Nikon 5700

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Commentary after the photos.

Copyright and License: All photos by Michael Gordon, Logan, Utah, USA. Photographs dated 2003 except as noted (but that won't happen until it is no longer 2003). Non-commercial (personal) storage and reproduction is permitted. Incidental commercial usage as part of comparison with other models of camera or other types of photography is permitted or as part of a pre-press composition layout ("comp"). Usage by not-for-profit entities is also permitted.

The Photographs. Small is 640x480 pixels, large is 1280x960 pixels (unless the image is cropped, of course).
	Clouds Slide show. Sometimes has mountains but the main ingredient is the cloud.
	Mountains A slide show. These mountains include Mount Logan and other mountains of the Bear River Range to the east of Cache Valley, and the Wellsville Mountains on the west. Also includes Mount Hood and other mountains to be added as I make more photographs. Sometimes has clouds but the main ingredient is the mountain.
	USU -- Utah State University SMALL * LARGE. Old Main with the Aggie "A" Polarized and levels-equalized in The Gimp. SMALL * LARGE. Trees and Cache Valley near USU. View northwest at the edge of campus. SMALL * LARGE. USU Frontage Road; 700 East street looking south.
	Folsom Lake, California SMALL * LARGE. Sunset breaking through clouds. Incredibly, no adjustment, no manual color balance. The camera seems to recognize when a sunset photo is being made and preserves the rich golden color. I used a Garmin Legend GPS receiver to predict the time of day for the sunset. SMALL * LARGE. Sunset on Folsom Lake as seen through a canopy of trees. SMALL * LARGE. Sunset, Portrait Orientation SMALL * LARGE. A Man and His Dog at Folsom Lake. A wonderful silhouette. SMALL * LARGE. Fisherman. SMALL * LARGE. Evening Rain. SMALL * LARGE. Sunset and Sunbeams 1 SMALL * LARGE. Sunset and Sunbeams 2 SMALL * LARGE. Sunset and Sunbeams 3 SMALL * LARGE. Sunset and Sunbeams 4 SMALL * LARGE. Lake Natomas at Negro Bar campground and boat launch. This is a couple miles down the American River from Folsom Lake. Both are reservoirs east of the city of Sacramento. I have fond memories of this spot where, 25 years or so ago, my good friend pushed me off this pier into the river in the middle of the night, clothes, flashlight and all while on a camping and rafting trip on the American River.
	SMALL * LARGE. Cat In Grass. An essential purpose of a telephoto lens is animal photography. Yes, it is true you can sneak up on your own cat but his behavior is not likely to be very natural in that case. No optimization on this photo. The cloudy day came to my advantage; ordinarily a black cat with white patches, in sunlight, has WAY too much contrast.
If you want to isolate a subject (emphasise it), get close and use a wide-angle lens. If you want to show your subject as part of its surroundings, use a telephoto lens and increase your distance.
	Temples and Similar Structures, Slide show. The Logan temple, Salt Lake City temple. Night and day views. In particular, many of the photos use the distance compression effect of telephoto, bringing the mountains in the background seemingly up close and impressive.
	Willow Park and Zoo SMALL * LARGE. Sitting Bench at the Zoo. Ordinary, yet relaxing. No optimizing. SMALL * LARGE * HUGE (All 2560 horizontal pixels!). Willow Park. No optimizing. SMALL * LARGE. Girl Picking Dandelions. Zoom in on the subject to reduce excess sky and ground clutter. SMALL * LARGE. Raven at the Zoo. Sometimes you just cannot get rid of the fence. In this case, make the fence part of the picture. No optimizing. SMALL * LARGE. Peacock Closeup at the Zoo. They are everywhere. So is junk, pipes, fences and litter. Hit the ol' zoom button and point at something colorful. No optimizing. SMALL * LARGE.Bald Eagle at the Zoo. Shutter lag on the Nikon 5700 is minimal and generally predictable, making it possible to obtain excellent photographs at the moment of action, provided you understand the animal or bird well enough to anticipate by 0.2 seconds or so when the moment is going to happen. No optimizing.

	Flowers -- all flower photos have color locked to white using preset. A slide show.
	Public Events SMALL * LARGE. Ribbon Cutting Ceremony. Nikon SB-28DX provided fill flash.
	Ellis Elementary Science Field Trip Never leave home without your camera! SMALL * LARGE. Going to the Field SMALL * LARGE. Sedges Have Edges, Reeds are Round SMALL * LARGE. Canoeing on the Little Bear River SMALL * LARGE. Canoeing on the Little Bear River
	Night Photography SMALL * LARGE. Chesapeake Commons Apartments at night. LINK to Chesapeake Website
	Automatic and Manual Color Balance SMALL * LARGE. A dining area at Chesapeake Commons Apartments. On the left is automatic color balance, on the right is manual preset balance. Manual color balance measures something that should be white (or neutral color, grey) and makes whatever adjustments are needed to make it so. In automatic modes, the camera has no way of knowing what should be white. It probably thought I was shooting a sunset (bright amber lights near the top of the scene) and "yellowed" the whole scene. It looked good at the Folsom Lake Sunset photos, but does not look so good here. Manual color looks wonderful; maybe it could be warmed up a bit but that is easy to do in the computer. SMALL * LARGE. The same photo, but automatic color balance. SMALL * LARGE. The same photo, but manual preset color balance.
	Tunnel Vision SMALL * LARGE. Aspen Park Apartments, Sacramento. An excellent use of Telephoto is to "tunnel" through the trees following natural (or man-made) openings. This is also an excellent demonstration of back-lit photography. Beware the exposure compensation; often -0.3 to -0.7 or more in this situation.
	Barns: A slide show and selector of barns.

What makes it special? The 8-to-1 optical zoom lens is the most conspicuous feature that sets it apart from its near cousin, the Nikon 5000. An electronic viewfinder is the second most conspicuous feature.

These sample photographs will tend to feature capabilities that the Nikon 5700 has over that of the Nikon 5000; at the same focal length, one would assume the photographs to be identical. In my experience, this is not so, the Nikon 5000 seems to have a sharper lens.

First impression. It handles well. Some people say it is too big, others too small, I say it is just about right. Actually, it is bigger than you would want for surreptitious picture taking, and perhaps not large enough to steady it at long focal lengths. However, I shoot from the hip sometimes and it works just fine, no loud clunk of a mirror, not even a beep if you don't want one. To steady it, I use a small, sturdy tripod -- quite often just letting its stubby little legs dangle in the air to increase its mass.

Edge sharpness seems a bit soft at telephoto zoom and wider aperture; especially in the upper left corner which suggests that on the unit I have, the lens elements might not be perfectly centered. I'd say there's a touch of chromatic abberation. The solution is to seek a smaller aperture in situations where this might be noticeable. Obviously, if the sky occupies the top half, it is not going to be noticeable, but cityscapes with sharply contrasting features might be a problem. I'll find out soon enough. These effects are not conspicuous especially at normal viewing sizes, but it is noticeable enough to be slightly annoying.

The electronic viewfinder works well. The first week of shooting with the Nikon 5700, I found myself using the LCD screen only once outdoors when I needed to achieve a difficult angle (camera almost on the ground). Otherwise, the electronic viewfinder is essential to see the framing of the image in daylight.

Manual Focus is going to be not very convenient. On the Nikon 5000, it was just as inconvenient but at least persistent (remained set while I tinkered with other controls) and displayed distance in feet or meters. On the Nikon 5700, the manual focus not only gave me no distance measurement, but it released itself the moment I released the manual focus button. That's obviously the default behavior, it may have some menu options to change it. One deficiency in both the 5000 and 5700 models; manual focus and self timer cannot simultaneously be active; activating the self timer cancels any manual focus and puts it into closeup mode as well. Not only that, autofocus stops once the self-timer is activated, so if you run around in front of the camera it is not going to focus on you, but it will take your fuzzy picture.

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