I can’t contain my excitement as I finally held this crown jewel in my hands. My buddy Wilfrid was nice enough to help me collect this piece of man-made wonder from the Nikon Service Centre (together with his own other pieces of small wonders), lugging 3 big bags of goodies all the way back to his office. In the evening, we met up for dinner at Crystal Jade in Holland Village, then drove off to pick up his wife, and then Wilfrid dropped me back home. The deed was complete. We have done it!
The Warden was watching Desperate Housewives, while I opened the boxes like a kid opening his Christmas gifts. I kept showing her each of the equipment as I pulled them out, like how a magician pulls rabbits out of his hat. Each time I give her a dumb smile, but she was just focusing on the sexy women on TV, and their weird diseases.
So I had to charge the batteries first. I did that first, and stared at the blinking light on the charger for a couple of minutes, willing it to stop blinking (which means it is fully charged). It kept on blinking. Never mind. I brought the full set of manuals to the toilet and poured through them as I sat on the toilet bowl – who said men cannot multitask?
As the clock ticked close to midnight, the Nikon D90 did not turn into a pumpkin, but the battery charger finally stopped blinking! Quick as a cat, I proceeded to stuff the battery into the camera, then slotted in the new (free) Lexar 4GB SDHC card, and mounted my brand new Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro lens onto the camera. It was a perfect fit! I held my breath as I turned the knob to power on the unit… hey presto! It was prompting me for settings on its brightly lit LCD panel!
After the initial mundane task of setting language, time, date and what-have-you, I was ready to test drive this baby. Under my home lighting at night, usually the Canon G7 will sputter a little, but this was no problem for the D90. It focused quickly and I had my first picture on the D90! Then I took a picture of the Warden as she hid behind a mountain of cushions on the sofa, and showed her the results. Meh… she said it was an ugly shot. So I let her be and went in search of other victims to shoot.
Afterwards, it was time to import the pictures and see if my Adobe Elements 5 can import the NEF RAW format of the D90. My laptop recognised the D90 instantly without a hitch, but it could not recognise the RAW format image. Luckily, Adobe provided a free download of its Adobe Camera RAW 4.6 on its website, and after installing that, everything worked perfectly!
I couldn’t be a happier man today. A man and his new toy. A world without worries. Well… unless you’re my buddy Wilfrid who claims he was struggling to put on the strap on his new Nikon D700… oh well…
November 11th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Lol … your wife is so funny. Man, I don’t know why. Mine didn’t prompt me to do the settings. Just keep blinking to tell me that the clock is not set and what-have-not … lol.
Hey, WE DID IT! Nice bokeh! I think by the time you were downloading the pictures, I was still sweating to put the stripe on and trying to take the inverted hood out of the lens! I am still staring on my camera this morning pondering what to do with it … lol.
November 11th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
[...] And I got a shock when I held my camera. So bloody heavy! Unlike my friend Mark who has also got himself a Nikon camera (how excited and productive he was!), my accomplishment for day 1 was as [...]
November 14th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Men and their toys. bleh.
hahaha…. congrats dudes! I know how it is to finally have the ONE that you have been dreaming for a long time! I’m not into gadgets. I’m happy with wads of cash.
*count count count*
November 14th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Wilfrid, don’t forget I got a head start because I’ve already got a dry box.
The bokeh is nice indeed, and much much easier to achieve than on a point-and-shoot.
November 14th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
ECL, thanks! It does feel good to actually hold this in my hands! Finally! Muahahahaha…
November 15th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
haha interesting way to put across your excitement. i think females’ excitement comes with jus the camera and how the new photos taken from the camera looks like. i dont get excited over the manual book. if i can (i.e. have someone to read and tell me how to use it), i will avoid it at all cost
November 16th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Haha Siying, it’s not bad to read manuals really. Sometimes I find myself re-reading manuals when I really needed something more out of a new gadget. Now I have 2 main manuals to read – for the D90 and the SB-900 flash unit. I even read the manual for the dry box and the Sigma lens.