Computer Software, Computers, Uncategorized

Windows OS vs MAC OS – July 2017

July 4, 2017 rfcn2 Leave a comment

I have been using Microsoft operating systems since DOS. I’ve used every one of Microsoft’s OS’s except Windows 8. This morning I read a tech news piece saying Windows is 90% of the current laptop market. After owning a MacBook Pro for a little over 4 years you have to just roll your eyes at this statistic. Yes there are some things about Windows that are better than MacOS, but the Mac is so much more reliable than any of our Windows computers. And this includes the fact that I am part of the Mac Beta software program. I am now running Mac OS 11 beta. Apple’s beta is far more reliable than regular non beta Windows.

As I’m writing this blog post I am also looking at our newest Windows laptop that was bought earlier this year for my wife. It is updating. It has been updating since yesterday morning. Maybe it will finish updating by the end of the week. I am very computer literate and do things like have the automatic-update setting on. I thought when I first installed Windows 10 a little over a year ago that Redmond had cleaned up their act. I put Windows 10 on two of my few-year-old high-end Windows 7 laptops and they were way improved. They booted up faster and everything on them ran better. Then I started thinking, “wow, MS is going to be as good as Mac”, wrong. Now a year later we are back to the old “update hell” that was the Microsoft of old. I take back all the good things said a year ago about Windows 10 OS being a great system. It is not if you use it like a Mac.

About that percentage of users that Microsoft has with PC’s. 90%. The misleading part of that statistic is it does not take into account the use of IOS and Android (including Chrome OS). Apple is doing an end run on MicroSoft with IOS. When IOS 11 is standard this fall it will turn an iPad into a laptop computer and then some. It will still not be as full featured as Mac OS, but from what I have seen of the previews it looks like it is going to work for most people as a laptop or regular computer. And then there is the Google system of putting everything on line in Google Docs and other on line services. If you compare the use of computer “systems” adding mobile phones and tablets the likely Microsoft percentage is much lower than 90%. I would speculate that it is more like under 50%. Most likely way under.

google

Google’s system online is very well sorted out. I have used Gmail for years and I am very happy with it. Google docs works just fine and I never spend any time updating it. I will say I am not happy with Google getting rid of Picasa and Motorola, both of which I used. But overall Google does a very good job just like Apple. Microsoft has been trying to use one system for computers, tablets, and smartphones. That only works if your one system is near perfect. In my opinion MS has a ways to go. So does Apple with Mac OS. But on the other hand with Apple you have more than one system and I can tell you that IOS is very easy to keep updated. And Mac OS is far more perfected than Windows.

Many of the applications that run on Windows work well. This includes Word, Excel, and the newest Photos app. In addition, one drive works for me without issues. But by sticking with the same basic cranky old general operating system MS has had for years it in turn makes me cranky. Microsoft needs to get better.

My laptop is still updating BTW.

Photography, Uncategorized

Film vs Digital Photos – May 2017

May 19, 2017 rfcn2 Leave a comment

About five years ago I started shooting film again after going with digital only for about 7-8 years. Now in May 2017 it seems like film is back in a big way. I have been writing this blog and one other with most of the posts being about photography. My most popular posts are when I write about film and film cameras. Recently I saw a post that was in Photoblographer on 5 great but unknown film cameras. The Minolta 600si was in the five. Within a few days I had a bunch of hits on most two 600si posts. Same with my post on Kodak Gold 200. Few have written about these items and all of a sudden my posts on them have been looked up and read.

76890003 — Shot with Minolta 600si with 50mm f2.8 macro Quantaray lens and Kodak Portra 160

For me personally I have settled into using both digital and film. I have a number of both types of cameras and just pick what I think will give the best images. The exception to this rule is that I carry an iPhone 7+ with me constantly and take a lot of images with it. My most recent camera purchase is a Sony pocket camera. It is a DSC HX80. This is a very new model of super zoom. I have had several Sony pocket cameras over the last 15 years and this one takes the best pictures of any I have had. This is not the highly rated $1,000 one, but looks very similar. I got it as I was trying to find something a bit better than the iPhone 7+ that had a long lens on it. I like shooting wildlife and volunteer at the San Diego Zoo so there are times when a long optical lens is helpful. I have to say the little Sony is a very good camera when you consider what it cost. It even has an electronic viewfinder (the same one as the $1,000 Sony) that is absolutely essential in bright sun. I recently took it with me to Arizona and the camera is a very good bridge between a large SLR or DSLR and a cell phone camera.

AZ trip with Cathy & Jeff-53 — Sony DSC HX80 at about 500mm a little tweaking in Lrightroom

On this trip I took my iPhone, the DSC HX80, and my Nikon D5500. So no film cameras. Why, I knew I would be bouncing around between outdoor and indoor, plus back and forth between landscape and people. We did not plan to go to any epic landscape places like the Grand Canyon or Bryce. So I spent several days trying to decide on what gear to take and just left the film at home. I really wanted to take my old Voightlander, but it is just more limited than some of the newer cameras. I got some very good shots with the gear I took.

The cactus is with the Sony, Casa Grande Nikon, and Route 66 with the iPhone. All three were easy to edit and organize with Lightroom and Apple Photos. I pretty much edited the pictures when sitting in the hotel and they organized easily as dates and times were already embedded in them.

Would the images have been better with film? Maybe. I would have needed two bodies for both 100 speed and 400 speed. The 100 would have been Ektar or Velvia, and the 400 Kodak Ultramax or Fuji Superia. I picked these films as I just have not been happy with my landscape shots using Portra 160 or 400. I just don’t like the desert look I get from this film. My two Minolta 600si bodies are just as easy to use as the digitals so I would have taken them. I would have used my two primes a 50mm and 24mm both with macro. The long shots could have been with the 70-205 Minolta zoom I have. Absolutely the 50mm macro is better at close ups than any of the digital cameras I have. The new Sony super zoom really has a long reach. So a couple of the animal shots might not have been as close up.

The added reason I picked the digitals is that I am trying to get certain looks with them in camera and post with Lightroom. I wanted to experiment some more to get the results I was looking for.

These shots of Casa Grande in Arizona I was trying to get the “Kodachrome” look. To me this photo (from the iPhone no less) pretty much nails that. And I could have made the same result with Velvia or Ektar in one of my film cameras. In this case though it is a bit of a pano that is easy with the iPhone 7.

The above is with my D5500 and I get the same “Kodachrome” look. I just used the P setting and landscape mode. I had saturation turned up +2 on the landscape mode. Then in Lightroom I just added a small amount of additional color in the sky with the dehaze slider. And I turned up the shadows a bit.

In summation I would have to say that I have settled into working with both film and digital for stills. There are some things I like about each process. As far as gear goes, I like some of my vintage film gear. Looking at and holding cameras mostly made out of metal and not plastic is a pleasure. And having full frame film cameras that are not heavy and relatively small is also a pleasure. I would like to move up to a digital full frame sometime in the near future, but nobody has made the camera I want yet. The closest is the Nikon 750, but I don’t like the fact that the camera and lens is so large. And the Sony stuff is just too pricy for what you get. Plus the lens cost and short battery life are additional problems. I would really like to get up to the 30 meg area of file size too. At this point the 750 is the same detail as my existing D5500.

Film Video vs Digital Video

While it seems I can get very good results with digital cameras I have to say I am glad that using film in movies is popular again. I hate digital video on TV that has not been processed to look like film. Netflix does that on their in house movies and they look terrible. I can usually spot movies made with film or TV shows. For instance HBO’s Westworld. The cinematography was so gorgeous I figured it was film. And it is.

Thats it for now. I am going to try to get out this weekend and shoot some film. I have some partially used rolls and I want to finish them and send them off to get them developed.

Photography, Uncategorized

iPhone 7 Plus Camera Plagued By Poor Connectivity Choices

March 9, 2017 rfcn2 Leave a comment

As I wrote two posts ago, I think the iPhone 7 plus has a brilliant camera for a cell phone. I have taken many very good still and videos with it. But even though you can capture very good shots and video it is a general pain in the ass to put them in an organized file system. When you turn on the Apple auto upload (which you really have to do to get the camera to work well) it sends photos to your other IOS devices and your iCloud photos automatically if you are connected to wifi. If you are traveling and only have access to mobile data, too bad. Apple waits till you connect to wifi.

But lets say you do connect your phone to wifi and the pictures auto go to the Apple pictures app in iCloud. If you only want to use the Apple photo app to adjust pictures than you are set. That is unless you want to have a regular file system like almost every good photographer does. Then you have to export from the Apple app to your file system. Or you can use the hard to find “Apple image capture app” and download by wire to your computer. Apple’s photo app stores copies of your photos in places it is almost impossible to find. And all of this works best if you have a Mac. If you have a Windows computer, well then you have to wait for your photos to go to iCloud and then you can download them to your computer. If you are not on wifi then you won’t be doing this until you are. Supposedly there is a way to download photos from your iPhone to a Windows computer. There used to be as I did it. But sometime in the recent past that ability was deleted.

Or lets say you want to take a raw photo. Well you have to use Lightroom or some other app that has raw ability. To do this though you need Lightroom mobile. And to get the Lightroom mobile camera pictures to your computer or say an iPad you have to use a wireless connection. I have found no way to take Lightroom photos off an iPhone with a wire. It is true you can move the Lightroom photo to the camera roll and then use Apple image capture to remove photos by wire. But your raw pictures are converted to jpeg when you do that. And lets say you want to move your camera roll photos to Lightroom mobile on your phone to edit or download pictures wirelessly when you don’t have wifi, well then you will end up with a giant Lightroom mobile file on your computer. Mine got to 16 gigs before I shut it down.

Confused yet? So while the iPhone 7 plus has a brilliant camera it is hard to live with in practice if you want to carefully file your pictures and videos, or edit them with Lightroom. This problem could easily be solved by Apple if they made their phones like most Android phones where you just plugged them into your computer and moved the pictures off. Easy peasy. But I think Apple is too busy designing the next iPhone to make these kinds of changes that people like me want. So once more, I do love the Apple iPhone 7 plus camera, but do not like (hate) the complex “Kafka-like” crap you have to go through to get the files off.

A few days ago I bought a Sony compact camera DSC-HX80, for the sole purpose of not having to putz with this issue. So far my $400 Sony takes pictures that are a bit better than what you can get from the iPhone. It has a zoom lens that goes from 24mm – 720mm. It is astonishing how good the pictures come out using 720mm. It has a lot of the same adjustments my Nikon DSLR has, meaning, it is much more adjustable than the standard Apple camera app. And it even has a viewfinder. Taking photos off the Sony is exactly like what you do on my Nikon DSLR, meaning very easy, and it fits with my file system. I do not intend to not use the camera in the iPhone, but I do intend to use it a lot less.

Below are a few test shots from the Sony. BTW the Sony has really good color rendition.

The shot below is my first telephoto test shot. This is amazingly good for how far away these kids were. It froze the action and this was hand held! You could never ever get a shot this good out of the iPhone 7 plus.

General, Photography, Uncategorized

The Analog Counter Revolution Continues

February 21, 2017 rfcn2 Leave a comment

Digital information technology has changed the World in the last 50 years. Much of this change is beneficial and here to stay. I have embraced advances in digital for decades, but now when almost everyone predicted that photography, movies, music, newspapers, magazines, and books and much more would go digital there is an analog counter revolution happening as you read this post.

This week I realized that the analog counter revolution is here to stay and going to get bigger. I got fed up with trying to read the news on digital and started getting the newspaper delivered again every day. This is after a two year break of getting almost all of my news via TV & Internet. I live in a big city and we have a good local paper. When I stopped getting the paper newspaper two years ago I kept getting their digital version. I finally realized that it is just not as enjoyable to get your news digitally compared to print. Why, because it is organized, you don’t have a light box staring you in the face, and you just pick it up and read it without worrying about charging the batteries, anywhere. Plus source shopping from 100,000 outlets is just a brain pain and your head spins after 12 youtube videos of people shouting at each other or complaining about Trump or Clinton or immigrants or 50 other current topics.

newspaper

The fact is that unless you are the President you don’t need to know about every news story in the World. You only need to know about the news that affects you. If there is some time left over you can look at some special interest news items. That said digital news is very good for looking up special interest pieces or specialty news like dog news, or audio news, or news on the planet Pluto. So for me the best thing is to mix analog and digital. Does this mean that newspapers will get as big again and as powerful as 50 years ago, no. But it likely means that a lot more people than I are not happy with digital only.

Lately I have started buying records again, vinyl records. I bought a new phono cartridge and bought several LP’s from eBay. As in getting the news, digital music is great, but I missed the other benefits of buying analog records. Some of those benefits are, an album that is organized by someone other than me, usually beautiful covers, lots of times words to the songs on the inside envelope, I own it no monthly fees, oh and it sounds better. If you have a good turntable and cartridge a vinyl record has more information in it than either on line or CD’s. It helps to have good speakers too. In speakers size matters. Bigger ones are usually better. Sure you have to clean the records and be careful with them, but many of my 40+ year old records sound better than CD’s of the same music or high quality on line. For me, and I have older ears, it is very easy to tell the difference between vinyl, CD, and on line music. The difference is hard to describe but easy to hear. I am not alone in this opinion as vinyl record sales last year I believe totaled to more money than downloads.

I have no intention of only listening to vinyl. I like digital music if the quality is good and I don’t have to be bombarded with ads. I have an Apple Music and Pandora subscription to listen to ad free music at home or in the car. But when I want to sit down and enjoy some music I think I am going to mostly go vinyl.

I have never switched to reading books on digital except for things like wikipedia. If I want to read something I just buy it. When I finish I sell it on Amazon.

I have written a number of blog posts about analog vs digital photography. To me these are two different art forms. Of course they are close substitutes for each other so they get compared a lot. But when you shoot film the structure of the image is just not the same as a digital image. You can clearly see this if you enlarge the photos enough. And of course with film you have to scan the image if you don’t print it. That means you are once removed from the initial image and the result is it just looks different. Most images in my opinion look better from film than digital. However, photos of children, pets, friends, and action are just so much easier to do with digital that most people should stick with that method. But for pictures of things and in many instances people (street photography) just comes out way better using film. Kodak, Fuji, and other film makers have spent a lot of time getting the result to come out well. Again last year my best photos mostly came from film shots. And I took way more pictures digital than film. On the other hand I have never taken super 8 movies, which are coming back. I shoot most of my video on either my smart phone or DSLR. I am not going to change that.

On the other hand I find movies shot with film and not digital to be much more pleasing to view. I can easily tell the difference and I would expect that the movie business is going to go back to more film and less digital. There are ways using software to make digital look more like film. In some cases when this is not done I find the resulting product almost unwatchable. Netflix original movies being a case in point.

The other really strong advantage of personal film photos is that there is so much really good gear still at great prices. Good digital lenses for a DSLR can run over $1,000. Many good lenses for film cameras can be bought for under $100. I have both, and you cannot tell the difference most of the time. Camera bodies for digital can easily run over $100. Very good SLR camera bodies cost less than $100. Improving your skills with new digital gear is very expensive when you start buying news lenses and bodies. If you buy right older lenses can work on newer digital bodies.

So to sum up, the digital counter revolution is upon us and I suspect this will continue as people realize that not everything new is better than everything old.

iPhone Photography, Photography, Uncategorized

iPhone 7 Plus Camera Review

February 12, 2017 rfcn2 Leave a comment

I got my Apple iPhone 7 plus about 3 weeks after they came out. It was a replacement for my iPhone 6S that I had for just under a year. The camera for the 7 plus is a system unlike any I have used before. If combines two separate cameras, one a wide angle with about a 28 mm equivalent lens with f1.8, and a second camera with about a 56mm equivalent lens with f2.8. And these two cameras are tied together with very sophisticated Apple software in the phone to give you many extra capabilities. In addition, the phone camera is designed to work well with Apple’s own “Photos” app on the phone, iPad, Mac or other Apple device.

This camera system using the standard (And very good) Apple camera app takes still pictures in wide or square format. Plus it takes video in up to 4K. In addition, to those usual modes the 7 Plus also can take Apple “live” photos, time lapse, slo mo, and excellent pano shots. And, “portrait” photos which have software that adds bokeh when used properly.

Taken with the iPhone 7+ and edited with Lightroom

The Apple iPhone 7+ system for zoom is brilliant. It is a different level of performance from any other smartphone camera I have used and is likely far better than any other smartphone camera currently sold. I am fully away that lots of you tubes and other ratings people, and camera magazines test this system and say that several other smartphones are better, but in my opinion that is in the lab and not the field. My ratings system is based on the images or video I get and not lab test. If you actually want to get great work out of your smartphone this is the one to get.

I started to realize how amazing this camera system was the first few times I shot zooms where I went well beyond the optical zoom. The first few times I looked at the result and though, “wow that looks really good for digital zoom”. I don’t know how Apple does it but their “secret sauce” software amazingly lets you use the two cameras to zoom a lot closer than the optics of the 56mm lens and get great keepers.

img_1164-2 — Shot with 7+ and about 8x zoom at dusk into the sun – edited in Lightroom

The above shot was at sunset at about 8x zoom, which is about 4x the optical capability. And it is shot in low light into the sun. The result is frigging astonishingly good for ANY camera much less one that was included with a multi use portable computer.

Then there is the pano capability.

Shot with iPhone 7+ and edited in Apple Photos on a Mac

The image above was taken at the Painted Desert National Park in AZ a few months ago. It was very simple to take and what you see here is about 180 degrees, maybe a little more. The Apple software stitched the whole thing together and then made it very easy to edit in Apple Photos even though it is a lot of mega pixels. I basically just cropped it a little and hit the enhance button.

Then there is the bokeh software. I tried this a couple years ago with an Android phone and google’s system at the time and it did not work very well. I am sure google has improved it but the Apple system has to be the one to beat at this point. The Apple “portrait” mode works extremely well when you use it right.

hailey-bokeh — Taken with 7+ using portrait mode

The Apple iPhone 7 plus is very compatible with the Apple Photos app on the phone, and iPad, or a Mac. For most photos the Apple app is all you need. I use both the Apple Photos app and Lightroom. I have the monthly charge Adobe Lightroom CC which gives you both the latest version of LR and also Photoshop. In my opinion this is a bargain. The Adobe software is big, complex, and takes quite a bit of effort to learn it. Plus many things are not intuitive. But after using it a while LR becomes relatively easy. I have tried organizing my photos with LR and really prefer to let Apple’s system do it. Plus I always have my master set arranged in chronological order in a standard file set up. I also like using the Apple system because it sends slide shows to my Apple TV so I can see my latest photos on the big screen. Generally when I edit I use my MacBook Pro 13″, but like it much better when it is hooked up to my large Apple display. That said, both Apple and Lightroom have very good iPad and iPhone editing apps. The LR one is far more capable, but for most photos the Apple one works fine. One other significant advantage of using Lightroom is that you can take RAW photos with the iPhone. If you want the most detailed image LR RAW is the way to go. Plus when you need to make adjustments having a RAW file allows far greater latitude than a jpeg.

I don’t take a lot of videos. When I do I almost always use the iPhone instead of my Nikon. Why, the results from the iPhone are usually better and a lot easier. I do not use 4K. The files get too big. For editing video I use the standard iMovie app that comes with the Mac. It works well and for the amount of videos I take it is good enough.

I have and use regularly a Nikon mid range DSLR. If used right it does give superior results on still photos than the iPhone 7 +. Having a viewfinder is very helpful in the sun. Plus for quick action shots the Nikon is very fast. When you want to shoot sea gulls flying overhead the Nikon is the way to go. It freezes the sea gulls in flight even when hand held and not in perfect light. Plus you do get more details. As good as the iPhone 7 plus is for longer range tele shots a Nikon with a tele lens is better. Plus you can put filters like polarizing ones on. I use a polarizing filter all the time when taking flower pictures. It cuts down on unwanted reflections. You cannot do that with the iPhone. So no the 7 plus as good as it is does not replace an SLR or DSLR, but the two together make a great combo. And when you are walking the dog you will likely have your smartphone and not your DSLR.

Waiting for the next iPhone? No, get the iPhone 7+ now. It is that good. If you think the next iPhone will be amazing you may be right. So get the Apple plan that lets you upgrade in a year. That’s what I did. But so far I have heard of nothing in the rumor posts about any feature that is completely a have-to-get item for me. I have already had a couple of phones with OLED and while I think OLED is great for a TV, I am very happy with the excellent screen on the 7+. Full glass covering? Who cares. I use a case any way. BTW, I have both the leather and rubber case for my phone and the rubber one is better for pictures. Easier to grip when you want a shot. The leather one looks better though. So what is my rating on the iPhone 7+ on a 1-10 scale with 10 being the highest, it is a 10. The best compact camera you can buy.

Photography, Uncategorized

Kodachrome and Ektachrome

January 29, 2017 rfcn2 Leave a comment

I just listened to Sharky James Peta Pixel’s latest podcast. He made some comments on Kodak, Kodachrome, and other Kodak products. Just my humble opinion, but many people including Sharky say Kodachrome will not be coming back because the chemicals used for the old style film are too harsh for today’s standards. So. Update the product to today’s standards and make the film with the color rendition of the old film. I mean think about it, Ford has been making a Mustang since 1964 1/2. They don’t sell you the same vehicle they made in the old days. They sell you the Mustang experience and look in a more modern car. Kodak can do the same thing.

So just to recap – Kodak should make the new Kodachrome to have the color pallette of the old Kodachrome that people remember and like, but use a more modern chemical set that can pass today’s standards.

Ektachrome – Back in the day I shot lots of slide film. Actually I still shoot some slide film. But back in the day when I shot slide film I mostly shot Kodachrome. Why, it did not fade like Ektachrome. I also liked the color pallette of Kodachrome better. I hope when Ektachrome comes out again this fall that Kodak has a new formulation that does not fade like the old Ektachrome.

Back to Sharky James – From his comments what I get is that film photographers are a small niche and digital photography is what is important today. To me that is incorrect. Film photography is a significantly different process than digital and looks different. When you scan photographic film you scan the result of the chemical film and not the image itself. So you get the digital image of the chemical image capture. To my eye in many cases film gives a better image. They are two different art forms just like black and white photos are different from color. I would guess that both methods of image capture will be around for a while.

iPhone Photography, Photography, Uncategorized

iPhone 7 plus & Nikon D5500 = A Good Photo Taking Combo

January 27, 2017 rfcn2 Leave a comment

My current smartphone the iPhone 7 plus is in my opinion a brilliant still & video camera. Of course it has many other uses besides photo and video capture but that is what the topic of this post is. When you pair the 7 plus with a mid range Nikon you really have most of the bases covered.

Stained glass cieling — Taken with iPhone 7+ inside a dark bar.

Before I had the 7+ I used an iPhone 6S. The 7+ is much more versatile and capable. The above picture was taken inside a fairly dark bar during the daytime. It took the above picture nearly perfectly. I took a similar photo using my Minolta 600si film camera with a 50mm f2.8 lens loaded with Kodak Porta 160. I prefer the color of the film shot, but since I did not have a fast lens, fast film, or image stabilization on that camera the image is blurred.

If I had only been carrying the 7+ I would have thought to try the secondary 56mm lens for this same subject, or maybe a short video clip. The 7 plus gives you lots of options and fits into your pocket. The 7+ is also the first camera I have used that can integrate the images from both it’s cameras to zoom and provide bokeh. Using digital zoom with the 7+ is not the same as digital zoom I have used on older cameras or even last years 6S iPhone. I have not seen an explanation in detail of how it is done, but I can tell you that the results of digital zoom with this camera are much better than I expected. Even at 10x it is not that bad. Plus you can get decent bokeh from this camera. It is computer simulated, but it is good when used as intended. And it is intended to be used to give bokeh in people shots. The software can see people heads and bodies well but struggles sometimes with other objects. I have had fair to good results using it on my rose blooms.

The bokeh in this 7+ photo is very good considering it is Apple’s first generation software. I expect there will be additional improvements as time goes on. Apple’s color rendition is excellent. As good as what I get from my Nikon. Actually it is pretty similar to what I get from the Nikon. I have noticed my Nikon works extremely well with Apple’s Photo software. It could be there is some collaboration between the two companies.

I have had my Nikon D5500 for just over 1 1/2 years. It has so far worked perfectly with no need for repairs. I did add the newer 18-55mm zoom lens that Nikon introduced last year as a replacement for the older one I got with the D5500. The reasons were that the new lens came with the fast stepper motor instead of the old autofocus. And several testers rated it as having significantly superior optics to my older version. To use it properly I had to update the firmware on the D5500, which was free and fairly easy. The other feature I like on this lens is instant manual focus over ride instead of having to flip a switch.

The quick auto focus stepper motor is very helpful in taking videos with the Nikon. You can still hear a very slight noise in the video when focusing, but it is maybe 1/5th as loud as before. Plus the focus time is greatly reduced. One negative is that the filter size on this lens is 55mm and not the standard 52mm of the older lens.

Nikon has recently come out with a replacement for the D5500, the D5600. The major difference in the new camera is that it can transfer photos to your iPhone (or other smartphone) via bluetooth. Since I prefer physical transfer I don’t need to upgrade right now. If I was to upgrade the Nikon one of my main motivations would be for a more useful viewfinder. The viewfinder in this camera is not nearly as large and bright as either my old Olympus OM2n or my Minolta 600si. And the Minolta in addition to being much bigger and brighter also have much easier to read information in it than the Nikon. For manual focus I find the D5500 very hard to use on many subjects. And I find all auto focus to be not perfect and in need of some fine tuning. You do that by having a clear easy to use viewfinder.

Nikon D5600 with the 18-140mm lens.

I find the Nikon D5500 very easy to switch out to the Minolta 600si film camera. The 600si is very similar to the Nikon in size, weight, and operation. Since the Minolta is also auto focus you do not need to switch back to thinking about getting the focus right.

The D5500 is very lightweight. It is under 20 oz. The Minolta runs just about 20 oz. They are both about the same size and look.

So that is my usual setup, iPhone 7 plus and Nikon D5500. If I was short of money the Nikon D3400 would give me pictures as good at the 5500, but would be slower to adjust. The D5500 also has a pretty slick facial recognition setting in addition to having a subject lock on setting. If I won the lottery and did not care how much money I spent I don’t think I would change my set up. To me the Nikon D5500 is the best you can get at this time. I would rather shoot with a full frame 35mm sensor. But to switch to a full frame sensor I would have to carry around a camera from Nikon, Canon, or Pentax that weighs twice what my D5500 weights. And Sony makes you live without a mirror, and I don’t like EVF. Leica is a great camera but still manual focus and a rangefinder. I don’t like either of those as well as auto focus and SLR. I like the look of the Fuji XT2 quite a bit, but do not think the image quality is as good as Nikon. And Olympus makes you live with a tiny sensor. If I could add a camera and not have to give up the D5500 I would take a Nikon 750 (or it’s replacement due out soon) and three lenses.

bobnuttmann

Windows OS vs MAC OS – July 2017

Film vs Digital Photos – May 2017

iPhone 7 Plus Camera Plagued By Poor Connectivity Choices

The Analog Counter Revolution Continues

iPhone 7 Plus Camera Review

Kodachrome and Ektachrome

iPhone 7 plus & Nikon D5500 = A Good Photo Taking Combo

My web site is about photography, RV ing, audio, gadgets and other things that interest me and I know something about.