Dominican Night Shooting

Note the "Martian" like flare from the lights!

On March break my wife and I took a holiday to Samana in the Dominican Republic.  Samana is a small resort town on the north eastern coast, and after soaking up the rays on the beach, there wasn’t a ton to do.  But there were some opportunities for some night time photography, which actually ended up rather well.

The big disappointment came when half way through the trip, the as new open-box Nikon D90 I had just bought started to turn the pictures wonky, corrupting many of the files.  Was it the new camera, or the new 32GB Lexar SD card?  I kept shooting and hope some shots might make it back alive.  Even though none were absolutely special, I was still very disappointed.  I brought the camera to Nikon Canada, and they found that the card had corrupted.  They ran a recovery program on the card and saved about 90%, which I was very happy about.

Note blur from fast moving clouds

I like the D90.  It’s light, somewhat compact and performs well.  These are 3 lenses I took with me, and they make a great kit for travelling:

1) Nikon 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 DX zoom.  This is a handy no-fuss lens.  Its got a nice range (equivalent of 28-200mm), and apart from significant barrel distortion at 18mm, has no significant flaws.  The replacement  18-105mm has VR, which would be useful.

2) Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 DX.  This is one of THE great lenses for DX cameras.  This lens works extremely well, really wide with not too much distortion and reasonably compact.  A bit slow, but this is never really an issue.

3) Nikon 35mm f2 AF.  Yes, the Nikon 35mm f1.8 DX is a better lens, but its not full frame.  Still, this lens is capable of excellent results.

All photos shot with Nikon D90 and Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6.  Photos 1-3 @ ISO 800, Photo 4 @ 3200 ISO