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mcGowan

kodak 14n

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It's an amazing camera but a bit out of my league pricewise. I -think- if a person shops around they can get it for about $3000ish, but like I said, that's out of -my- price range.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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i found a used one fo$1995.00 so that put it in my reach (barley)

i have been way horney for that high res and quality for a long time. sort of like moving from 35mm to med format (2 1/4.

loking forward to seeing you at the memorial day boogie. i enjoyed jumping/visiting with you last year

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you ain't kidding. if she where a camera she would be a ga zillion bilion pixel leica.



Now that sounds like it may be to heavy to put on your head. ;)

Hope all is well Mike! Say hi to Jen.



oh i wouldn't use a camera of that quality for free fall. strictly close up photography for a camera like that :ph34r:

good to hear from you. doing well?

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You're a lucky man Mike and I'm not just talkin' 'bout the camera.



would you be refeering to my recent marriage?:)


That's one of the sweetest things a camera guy could say about his gal! :)
Mike, let us know how the 14n works out when you start jumping it. That many pixels makes us all tingle.

peace
lew
http://www.exitshot.com

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A good article comparing the Kodak 14n to the Canon 1d
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/14n-initial.shtml



Ouch, that is not a very flattering review of that camera!

Michael, I would give it some serious thought if all of this is true and save for the 1Ds..
But then you have to change your whole setup from Nikon to Canon.. tough call.

Iwan

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A good article comparing the Kodak 14n to the Canon 1d
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/14n-initial.shtml



Ouch, that is not a very flattering review of that camera!

Michael, I would give it some serious thought if all of this is true and save for the 1Ds..
But then you have to change your whole setup from Nikon to Canon.. tough call.

Iwan



iwan
that is avery old review. many firmware upgrades since then. also all the weakness that where noted are in shooting situations i am not concerned with(high iso and low light) the camera seems to excell at 100 - 80 iso and that is where i will be shooting . ah and the big one. the canon is $6000.00 more then my 14n

i will be jumping with the camera tomorrow. will report on my findings.

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ok as promised here are my findings after jumping the 14n today. i had the d1x and the 14 n on my helmet and shot them both so i could compare the two. i interpalted the d1x images to 10million when converting from raw. the14n definitly out resolved the d1x but not by as much as i had expected %25 maybe? at first i was a bit disipointed but then i took into consideration what a really great camera the d1x is and to out perform it by even 25% is a formable feat.
i am going to jump the camera more tomorrow and i think the more i get to know it the better i will get it to perform for me. this is for sure not a point and shoot camera. it is definitly bringing the photographer back out of me. i love that

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Enter Canons mk2
8mp action monster.



Yes it shoots at 8.5 fps, but it is still not a full frame camera. And I think that is what Michael is after..

Why do you want 8.5 fps? I agree that it is nice for exit shots, but even with 2.5 fps (like I have on my Digital Rebel) you can get that nice exit shot.
I would buy the next level up digital camera next time though, I wouldn't go with the entry level camera anymore.

The Kodak has a 14 Megapixel resolution and many other things, as well as a mount for Nikon type lenses.

Iwan

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as well as a mount for Nikon type lenses.



Kodak has announced that the 14n will also be produced as the DSC Pro SLR/c with a Canon lens mount.

J
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke

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as well as a mount for Nikon type lenses.



Kodak has announced that the 14n will also be produced as the 14n/c with a Canon lens mount.

J



Now we're talking! Well, if mcGowan blesses the camera who am I to challenge that!
I better start saving.

Iwan

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I would buy the next level up digital camera next time though, I wouldn't go with the entry level camera anymore.



I wanted to clarify what I meant here, as I got some questions on this statement. I am extremely happy with the Digital Rebel at this point, and as a first digital SLR I couldn't have made a better choice.

I meant that as I get more proficient in photography in general, my demands on the camera will go up I am sure.

Right now if I would go for another 35mm SLR, I would not buy the Rebel 2000 again (or the newer equivalent of that camera) but would probably go with the Elan 7 or something.

What I am saying is the Digital Rebel is an entry level digital SLR, that in my opinion fully meets the requirements for freefall photography, BUT it has limitations (that I have not yet met by the way)

Iwan

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Henny Wiggers (Parashoot here) jumped one in Thailand. Some of the pics on the news page www.theworldteam.com/news (pic names should start with HW or HennyWiggers, some pics are with his D100 others with the 14N) and on his own page www.parashoot.nl are shot with this camera.

Also I made some pics in Thailand with his camera, on the ground only (some of the group pics etc).

He's had a bunch of problems with it (understatement), but it performed well sometimes, esp with the two pics on his first page (the Thailand mouse-over). Don't know off the top off my head which other pics were with the Kodak tho.

Also, Norman Kent jumps one.

BTW there's 4 versions of this camera now, I'd be very very careful which one I payed so much money for :S:$ Especially the first one I think is really much more of a studio camera........

Also I'd advice the fastest CF and SD cards (SanDisk UltraII is good), and make 'm big (1 GB is nice) :S;)

ciel bleu,
Saskia

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As mentioned by Saskia I got a 14n from Kodak to play with it in Thailand. In return of some nice shots I could keep it. At the time I got the camera there were 2 versions. One with a buffer of 256 and one with 512 mb. I got the 256 and Norman already warned me about the limited burst rate. The 512 is obviously double. Now they introduced the Pro with a new chip and software. The 14n 512 can partly be upgraded but I think the Pro will have better results for skydiving due to the lower ISO settings.

I still can't explain most of the the problems I experienced with the body I had. Many pics were not sharp although I used manual focus with the settings I'm used to use for over 17 years of camera work. I even tried auto focus but with the same results. I also had many jumps with all milky pics. I found a bug in the software which explains some unsharpness. When using the flash on the body in the plane the shutter goes to 125. Once the flash is closed the shutter goes back to the original setting (I'm used to 350 and 420). In the photo info it says it's shot with that shutterspeed but after one release the display says 125 again and the results look like 125. The ugliest is the magenta parts in the pics. Kodak says it can be solved by chosing a lens correction setting in the software. I didn't try that yet.

I was absolutely sure that the body I got was having a problem like a loose chip. This can be the reason for most problems. I gave the camera back to Kodak and they checked it and upgraded it to 512 at the same time. They couldn't find anything wrong except for a big crack in the body I just saw when I returned the camera. It probably had been fallen before I got it.

On the record jump in Thailand it worked flawlessly and I'm really happy with these results. The record shot is amazing with the resolution of 4500 x 3000. I also have an incredible shot from the tail of the lead plane with such a perfect style that I sold more photos of that one than from the record. Because of the resolution I can easily crop more than half to still keep a high resolution picture.

I just got a call from Kodak this morning and they'll make me an offer again to replace the previous camera. I hope they'll give me the new Pro version.

Although I'm happy with my D100 (with a 2½ mm remote connection made by Nikon) the Kodak is far superior in Quality and the weight is no problem since I'm used to jump medium formats, 16 and 35 mm, etc. If I compare the shots of the 14n with my medium format scans (Kodak Pro) I prefer the digital kodak 14 MP.

Hope this is of any help.

Henny Wiggers (Parashoot The Netherlands)
Team captain camera team The World Team

** Know what you say but don't say all you know. **

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As mentioned by Saskia I got a 14n from Kodak to play with it in Thailand. In return of some nice shots I could keep it. At the time I got the camera there were 2 versions. One with a buffer of 256 and one with 512 mb. I got the 256 and Norman already warned me about the limited burst rate. The 512 is obviously double. Now they introduced the Pro with a new chip and software. The 14n 512 can partly be upgraded but I think the Pro will have better results for skydiving due to the lower ISO settings.

I still can't explain most of the the problems I experienced with the body I had. Many pics were not sharp although I used manual focus with the settings I'm used to use for over 17 years of camera work. I even tried auto focus but with the same results. I also had many jumps with all milky pics. I found a bug in the software which explains some unsharpness. When using the flash on the body in the plane the shutter goes to 125. Once the flash is closed the shutter goes back to the original setting (I'm used to 350 and 420). In the photo info it says it's shot with that shutterspeed but after one release the display says 125 again and the results look like 125. The ugliest is the magenta parts in the pics. Kodak says it can be solved by chosing a lens correction setting in the software. I didn't try that yet.

I was absolutely sure that the body I got was having a problem like a loose chip. This can be the reason for most problems. I gave the camera back to Kodak and they checked it and upgraded it to 512 at the same time. They couldn't find anything wrong except for a big crack in the body I just saw when I returned the camera. It probably had been fallen before I got it.

On the record jump in Thailand it worked flawlessly and I'm really happy with these results. The record shot is amazing with the resolution of 4500 x 3000. I also have an incredible shot from the tail of the lead plane with such a perfect style that I sold more photos of that one than from the record. Because of the resolution I can easily crop more than half to still keep a high resolution picture.

I just got a call from Kodak this morning and they'll make me an offer again to replace the previous camera. I hope they'll give me the new Pro version.

Although I'm happy with my D100 (with a 2½ mm remote connection made by Nikon) the Kodak is far superior in Quality and the weight is no problem since I'm used to jump medium formats, 16 and 35 mm, etc. If I compare the shots of the 14n with my medium format scans (Kodak Pro) I prefer the digital kodak 14 MP.

Hope this is of any help.

Henny Wiggers (Parashoot The Netherlands)
Team captain camera team The World Team



thanks henery
for taking the time to share your experiences with the 14 n. they confirm a lot of what i have already heard. so far i have been having great luck with the camera. and feel the more i use it and learn it's personalty the better results i will recive from it.

let's keep in touch and help each other get the most out of the camera

peace

mike

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In case you want to see some ground pics shot with Henny's kodak:

http://www.proton.org/~dragon2/chutes32/index.html

The first 20 or 25 pics, filenames starting with D then a number, are taken with the kodak.

For some reason I'm missing the group pics I shot with the kodak, they're on another harddrive I think :S

I was impressed by the way the camera handled backlighting (shooting into the sun, colors turned out NICE), and the fps didn't really bother me as much as I thought it would (see series of JC swooping the ditch).

The other pics were taken with a Nikon D100 (DSC...) and a Canon 300D (IMG_...).

ciel bleu,
Saskia

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