Nikond200 on The Singemonkey

September 23, 2024

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 18:13:31 +0000

Another hopefully atmospheric bushveld scene. Buffalo and a Sabie River wild fig tree. I like this kind of pic to remind me of the experience of being on that river road when it’s very far away.

September 23, 2024

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 18:07:09 +0000

Sunset Impalas. We’re on our way home and have been having some patchy wifi. It was a really good time in the park. We finally saw a pack of painted wolves about half an hour before we drove out of Malelane Gate.

September 19, 2024

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 17:45:04 +0000

Scratching post.

September 18, 2024

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 18:12:50 +0000

There’s a certain type of wildlife picture that I just really enjoy even if it’s not very clever. 1960s/1970s style wildlife portraiture.

Thinking about my dear cousins @joydemillar and @timdrmillar today.

September 13, 2024

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 09:47:55 +0000

Yesterday evening on the Sabie - for my money the most beautiful river in South Africa. And that has a lot to with the huge wild fig trees that line its banks.

September 12, 2024

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 14:22:55 +0000

A big old bruiser.

September 12, 2024

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 06:36:26 +0000

We’ve had two days of frankly chilly weather but today it’s back to the proper lowveld heat.

September 09, 2024

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 19:28:20 +0000

All elephants together.

September 09, 2024

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 19:12:01 +0000

Plains Zebras are very passionate. Affectionate or fighting at the drop of a hat. Horses got strength and endurance and zebras got the rest perhaps.

September 09, 2024

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 18:39:20 +0000

I’ve been struggling a little with my photographic workflow since this 20 year old Nikon D200 uses the old compact flash cards and my card reader no longer reads them.

One bit of emergency photo recovery and some new software later, I’m back in business. I should be posting more regularly on this trip.

There’s been a lot of talk about the qualities of old CCD sensors like this one. But really the sensors before this generation (the last) were rather terrible.

July 22, 2024

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 15:08:21 +0000

I found this pic I took of @withoutaleaf in 2008. I have no memory of taking it and hadn’t seen these pics since. Sometimes digital files disappear. And then sometimes they crop up as if out of nowhere.

December 11, 2023

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 19:17:53 +0000

This is a lost photo. The only version I had was one on Flickr with a long edge of 768 pixels. I’m trying AI up scaling and the results are better on images that are sharper and less underexposed than this was. It’s my dear friends @sadshirtshop when they were in a band called Fezray (Fez and beret, right?). Anyway, I liked this pic and the AI has definitely improved over the mess-of-visible-pixels alternatives from years past.

January 24, 2021

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 13:02:44 +0000

Since I got the colour more or less right, I thought I’d share more pics of those busy Kgalagadi foxes from 2008.

January 23, 2021

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 22:50:13 +0000

Foxes!

Playing around in lightroom. The Kgalagadi sand completely defeated the auto white balance when I took this pic back in 2008. Finally managed to get a version I can live with. These Cape Foxes had a den by the road and the young ones were having great games before bedtime first thing in the morning.

August 13, 2020

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 17:03:24 +0000

Apparently I took this almost exactly ten years ago. August 7, 2010. A slightly gloomy winter’s day down at the good ol’ sewrage-works with my dad, @millar6300, relieved by the firework-brightness of these Greater Flamingos.

August 06, 2020

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 13:11:58 +0000

#throwbackthursday The world’s biggest surviving bird - and the world’s biggest surviving dinosaur - enjoying a dust bath after a long day of grumpy peckin’. @withoutaleaf and I went to Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in 2008, I think. A spectacular piece of Southern Africa. Until quite recently it was one of the only places in which the world’s oldest culture, the Bushman hunter-gatherers, could still practise their traditional way of life - until the Botswana government kicked them out.

February 22, 2018

Thu, 22 Feb 2018 16:04:32 +0000

Guerrilla DSLR photography. I’m going to photograph the birds that land on the phone line behind our house using this 10 year old Nikon D200 and this 40 odd year old Pentax / Takumar 400mm lens that’s been butchered to fit. Watch this space.

February 14, 2018

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 10:29:48 +0000

All cats all the time I’m afraid. I should start taking more interesting pics again as Feb goes on. My handsome boy is in danger of getting fat. He eats twice as much as the others.

This is that same 105mm Nikkor from the ‘70s that I posted last year. It’s my fave 35mm lens at the moment. On this crop sensor it’s a 158mm f2.5 - a perfect portrait lens.

February 12, 2018

Mon, 12 Feb 2018 19:05:34 +0000

Still remembering how to use a ten year old dslr. The screen isn’t high res enough to judge focus even roughly. So, again, it’s a bit like shooting film. You’ve got to be pretty sure when you press the shutter. Another thing that hasn’t changed in ten years is that Skitten still loves a box.

February 10, 2018

Sat, 10 Feb 2018 12:10:54 +0000

An old dlsr like the Nikon D200 makes you work harder - a bit like shooting film. You don’t want to go above ISO400 to avoid noise. But it still has big advantages over a phone camera if used right.

February 10, 2018

Sat, 10 Feb 2018 11:50:14 +0000

A very old friend came by today. This Nikon D200 is from the first generation of digital cameras that could produce results as good as film. It has no video. It’s low light capabilities are unremarkable. But in decent light it can make images that look great even blown up to 11”x14”. Slow but not obsolete - just like me.