New Nikon D3 & D300 announced

Today, Nikon announced two new cameras, the D3 & the D300, as well as several new lenses.

The D3 sounds like Nikon's answer to Canon's MK III; very good news to me! If the D3's high-ISO low noise feature is as good as purported (better than the MK III!), I won't have to make the switch to Canon, which will save me thousands of dollars of investing in new equipment. This would be very good.

Here's a link to Rob Galbraith's site: Nikon D3

It is a very pretty camera, too.

World Record Pool building

As a photographer, you get to witness some unusual things. I like that.

A few days ago I helped Chris Barr cover We Fix Ugly Pools' attempt to break the world-record for the fastest built swimming pool. Bet you didn't know they had a record for that, did you? Me neither.

To cover it, we set up two synchronized cameras on roofs overlooking the pool area and took 4 bracketed shots every 10 minutes. In between climbing a sissor-jack onto the roof to check on a time-lapse camera (wrapped in a ziplock bag and shaded by a gobo), I did the event photography. Got quite a work-out, and sweated like a pig the whole time.
We got to the site at 4am to set up the time-lapse cameras. It was to become a brutally humid & HOT day.

6am:

Shooting the gunite:

A frame from one of the time-lapse cameras:

One of the time-lapse cameras. Plastered...

The Phoenix Fire Dept filled the pool from a hydrant in minutes.

After a beehive of activity and six manic hours later, the pool was full of water and we were spent.

12:30 pm - the homeowner and just SOME of the workers who made it happen.