New stuff.

I'm gonna have a new lift soon! Ok, not THAT soon, and I've got to put up with quite some inconveniences as well.

Click on only if you have time to read my ramblings.

Been busy with my schedule of exams, school, tutorials as well as building up my new photo processor. I can now finally shoot and process NEFs in Capture NX! My old computer will just die when processing these 12mb files (which can expand to several times its size when opened due to all the caching involved using the notoriously inefficient software). Together with my new laptop bought from the uni fair, I bought a docking station and attached it up to the larger 20" screen. (sorry if u think i'm bragging a bit.) It's an LG L2000CP, using an IPS screen! In case you are wondering what's that, it's a technology used in LCD panels that has much better viewing angle and contrast compared to conventional screens. It can also display more colours (8bit compared to 6) The downside is its higher price tag, as well as slower response times.

Ok its not the largest screen, nor is it the best quality screen. In fact, it suffers from uneven backlighting which is noticable when u display a complete black screen in a pitch dark room. You will see that the edges are brighter than the center. (If you are looking for even more excuses to spend big money on a better monitor, try out this site.) The one BIG factor why I love this screen is its ability to tilt to portrait. I can have 1600 pixels of height for my pictures shot in portrait orientation, all that real estate dedicated to the picture itself, with the thumbnails, palettes all on my laptop screen. (dual monitor rocks!) And mind you, you'll need a 30" screen to have 1600 pixels height if you can't rotate, and a normal screen will suffer from horrible viewing angles when tilted vertically. Plus, its the cheapest available 8 bit panel.

Enough of the screen and back to the photos. When i first opened this file in capture, it literally jumped at me. Out of camera and unprocessed, the colour, contrast and sharpness were so real, so accurate. I was staring at my screen for a few minutes just "wowing". Of course this was partly because it was shot using a uber sharp tokina 11-16 stopped down to f8. But wow. I can literally "feel" all the texture on the netting, the steel chain... it is as 3D as a 2D image can get. Nothing beats Nikon's own software for opening NEFs for now.