St. Patrick’s Day Parade Photowalk, 2012

Todays’s Photowalking Utah event was the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Photowalk in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah co-sponsored by Pictureline and Nikon USA and helpfully organized by Nick Gilson from Pictureline.  Those who showed up for this event were treated to a truly extraordinary assortment of Nikon gear for them to try out and shoot with for the day, all absolutely free.

 

Nikon USA shipped out a mind-boggling array of gear including 11 Nikon D3s bodies, a ton of D7000 and D700 cameras, their new Nikon 1 series cameras and more lenses than should be allowed by law.  There were Nikon tilt-shift lenses (I’ve shot with the Canon versions, but did not even know that Nikon made them), crazy numbers of Nikon prime and zoom lenses, 300mm f/2.8, 500mm f/4.0 and even 600mm f/4 lenses for people to try out.

Look for everyone’s images from the walk over on the Photowalking Utah Flickr group site.  Images are being uploaded by people in the group as I type this.

 

The Nikon 1 series of camera kind of escaped me conceptually when they were first released.  However, after shooting with them a little bit this morning, I get it.  What I’d really be interested in trying out is one of the Nikon 1 Series cameras with a digiscoping setup.  I am not entirely sure if the eye-relief will work on a spotting scope, but it would be a fun experiment to try.  I’ll have to bring my scope down to Pictureline and give it a go.

 

As I said, an extraordinary assortment of gear all provided for free by Nikon USA.  Through these efforts, we had photographers that were able to experience professional level photographic gear as well as the consumer related gear.  We had a number of people that used the event to try out lenses or cameras that they were thinking of buying which undoubtedly led to some sales for Nikon.  Even more than that, I was impressed by the community good will that Nikon was willing to show.  Nikon has made a stunning comeback in the field of digital photography over the past few years that has been wonderful to see.  As a Canon shooter, I can hope that Canon pays attention to how aggressive Nikon has been with respect to their customers and potential customers.  Nikon as listened to what their professional shooters have wanted and responded with some amazing gear like the Nikon D4.  (I have a Canon 1DX coming (hopefully soon) via Pictureline and Duncan and I are planning on shooting them head to head to explore how they stack up, especially in low light.  Stay tuned…).  But Nikon has also been incredibly aggressive in the consumer imaging area, as well.  Its a good time to be a photographer…

 

An entertaining aside:  We even used some of the adapters that Nikon sent to try out something truly fun… Hooking up the new Nikon J1 to a Nikon 500mm f/4 lens!  Crazy, but it works!

We are very much grateful to Nikon and Pictureline for co-sponsoring this event.  They were both very generous with their time and resources and Pictureline is perhaps the best camera store I’ve ever seen.  Jens Nielsen opened up Pictureline over 20 years ago here in the Salt Lake Valley as a resource mostly for us professional photographers.  But since then, they’ve expanded to be a full service camera shop with a substantial online presence, great prices and spectacular service.  They are my go-to camera resource for all things photography, and then some.

 

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