I didn’t need this camera. My three year old D40 was working just fine and was all the camera I really needed. But, while facts and logic may have slowed me down, they didn’t stop me. Although I can’t entirely deny the attraction of more pixels, that was not the the primary or even secondary reason I wanted this camera. The main attraction was the supposed superiority of the D5100’s CMOS sensor over the D40’s CCD. Secondly, I desired vibration reduction (VR) lenses. Yes, I could have simply bought VR lenses without the camera but I had convinced myself that putting money into lenses then attaching them to the lowly D40 was not wise. As I said, facts and logic only slow me down.
So, when finances allowed, in September of 2011, I spent right at a grand on the D5100 and a pair of lenses. One lens was simply the VR equivalent of the 18-55 mm D40 kit lens. The other was a 55-300 mm zoom that gave me some more range (300 mm vs. 200 mm) over the lens it replaced in addition to VR.
In many respects, the D5100 is just a slightly better and slightly bigger D40. It is still near the bottom of Nikon’s DLSR offerings. The higher resolution is nice and I believe that the VR lenses have helped from time to time but I’ve no hard evidence to support that. The CMOS sensor does deal with low light better than the CCD but I can’t shake the feeling that the D40 produced some brighter images in the “middle light” of an overcast day. That could certainly be an illusion and I’m really quite pleased with the D5100’s overall performance.
Not everything about the camera is just a step up in specifications over the D40. There are three obvious additions and all are related. First, the D5100 does 1080p video. Then, since you really can’t have the viewfinder mirror flapping around while recording video, a “live view” has been added which locks the mirror in the up position and puts a through-the-lens view on the rear mounted 3″ LCD screen. Both video and stills can be recorded in this mode. I’ve experimented a little with video and do use live mode occasionally for one handed shots. It’s also handy when I ask someone to take my picture who is baffled by an eye level viewfinder. Lastly, to make live view even better, the screen is fully articulated so you can record in assorted odd positions.
One subtle difference from the D40 that I’m starting to appreciate is the ability to record JPEG and RAW files simultaneously. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I just use the JPEGs as I always have but once in awhile I’ll salvage a picture with a little HDR processing using the RAW file.
My first attempt at writing this post got all bound up in explaining why I do thumbnails the way I do. As I rearranged the second paragraph for the third or fourth time, I heard my own echo from long ago, “If it’s this hard to write, it’s going to be a bitch to read.” That’s usually a pretty good signal that a basic rethink is in order. When I stepped back, I quickly realized two things. One, some of my reasons are truly arbitrary and naturally hard to explain, and two, nobody cares. There aren’t many who care if I do something, fewer care how, and the number who care why has to be near zero. If someone does want to know why, just ask and I’ll be happy to explain and ‘fess up to the arbitrary bits. For now, I’m just going to talk about how I do them and how Easy Thumbnails fits in.
The Lincoln Highway turns a hundred this year. Brian Butko’s Greetings from the Lincoln Highway turns eight. At first glance, the 2013 Greetings… looks an awful lot like the 2005 Greetings… with a soft cover and a “Centennial Edition” banner on the front and it’s a fact that, in many ways, it is the same. It has the same organization with an introductory chapter and a chapter, with map, for each state the highway passed through and a very high percentage of the words and pictures in those chapters are the same, too. Another thing that remains the same and which accounts for the small in percentage but large in number changes is the care and attention to detail. Butko probably didn’t catch everything in the book that the passage of time has altered but he sure tried and he sure got a lot.
Aside from the occasional new photo, the most visible changes may be in the statistics and maps at the front of each state chapter. Here population numbers from the 2010 census replace those from the 2000 census and the maps get a line for the Proclamation Route. The Lincoln Highway Proclamation Route was a list of cities published by the Lincoln Highway Association on September 14, 1913. Shifts started happening almost immediately and a detailed route was never signed or published that matched the September 14 announcement. But several of the cities dropped in 1913 fought unsuccessfully to return and many have fought more recently and more successfully to be recognized. Butko acknowledges that by including the ephemeral route. All of the quotes from postcards and other period communication that appeared in the margins of the original are still there and a few more have been added.
I’m reading this book for the third time. I read it around 2005 when I was dabbling with short drives on the Lincoln Highway to my east. I reread it in 2009 when I was getting ready to drive the Lincoln from the east edge of Illinois to the west coast. My current read is in anticipation of another long, hopefully full length, drive of what Drake Hokanson calls Main Street across America. I never read the original, only the pictured Tenth Anniversary Edition which is now fifteen years old itself.
If you think this looks like it belongs here, you haven’t been paying attention. No, books about cosmology, quantum physics, and beyond aren’t what I typically read and I’m clearly not qualified to review them. I was given the book as a gift, I read and enjoyed it, and I intend to tell somebody about it.
I started off admitting that this book was really out of place here. I do a lot of my reading over meals in restaurants and it was rather out of place in some of the joints where I eat, too. I quickly worked out a way to carry the book that cut down considerably on the funny looks aimed my way.
