also, the lack of a “DX” in the name indicates this’ll work on all Nikon bodies, both crop and full-frame.

There’s a press release and MTF chart after the jump. And, in keeping with the general affordability of nifty fifties, the MSRP on this is $219.95. Which is cheap. Like the budgie.

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Nikon D7000 Gets Second Firmware Update

Judging by the sales figures here, there’re quite a few more of you out there with D7000s than there were the last time we announced a firmware for it. So, the now larger number of you are in luck, there’s a shiny new update for you fixing a whole slew of niggles. Via Nikon:

  • Noise reduction processing is now performed with shutter speeds slower than 1 s (previously 8 s) when On is selected for Long Exp. NRin order to reduce the bright spots that occur with shooting of still images at slow shutter speeds.
  • An issue that prevented the opening of movies recorded with the D7000 in certain movie editing software applications has been resolved.
  • When the camera was connected to a television via the A/V cable and a movie was played back, playback was normal the first time but when the movie was played two or more times, the sound was played back at extremely low volume and seemed to play intermittently.  This issue has been resolved.
  • When white balance for RAW images created using the camera’s image overlay function was fine tuned with Capture NX 2 or ViewNX 2, the images acquired a magenta cast.  This issue has been resolved.
  • An issue that caused 0.00” to be displayed for heading information when the GP-1 GPS unit was connected to the camera has been resolved so that —.– is now displayed.
  • When Viewfinder virtual horizon was the role assigned to the Fn button or the preview button and the applicable button was pressed, errors in the virtual horizon indicator were displayed.  This issue has been resolved.
  • The following errors in Help displays have been resolved.
    • “Maximum sensitivity” help was displayed for shooting menu>ISO sensitivity settings>On or Off help.
    • German help displayed “Select focus priority for AF-S mode.” for Custom Settings>a1: AF-C priority selection help

Sound groovy to you? Good, hit the external link to nab it for yourself.

 



Nikon Upgrades D5000, Logically Calls It D5100

So, just because the D3000 got updated waaaaaaay back in August, we’re not going to say the D5100 has been due for a little while now. No sir. We’re above that here at Roberts. But, the high-end entry level D5000 has now officially seen an update, called, yes, the D5100.

So, what’s on offer here? Well, the megapixels are from 12.3 to 16.2, for starters. which puts another Nikon camera playing around up there at that resolution, a move they’ve been slow to make. And to go with it, the native ISO range is now 100-6,400, a 2-stop increase (one up, one down). Push ISO will carry you all the way out to 25,600, a number so big I have to double-check it every time I use it. All of which is probably due to the Expeed 2 processor, instead of the older Expeed of the D5000.

The video mode is now up to full 1080 HD finally, and it’ll be a bit better (I feel) for being pumped through a proper, side-swinging tilt-swivel LCD (instead of the D5000′s oft-criticized bottom hinged one.) The resolution on the LCD is up to 921,000 dots, which should pretty much guarantee that your pictures never look as good on your monitor as they did on the camera. Oh, and they added contrast-detect AF in live view mode. Nifty.

Otherwise, 11 points of autofocus, 4 frames per second, a 3-shot HDR mode, and a foray into Olympus’ world with a new “Effects” position on the mode dial, for such fun options as selective color, color sketch, miniature, and night vision. I hear these work in both still and video, for all your artistic vision needs. For you shooters without a bag full of AF-S lenses, the body still doesn’t have an internal focus motor, so your older glass will work, but focusing will be the old-fashioned way (with your hand).

It’ll be available body only ($799), or as a kit with 18-55mm ($899). Press release and images after the jump.

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Nikon Coolpix L24 Doesn’t Break Any New Ground, No One Asked It To Anyway

This is Nikon’s other new L camera for the year. If it looks a lot like last year’s revamp, well, we’d have to agree with you. The L series compacts are getting pretty stalwart, and there’s not really much you could for change-wise at their price point anyway. The newest refresh has 14 megapixels, a 3.6x optical zoom, and a 3″ LCD with lower resolution than the others so far. It also lacks HD video, but will happily record you some at VGA resolution. It’ll come in red, black, and silver, and run a mere $120 when it trots onto shelves.



Nikon Coolpix L120 Has More Megapixels, Less Zoom Than Bigger Brother

Behold, the other bridge-style shooter in Nikon’s 2011 stable, this time from the “L is for Lifestyle” collection, meaning more budget-conscious than its “P is for Performance” brother. The Coolpix L120 has a few more pixels on it’s bigger brother, reaching up to 14 million of them, but it sticks it behind a more pedestrian 21x optical zoom covering 25-525mm equivalent. At least it’s still VR, though, and you’ll still find a 3″ 921,000 dot LCD on the backside, although this one’s fixed in place. IIt has no mode dial, scene and auto modes only, will do 720 video, and runs on AAs for power. In exchange for all those changes, it comes with a much soft $280 price tag. When it comes out, that is.



36x Optical Zoom? Nikon’s Coolpix P500 Can Do That.

What has a 12.1 mp back-illuminated sensor, dual C2 processors, and a VR lens covering an equivalent ranger of 22.5 – 810mm? Why, Nikon’s beastly little P500, that’s what! Adding one more model to what was once a much bigger market, the Coolpix P500 is one of the company’s two bridge-style superzoom for the model year, featuring DSLR-eque design cues but a big old fixed zoom lens on front for all your wildlife, vacation,and voyeuristic needs. A physical mode dial lets you choose between auto, scenes, and the usual PASM. As with the P300, though, you don’t need no stinking RAW, JPEG for life, buddy. There’s a 3″ tilty 921,000 dot LCD around back, and an EVF you can peep through for better stability or to escape bright sunlight washing out your view of your composition. Being electronic, you’ll get the usual concerns about refresh rates, but you won’t have to worry about parallax errors or zoom or framing, so, I’m generally all in favor of EVFs on a compact.

As if you could trot a camera out on this end of the scale without it, there’s 1080 HD video with optical zoom, as you’d well expect. Also as you’d expect, it records to SD/SDHC/SDXC. What you might not expect is that it will be available in black….and red! Also, it’ll be right at $400 when it ships, and images and press release are below. As you’d expect.

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Nikon’s P300 Joins the Fast Squad

Not wanting to be left out of the growing f/1.8 club, Nikon last night announced its new Coolpix P300 compact, whose most obvious selling feature is a 4.xx (24-100mm equiv) lens starting at a fast f/1.8 aperture. Sure, it creeps to a maximum aperture of f/4.9 on the tele end, but considering some point and shoots start about there at their fastest, we’ll go ahead and say that’s pretty all right. A (comparatively) large 1/2.3″ back-illuminated sensor with 12.2 megapixels sits behind that, and it’s all wrapped in that boxy bit of black beauty.  A 3″ 920,000 dot LCD around back shows you what’s what, and it’s got a built-in pop-up flash, 1080 HD video, and manual controls, but, we don’t see any RAW, so, a ding there. It does take SD/SDHC/SDXC, in case you were running low on alphabet soup this morning.

When it starts shipping, it’ll set you back about $330. More images and a press release after ze jump.

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Nikon Patents DSLR/Projector Combo in Japan

So, you know what’s cooler than a point-and-shoot with an integral projector. A DSLR with an integral projector. And apparently, Nikon agrees, since it’s filed a patent for exactly that. Now, we want to say that again, a patent for it. That doesn’t mean that this is coming anytime soon, or that we’ll ever see it. If we had a cookie for every awesome patent we’ve seen Canon file but not use so far, well, we could give a certain popular kid’s show icon a glimpse of nirvana.

That said, the idea looks cool, and if we’re reading that little schematic there right, it looks like the projector would bounce the image from up inside the prism back out through the lens. That sounds awesome.

Anyway, you can read the whole thing online if you jump through some crazy hoops, but we’ll let the post over at Engadget explain how to do that, since we learned it from them.




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