Mark Leo.Net

I got loads to learn about the photography industry. I really do. I need to find all the experience I can get and then learn from them. Usually I take to heart quite a fair bit of comments that I get. Only recently have I had to deal with more of them but slowly I am beginning to learn from them.

Learning slowly from experience photographers as well as going out to shoot and spending more time is something I try to do. Of course that takes away a fair bit of my own personal time but it is just so worth it when clients are happy with your products. My main goal would be that my clients and future clients will feel comfortable working with me as well as love the products I produce.

With that, I have to apply the same professional skills that I use at work as with my photography. Working in a consulting firm, the firm treats their employees are assets. Its very different from my previous job when I worked in a factory where the company treat their machines, design documents and factory as their assets and their workers as just employees. It is just so different when it comes to a consulting firm.

Every year I am given a training budget to apply for either internal or external training. Of course I can’t just simply take any sort of training but usually those that helps my career and guides me in the right direction. On top of that, the firm would then spend millions of dollars to provide all the staff with thousands of online training sessions. Mind you, these are not the simple online trainings but ones that provide plenty of test cases as well as videos to further enhance our learning experience.

Yes, training is deemed very important and hence the same approach I shall take towards my passion in photography. Hence I have deemed it 200% worth it to spend my hard earned money to attend workshops and training courses so I can improve further in the field of photography. A lot of people I know always said that some courses or workshops are expensive but its not! You can never ever put a price on education.

If you must know, if I didn’t spent a single ringgit on workshops I probably would have pre-ordered my Nikon D700 or perhaps be shooting crappy shots with my Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens instead. Like many photographers will eventually tell you, its not the gears that make your pictures, its the photographer.

Anyway I will be pretty packed this weekend attending Louis’ workshop entitled “Take Back Your Life” at CLICK. The workshop starts tonight and I can’t wait to really take back my life and get away from the rut of sleeping 5-6 hours a day. Of course, I also can’t wait to here what Alex has to talk about on the topic of “Out of the Tempurung”. (Note: Alex Lam is a special guest who will make a guest appearance for the workshop)

Out of the Tempurung

A light-hearted session with internet guru Alex Lam from Integricity Corporation on how to remove the barriers that prevent your photographic art from being showcased to the masses. He believes that many of the best photographers are camping beneath their tempurungs, but need to come out and harness modern-day technology to assist in marketing themselves. Set yourself apart and move from being “just-another-ordinary-photographer” to one who “has-a-kickass-website-and-extraordinary-tools”.

Alex will touch on topics such as using Facebook for business, enhancing your website, search engines and various other tools that can be used to impress and dazzle your prospects and clients.

Until then, I hope to post up some pictures of the workshop.

Update:

According to the News Straight Times, Malaysia-Today.net should be back up and running but I still can’t seem to access the site. I guess I am fighting with the millions of other people trying to gain access to the website.

As usual I would try to read my daily dosage of news online and one of the many news sites that I visit was unavailable. I guess the reason why it was unavailable was because the bookmark which I saved on my browser linked straight to the index.shtml file. So I thought, why not just try with the main address at http://www.malaysia-today.net/ and was shocked to find this instead of the usual news site.

I guess the admin team over there must be working hard trying to restore control to the website. Its a pity that this should happen during the time when everyone is awaiting for some piece of news. I wish the admin team all the best in trying to get the site up and running as usual as well as get it properly secured.

As contreversial the site may be, it is definitely a target for many.

Updated: 17:06

Thanks Eugene for the heads up on this bit of news. I was out at lunch earlier only to find this very interesting bit of news sitting in my comments column in my last post.

Good to know that Nikon has finally launched the Nikon D700 and its as good as the rumours claimed it to be. Awesome stuff this new FX camera which sports the Nikon D3’s CMOS full frame sensor. To top it off, Dpreview mentioned that it sports a sensor cleaner, something which Nikon’s flagship D3 did not have.

Image source: DPreview.com

As I previously posted, the Nikon D700 is indeed a camera to behold, fits nicely within the price ranges of the previous D300 and the high-end D3. At USD$2999, I would expect the camera to be priced at RM9k and any lower than that would be a good bonus.

I think it might just be the right time to retire my D200 and head towards greener pastures or perhaps, larger pastures. With this already available, I would say that all of my remaining lens purchases should revolve around FX type lenses and no longer should I look at DX lenses unless to be used with the D300.

Available at the end of July, we should expect the camera to hit our Malaysian shores in September and hopefully by then we can see samples of the D700 in action at ISO6400. Very curious to see if this baby can keep images clean at ISO6400.

D700 next to a D300 - Image Source: Rob Galbraith

Update:

Pre-orders for both the Nikon D700 and SB-900 is already available at Shashinki. Check them out here.

	Nikon D700 Digital SLR Camera Body Only (FX Full Frame 12MP CMOS, Live View, Image Sensor Cleaning) (Japan Import) Date Added: Tuesday 01 July, 2008 Manufacturer: Nikon Price: RM10,300.00
	Nikon SB-900 Speedlight i-TTL Shoe Mount Flash (Guide No. 34/111.5 (ISO 100, m/ft)) Date Added: Tuesday 01 July, 2008 Manufacturer: Nikon Price: RM1,995.00

Sources:

• DPreview.com - Hands On Review
  
• Rob Galbraith - Nikon unveils D700 full-frame digital SLR
• Nikon D700 24 page brochure
• Nikon USA - D700 page
• Nikon USA - SB-900 page
  

Late last night after my meeting, I managed to catch Eugene’s site on this bit of news. Today I found the site that reportedly published the Nikon D700 and the new SB-900 (new flash unit) will be out at the end of July.

Mind you, its in a different language (German if you can understand it) but its Google translation to the rescue!

Translated bits:

After Nikon with the full-format camera D3 in August 2007 is the first Nikon model with full small image sensor-Formar 24×36 mm that was now follows is not entirely unexpected, the D700. Derselbe 12-Megapixel-Sensor, augenscheinlich dasselbe 51-Punkt-Autofokussystem, etwas geringere Serienbildgeschwindigkeit (5 B/s statt 9 B/s - allerdings kann das mit Batterieteil auf 8 B/s gesteigert werden), Sucherbildfeld 95 statt 100 Prozent, dafür aber ein eingebauter Blitz (auch zur Drahtlos-Blitzsteuerung), ein Sensor-Reinigungssystem (dazu morgen mehr) und ein interessantes Preisschild: knapp 2600 Euro soll die Neue kosten und ab Ende Juli 2008 erhältlich sein. The same 12-megapixel sensor, apparently the same 51-point autofocus system, slightly lower image speed serial (5 B / s instead of 9 B / - however, the battery part to 8 B / s increase), the viewfinder field of 95 instead of 100 percent, but but a built-in flash (also for wireless flash control), a sensor-cleaning system (more about this tomorrow) and an interesting price tag: just under 2,600 euro, the new costs and from the end of July 2008 will be available.

Next is a flash Nikon SB-900 as a successor model of the SB-800, whose zoom reflector should be directed to focal lengths from 17-200 mm and in DX and FX sensors recruits, and in which the user firmware updates for the first time in a Nikon Lightning can even aufspielen.

Now, the first thing in people’s mind would be, “Is this another rumour?”. Well rumours tend to be true most of the time but upon closer inspect of the image on the magazine, you can see that one of the newer characteristics of the D700 is the viewfinder. Seems different from all of the other DX range of cameras.

So this is the best piece of news since they even mentioned that it will be out late July, perhaps a pre-empt strike against the upcoming Canon 5D MkII? Who knows but for one thing, everyone is waiting for the release of this baby.

Last week a hopeful image of the so called “Nikon D700” was “leaked” and the news spread like wildfire amongst photography sites, forums and personal blogs, mine included of course. This was a picture that was posted up on Engadget on the 25th of June. It looked really real and this is something that we might have predicted or imagine that a smaller full frame sensor Nikon camera would look like (to rival Canon’s 5D of course).

That was posted on the 25th of June. It took only 2 whole days before the real news was unearthed. Yup, suspicions were true, it was just a photoshopped D300. I guess this is one of the banes of Photoshop! Grrrr.

The real image was actually up on Flickr over here. Here is the image of the original shot which was actually a Nikon D300 all the while. And no, it wasn’t my D300 that I shot!

Like the title says in the Flickr image, “Awwww….no D700 after all“.

I had my hopes up really high, only a couple of hours more before I can call this so called rumour that Nikon will make an announcement on the 30th of June a true blown rumour. Anyway I am sure a lot of people are still expecting an announcement from Nikon soon, whether it may be the D700 or the D90 or the D3x, who knows what Nikon has in store but for sure we would find out something by September.

My fingers are still crossed though.