Sebastian Bergmann

In case you follow me on Twitter, you already know that I recently made the switch from Nikon DX to Nikon FX by upgrading from a Nikon D300 to a Nikon D700 DSLR camera.

Just like they say

"Guns do not kill people, people kill people."

they also say

"Cameras do not take photographs,
the person behind the camera takes photographs."

And while I agree with the second statement, I also agree with Martin Gommel's answer to the question "Who makes the photograph?": the camera and lens used to take a photograph are important.

• A camera that takes great photographs using available light and high ISO is more useful for event photography than a camera that produces grainy/noisy photographs in available light conditions.
• A lens with a maximum aperture of f1.4 or f2.8 allows for more interesting pictures (with bokeh, for example) than a lens with a maximum aperture of f5.6.

With the exception of the Nikkor f1.8/50mm (photos) lens, all my lenses were DX lenses. Following the advice of Marcus and Duncan, I replaced my DX lenses with the following FX lenses.

Nikkor f2.8/14-24mm

The Nikkor f2.8/14-24mm (photos) replaces the Sigma f4-5.6/10-20mm (photos) ultra wide angle lens that I used on my Nikon D70s (photos) and Nikon D300 (photos).

Nikkor f2.8/24-70mm

The Nikkor f2.8/24-70mm (photos) is my new default lens.

It was a blog entry ("DxO Optics Pro 3.5 announced") by Terry Chay that brought DxO Optics Pro to my attention back in 2005. I had just gotten my first DSLR camera, a Nikon D70s, and was looking for a RAW processing software. DxO Optics Pro seemed to fit my needs perfectly. In addition to developing RAW files it also corrects for various optical aberrations, notably image distortion, with corrections tuned to particular lenses and cameras. After reading Terry's blog entry, I downloaded the trial version of DxO Optics Pro 3.5 and gave it a whirl. After a couple of days I bought a license as I was very happy with the results the software produced.

However, I was not satisfied at all with the software's GUI. But I was hoping that, since the core of the software did not need any major improvements, the developers would eventually improve the GUI. Gosh, was I wrong.

Fast forward to December 2007 when I got my new camera, a Nikon D300.

In order to use DxO Optics Pro on the photos taken with the Nikon D300, I had to upgrade to DxO Optics Pro V5. Just like Marcus, who has previously blogged about DxO, I am not happy with DxO Optics Pro anymore.

• In its current state, DxO Optics Pro 5 does not even start up on Windows Vista 64bit. Not supporting a 64bit OS in a software that performs memory intensive computations is just ... words fail me.

• After long and tedious work (with the help of DxO's support), I got DxO Optics Pro 5 working inside a virtual machine that runs Windows Vista 32bit.

  Well, "working" might be a euphemism here as, for instance, it only runs with superuser privileges. Last time I tried using it, it would not even start up anymore on Windows Vista 32bit.

• DxO Optics Pro must be the only piece of software I have ever used whose GUI got worse with each release. Not only does the GUI of DxO Optics Pro 5 look ugly (when compared to Adobe Lightroom, for instance), it is also not ergonomic bordering on unusable.
• In a nutshell: DxO Optics Pro 5 is currently unusable, at least for me and the other users I know (Marcus, Terry). It does not work on Windows Vista 64bit. When it does start up in Windows Vista 32bit, it usually crashes after processing 2-3 photos.

By the way: the way that the company behind DxO "deals" with the alpha-quality release of DxO Optics Pro 5 is just awesome (not!): When reports of crashes, startup errors, etc. began to pile up in the public forum, what did they do? They closed the forum.

For now I am happily using Adobe Lightroom 1.4 to develop my photos. Adobe Lightroom 2 looks very promising as, among other improvements, it adds native 64bit support.

Dear Adobe: Please integrate the functionality that DxO Optics Pro provides into your products. I do not care whether you just buy the company behind DxO Optics Pro and integrate their software into your RAW converter or if you decide to implement this on your own. I just want the functionality in your great Adobe Lightroom product. Thank you!

Update: DxO Optics Pro 5.1 has been released. It still does not support a 64bit version of Windows.

Update: DxO Optics Pro 5.2 has been released. It works on 64bit versions of Windows but is not officially supported.

World Youth Day is over and I could finally go to Cologne today and get my Nikon D70s camera with a AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-70mm/3.5-4.5G IF-ED lens.

I am happy to finally own a digital SLR camera and looking forward to shoot some pictures with it.