Tea Leaves

Once again, I suffer so that you don’t have to. This morning I picked up Maxis/EA’s new Spore. Apparently, though, the online part of the game — which is to say “most of it” — is completely broken and doesn’t work. At all.

I’m sure I’ll hear from the “works for me” contingent any moment now. But for those of you who haven’t yet bought the game, you might want to peruse this 39-page thread on EA’s support forums. Many people, evidently, are getting messages upon their first login along the lines of “The code for this installation is invalid and cannot be used to link this product to your account”, or “You do not have the proper spore.com priviliges to use this product’s online features”.

These problems are impressively troublesome because they’re part of the out of the box experience. As I described to some of my friends on Twitter and elsewhere, the overall tone of the experience is “Hey, thanks for buying our game, you goddamn criminal.”

Playing offline on my Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, the game is playable, but noticeably slow. I’ll try it on the iMac later and report on that in a bit.

As regular readers know, I’m not only a gamer, but I’m a gamer who lives primarily on the Mac OS X platform. For years, this has been an insufferable position, akin to being seated at a restaurant where all the other customers were being served but where you couldn’t flag down a waiter. There have always been unique games for the Mac platform, and the occasional game like Diablo 2 that was on both PC and Mac. But for the most part, the hot new games would come out on Windows, and we’d have to wait until it was ported, 2 or 3 years later. If we were lucky.

I think 2008 is the turning point. When we look back, we’ll recognize this as the year it all changed.

Camera dorks, like most dorks, are obsessed with “systems.” You only ever hear dorks talk in hushed tones about how the most important thing to consider is not the individual purchase, but how all of your purchases should meld together into a cohesive whole that is a larger synergy. You hear this a lot when you ask camera dorks for buying advice. “It’s not the single item that matters, it’s how the whole system fits together” they will say. They make sure that before you go out and buy that Nikon D40, you have duly considered whether or not the Nikon system has the lenses and accessories you will need to handle all of your photographic requirements from now until the end of time. You get similar sorts of lectures when asking for buying advice about computers, stereos, maybe cars, bicycles, etc. These are all dork system hobbies. You should smile and knod, and ignore them.

(Part 1 of this article explains my rationale for answering the question “How hard is it for a Canon shooter to go Nikon?)

Conclusion

I set out to answer the question “can a Canon shooter go Nikon?” The best answer I have for this question is a personal one: in writing this article, I’ve been packing up the D300 to send back to Nikon, and I’m mentally tallying up my bank account to see if I can come up with the cash to buy one — and the 17-55 f/2.8, and an SB-800 — for myself.

This is not to say that one can’t get good results out of a Canon. Rather, having decided to address the “what should I upgrade to?” question squarely, I can’t unring the bell. The D300, with the accompanying lens, is a combination that, out of the box, made composing and exposing compelling images practically effortless. When I last used a Nikon — a D70 — I felt like I was quite literally fighting the camera tooth and nail in order to get an image of acceptable quality, an image not overwhelmed by unpleasant ISO noise. Those days are gone.

(Part 1 of this article explains my rationale for answering the question “How hard is it for a Canon shooter to go Nikon?” After a month with a D300, I’m ready to answer that question. If you buy equipment from Amazon via links on this page, or click on the ads, we get a little cash, which helps us maintain this site.)

Noise and High ISO performance

Nikon DSLRs have traditionally lagged a bit behind Canons in terms of digital noise at high equivalent ISO settings. The D300 levels the playing field to the point where this is, effectively, no longer a useful distinction between the two systems.

ISO 640

(Part 1 of this article explains my rationale for answering the question “How hard is it for a Canon shooter to go Nikon?” After a month with a D300, I’m ready to answer that question. If you buy equipment from Amazon via links on this page, or click on the ads, we get a little cash, which helps us maintain this site.)

Focus

Nikon’s auto-focus system UI differs from Canon’s in the particulars. In its default mode, the Canon focus system tries its best to focus, and then lets you take the photo. The D300 in “S” (”single-servo AF”) mode will refuse to take a photo if it thinks it isn’t focused. The camera goes to great lengths to make sure that you, as a photographer, know what’s going on with the focus system. In “S” mode (which I think of as equivalent to Canon’s “one shot AF” mode), half-pressing the shutter causes the lens to focus, the selected focus sensor to flash in the viewfinder, the camera to beep (unless you tell it not to), and a small dot to appear in the viewfinder, which means the camera believes it is focused on something. Squeezing the shutter release the rest of the way takes the photo.
Overall, I found D300’s focusing to be superbly accurate, but slightly slower than Canon’s. We’re not talking a huge difference here. Subjectively, it feels like about a hundred-millisecond difference. For most non-sports situations, that’s enough that you notice, but not enough that you miss the shot. For my money, this is a good tradeoff: when the focus system works, which is most of the time, you get superb accuracy and tack-sharp results. That means more keepers.

(Part 1 of this article explains my rationale for answering the question “How hard is it for a Canon shooter to go Nikon?” After a month with a D300, I’m ready to answer that question. If you buy equipment from Amazon via links on this page, or click on the ads, we get a little cash, which helps us maintain this site.)

Flash

When I first began shooting, I didn’t have any interest in flash photography whatsoever. Now I do, and that’s one of the things motivating me to look at switching. Nikon has a reputation for having a superior flash system. After shooting with the Nikon D300, I believe it.

Several years ago I entered the digital photography age and bought a DSLR. The other principal at Tea Leaves, psu, is a dedicated Nikon shooter and lent me his Nikon D70 to play with, and another friend of mine lent me a Canon D350 (”Rebel XT”). Both were fine cameras, but I liked the “out of the camera” JPEGs from the Canon a little more, so I went with that. Since that time, Pete and I have developed a friendly rivalry where he has been “the Nikon shooter” and I have been “the Canon shooter.”

Recently, I’ve been mulling over a new camera purchase. I’ve abused my faithful Rebel quite a bit, and although it still works fine, I’ve sometimes chafed at some of the tradeoffs I made. For example, it’s wonderfully small, but the viewfinder is unusable. I was, of course, considering trading up to one of the higher end Canon models, but then I sat back and surveyed what I actually own and I realized my investment is pretty small. My favorite lens is the 50mm f1.8, which was a mere $70. I have a $400 28-135 IS lens which has been dropped on the ground, repaired, and which doesn’t focus so well anymore. And I have a low-end flash unit. With no huge investment in quality glass, why shouldn’t I at least look at Nikon?

“It’ll never work”, said Pete. “You’ve spent three years living, breathing, and thinking Canon. You can’t rewire your brain to a completely different user interface. You’ll hate it.” But I was curious to try the experiment anyway. I contacted Nikon, and they graciously agreed to loan Tea Leaves a Nikon D300 and a very nice lens. I’d like to tell you a bit about my experience.

It’s the middle of August which means that the new Madden is out and we can say that the annual “Retarded Fall and Holiday Gaming Release Flood” has officially begun. While the coming weeks probably won’t bring us anything quite as bountiful as last year’s Bioshock followed by Halo 3 followed by Ratchet and Clank followed by Rock Band, there are no lack of interesting titles.

I just paid $90 for a set of games that, purchased separately, would cost nearly $500.

Long-time readers know of my love, bordering on irrational, for the games of Everett Kaser. From his first great game, Sherlock, through to what I consider the apogee of the deduction game, Baker Street, Kaser’s games have kept me company for upwards of 15 years. There has always been one problem: his games didn’t run natively on Mac OS X.

Until now.