Reviews / Previews:
Dpreview.com’s preview

Ephotozine.com’s Review

PhotoRadar.com’s Review

PhotographyBlog.com’s Review

DxOMark Color/ISO/Technical Test of D7000 (Note: very advanced tests, not for most people)

Photo and Video Tests:
Nikon D7000 vs Canon 7D – which one is better?

Nikon D7000 vs. Canon 60D Lowlight Video shootout

Nikon D7000 with Low-light footage

D7000 Video Test

Sample photo galleries:
Camera Road Test with Chase Jarvis
Flickr: D7000 Camera stats and photos from users
Flickr Group: Nikon D7000 Users
Flickr Group: Nikon D7000 Club

Sample videos:
Nikon D7000: Camera Road Test With Chase Jarvis

Beautiful Macro Tests

Benevolent Mischief by Chase Jarvis

“African Music Video”

Other:
Nikon D7000 Brochure (PDF)
Nikon D7000 Manual (PDF)
Nikon Digitutor D7000 – Learn how to use the camera

Here is an article outlining the behind the scenes information.

Video:

They’re certainly not the first to do this, but this is a very impressive example.

mcbess

The snowboards for Apo Snowboards:

And let’s not forget his amazing animation for his Dead Pirates band:

Truly amazing stuff. He was part of the Sigg Jones short team along with Asterokid.

To get a little more speed out of my Mac Pro from 2006, I decided to upgrade my system harddrive to a Corsair 128 GB SSD Performance disk. I had heard that SSD drives could boost system performance by quite a great deal, and wanted to try it out. At 500 USD, it was a bit pricey, but worth a shot. It’s a lot cheaper than buying a new Mac Pro anyway.

Read the full review with speed tests after the jump.

Installation was super easy. The drive is 80 grams in weight, and pretty tiny. I just put it inside my Icy Dock 2.5 SSD to 3.5 SATA drive converter, flipped the cover down and swoop. It was connected. I screwed it onto the Mac Pro’s hinge and it was ready to go. I initialized it in OS X, and just ran an OS X install directly to the drive. Easy.

Shut-down/Boot up time:
To get this 100% accurate, I decided to use the restart function to gauge boot times. Basically this also shows how much time the computer uses to shut down and then restart.

Standard harddrive: 1 minute 26.6 seconds
SSD harddrive: 26.7 seconds

Application start-up time:
I also did a test of how much different the application startup time was between the two harddrive types.
All running Snow Leopard, no plugins installed.

Adobe Photoshop CS5
Harddrive: 22.6 seconds
SSD: 4.4 seconds

Adobe Illustrator CS5
Harddrive: 21 seconds
SSD: 5 seconds

Adobe After Effects CS5
Harddrive: 35 seconds
SSD: 29.9 seconds

Autodesk Maya 2011 64 bits (1 plugin)
Harddrive: 30 seconds
SSD: 8.3 seconds

As you can see, some of these apps launch at incredible speed on an SSD drive compared to a standard SATA harddrive. Maya actually takes 22 seconds longer to start on that drive. So far, this is looking like a very good upgrade to my Mac.And it worked a lot better than the voodoo curse I tried putting on it last week.

So to sum up:
Superior SSD Technomonology 1 – Voodoo 0.

Greyscale Gorilla has a nice breakdown of the new features with some sweet test animations.

Some videos off YouTube:

So you’ve got a fancy new DSLR with video features, but can’t shoot slow motion video?
Oton Bačar shows off how you can do that with the impressive Twixtor plugin from RE:Vision Effects.
Oton has taken 60 fps footage from a Canon 7D and spun up to 1000 fps in After Effects. Very impressive!

The Cintiq 20WSX arrived at my doorstep last week and I have had an enjoyable weekend giving Wacom’s latest screen tablet a run for its money. The 20WSX is the widescreen middle child of the Cintiq family, not as big and 4:3 as its big brother 21UX and yet much more applicable than its little 12WX kid brother. It was just launched in December 2007 along with the 12WX, so it is a brand new product. With its 1680 x 1080 resolution, 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity and fully 180 degree rotational surface, we are talking the magic stuff of illustrator dreams here.

Hit the jump for my full review & pics.

1. The Box, Its Contents, Price & How to Steal Get One
The package the Cintiq 20WSX comes in is fairly large and weights about 15 kg, so if you are importing it from the States like I did then this might be useful info. Basically these things go for $2000 in the States, and is not available in Europe. The only similar choice us European have is the 21 inch 4:3 format Cintiq 21UX which will set you back the remarkable amount of $5000 or 3300 Euros. It’s no wonder that this hardware has only been the privilege of lucky high-end professionals. However, thanks to a severely failing American economy and their moronic banks, we can make a great purchase! Cheers, yuppies…
The Cintiq box contains the standard Grip Pen that is also used on the Intous line, five replacement nibs to change the feel of the pen, a uniquely unified DVI,VGA, USB & power cable (finally a company that understands cable clutter!), power adapter, user manual, driver cd and a dvd with useless copies of shareware full copies of Photoshop Elements 5/4, Corel Painter Essentials, Nik Color Efex Pro and a nice little set of 81 brushes for Photoshop. The voltage of the power adapter is compatible with 110-240 VAC, so all I had to do was plug a Norwegian cable in and it was up and running.

2. Specs

Actual size: 21.6″ wide, 14.5″ tall and 1.8″ deep
Screen Size: 20.1″ (16:10 aspect ratio) at 1680 x 1050 pixels
Contrast ratio: 600:1 (250 cd/m2 brightness)
Colors: 16.7 million
Display Input: DVI-I or VGA (comes with converters if you’re old school)

2. Setup
My first impression opening the box was the pleasant surprise of realizing what the real world size of the screen actually is. This thing is big! But not in a clunky way. It certainly won’t win any design awards with its dull grey exterior, but until Apple release a touch screen, this will do more than just fine. Setting it up went really smoothly, all you do is place its sturdy stand on your desk and slide the screen down into it. There is no need for any other attachment. Plugging it in went fine as well. There is a rather thick and chunky cable going out its back, but not having three or four cables flowing out of the device makes up for this in my book. Installing the Cintiq in Mac OS X was easy, it recognized it right away after the latest driver was in place and I was up and running. Calibration took a couple of tries, and will probably be a testing process for most to get the feel right.

The technical stuff was the easy part though. Re-arranging my workspace was a whole other matter. I have a typical designer setup with a 24″ Dell screen as my main display, a normal Apple Keyboard and a mouse. Suddenly I didn’t know where to put any of these things. My normal setup was to have my Wacom Intous in front of my keyboard and my screen in front of that. This was the first setup I tried for the Cintiq and it really didn’t work. Either I couldn’t see the 24″ or then the keyboard was touching my stomach and making me type like a cripple. After a few hours my neck hurt like hell. Eventually I changed the setup so my keyboard, mouse and 24″ was to the left side of the desk and the Cintiq was on the right. This seems to be a very functional setup, and lets me do normal computer stuff to the left, and drawing to the right. From the right I can also see the screen well and use it for reference images or inspirational stuff like YouTube videos of pandas sneezing at their younglings.

3. First impressions
Once the Cintiq was all set up, I opened Illustrator to try it out properly. The best way to describe this experience is probably ecstatic magic / omfgimridingaunicorn. It is truly a remarkable piece of hardware for artists. It will change the way you work as well as speed it up. All of the troubles and grievances I had with the Intous’ strange detachment from the drawing surface were gone and this was actually just like drawing on a digital A3 sketchbook. The screen tilts up and down with surprising smoothness and the 180 degree rotation allows you to get strokes from angles you normally use on paper (and could only dream of on a regular Intous). Pressure sensitivity functions like a normal Intous, and is easily adjusted to your preference via the Wacom software. There was a bit of sound when drawing at first, but this is no longer noticeable as the nib has been worn down. Zooming in and out is easy thanks to the two touch strips intuitively placed underneath both sides of the Cintiq. The ExpressKeys were quick to setup and very useful when you have to be less reliable on your keyboard, unlike an Intous where it is easier to dual-wield. Drawing in Illustrator and Photoshop was treat in all ways, however modeling in Maya was a bit of a change of modus. This mostly has to do with the large screen-estate and my usual reliability on an ultra-fast mouse. Though after a few hours of testing and adjusting, I was modeling with reasonable ease.

All in all, the first impression from the Cintiq 20WSX was entirely positive.

4. Screen and Quality
To my surprise, the screen contrast was not as vivid as that of a proper high contrast LCD screen. Setting the backlighting to a higher value takes care of most of this issue, and your viewing angle affects the contrast a little too. But really, at this price point you would expect the contrast to be higher. When it comes down to it, sure, it’s not really a big issue. The colors are of excellent saturation and the ICC profile it comes with seems perfectly calibrated as images on the Cintiq and my 24″ Dell are identical. The screen-estate of 1680×1050 is just perfect too, it’s not too high a resolution to make drawing / gui usage difficult and not too small to make the drawing are feel small.

5. Conclusion
The Cintiq is a revolution for artists. It has been around for ages, but has been completely unavailable for most people. While its $2000 price tag still makes it a very expensive piece of equipment, it is at least within reach. Most artists spend $1000 on their LCD screens and another $600 on a Wacom, so the step up to a Cintiq really is not that far off. In the end, I think most artists will benefit greatly with a Cintiq in their workflow, much more than a normal Intous. Personally I can already see that I have cut my drawing time in half, and that is very impressive to me. I can’t wait to draw more, and I highly recommend it to anyone serious about illustration, 3d modelling (ZBrush) and photo retouching.

6. Tips & Experiences
After a few hours of drawing, I realized that half of the screen had become very smudged and wet with a thin layer of sweat. This is apparently a common issue with all drawing tablets, and one that is easily fixed. You may have seen people on YouTube using this if you’ve searched for Cintiq videos. All you need is a glove for your drawing hand. You would imagine Wacom would bother to include this, but seeing as it’s not strictly necessary, they cut the 20 cent cost. While you can get a pre-made glove, it is considerably cheaper to go to a local photo shop / drug store, buy some cotton gloves and chop off all of the fingers except the pinky.