Paolo Taverna’s Photography

Well who said you can’t have fun when its raining!

Ivo running with 2 umbrellas

Well, who said you can’t go to Las Vegas if you don’t gamble… My wife and I went to Las Vegas for 4 days and we spent not more than 2 hours gambling. If you want to see the rest of my photos taken in Las Vegas please go to Gallery

Image of the Grand Canyon West Rim

This is an interior photo of our Home. Note that it is composed with 3 different exposures

Black and White Home

This photo was post processed using Capture NX2 and Photoshop.

This is an orchid shot with a D700 and Nikkor 24-70 using only natural light.

Orchid shot with Natural Light

This photo was post processed using Capture NX2.

Black and white keyboard - Mac apple

This photo was taken using Natural light coming from the screen.

Well I just got my D700 and Nikkor AF-S 24-70 G lens.  This package also belongs to my long partner Gioele Agostinelli as we purchased it for business needs.  Well my first impressions are excellent.  I’m currently a Canon 40d owner with a couple of sigma lenses and one canon 50mm prime.  The jump to a full frame camera is awesome and naturally the first set of tests I ran revolved around low light capabilities of the D700.  Below are some shots showing the preliminary results as most of the below photos are shot hand held and at ISO 6400 (PS I have not added extra noise reduction in Aperture…this is straight from the camera).  I can say that the AUTO ISO Feature is one feature I will really be using a lot, the camera decides for you which ISO to set whenever you are in difficult situations without going lower a user set shutter value…this is true in all modes.  So as an example, I set the auto ISO to not go higher than ISO 6400 and not lower than shutter speed 1/50, If I shoot in manual mode and I set my shutter speed to 1/60 and aperture to f4, the d700 will juggle between iso 200 and iso 6400 in order to correctly expose the photo.  A little warning light will advise you when you ISO set value is in override.

What is fun is that I got used to the D700 ergonomics pretty quickly which shows the ease of the setup. My first wow (besides the High ISO) is the fact that the focusing system is way wow fast.  Also the focus is tack sharp…of approx. 350 shots I took in one night, I believe one or two is off.  There are some adjustments I still need to look at like the White Balance tuning as I find the auto white balance is some what not 100% accurate.  The auto exposure bracketing is amazing and I look forward to using it in order to achieve some amazing HDRs with more than 3 exposures (with the D700 you can shoot up to 9 at 1/3 increments).

The Nikkor AF-S 24-70 G lens is AMAZING and honestly it does what it needs to do with very little defects.  I believe the only negative side I see to this lens (and It’s not all that bad) is the fact that attached to a full frame there seems to be a little vignetting at wide open aperture…nothing you can’t remove in post processing.  The lens is very robust and construction seems very solid (Now this is something I don’t want to test!).  The lens is lightning fast for focusing and manual focusing is amazingly easy.  It is my first time I actually don’t mind manual focusing.  On all other lenses, I always seemed to struggle in order to manual focus but with this lens….it’s another world.

In my next Post I will also write about my new SB 900…at first glance this flash really takes flash photo to another dimension.

Old Port of Montreal Skating Rink

The tree lights

The street

Basilique Notre Dame Lights

Basilique Notre Dame

Lonely Seat

Lonely Bike

Place Jacques Cartier

Old Port of Montreal view from the train track

Montreal Old Port, streets view

White Christmas Tree

Montreal Old Port

Montreal Skyline