Thumbnail captions restored

14:05 BST

Thumbnail captions are now restored and all galleries are displaying correctly.

Pop-ups restored

15:20 BST

 Mouse-over pop-ups are now restored. Thumbnail captions to follow.

Missing captions from thumbnails

Wednesday 28 March 10:55 BST - Main website

A problem with the new back end interface this morning means captions are not displaying correctly or at all below thumbnail images in galleries. This will be resolved in short order. Any clients experiencing difficulty locating images in the meantime can contact me by email or telephone for immediate assistance. My apologies.

Comment - Unlucky number four

In China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan the number four is considered unlucky by many people because it sounds like the word "death". Buildings either have no fourth floor or use the letter F instead and some product lines avoid the number four, skipping from version three to version five. Camera manufacturer Fuji has done this, but Nikon has never appeared superstitious, producing both F4 and now D4 cameras. Today it appears that may be about to change. 11 weeks after the product launch and a week after the first units reached dealers, Nikon UK astonished customers by announcing the original price had been a "systems error" and increased the RRP by £500. Both Jacobs and Jessops immediately raised the price of the camera to £5289 and other dealers have now followed. That's US$8394 against the US price of US$6000. That's quite an error. You'd think someone would have noticed before now? It's hard to see how this can be anything other than a PR disaster for Nikon. Time for a four letter word?

Update 26 March: Having spoken to both my dealer and Nikon Professional Services this morning it appears Nikon may yet honour the earlier price for anyone who placed an order before the weekend.

Site maintenance Saturday 24th March

All clients please make a note that this coming Saturday 24th March the main website will be unavailable for a short period. This scheduled full site downtime is to allow for the upgrading of the code running the system behind the scenes and is the first stage in a series of improvements aimed at bringing a more efficient service to everyone. Please schedule your downloads accordingly.

Thanks

D800 Price rise!

In a bizarre turn of events this evening, Amazon has now increased the price of the D800 by £300. On the plus side, you are still saving 99p off the RRP.

Update 20 March: Amazon has once more lowered the price of the D800 by £300 only to return to the RRP (-99p) within hours.

D800 Price drop

Photographers interested in the D800 might like to note that Amazon has today reduced the price by £300, before the camera is even on the street. Taken together with the inclusion of £200 worth of XQD card and reader in the D4 it suggests Nikon may be rethinking its recent UK price moves.

UK D4s to include XQD card and reader

It's just been confirmed that the initial supplies at least of the D4 arriving in the UK include a complimentary 16GB Sony branded XQD card and USB 3.0 reader. That's a nice gesture.

That could have your eye out

From the pages of the D4 user manual.....


Using the viewfinder diopter adjustment control
When operating the viewfinder diopter adjustment control with your eye to the viewfinder, care should be taken not to put your finger in your eye accidentally.


Good try, Nikon, but Sekonic still holds the title with its entreaty not to swallow a flash meter. 

Client News - Streaming Zip File Delivery

Coming to the main site starting later this month a series of changes will improve the way clients view, select and download images. Many of the changes will be behind the scenes such as a move to solid state drives on the servers used to store and prepare images for download, bringing even greater speed to the service. Among the changes sure to be popular will be the ability to select a number of images in a gallery and download just those images in one go. As part of this process a streaming zip file downloader will be introduced. Previously it has only been possible to batch download an entire gallery or take the images one at a time. Hopefully the new option will not only save your time but will also end the problems a very small number of clients experienced with the present Java based batch downloader.