posts tagged with the keyword ‘photography’

2012.05.09

Nikon D3200 – Start!

Hey, we got a Nikon D3200 in the studio… how does it work? Just fine. I mean, there hasn’t been a ton of evaluation time with it yet, but I’ll mention one thing.

When we got in a Nikon D3x a few years back the biggest pain point was that we could not open the NEF files without using Nikon’s ViewNX software. (At least not until some software updates.) My workflow is built around using the Adobe Camera RAW converter in Photoshop, so that sort of sucked. Things got solved over time, but right now with the NEF files created by the Nikon D3200, I’m out of my simple NEF -> Photoshop workflow.

DNG 7.1 Converter

The solution for now is to grab the Adobe DNG Converter “Release Candidate” software, which lets you convert NEF files to DNG files so you can open as RAW in Photoshop. (And yeah, I’m still running Photoshop CS 5, btw.)

The version I got says “7.1.0.342 beta” and when you launch it you see that it will expire in June. (We assume a new release, or worse-case a new beta, will be out by then.)

DNG Expires

The Camera Raw plugin you see listed on that page? It didn’t work for me. In fact, before I could install it I had to install the Adobe Application Manager, and then it told me it couldn’t install again. I dug through the install files, and while I did find support files for the Nikon D800 (which we’ll get in soon… I hope!) there are no files for the Nikon D3200.

DNG UI

So for now I’ll just stick with converting NEF files to DNG files, and then opening those in Photoshop. It’s another step, and it’s a PITA, but it could be worse. And while Nikon’s new ViewNX2 is a big improvement to the crash-worthy ViewNX, I still don’t care for it as part of my preferred workflow.

So here’s hoping Adobe gets that RAW plugin updated soon, and that it’ll work with Photoshop CS 5.

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2012.05.04

It’s not the Gear, it’s the Gear!

TWIP - Gear

In the latest This Week in Photo there was another round of the talk of gear, and how gear doesn’t make the photographer, and while I agree with this, I also disagree with this.

The photographers who tend to say “Gear doesn’t matter!” are the ones who have really good gear. I’m not saying that it’s not true, but that it’s partly true. Over the last four years I’ve shot with a Nikon D40 with the 18-55mm kit lens, and I’ve shot with a Nikon D3x with a 28-70mm pro lens. the D40 was the entry level DSLR from Nikon in 2006. The D3x was the top of the line model a few years ago. The 18-55mm lens is a cheap consumer-grade lens that costs about $100, and the 28-70mm is a professional lens that costs close to $2,000.

Enough with the specs… I’ve taken the same photo with both cameras, and the results from the D3x look better. And I’m talking about studio shots, I’m not even getting into low-light, event photography, sports shooting, and other comparisons.

They also talked about the Nikon D3200, which oddly enough, is what I’ll be upgrading to very soon. I’m not expecting D3x quality from it, especially since I’ll be shooting with cheaper glass, and I’m not letting that 24 megapixels number fool me. I’d be fine if it were 16 megapixels, or even 12. (The D40 is 6 megapixels, and yeah, I have come to find that a bit limiting.)

I’m not buying into the idea that to become a better photographer you need better gear, because I do believe that shooting and trying new things is the road to getting better, but I do believe that gear does play a part it helping you make progress, or holding you back.

So my upgrade from a D40 to a D3200 comes with a set of expectations. I expect to be able to get better results in low-light (6400 ISO versus 1600 ISO.) I expect to have more choices in focus points (11 versus 3.) I expect more megapixels (24 versus 6.) And I also expect to be able to shoot video with the D3200, which is something I can’t do with the D40.

That’s about it… I’ll let you know how it goes.

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2012.04.06

Vivitar Foot Repair

Vivitar

So I got this Vivitar 285 flash last year, and it’s been working great, except for one thing… the little plastic foot is no match for the weight of this thing. Eventually, it broke. Argh… To be expected though.

I found a replacement metal foot on ebay for $6.99, and I watched some YouTube video that explained replacing it. Here’s the thing though… after I watched a damn advertisement, and then a 9 minute video showing how to do the replacement, I decided that I’d help people of the future by presenting the same info in a good old no-nonsense way, with words and pictures!

Broken Foot

So here is our broken foot. Thin, old, cheap plastic. No good! Grab a tiny screwdriver and remove the foot. Don’t lose the screws, they are tiny! (Also, you will need them later!)

Remove Foot

Here is the broken one still attached, next to the new one. On the original unit, there are 4 wires. Two of them (white and green) go to the test button. You don’t need these! You just need the black and red wires. The button on the new one will work just fine with only the black and red attached.

New Foot

The black and red wires are short, so don’t cut them, you need to desolder them. If you don’t have a good soldering iron, and some soldering wick and a solder sucker, find someone who does. (Maybe your local hackerspace?) I did cut the white and green ones, and put a tiny amount of tape over the ends, just to be totally safe.

Soldered

Solder the black and red wires in place securely. It appears I put the black on in the center. I’m not sure that it matters, but YMMV and I make no guarantees. (See where I put the screws? Right where they belong, because they are so damn small I was afraid of losing them!) Also, don’t put the foot on backwards, as that would be stupid. (Disclaimer: I’m not even sure you can put it on backwards. I just like disclaimers.)

New Foot

With the soldering done, put the foot in place, put the screws in, and put the batteries back in (you did take them out before you started, right!?) and test it!

OK, there’s your short guide to replacing the hotshoe foot for a Vivitar 285 camera flash. Hopefully you read this in less time than it took me to watch that 9 minute long YouTube video.

(And yeah, the fact that this is a post about photography that has terrible photos is not lost on me. Apologies…)

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2011.08.22

HDR Photos [Photoshop and Luminance HDR]

HDR Photos

It’s been a while since I posted anything about HDR imaging, and I realized that I never put Adobe Photoshop CS5 to the test. I did try creating an HDR image with CS4, but was disappointed with the results…

In the image above you can see my final output of an image. On the left side is all Photoshop, and on the right side is Luminance HDR (formerly “Qtpfsgui” for you old timers.)

Now for both of these images I did the HDR+ thing I talked about a while back, where I blend an HDR image with a normal exposure. Personally, I like the way those turn out, so it’s pretty much how I do HDR.

Pewaukee Lake

Here’s the image from Photoshop. (View it large at Flickr.)

Pewaukee Lake

Here’s the image from Luminance HDR. (View it large at Flickr.)

I think the Photoshop image looks better in the sky… it looks a bit cleaner, while the Luminance HDR image has a little bit of banding going on. You can also see some differences in the trees, and the water, but I think the rocks in the foreground really show the difference, and I prefer what Luminance HDR did.

This is only my first attempt at comparing the two applications, so it’s not entirely scientific. I did go into each file and tweak it a bit to try to match them closely as far as the color balance, but the detail is where the difference is most apparent. I also didn’t see any way to adjust the tonemapping in Photoshop, while Luminance HDR has a ton of sliders and options to twiddle with.

I suppose next time I could combine the two final images into a ‘final final’ image that would be some sort of SUPER HDR+ image. (I’ll add that to the ‘to do’ list.)

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2011.08.21

Analog Photography!?

Skylark

It’s been a while since I thought about my film days, and honestly, I don’t know the last time I’ve use the term “digital photography” when describing “photograpy” but there are still people who shoot film, RachelK is one of them, and another is Troy Freund.

Troy wanted to let me know that he’s involved with an Analog Photo Seminar at Cardinal Stritch University on October 9, 2011. Here’s the details:

This seminar will feature presentations and demos by Wisconsin film-based fine-art photographers. Nick Olson, Dr. Yong-ran Zhu and Mark Brautigam will present on their experiences in large-format photography. Over the lunch-break, I will talk about the experience of working with Leica rangefinder cameras.

Each photographer will give a 30-40 minute presentation of their work, followed by a short Q&A session. The afternoon will be spent with each photographer giving a hands-on demonstration of their working methods.

See Troy’s blog post for all the details.

If you’ve got any questions, I’m sure you can hit up @midwestphoto on Twitter and he’d be happy to answer them…

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