I placed an order for the Nikon D700 today.

This has been a long time coming and is a much needed upgrade to my DX format digital SLR’s. Why? Well, I’ve always been a reluctant DX shooter. To my eye there is something curiously unorthodox about the way images look when shot with 35mm lenses on a DX frame, especially when you’re trying to shoot with a wide angle lens. I’ve also never felt that the DX wide angles produced pleasingly rendered wide angle shots. They don’t look right to me and that’s why I have been loath to invest a lot of money in DX, particularly lenses like the Nikon 10.5mm DX Fisheye.

Not only that, I think that my style of shooting is better suited to a body that can produce high quality, low noise images at high ISO. Lord knows I have to do a lot of work to the stuff that I produce with my D70 and former D2H cameras, so if I can shoot at 3200 or even 6400 without having to go to extremes with the Neat Image plugin for Photoshop, I think I am going to be able to produce work of a much higher standard.

Well this is what I’ve been trying to convince myself of anyway!

For ages I have been wanting to specialise in photographing stage shows and this looks like the perfect camera for the job. I can’t wait to see how my Tamron 90mm 2.8 macro, Nikon 105mm 2.5 and Nikon 16mm 2.8 lenses perform on this beauty.

ETA at Nikon SA is 25 July, a week from today.

Today I uploaded 150 random photos taken at the 2008 SASAD Congress at Danville Girls High School into my gallery. If you are interested in purchasing a digital copy of the photo (which will be high res and unwatermarked) please contact me via email. I will send you an invoice and then prepare a place for you to download the images.

There are some additional photos that were taken of the acrobatics class that I still need to get online, so if you are looking for those, please bear with me - I’ll have them up soon (I hope!).

All photos that were ordered from the event where teacher information was given have been delivered to the dance teachers. Those of you who live outside of the Durban Metro area and who provided addresses, your photos have been mailed to you.

I still have photos for the following persons where no teacher or mailing address was given:

Susan Sweeney
Janine (from Westville) collected
Dale Wills
Sylvia Snyman
Melissa Calitz
Carol Godfrey
Shayleen Asherwood
Quanta Forbes
Nicola Jennings
Brenda Cronje
Carly Braithwaite

Those photos are ready for collection from me - I have sent you an SMS advising of the address.

Greetings!

All photos ordered at the SASAD Congress have been printed and either mailed or taken to your dance teachers. There are about 10 people who only gave me their cell phone numbers so I have sent you an SMS explaining where you can collect your prints.

Unfortunately my Coppermine Gallery website got hacked last week so I have not been able to put up the other photos yet. Nasty Ukrainian hackers had their way with me! I will be putting up the photos on this new site, so keep your eyes peeled for them.