First up, this young pit bull who is a bit chunky but loves to play.

I had to visit the puppies again, they are great dogs and won’t last long.  Previous photos of these little guys are here.

A playful and very cute Pomeranian.

Call of the wild

And a German Shepherd who was more interested in napping in the grass than having her photo taken.

Don’t bug me, I’m crabby

Best buds, Gus and Ollie, hyacinth macaws

The races are held in False Creek with downtown Vancouver as the backdrop.  Hard to find a nicer venue than this.

The staging area is right beside Science World.

Some shots of the action.

Organized chaos.

This is one of my dogs, Jammie.  She is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, small but thinks she is a big dog.

You see some interesting critters when you start getting close

I have also been playing around with black and white images more and more.  The D800 captures so much detail and has so much dynamic range you can really get great effects with b&w.

This was a bit random, looks like someone brought it to the beach and stuck it in the sand.  I didn’t see these growing anywhere.

The horror! Actually they are rather cute, as long as they don’t decide to set up shop in my back yard.

And the fern somewhat reminds me of the furry caterpillars.

The three puppies on this page are very cute and friendly, they all tried to crawl into my lap as I was taking photos.  They have the most amazing crystal blue eyes I have ever seen!  But first, this young German Shepherd.  Playful and energetic, loves to play fetch.

Now the puppies!

 
For anyone curious, this was the fist time I shot dogs at the shelter with my Nikon D800. I used the Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8 lens but I think next time I’ll try a 50mm f/1.8 prime. Overall, I have some learning to do with the focus system of the D800 but it is producing great images.

I’m assuming this is not a common sight, otherwise I would have seen it myself before (we have a lot of plants) or I would have seen it somewhere online. Regardless, I had to capture it on video so others would not think I’m crazy

Shot with the Nikon D800, 1080p, 105mm f/2.8 VR lens.  View the HD video on Youtube.

First, a shot with the iphone unadjusted for white balance showing the D90 LCD screen (left) and the D800. Both in live view mode, not displaying a captured frame. They look different but I’m not really sure if the D90 is cooler than expected or the D800 is warmer.

Next, I used the custom WB adjustment in Lightroom 4 and selected the white of the paper as the target neutral.

Finally, a shot taken with the D90 showing the paper and LCD screen of the D800. White balance adjusted in Lightroom using the paper as target neutral.

To my eyes, there doesn’t seem to be an objectionable colour cast to the D800 LCD. I’m not sure if this is common to all D800 models or only some (early run?). I could do more testing, but not sure how or what else to look at. If anyone has suggestions, please let me know.

Details:
Nikon D800
Micro Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 VR
Aperture: f/4
Shutter: 1/80″
ISO 3200
High ISO noise reduction: normal

Processed from 14-bit lossless compressed raw in Lightroom 4, than ran through Noiseware to clean it up a bit. Overall, very happy with the image, completely usable shot of my dog, Jammie. The room was quite dark, Lightroom brought back the shadows and exposure, there is lots of dynamic range available to play with. (Click for bigger version).

I want to mention that I’m not that happy with the grip of the D800. I have big hands, XL gloves, and it seems small to me. I may just need to get used to it, but it is smaller than I expected.  It’s not comfortable in the hands, especially with a bigger lens on the body.  I may have to buy the grip, which is not something I wanted as I like the size of the body as it is.   I’m going to shoot it without the grip for a while, see if I get used to it.

Some people have posted on various forums that their D800 came with a few hundred shutter actuations.  I checked the shutter count on my first frame, it was showing “2″. Maybe they do a test shot at the factory?

This is the first frame from my camera.  I didn’t set all of the settings I should have, but it is what it is.  Shot using the Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8, auto ISO, aperture priority mode.  Processed from 14-bit lossless compressed raw in lightroom. Not the best, but I’m happy with things so far.  My dog Cedric, who is always an unwilling participant since there are more interesting things to do at the beach than sit around.  And yes, I can see my reflection in his eye.

Any my second shot, same settings.  This time of my dog Jammie.

Flower shots below are shot on a sturdy tripod, Nikkor 105 f/2.8 VR, 2 second timer, 3 second exposure delay, live view focus. Processed from 14-bit lossless compressed raw in lightroom.  Better, happy with the first samples as I know they will get better from here.

The full resolution jpeg (18MB) can be seen here.  The detail captured by the camera is amazing.

The beach wasn’t particularly interesting, so as the sun was going down I decided to try out the variable ND filter I purchased.  First time I have ever used an ND filters, but it was a day of firsts so why not.  Here are a couple of shots, looks like it could be fun and the effect can’t be duplicated any other way.

And here is Andrew setting up for a sunset shot.

The sun finally set so we found a spot where we could see the runway and decided to shoot planes on the way in and out of the airport.  There were not a lot of flights and we couldn’t get a decent photo.  Out of the photos I took, this was the best one and it is average at best.

We quickly got bored, and decided to try some light painting.  Started with waving the flashlights around.

Then we noticed the back hoe, so we decided to try some light painting on that.  The idea was to trace the bucket and tracks with brighter light and fill in the rest.  For a first attempt, somewhat successful.

And better after we stumbled on some better camera settings.

Found a bulldozer nearby as well.

And finally my truck before we wrapped up for the night.

Finally, I asked Andrew to paint on some horns, he must of thought I said “propeller”.  They sound so similar I can see where he got mixed up.

So I had to try it myself