Shot number 12

[coastalconn]

So the D7100 arrived this morning. First things first, check the shutter count.... 104 Awesome. Camera is in perfect shape. This is the 3rd refurb I have purchased from Cameta. Anxiously changed some settings AE-L to AF-ON, Aperture mode, figured out how to do the crop thing and set the camera to AF-C. Took me a bit to figure out focus mode.. set it to 9 point dynamic and headed out the door. I only had about 45 minutes and I really wanted to test this sucker out. Took a few shots of leaves and boring things like that. Got to the best part of my trail and on cue this Kingfisher popped up and started flying. Focused acquired pretty quick. I'm thinking I need a bit of fine tune, but for not being familiar with the body I will take it...

Shot 12 on new D7100 Kingfisher by krisinct, on Flickr

made a quick stop at the beach to try a quick AF fine tune....

Seagull Testing D7100 by krisinct, on Flickr

First impressions... IQ is phenomenal. It has more headroom with dynamic range so I think it will blow out Ospreys head less. Much cleaner images at ISO 400.. Much more to come over the next week....

 

[cbarnard7]

Kris- #1 is great..you must either be constantly surrounded by shore birds, or your aim is awesome!

 

[SnappingShark]

Kris- #1 is great..you must either be constantly surrounded by shore birds, or your aim is awesome!

With a $4k lens, I'd hope he had good aim!!!

BTW love the shots!! I was in Old Saybrook a couple of weeks ago! Beautiful place!

 

[ronlane]

Nice

 

[coastalconn]

Thanks everyone!

Kris- #1 is great..you must either be constantly surrounded by shore birds, or your aim is awesome!

With a $4k lens, I'd hope he had good aim!!!

BTW love the shots!! I was in Old Saybrook a couple of weeks ago! Beautiful place!

Hey, I resent that. I'm a bargain shopper and got the non sport version for 2K

You should have hit me up we could have shot for a bit... next time..

 

[baturn]

Nice. Enjoy your new camera and keep on sharing.

 

[Derrel]

Ahhhh, good news!! Phenomenal image quality and more headroom on the RAWs sounds like a sweet combination. I'm happy for you man!

 

[matthewo]

yeah, I have a feeling your going to like this. not saying the d300 isn't good, but I think the newer Nikon sensors dynamic range, iso noise, and just overall image look is much better then the d300 era sensor.

its hard to explain I guess, I think more often the color and contrast that the newer sensors produce is better to the eye, then the older dx cameras like the d300 and the d90 etc. from the images I have seen and the use of camera bodies on my own it seems like the big changed happened around the release of the d7000. i don't really think the d3 / d3s / d700 really count in this, they have great color and contrast on their own, i think it was an early dx camera thing. then again this is just my observation. as well as now i feel DX has come so far in ISO performance with the d7100, i find little reason to have FX for my wildlife shooting, if i could grab a d7100, i would probably use it more then my d800, just because the pixel density is better. so in most of my wildlife images that do have to be cropped anyways the d7100 would be winning.

 

[coastalconn]

The only thing that bothers me so far is the absence of "focus and release" in the AF menu. It's one or the other. I just got some fine tuning done and shot my cat to see what I could do with higher ISO's. It's not the prettiest but I think I would go as high as 6400 if I really had to and no cropping was involved. I will really know about the performance more after sunday/monday. It does seem like a very responsive camera though which was one thing I was worried about. When I shot the D7000 last month it seemed to have more lag. It's just a very different feeling than the D300 which feels like it was surgically implanted in my hand over the past 16 months. I could shoot and adjust without thinking. I'm sure I'll get used it, but it adds an extra step in changing a few things like metering and AF mode...