Second Fiddle

I’m going to be honest with you folks.

You’re not getting anything tonight.

See, I bought myself a Christmas present – a Nikon D5000.   My pal Beastly introduced me to photography many years ago in Navy technical school. Beastly was professionally trained and is a hell of photographer, and he taught me everything I know about taking pictures and over the years I’ve ended up with many of his cameras as he has moved up in technology.  I have his old Pentax wetfilm 35mm cameras and his Sony D770. But somehow he never would part with his professional equipment, i.e. the Nikons. 

Though Beastly’s castoffs have served me well over the years, I’ve always lusted after a truly professional Nikon.

And now I finally own one, and in fact have managed to get a leg up on Beastly – who tonight on the phone referred to me as, and I quote, “The King of Suck.” 

This gives me no small measure of satisfaction (yes, yes, I am a small petty man, tell me something I don’t know).

I’ve wanted this very camera for roughly 25 years now. I didn’t know that it was this particular camera – which actually didn’t exist until recently - but this camera is exactly what I’ve wanted for over two decades. 

And now that I’m actually holding it in my hands, I’m giddy. Like a schoolgirl. Yes, I am.

This is one of the most amazing and beautiful machines I’ve ever seen, let alone owned, let alone handled.  The handful of pictures I’ve taken so far are stunning in their detail.  Here, have a look:

 

 

 

Both pictures were taken with the exact same lighting setup and from the same distance under identical conditions. Both bird houses are made from similar materials and finishes. The picture on the left is from my old Sony D770, the picture on the right is from the Nikon D5000 – with the Nikon set to “Normal” jpeg compression mode, which is the low end of its capability.   You can click on both pictures to enlarge them to their original sizes and resolutions, but even here the difference is immediately obvious.

The Nikon’s capabilities are multitude and the manual is the size of middling sized town’s phonebook (Question: in the future when the phonebooks, dictionaries, and other such large tomes have become entirely electronic, what the hell will we compare things to? “The electronic manual download was like downloading the entire Wikipedia!" But I digress). 

So, I intend to spend the rest of my evening reading the manual and fooling with this amazing camera. 

Sometime this weekend when I’ve had sufficient time to fiddle, I’ll post a review.

I’ll try to keep the gloating to a minimum.

I suspect I will be unsuccessful.