i interrupt the photovent to introduce you to the nikon d700

So Nikon has generously lent me a camera to play with -- the Nikon D700.  I received it today, and just took it out of the box to play with it.  The shots you see here are the first ones I've taken.

As far as I can tell, the main difference between the Nikon D700 and the Nikon D300 (which is what I use to take most of the images you see here on my site) is that the D700 has a full-frame sensor -- which I gather means (a) the resulting image is larger in the D700 than the D300, (b) I'll be able to take sharper images in lower light, and  (c) my lenses will shoot more true-to-label, since the D300 is a cropped sensor, and actually distorts a 50mm to about a 75 mm, causing the ...

... sigh.

I don't mean to get all technical.  The upshot is that the sensor of the D700 is theoretically a step-change above the sensor of the D300.  I can't wait to see how this works, and we're planning on taking it on a serious spin tomorrow morning in Galveston, so stay tuned.

In addition to lending me the Nikon D700, they also lent me a bee-you-tea-full 16-35mm zoom lens.  Again, I've just taken it out of the box, but I did take one photograph of my neighbourhood, below:

Oh-me-oh-my I can already tell that I'm going to love this lens.  I don't currently own a wide-angle lens (since I tend focus most of my shots on portraits and macro photography), but the 16mm on this puppy is really gorgeous.  Again, I'm going to really take it through its paces over the next few weeks, so we'll see, but I suspect that I'm going to have a hard time letting go of this one when the time comes to return it. 

More very soon.  Hope you're all having a great weekend.

Images:  Both shot with the D700 that Nikon so generously lent me.  The top image of Marcus was shot with my ancient 50mm manual lens; the bottom photo was taken with the 16-35mm lens that Nikon also lent me. 

I think I'm about to have a lot of fun with these.