Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8

I made my decision on which wide-angle lens to purchase (see previous entry) and picked up the Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8. The ratings and specs compared versus the price (when compared to Nikon's offerings) and the fact that they were a known quantity thanks to my excellent experiences with the equivalent crop-sensor model for my D7000. I knew from looking at the physical specs that the thing was heavy, what I'd not expected was the sheer size of the thing compared to its DX colleague. Truly it is a beast. Check out its size compared to the standard reference brew in the picture, for example. It's comparable with the alternatives, of couese, I just hadn't appreciated the scale-up of lenses that takes places in the shift from crop sensor to full-frame. Ah well, I've made my choice.

The quality of the lens itself is superb and I'm delighted, just as I was with its predecessor in my lineup. I've not got many example photos taken using the lens just yet but here's one of the Potala palace in Tibet. I look forward to many future shoots using it.

Crunching Numbers

I knew that my 28-300 lens wasn't great when I bought it. I wanted it for flexibility, not performance, but it's good to know that it will at least perform better on the full frame camera for which its purchase was intended, at least according to DxOMark. I've heard some criticism of DxO's lens comparison and I've even disagreed with some of their findings myself (they say that the Tokina 11-16 is best at f/2.8 whereas my own observations and indeed common sense suggest it's better at f/4 rather than wide open) but really, what better system are you going to use when researching lens purchases?

Wide angle problems

I hadn't realised but it turns out that I actually have a pretty specific set of requirements for a wide angle lens. That's good in a way, I suppose, since it implies I know what I want but it does mean that a number of available lenses don't meet one or more of the criteria:
+ At least 18mm wide
+ At least f/2.8
+ Decent rating from DxOMark or the like
+ Weigh less than my camera
+ Budget c.£700
+ Not fisheye

I'm open to either prime or zoom if it meets the requiements. The lens I'm using on my DX rig is the Tokina 11-16 and has been superb- my best lens- but I do tend to use it at the widest angle so it would make sense to just get a prime from that POV. I had been looking at switching to the FX equivelent of the 11-16, the 16-28 which I'm sure will deliver what I need but it weighs nearly a kilo! Not the most portable given that I mostly do wandering travel photography.

Sigma and Nikon both have well-regarded beautifully light 20mm primes (the Sigma one is f/1.8!) but I checked the loss of FOV on Nikon's handy lens simulator between 16 and 20mm and it's just too much for me. I prefer to see all the things. My best urban landscape shots are all 16mm equivelent. Sigma also do a 15mm prime but it's a fisheye and a (discontinued) 14mm prime that sadly doesn't appear to be very good. Other offerings from Nikon are a 14mm prime and a 14-24mm, both at f/2.8. This would be ideal were it not for the £1300 price tag.

So where does all this leave me? Apparently having to compromise- pay nearly twice what I'd like, lose some FOV or haul around a tank. I'm stumped.

D610 purchase

I went ahead and purchased a D610 from an eBay seller. Advertised as "new UK stock in sealed box" for £200 cheaper than the Amazon price. I was... cautious but decided to commit, reasoning that what is described is exactly what I want and if any aspect is not as described, I'm covered by eBay policy. Nothing to lose, right?

The item was dispatched quickly and arrived by special delivery the next day- a new, UK model complete with warranty card in... a box with a broken seal. Now, Nikon product registration accepted the serial number fine (and I know they do some validation on that since they prompted me about my gry market D7000 when I registered that) but I might give the warranty line a call and just check that they'll honour the warranty.

As for the camera itself, I've not had a project since I acquired it but I shot a couple of test shots of what happened to be around the place i.e. my cat.

It's nice to pair it with my FX lenses that I'd purchased prior to the switch. The AF feels great and I feel that the shots are coming out sharper than on my D7000. This probably just means that my D7000 needed a routine calibration maintenance, but I'm still pleased with what's coming out the of 610 in any case. It's worth noting that this shot was taken in a dark room and I was really pleased with its low-light AF performance (which has been something of a selling point) and the fact that it doesn't engage it's "assistance beacon" as readily as did the 7000 and seems to manage fine without it. Also very pleased with the bokeh of it when combined with the 50mm f/1.8.

I'll do another update on the camera when I've had a proper chance to use it on a project but my initial feeling is that I'm pleased with the investment.

Upgrade All The Lens!

My new lens arrived yesterday. Nothing too exciting, a NIKKOR AF-S 50mm f/1.8G, the full frame equivalent of the DX NIKKOR AF-S 50mm f/1.8D I've been using on my D7000. I've bought it in preparation of moving up to a full-frame body. In the interim, it works as a 75mm f/1.8 on the crop-sensor D7000. I'm sure I'll do an update about the lens itself before to long but what I wanted to write about today is the the process of piecemeal upgrading from the one system to the other- replacing my DX lens with an FX equivalent and the decisions about each. Here's my current gear and the options I'm considering for the upgrade:

Body:
Current (DX): D7000
Considered (FX): D610, D800
I've already written about delaying buying a D600 until the dust/oil issue was resolved and, now that the 610 has arrived, I've still got some reservations about that model. Namely, it's central clustering of focus points compared to the handsome spread on the D7000. Now, I understand that this is a problem generally on full-frame digital cameras but the 600/610 has it worse than many. Ideally, I'd really like to wait for the next iteration to see what happens there but I have some once-in-a-lifetime type travel plans coming up in a few months and I think I should have the full-frame for that hence I have to choose from what's available. Having pretty much committed to staying with Nikon (already picked up a couple FX lenses) my options are for the D610 or the D800. The D800, despite having a slightly better focus point spread, is larger and heavier and I do a lot of travel photography so I'd ideally like to keep things light where I can. Also it's virtually twice the price of the 610 and I don't think I'd see the benefit for the extra outlay.

Telephoto zoom:
Current (DX): Tamron 18-250mm
Considered (FX): Nikon 28-300mm (purchased)
I wrote about deciding on the Nikon 28-300 from the available options. It's also one of the reasons I chose to stick with Nikon rather than taking the opportunity of switching systems to try Canon- the Canon equivalent is far outside my price range. Is it the sharpest? Hell no, but it's a decent lens for a decent price and it provides the flexibility I was looking for from this piece of my kit.

Portrait prime lens:
Current (DX): Nikon 50mm f/1.8D
Considered (FX): Nikon 50mm f/1.8G (purchased)
This was an easy decision, standard cheap 50mm f/1.8 DX prime has straight equivalent for full-frame bodies. £150. Job done.

Super wide-angle lens:
Current (DX): Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8
Considered (FX): Tokina 16-28 f/2.8, Sigma 10-20 f/4-f/5.6, Nikon 14-24 f/2.8
The Nikon equivalents of the Tokina wide angle are crazy expensive (for a hobbyist, anyway). I had a brief panic where I thought that Tokina's FX model wouldn't offer an equivalent field of view to the DX equivalent and I'd be stuck but it turns out the 16-28 gives a maximum 107° vs. the 11-16's 104°. So it seems that the Tokina 16-28 will be a definite, the only alternatives being stupid expensive or f/4 max. I've taken a look at Tamron and Sigma's offerings in this space but Tamron don't do ultra-wides for full-frame cameras and the closest I can find from Sigmas is a 10-20 f/3.5 which offers 102°. So likely going to be the Tokina but shout up if you know of a good F-mount super-wide.

This was far, far longer than intended.

50% markup for D610 product fix

I'm sure that most people have seen by now that the D610 has been unveiled. Let's not pretend- this is a fix for the D600 oil/dust/shutter issue. It's not a new model and a slightly faster FPS and marginally improved weather sealing aren't going to make anyone think otherwise. And that's ok. Nikon's drawing a line under the 600 and effectively admitting its problem and releasing a follow-on free from its taint rather than fix the issue under the same model name and risk it not being realised by your average Google-search consumer. I'm fine with that. What I'm not fine with is, at time of writing in the UK, the 610 costing 50% more than the 600!

It's a problem fix for a documented and acknowledged issue. You want to relaunch as a new model to avoid the reputational damage? Fine, I'll play along. But don't charge people an outrageous premium to purchase a working product as opposed to a faulty one. It's more expensive than the D800!

I don't intend this blog to be ranty, God knows there are enough bloggers ploughing that furrow, but I couldn't help this striking me as an insult to their customer base on the part of Nikon.


Update: D610 price has dropped 10%. Body prices as per Amazon UK now stand as follows: D600 £1280 D610 £1599 D800 £1835

Introducing the D610?

There are rumours that the D600 is about to have a refresh, which is something I speculated might happen in an article I wrote about the D600 dust issue. I agree with NikonRumors that we're going to see next to nothing in terms of a spec update, just a new model to fix the dust issue that plagued (or at least was said to plague) the original model. I'm curious as to whether it will also improve the small focus area which is the other common criticism of the D600 model. Assuming this is the case, it'll still leave me with the tricky decision of paying the extra for the new model or picking up an even cheaper D600 (at time of writing, you can pick up a body for £1100, presumably this'd drop below £1000 with the release of the 610).

The D600 was launched almost exactly a year ago.

Manchester Pride Parade 2013

It was my home city of Manchester’s annual gay Pride parade on Saturday, one of the largest and longest-running of such parade’s in the country thanks to our sizeable LGBT community centred around the gay village of Canal Street and the surrounds. It's a great event and all of 100 metres from my home and it’s probably the best photo-op that the city has to offer so I did my usual thing of clambering up to one of the deep window ledges of the former warehouse buildings that dominate the area and snapped over the crowd as the parade went past. It’s been a decent tactic in previous years and resulted in a number of my more successful (according to recorded views) photos but it does mean that I essentially get the same shots year on year. I think next year I’ll aim to get to the front of the crowd and use my 50mm prime instead. Push myself to try different approaches.

The parade was good, if perhaps not quite as good as I've seen it in previous years. In 2010, they had Sir Ian McKellen and in 2011 they had a tank. That sets the bar pretty high. Still, some great costumes and the usual wonderful atmosphere.

The other observation is that my new 28-300mm lens really ain’t all that sharp. Now I knew it wouldn’t be given the range but I was expecting it to be sharper when compared with the lens it replaced (Tamron 18-250) and the price difference between them (the Nikkor being something like 4x the price), I was really expecting more. Nonetheless, I got some decent shots. Here’s a sample:

As always, the full set are available on my Flickr account.

Village Day 2013

I grew up in a small village in Northwest England and, just to live up to the stereotype, we have a village fête. Pretty traditional: bouncy castles, apple bobbing, face painting, homemade jam and all that stuff.

It was also the first proper outing of my new zoom lens where I was shooting at the long end. The first thing to say is that we were blessed with a sunny day, meaning I could keep the shutter speed way up (640/1), even while shooting in ISO 200 at f/8. I guess that's likely necessary at 300mm on a DX-format sensor. That out of the way, I found it performed pleasingly well. Yes, it's a touch soft on the long end. But only a touch. It's never going to be competing with a prime, is it? The VR helps, of course, and the SWM focussing is a blessing compared to my old Tamron 18-250. Overall, very happy and it gives me exactly the versatility I was looking for. I'm pleased that I opted to get this over the (cheaper & presumably sharper) 70-300 since I was shooting at the full range, swithcing from zoom to wide shots at no notice where I wouldn't have wanted to change lenses.

Bizarrely, the small handful of photos I uploaded pulled in nearly 1000 views to my Flickr account yesterday. I guess the kids love quaint rural funsies. Also dancing girls.

The D600 dust issue

For those of you not aware, the D600 is known to have an issue whereby dust and/or oil collects rapidly on the sensor, manifesting as spots and smears on photos.

I'd not really thought about blogging about this, firstly because it involves going into a level of (mechanical) technical detail which is an area in which I would not normally dwell and secondly because there's a huge amount of content out there already on the subject. What convinced me to write on the subject was that all the other content I could find tended to only focus on one facet of the issue and a lot of it has not been updated as new information has come to light or attempted to reconcile its own content with other content on the web. I thought I'd attempt to summarise everything I've encountered in my research on the issue. An article that covers everything, from perception to causes to solutions, hopefully in a succinct manner, updating as I discover anything new.

Perception: Is there actually an issue?
Not famed for being a source of universal agreement, the Internet is divided on whether there's an issue at all. The ever-high-profile Ken Rockwell has said that he thinks it's an example of Internet gossip but this would seem to fly in the face of user after user after user who are reporting firsthand experience of the issue, not to mention that it's been reported by no shortage of experts such as LensRentals, petapixel and dpreview. A number of other commentators have gone along the "all cameras get dust on the sensor" route, but this seems to be missing the point that those citing the issue are stating not that "it collects dust" but the speed at which it does it. These aren't first-time camera owners, they've had DSLRs before and are saying that the D600 gets it much faster than any other they've seen, sometimes right out of the box.

So yeah, I think there's an issue. At least for a sizeable chunk of the D600 user base.

What do Nikon say?
Given that the issue had been reported since the product launched in September 2012, it wasn't until February 2013 that Nikon acknowledged the issue. Reports prior to that include stories of cameras being sent in for servicing being returned with the amount of dust described as being "within acceptable tolerance".

Even Nikon's announcement from February is somewhat half-hearted. It's not a "yes, there is an issue" so much as "we hear a bunch of people are unhappy, here's what you can do about it". And that is to send it to them for cleaning. Shipping at your cost but the service should be free.

Is dust a big deal?
So it's dust on the sensor. Just clean it, right? Sure, that works, but be aware that a typical report of the issue is that it manifests from only a few hundred actuations. Do you really want to be cleaning your sensor (or sending it off for servicing, even) that frequently? Not to mention that I believe self-cleaning may actually void your warranty.

What's causing it?
Short answer- nobody really knows. There are a couple of theories around mirror box scratches or short shutter curtains.

Is there a permanent solution?
Since it's a hardware issue, something physical within the machine, it seems likely that there's nothing the user can do. But what about Nikon? A number of users who have returned their D600s to Nikon stated a service category of B1 or B2 on their service reports. Both of these denote that camera parts were replaced (B1 being minor, B2 being major). Are Nikon replacing parts that cause the issue with alternate versions that prevent it? This would also fit with some reports of speaking with Nikon customer service, although these are hard to verify. Does this also mean that new runs of the 600 are being manufactured with these new parts? Possibly, but we've no real way of knowing (or at least I've not found anyone who's compared the parts suspected of causing the issue on older or newer models).

One thing worth mentioning is that there have been reports of the issue apparently improves over time.

Are all D600s affected?
Difficult to say. Nikon's serial numbers work by region so it's harder to tell what's a 'newer run' (the first digit denotes the region) and thus whether it's a 'bad batch'. From the research I've done, it seems that cameras get hit (or at least some users report it) regardless of country, run etc. If newer models are being produced with fixes, it doesn't seem to be apparent from the available evidence. But then not all users say they have the issue so could random bodies really just not have it? Conclusion: Do I get one?
Let's review. From launch, it seems there was an issue affecting a good portion of the cameras. According to some, that gets better. If it doesn't, apparently Nikon can fix it for free if they've not already fixed the route cause on new units.

I'll be honest, it's given me severse cause to hesitate purchasing but I'll keep an eye on news for it while waiting for old stock levels to die down and probably take the plunge before too long.

Lens decision!

I appear to have made a decision with regards to upgrading to a full-frame camera. Well, sort of- I've bought a Nikon 28-300mm full-frame lens to replace my very cheap Tamron 18-250mm zoom.

I guess this means I'm sticking with the Nikon system rather than switching to Canon for the EOS 6D, which is something I'd been flirting with. There are a couple of advantages of this; firstly, I can upgrade and replace my lenses and other kit piecemeal without leaving holes in my lineup since my existing lenses will work on a Nikon full-frame (even if they won't be making the most of its capabilities) whereas with Canon I'd have to replace everything in one go- camera body, lenses, flash, remote & triggers. The other reason for sticking with Nikon is Canon's lens line up, specifically on the telephoto side of things. Here's what I mean- this is the Nikon lens I bought and this is the Canon equivalent. Both are 28-300, f/3.5 - 5.6, image stabilising, full-frame etc. etc. The Nikon one (at time of writing) is around £650 on Amazon, the Canon £2050. Their product lineup would seem to suggest that Canon will let you have 50mm into the hundreds fine, but if you want to start lower, they deem that to be a 'pro lens' and you're into more serious money. That's not an option for me and I can't see an alternative in their lineup, nor from the likes of Sigma, so that sort of decided it for me.

I know I could get a 75-300 or some such but I'm not willing to take on an extra lens. The idea is to build a lineup of:
+ Super wide-angle
+ Prime portrait (35mm or 50mm)
+ General versatile & telephoto

The 28-300 will certainly offer benefits over my current lens- not only is it longer (on crop sensor, anyway), but it's got vibration reduction, advertised as making up the equivalent of four shutter stops of speed, allowing you to shoot slower. Not only that but it's f5.6 at the long end, compared with 6.5 on what I have now. All told, it should make for a considerably quicker lens (and hopefully sharper, too).

All of this, combined with me finding a cheap Nikon refurb was too much to resist. I'll update more once the lens arrives. Hopefully in the next couple of days.

Nikon D7100 vs. D600

As mentioned before I'm a D7000 owner, Nikon's top-tier cropped sensor model. I'm keen to upgrade to a full frame camera and had been waiting with bated breath for the release of Nikon's entry-level full frame model, the D600, which I felt didn't quite deliver what I wanted from a model at that position in Nikon's product hierarchy, both in terms of price and functionality. The latest twist in the tale is the introduction of the D7000's successor, the D7100 released a short time ago.

As a bit of background, Nikon have got a point where all of their current models have been released in the space of a little over a year and it looks like there are some baselines being established across the lineup- the Expeed 3 processor (used across all current models) and the 24.7mp sensor on the lower half of the portfolio, for example.

What I find curious is that the new D7100 offers a number of key technical specs which are superior to the D600 despite being from a lower tier. Obviously this isn't unusual if the higher tier camera is an older model but the 600 launched a mere five months prior to the 7100.

My interest is particularly from the viewpoint of HDR photography, which is what I find myself doing, most commonly. Much has been made of the impressive dynamic range of the now-standard Expeed 3 processor in the D600 and its ability to provide 1-shot HDR from RAW as well as an in-camera HDR function. So it's safe to say that the D600 is a very capable HDR camera despite only provide 3-step auto-exposure bracketing (AEB), something I've commented on previously. This does not detract from the oddness that the D7100, with the same sensor and processor, still provides 5-step AEB on a lesser model. Why almost immediately one-up your own new camera, which made much of its HDR capabilities, with one from a lower tier?

So why is this a problem? If the 7100 is superior for HDR, why not just upgrade to that? Because the 7100 is still crop sensor just as the 7000 was, thus forcing HDR shooters into deciding between superior HDR capabilities (not to mention the D7100's increased focus points and built-in WiFi) on a crop sensor or a full-frame model that doesn't quite deliver what it should on the HDR front, the likely result being that, like me, they may either refrain from purchasing altogether or, worse from Nikon's POV, notice that the Canon EOS 6D doesn't force them to choose.

Edited on 17/04/2013

D600 revisited

I've continued to follow the D600 after its ridiculously pricy UK launch and, at time of writing, it's come down in price 21% on Amazon to a much more reasonable £1540. This puts it much more within my price range for what I'd be prepared to pay for a camera at this level, i.e. entry-level full-frame, but there was one more disappointment when we had the release announcement which is that it only does three-stage Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB). For those you who aren't aware, AEB makes HDR photography (which I do a lot of) very easy- I switch it on, hold down my shutter release and my camera will take three photos at varying levels of exposure for my HDR software to combine.

...and that's my point, this is what I do with my current camera, a D7000, and the D600 doesn't give me any more exposures. The D800 will let you do up to seven so I was hoping for at least five from a camera that costs twice as much as my 'humble' D7000.

Or so I thought, but then reading about how the D600's sensor already has a superior dynamic range and so each of those three exposures is still delivering more from an HDR perspective. Just how much more is a bit more difficult to quantify.

I also realised that, in order to get the benefit of the new camera, I'd also have to replace all my DX (cropped) format lenses so I'd be looking at at least a £3000 spend in total.

Maybe not something I'll be doing too soon, then...

Prescient

Five days after I pointed out that the UK price of the D600 is too high, it drops by 18% on Amazon. Coincidence?

Yes.

But still, it's not even been released yet and they already dropped it by that much. Still, it needed doing.

D600 launch

So after much rumour, speculation and leaks, Nikon finally announced it's new entry-level full-frame (FX) model, the D600. As mentioned in previous posts, this is a camera I was looking at getting based on leaked and rumoured specs as the next logical stop up from my DX format D7000. I must say, the final release did have a pretty big sting, for those of us in the UK at least: the price. Remember that this is meant to be the "lets make full-frame affordable for the consumer market" model. Now in the US, it's $2100 which I would be more than happy to pay for what this camera is. I mean, I'd jump at that. But in the UK, it's £1975 or USD$3200. 50% more! And I'm taking Amazon.com vs. Amazon.co.uk so it's about as much of a like-for-like comparison as you can get.

This is how bad it is- it's cheaper for me to purchase a return flight ticket to New York and buy the camera while I'm there than it is for me to buy one from Amazon.co.uk. And I don't mean pennies cheaper; I did the briefest of searches for flights and found that I'd still save over £230 on the cost of the camera. Madness.

This is made more ridiculous by the fact that the D800 is 'only' £2204. Less than £250(12%) more for a camera two tiers above the D600. Surely Nikon have got to do something to sort this pricing out but I can't see myself making a purchase before they do.

Wishin' an' hopin'

I'm eagerly awaiting next month's Photokina exhibition for all the expected Nikon announcements. Particularly the cheap full frame model. I've also worked out that I want one of the Nikon x-300mm lenses (they do four: 18, 28, 55 & 70) but which one I get will depend on whether I pick up this full frame camera or not and whether they announce successors to any of those models. I'm also really hoping that'll it'll do at least 5-stage auto-exposure bracketing (not mentioned on the specs known so far) or I'm not entirely sure I can justify the purchase.

Lessons learned

Take a look at the above shot. Those flecks dominating the top right corner of the frame are sadly not a feature of the instagram-style filter I sadly had to use to make the shot even remotely work. Yes, I had crap on my lens. Normally this wouldn't be too much of a problem because at typical exposure, there's enough light coming through the lens to eradicate it but for a HDR shot, the underexposed frames are already limiting the light coming into the lens so the specks show up more. The HDR software then picks up on these details out and exacerbates the effect.

Obviously the solution is very simple- one of those inespensive lens pens/cleaners. Hama do one for all of £7 on Amazon which I've picked up since (and can recommend) but sadly it doesn't help those photos I took at the time.

Barcelona and laptop upgrade

I've just returned from a stag do in Barcelona. Not exactly a perfect photography holiday but I've got a few that are nice. Most notable was the trip to la Sagrada Familia, a modern cathedral designed by Gaudi with an interior intended to resemble a forest. Very well thought out- the columns are made from different coloured/shaded stone so that from the back it gets darker and darker towards the front until there's a golden sunburst intended to represent God. Even as an atheist, that's impressive.

I was looking forward to creating some HDR images I took there but computer problems have meant that it's running very slowly and HDR processing is lengthy at the best of times. I use Photomatix for HDR and it's taking a full 10 minutes to get through to the preview stage. After that, I have to tweak the presets and settings and tell it to process which takes another couple of minutes. If the image doesn't come out quite right, it's back to the start. Long story short, I decided that enough was enough and bought a new laptop so I look forward to powering through the rest of the HDR work and improving on the image above.

Lens indecision

I've been thinking of reviewing which lenses I use. My cheap Tamron 18-250 that I picked up is alright but seldom does it provide images quite as notably sharp as those taken on either my Nikon 5mm prime or my Tokina 11-16mm. At least part of this is the lack of vibration reduction provided by that model, ever more important at the long end of things.

Swapping it for a Nikon equivalent gives me the options of 55mm or 70mm to 200mm or 300mm. Either way, I'm losing the 18-55 range. From that perspective, Nikon's 18-105mm appeals but them I'm weighed down with four lenses and that certainly doesn't appeal:

Tokina 11-16mm
Nikon 18-105mm
Nikon 50mm prime
Nikon 70-300mm

That's a heavy bag.

Anti-government cuts march

There was an anti-government cuts protest in Manchester yesterday (the ruling party are holding their annual conference in the city at the moment) with some 35,000 in attendance. They went up my street so obviously I went out to join in and take photos. Sadly, this was the only half-decent photo I got and it's not much; the composition is out and it's blurry. Overall, I think the Pride march spoiled me a bit in terms of photogenic parades. Also it was a typical grey Manchester day so the light could have been better and the sky could have been a nice backdrop. Still, at least it was right outside my door.

Also my remote has croaked again. Seemingly permanently this time so I've ordered another since it's probably my most-used bit of extra kit (I use it much more than my flash, for example) and I will want it for my holiday. Given that the dead one was an official model and didn't last long, I didn't see any point in doing that again so got a 3rd party one for a whole £5.