Two:Thirty AM

The Nikon D40 was my very first dSLR camera. A fantastic leap from the point-and-shoot side of the fence! I had the camera for about 4 years, but really only started getting serious about photography a little over a year ago. After shooting with the D40 body and mastering it (the camera, not photography) over the course of a year, I was starting to hit imitations of the camera hardware and it was starting to look like it was time for an upgrade. I really prefer and like the Nikon camera bodies, so I knew I would be upgrading to a new Nikon. I studied all the bodies and reviews for months to find out what would be the best upgrade for me. It came down to the D90 and the D300.

The two seemed to have pretty similar specs minus the video on the D90, although the D300 was touted as more of a “professional” camera. One of the biggest features I wanted was the command and sub-command dials for aperture and shutter speed adjustments.

The video on the D90 leaves a little to be desired. Especially compared to the new D300s that came out a couple months after purchasing the D90. Video is not all that important to me, so it is just a bonus to be able to shoot little video clips with the same camera I already have with me.

I find the build quality of the D90 to be much higher than some of the newer bodies coming out like the D3000. The body feels great in the hand and is a good weight. I like a larger camera body and this is just that. I found the D40 a little annoying to hold due to its small size. I had a battery grip on the D40 simply to make it more comfortable to hold with a longer lens.

The image quality on the D90 is great. A very nice improvement from the D40, although the raw files were a lot harder to work with on my old laptop. The D40 raw files were no problem, but the D90 at twice the size made the computer chug. I have since upgraded to a new MacBook Pro, so it is no longer an issue.

As far as lenses go with this new body, I bought the Nikon 35mm f/1.8. This lens is AMAZING! Super sharp and fast. And for only $200, you have to have this lens in your bag. I also rented the Nikon 18-200mm from Lensrentals.com and I WILL be buying that lens at some point. It was so versatile and handled a full day shoot walking around town without having to stop and swap lenses.

Overall, If you are in the market for a Nikon body upgrade from one of the lower tier bodies I would say this is definitely a camera to look at. If video is more important to you, you may want to look into the D300s instead. For me, stills are where I want to be, and this camera body does not disappoint!

I listen to a ton of podcasts, watch a lot of video podcasts, and have moved all of my TV watching to online services like Hulu. Overall the experience over mainstream television and radio is so good it can’t be measured! Better quality content, and the choice to watch only shows that I want instead of having to weed through the massive amount of garbage that is on mainstream media. With the lack of intelligence and an over abundance of worthless advertisements, mainstream media is dead to me. Podcasts and Hulu have ads, so what’s the difference? There are a couple of differences: podcasts and the like generally have fewer ads that are more targeted toward the show you are watching, making for a more effective ad. These ads are also generally slipped into context of the shows. Hulu has more traditional ads but fewer per show and generally will have ads that are genuine in their intent.

Everything sounds pretty good, so what’s the problem? The problem is what I am calling “The SquareSpace Effect”. It’s unfortunate that they were the ones that had to take the blame for this, but they were the first ones that made me realize the problem. The problem is frankly over advertising. To the point of turning would be customers into anti-product maniacs. Over the 15-20 audio and video podcasts that I subscribe, a company like SquareSpace is on 90% of them with the same exact ad every week. I understand you need to get your companies name out there, but when you are targeting something that is an RSS feed where you are pretty sure you have a majority of repeat customers, you maybe can cut back some. Also a lot of the podcasts I listen to are on the same network, and it’s pretty likely that listeners subscribe to many podcasts on the same network due to similar content. This could be a problem that only effects the technology genre of this new media, but that is my focus.

The second case of this comes from Hulu. They have a similar problem. They seem to have a very small library of commercials to splice into the shows. This means that during an hour of viewing Hulu TV shows, I am pretty much guaranteed to see the same commercials every time. There have been more instances than I can count where the same exact commercial has played 4-5 times in a row during my viewing. A specific example I can remember was the ad for the movie 500 Days of Summer. After seeing the commercial the first time I thought it looked like a movie I would wan to go see. After seeing the same commercial for the 6th consecutive viewing I hated the movie and wanted nothing to do with it.

There needs to be a compromise here! I find the advertising to be VERY successful on this “new media” but I feel like they might be beating and kicking the poor dead horse. I have purchased several products due to ads on these new media networks, but they have to be careful of over advertising and killing the brand.