Reviews

Review: Nikon’s Zoom-Nikkor AF-S DX 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED-IF VR lens

After spending nearly a year with my Nikon D40 and the 18-55mm kit lens it came with, I’ve learned a great deal about photography, having taken thousands of photos in various corners of the globe. It’s gotten to the point where I lust after new gear (camera bodies, lenses, and even just cheap accessories) to the point that my dad reminds me that I have no income. Well, the economy doesn’t seem to have phased my family too greatly, since upon my graduation from high school, my grandparents gave me Nikon’s Zoom-Nikkor AF-S 55-200mm f/4-5.6G DX ED-IF VR lens to use with my D40, conveniently right before I left to camp (where, as I will discuss later, the lens has been of considerable utility).

Please forgive me ahead of time for the extra long sentences, and bear in mind that while this review won’t go thoroughly overboard with discussions about distortion and falloff and other camera nut scientific details, I will be talking somewhat technically throughout the review. As such, I forgive you if you head back to the page of Google search results you found this review in to look for a less geeky write-up.

Initial impressions

Aside from the initial excitement and anticipation after my dad told me my present was something I’d been wanting for a while, I knew I was moving up in Nikon-land when I opened the box of the 55-200mm VR. I guess it really was worth spending some quality time with the small 18-55mm beforehand as I improved my shooting technique to (unknowingly) prepare for this lens.

The lens is finished in textured plastic that’s actually a bit nicer than that of the D40 body – it has a more pronounced texture that assures confidence in the hand. The zoom ring on the barrel of the lens is surrounded with ribbed rubber, and is sufficiently large for comfortable zooming.

Nikon only designed the 55-200mm VR with the more simplistic AF-S system found in lenses like the 18-55mm (both the VR and non-VR enabled iterations), and the non-VR version of the 55-200mm, which doesn’t support grab-and-go manual focus override. As such, the focus ring is locked while the lens is set to autofocus (and does rotate during autofocus servo operation – very noisily at that), and switching to manual focus mode involves flicking the top switch in the small control cluster on the side. Also, the focus ring does have a bit of play while locked, which seems normal of this caliber of AF lenses.

The included bayonet-style hood attaches to the front of the lens, outside the 52mm diameter filter thread, and also attaches in reverse for convenient storage. Speaking of the filter thread, it doesn’t rotate during focus operation – this lens is adorned with the IF (Internal Focus) designation, making it more convenient to use with filters like circular polarizer or graduated density filters. (I bought a polarizer immediately after receiving the lens.)

Build quality is otherwise okay, on par for an affordable telephoto zoom. Zooming action is not quite silky smooth, but works just fine.

Performance

The 55-200mm, being an AF-S series lens, focuses fast in most situations (I’ve been able to achieve focus during plays on the dimly lit stage in my camp’s dining room). The lens can go from infinity to its closest very fast, much faster than on my 18-55mm, though also much more audibly – it makes a slight screeching sound when passing through its focus range.

Being a slow, variable aperture lens, the 55-200mm VR won’t let you use fast shutter speeds in very low light, or achieve extremely shallow depth of field (though at 200mm you definitely see compression of the subject on the background). Despite this, I can shoot with the 55-200mm in low light with my SB-400 speedlight (in full TTL auto mode) at f/7.1, 1/80 of a second, and ISO 800, and get decently exposed photos (albeit they tend to be somewhat grainy thanks to the D40’s noisy sensor).

Nikon’s Vibration Reduction technology is absolutely essential when shooting handheld at any focal length beyond, perhaps, 55mm, and works amazingly well. Hold down the shutter button half way, and the image in the viewfinder becomes amazingly stable while the camera attempts to achieve focus. At a sporting event, set your camera to continuous-servo and dynamic-area autofocus, and follow a moving subject while holding down the shutter button half way – you can follow with ease, and the focus will keep up with your movement.

Image quality

Here’s the part that camera nuts could go on and on with. I’ll try to condense my opinions.

The 55-200mm VR tends to have decent bokeh around the minimum focusing distance, and with care (stop down the aperture if you need to), subjects can be kept very sharp. Falloff, or vignetting perhaps, is noticeable in photos I’ve shot outdoors. Chromatic aberrations are okay – certainly much better than with the 18-55mm. I haven’t really noticed any distortion, as I’m not exactly shooting skyscrapers with a telephoto lens.

The punchline

If you’re a soccer mom or baseball dad who wants a cheap but useable telephoto zoom lens for the little league games, or want to compliment your kit lens with something longer, go for the 55-200mm VR. It’s cheap (compared to, say, the professional Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VR, which rolls in at about $1,900), light (also compared to that lens, which I can attest will send you to the gym), compact (it kind of fits in my LowePro Nova Mini bag), and generally gets the job done. I’m certainly happy with mine, and I continually get great shots from it.

If you want more reach, the new just-grab-the-ring-to-focus-manually AF-S system, or possibly even better AF performance, try out the full-frame Nikon AF-S 70-300mm VR, which, as even Scott Bourne claims, has merit. If you want a truly professional lens, take a look at the AF 80-200mm f2.8 (non-VR and non-AF-S), or prepare to take out a second mortgage for the AF-S 70-200mm f2.8 ED-IF VR. But if you’re not pro, chances are the simple 55-200mm VR will serve your needs.

Review: How Twitter Became Addictive

All of the buzz in the social communication world these days goes to Twitter. From MacWorld to SXSWI, people have been tweeting about anything and everything going on in their lives. The main goal of Twitter is to have people share their current action or thought in a 140 character message (the specific limit is set to allow use of SMS for sending updates and receiving updates from friends). In reality, Twitter is much more: a communication platform (”@” replies and direct messages), a publishing platform (integration with Seesmic and Qik; plugin for WordPress; or simply posting links to user content), and an avenue for meeting people through (check out your friend’s replies to his/her friend’s tweets).

The Lowdown: Basics of Using Twitter

The essence of using Twitter is quite simple. Sign up, give them your phone number, IM network ID, or both, and send a message to the service that tells your friends what you are doing.

Now obviously, most tweets aren’t directly saying what a person is doing. They could describe what he is thinking, who he’s speaking to, what funny picture he took recently, what video he uploaded or just watched on YouTube (and for the latter of those, as well as links to any site, Twitter integrates the TinyURL address shortening service), or just the fact that the person is awake.

Twitter for Interactive Communication

Much of the fun in Twitter is having conversations without having to set up a new environment for the “conversation instance” – no need to set up a chat room in AIM or the like. Just preface your thought with the “@” symbol followed by the name of the person you’d like to direct your thought toward. As a result, the person you addressed will receive your tweet, regardless of whether or not he follows you on Twitter. In essence, you can start a conversation with any person or group of people who is/are member(s) of Twitter.

The Addiction to Twitter

Part of using Twitter is being constantly involved. It’s quite obvious that if you tweet once a month you will end up being immensely un-popular within the Twitterverse. What many people end up doing is tweeting about anything and everything going on in their lives, in some cases almost every few seconds. In return, that person’s followers will reply, and make their own tweets, etc. There is a certain element of fun involved with being constantly updated of what your friends are doing. For me, there is so much that I almost got my phone taken away by my principal for receiving a text message from Twitter during school hours (despite that, of course, I receive dozens of them a day from those whom I follow). No wonder they call people like me Twitterholics…

Impact of Twitter on “Traditional” Social Networking

Twitter redefines social networking as we know it, mainly because the service primarily provides us with real-time updates of the things that our friends are up to. It’s provides a somewhat more personal relationship with people who we don’t actually know personally, because, essentially, we can have a one-on-one conversation with them without actually developing a real relationship.

Also, and this is strictly IMHO, the randomness of Twitter gives us a sense of relationship building. For example, I’ve been following Daniel Brusilovsky on Twitter essentially since I met him, and through both “@” replies and direct messages (a feature available to friends who follow each other), we’ve developed a much stronger relationship with each other.

In other words, Twitter provides a platform for connecting with people, not just “meeting” them. The terse nature of tweets makes forming connections faster and easier, and the real-time functionality brings us closer to those with whom we communicate.

Hands-on Windows Vista Review

This summer, a good portion of the work I was involved with took place on a Windows Vista system, so it’s only proper for me to have found out a few things about it. As I stated in my initial review, Microsoft’s latest and greatest left me somewhat impressed, but otherwise XP still rocks the house.

The first thing that many fear about Vista is the performance. We were running Vista on an HP laptop with a 1.8 GHz AMD Turion (whatever the mobile line is called) and 1.25 GB of RAM, and the machine almost never was significantly slow. Aero Glass performed nicely – the effects were never dropped, and Pinnacle Studio 11 Plus ran well most of the time. However, toward the end of the summer, Windows would frequently pop up dialogs alerting us that the computer was low on memory, although the system never crashed or hung.

The eye candy that Aero brings is certainly a welcome addition, but it doesn’t revolutionize the way you use the computer. Of all things, the transparent window frames are the least exciting part. I personally enjoyed the minimize and restore effects the most.

Vista actually does bring something in the way of productivity enhancements. The search box integrated into the Start menu makes it a breeze to find programs that could otherwise be buried folders-deep in the menu. Another useful addition is scrolling in the All Programs list, which lets you use the scroll wheel on the mouse to navigate through the list.

I’m still more convinced that even Mac OS X Tiger (but even more so Leopard) beats Windows Vista in terms of productiveness and design. Spotlight was around before Windows’ desktop search, Dashboard before Widgets, Exposé before Flip 3D, etc. I don’t want to go into Mac vs. Windows arguments, but I’m more than willing to give OS X a try.

Western Digital My Book 250 GB Essentials Edition

Today’s ever-digitalized world is using ever-increasing amounts of storage. Once I downloaded the Adobe Premiere CS3 preview / beta, I really discovered this for my self, and followed up on that with a copy of VMware Server (which I run Ubuntu Linux in). Turns out my measly (relatively) 80 GB internal SATA drive just isn’t big enough to keep up with the current storage demands.

After finding a real steal on Western Digital’s My Book Essentials Edition at Circuit City, realizing it was after a mail-in rebate, buying the smaller 160 GB drive, at Best Buy, returning that one and finally getting the original 250 GB drive at Best Buy with a price match, I got my hands on yet another addition to my “studio”. I felt like an idiot for not bringing a Circuit City flyer to Best Buy with me, but that’s how idiots roll.

The drives enclosure is bigger than I anticipated, but it still looks sharp. Western Digital advocates that their My Book drives can be placed in a bookshelf or laid on their sides and stacked vertically. The little green circle on the front of the case indicates power and disk access status. Pressing the center of the circle powers on or off the drive. Unlike many other devices these days, the WD drives comes with a normal size power adaptor.

Setting up the drive was a snap. After connecting it to an open USB port on my computer, an Autorun dialog popped up, prompting me to do install software. I neglected to choose to install anything, but it appears that a Western Digital drive utility made its way on my machine anyway.

Regarding performance, the drive is definitely not as fast as my internal SATA drive, but that’s a given. Accessing files is pretty snappy, although occasionally the drive has to spin up after going into standby (after about ten to twenty minutes).

This new drive will serve as a non-performance-critical repository for most of my digital media (as well as my huge catch-all download folder), and to archive files needing the speed of my primary drive after I finish working with them (like video footage). For now I will keep my VMware images on the main drive.

Typically I’m very frugal on computer upgrades – and the 69.99 USD really shows how good a deal this was. Needless to say it was worth every penny.

My First Phone: Motorola i855 from Boost Mobile

Thanks to the extreme compulsiveness (more like the way mothers worry so much) of one of my relatives, I now own my first cell phone. Originally I was planning on buying one myself, but luck struck and it came as a present, much earlier than I had hoped for. Like every tech purchase that involves me, most of the deal was planned out beforehand, so I didn’t get stuck with any surprises.

We bought the phone at one of those gadget places (where they sell phones, stereos and other stuff) in Manhattan. My Moto i855 cost $149.99 before tax, which is exactly the same price that the Boost Mobile site offers it for. In the box:

• Motorola i855 handset
• Manuals, guides, warranty statements, etc.
• Belt holster (with a swiveling clip)
• “Rapid” charger
• Activation materials (which in the end got me $10 on my balance)

The phone itself is a bit large, being about 2 1/2 times as thick as my dad’s Moto Razr. Add the belt clip on there, and it’s probably four times as thick as the Razr alone. However, the holster does protect the shiny front panel from scratches, and it doesn’t make the phone feel much bulkier. And while I’m talking about the physical design, the headset jack cover is located all the w

If it wasn’t for one of my friends (err, enemies at some points), I would never have heard of Boost Mobile. Based off the so-called nationwide Nextel network, they give access to texting, mobile Web, and the famous Walkie Talkie. However, because Boost is prepaid, communicating can be expensive. Here are the service rates:

• Cellular calls: $.20 / minute
• Night / weekends: $.10 / minute
• Mobile to mobile (Sprint, Boost, and “most” Nextel callers): $.10 / minute
• Text messaging: free incoming, $.10 / message outgoing
• Multimedia messaging: $.25 / message (incoming or outgoing)
• Wireless Web: $.35 / day for unlimited use
• Walkie Talkie: $1.00 / day for unlimited use (the absolute most expensive way to call with Boost)

It’s easy to see that prepaid cellular is expensive. Fact of the matter is that nobody in my house (including me) is willing to pay for the upgrade to a plan that allows a second line, and then the second line. Prepaid service from Verizon and Cingular isn’t any cheaper: Verizon charges a daily $.99 access fee (but only $.10 / minute for calls, and unlimited In calling), while Cingular offers either the same deal (with unlimited nights and weekends) or a plain vanilla $.25 / minute plan.

Although I have made a single real telephone call yet, the claims that Nextel has a really terrible netowrk don’t seem to hold true. Despite those claims, I observe at least three bars in most places. But one thing strange thing is that it takes some time (10-20 seconds) to download text messages. For example, this morning, I got a 0.6 Kb message, which took about the aforementioned time to transfer.

The phone’s interface is not entirely intuitive. Pressing the Menu button will bring you to the first screen (out of three) of the main menu, but pressing it again will give you options relating to the main menu. In order to go to the next screen, you press the More soft key. In most areas of the phone, pressing the menu button will bring up some kind of context menu.

Here are some bugs that you probably wouldn’t expect from a phone. While sitting at my computer, my speakers emit strange wisping sounds, and occasionally my wireless mouse will go haywire. In fact, one of my friends knows that he should get ready to pick up the phone while listening to music on his CD player: he hears sounds in his headphones too.

I like my phone. Even though it has some quirks, it is definitely a nice phone for a first phone. Hopefully Motorola will keep up the good work. And good thing I have a 7 Eleven nearby, for those sudden minute refills….

IMified: Truly Simplistic, Undeniably Useful

Starting at registration, IMified is the easiest Web 2.0 service to use. Not many sites that cross the Educated borders are talked about like this, with good reason.

From second one, I realized that IMified is truly simplistic. In fact, the registration process is as simple as this: send an instant message to one of the services IM accounts (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, and maybe one or two more), and then go to the link it sends back to tell it the absolute basic info about you (the time zone is the only necessary one). Once that’s done, you can decide what you want to be able to do with IMified.

From the IMified Web site, you can select which services you will be able to access from your Main Menu. These include Google Calendar, Twitter, and the various services that IMified provides (Reminders, Notes, Todos). It is all very simple to set up, and almost as easy to use.

Other than the downtime of their bots upon occasion, I have no gripes towards IMified. It’s all very simple and uncomplicated. Perhaps this could be a true Web 2.0 service.

Visit IMified

Widescreen Mania

This summer, among many summers at camp, I will be officially working for the first time (unlike the fake work I did last summer that some of my friends may remember), which means I will come home with some cash (hopefully). Anyone who knows me also knows that I don’t hold on to money for very long without spending it on something. Since I have to keep up the tradition, my latest addition to my tech wish list is (drum roll please):
Dell’s E228WFP 22-inch Widescreen LCD monitor. Why did I choose that of all things?

It probably began with my visit to the Apple store. Looking at an Apple 30 inch Cinema HD Display really wows you (and warms you too – that things was giving off heat like the steam pipe in my bathroom, although it might have been the Mac Pro sitting next to it that made me sweat). But who on earth can afford something like that? The previous revision of the wish list included the 20 inch Apple Cinema Display, but once I saw the Dell, my jaw dropped, at – you guessed it – the price tag.

This gorgeous display gives you a comfortable 1680 by 1050 pixel resolution, which is plenty of space to do all sorts of things at once. Coincidentally, this monitor costs less (at this point, about $60 less) than its 20 inch brother, but also omits its USB hub and additional video inputs (the E228WFP only supports D-sub VGA and DVI-D, while the 2007WFP also has S-Video and Composite inputs).

But the fun doesn’t end there. If I still have a reasonable chunk of change left over, the next item on the list is a new graphics card. With that, I’ll have a really nice dual monitor setup, with both the current HP 17 inch LCD and the new Dell giving an unimaginable view of my desktop. I’m eyeing Newegg.com’s selection of PCI-interfacing graphics cards, since there isn’t an AGP slot for the purpose (or at least one that is available for use, because it seems that there are contacts on the motherboard for an AGP slot with no connector on them; BTW this is the one trouble with my computer). The plan is to have the Dell hooked up with the DVI-I port, and the HP with the D-sub VGA. It all sounds far fetched, but this idea should work.

Do you have any dual-monitor setups you’d like to share? If so, sound off in the comments below.

A Mac for Mike

This lovely vacation day of mine brought me to both my orthodontist, and then to the Apple store in Manhattan (three buses and two subway trains later). I saw the entrance to the store last night, and then decided to come here. I actually began posting this from one of the Macs at the store. The place is loud and a bit busy-feeling. I guess Apple really is that popular.

Once I got past the initial shock, I sat down with a couple of Macs: a black MacBook, a Mac Pro with a gorgeous 30-inch Apple Cinema Display, and a 17-inch MacBook Pro. In particular, the big-screen really impressed me – I could see the entire write post screen without scrolling! All of the machines are beautiful, although they are also all hot – literally. Even on ths 30-something degree day, I think they could use some AC in the shop (forget about summer!).

I was particularly wowed by the speed of these guys. Opening Safari took just a few seconds. When I plugged my Cruzer Micro into the MacBook Pro’s USB port, it was mounted and ready for use about a second later, and preparing it for removal was nearly instant. And even Photoshop CS2 didn’t take so much time to load.

Using a Mac is different. Many of the familiar keyboard shortcuts from Windows (ex. Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V, Ctrl + A, Alt + F4, and many others) don’t mean anything on a Mac. I tired taking a screenshot, only to note the absence of a Print Screen key (turns out Grub is the program for this task).

Toward the end of my visit, I got one of the store reps to show me Windows on a Mac. As I’ve read before, the process of booting into Windows is very simple: At startup, just choose the OS to boot into. Once booted up and logged in, the machine acted like a normal Windows XP box, with the same normal apps, and the same errors (I had to add that). To top it all off, the graphics card was running at the 24″ iMac’s native resolution, giving me the same giant-screen feeling that I got with the Mac Pro and then 30″ Cinema Display.

I think I love Macs. I don’t have the money to buy one now, but I will definitely talk about it for my next computer.