Niederrhein; Nature in Northrine Westfalia, Germany

[the solitaire]

Since this is what I photograph most I would like to share a few impressions here.

I do not know the rules for this subforum yet, so if in violation, please let me know.

I live in Northrhine Westfalia, Germany since 2005 and spend a lot of my free hours walking/hiking through the landscape and forests in the region. Most of the time I am accompanied by my girlfriend who is also a talented (more then I am) photographer and uses a Nikon D800 and mostly AF lenses.

Personally I prefer older manual Nikkors on my D3 which I still consider a ver capable camera.

Here is a photograph made with the D3 and 105mm f2,5 Nikkor-P

DSC_2873 by b j, on Flickr

One of our two belgian shephards, also with the 105mm

DSC_3081 by b j, on Flickr

Taken with the D3 and 16mm f3,5 fisheye Nikkor

DSC_3094 by b j, on Flickr

55mm f1,2 at f5,6

DSC_0650 by b j, on Flickr

135mm f2,8 Nikkor-Q.C

DSC_3921 by b j, on Flickr

[Mike G]

Lovely Fallow Deer stag.

[Frank Fremerey]

Very capable handling of all of these lenses esp the fish. I also like the  dog strolling towards the light.

Love the D3 still and will keep her. Yet she is outperformed in every respect by the D500.

The D600 only beats her IQ wise.

[John Koerner]

Beautiful shots, all.

[the solitaire]

Thank you for the kind comments.

The D3 is not the most modern camera and technology moved on, but I really like the file sthe camera provides. They are easy to work with, DR is good enough to mak eme worry less about the perfect exposure (getting within a stop or two is normally close enough to work the file, even though I generally do not adjust the exposure more then +/-0,7 stops) and I like the colors this sensor gives me.

What neither the D600 or Df give me is the handling and ergonomics of the body and what the D500 does not give me is the full frame sensor, so good as they all may be, the D3 will still stay with me until I can upgrade to a D4 or D5.

I am not sure if it is appropriate to continue such a thread, but here are a few more impressions I would like to share.

Taken with the 105mm f2,5 Nikkor-P

DSC_9521 by b j, on Flickr

With the 180mm f2,8 AF-D and my girlfriends D800

DSC_0700 by b j, on Flickr

With the D300 and 24mm f2,8 (incorrect EXIF)

_DSC4744 by b j, on Flickr\

And a last one with the D300 and 14-24mm f2,8

_DSC7991 by b j, on Flickr

[Jakov Minić]

Buddy the horses are very much to my liking.
Always nice to see a successful photo made with a wide angle lens!

[Frank Fremerey]

The birches and the horses are wonderful shots, really love them.

As for rules, that are written down somewhere: You can add anything you like to the threads you started as long as it is photographic and not politics or religion or format/brand war.

If you should want to open the thread for others to add their impressions, you could change the topic to: "[Theme] Niederrhein; Nature in Northrine Westfalia, Germany"

[the solitaire]

Thank you Jakov. The wide angle horse group portrait was a lucky shot. These are wild horses and we were walking in the area where they live. Most ofth etime these horses are fairly shy and we saw them from a distance away, across a creek. When they saw us they fled at first, which for horses is not uncommon behaviour.

We decided to walk into the evening hours to see the sun go down and just enjoy our stay there. And all of a sudden we saw this group of approximately 30 horses slowly come our way. The horses in the picture formed the vanguard and came to size us up. I made one more photo with the 14-24 before I walked up to my girlfriend and used mostly my hands and shoulders to inch horses away because we were surrounded and they were very curious about how cameras and dogs taste.

About half an hour later we were surrounded by 30 wild horses doing their thing, foals running and jumping around us and some of the adult horses decided to roll over and take a sand bath. I made quite a few photos with 55 and 105mm lenses, but the good light was pretty much gone and the pictures look a bit pale, even after PP.

Not too long after this we packed our stuff and walked to back the car.

Frank, I do not yet feel confident enough here to open a new theme/topic, but I do not mind other people sharing impressions here. I will relabel this thread, and as soon as I feel a bit more confident there are one or two themed threads I would like to start because I have an interest in seeing what other people do as much as I take interest in hearing what other people think of my photographs.

Thank you for clarifying how these things go on Nikongear. Shouldn't this thread then be moved to the themes and portfolio series subforum?

[Frank Fremerey]

You can always show one shot or a series of shots of your own in your "own" tread.

My experience as a user (I am no admin, just a user) is, that a thread stirs more interest if it is interactive.

Look at Gary's "old stuff" thread for example. Only Gary's photos but a nice interaction with "one photo per day" and "thank you photos" ...

A theme/topic is always good whem a lot of people have tried the same before or are currently interested to develop things further.

A good topic would e.g. be: "wild horses"

A less sucsessful "under my sink"

*ggg*

[Jakov Minić]

Buddy, just listen to yourself and your feelings just like you are doing with your lovely images
Feel free to post as you have been doing. We are all enjoying it very much.

[the solitaire]

Thank you for the vote of confidence Frank and Jakov.

In that case I will just leave this thread as-is and open up a theme thread in the appropriate subforum one of these days.

Some more recent photographs. This one with the 28mm f3,5 PC Nikkor at about 6mm shift

DSC_7550-Edit by b j, on Flickr

Also with the shift lens, this time at 11mm shift

DSC_7644-Edit by b j, on Flickr

16mm f3,5 Fish-eye Nikkor

DSC_7536 by b j, on Flickr

With the 5cm f2 Nikkor-S

DSC_7703-Edit by b j, on Flickr

Same as above

DSC_7756-Edit by b j, on Flickr

Going down that road, 28mm f3,5 PC Nikkor at 7-8mm shift

DSC_7783-Edit by b j, on Flickr

[Frank Fremerey]

Seems we encouraged you. Keep them coming. Great you are here.

[the solitaire]

Today I took a lot of photographs for a paid assignment, but also found the time to photograph a few landscape impressions

DSC_8622 by b j, on Flickr

[Peter Connan]

Great colours and saturation throughout!

[the solitaire]

Thank you Peter. I just noticed that I linked the wrong picture in my last post

It should have been this one, taken with the 16mm f3,5 pre-Ai

DSC_9000-Edit by b j, on Flickr

Which falls in line with your comment on the nice saturation

I often find that saturation plays a part in how a photograph is received. Nicely saturated greens and some warm yellows just give me a good feeling because they remind me of some of th emost beautiful moments I experienced while hiking through the forests and landscape. Because of this I rarely reduce saturation in my iamges and sometimes even enhance it a bit.

With Nikons D300 and D200 I found that enhancing saturation often led to problems in the display of red surfaces. With the D3 this has become far less of a problem.