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Better Than Daylight

I do a fair amount of higher ISO rated shooting with my photography these days and there is no doubt that the capacity to which we are capable to shoot this way has literally changed the realm of photography. Its a game changer as much as roll film or Polaroids or the advent of digital photography.

Camera sensors are rated for a range of sensitivity and my Nikon D700 shoots from 200ISO through 6400ISO. Then you have the option of pushing beyond the sensor’s ratings into “High ISO” or, essentially, push processing (remember that?). Push processing was rating film at your camera for underexposure then “pushing” the film back to its original rating during the processing of the negatives. This was tricky to get just right, unless you did the math. Let’s be honest though, the math sort of ruined the fun and sometimes I’d rather just guess and see what came out the other end. This was akin to shocking your film with a cold water rinse just before the fixing stage or cross-processing chromes in color chemistry. All these options, with so much left to the unknown, often resulted in undesired results, but every once in awhile strange and happy photographs would greet you on the other end.

I know a lot of photographers that wont budge over 800ISO on their fancy pro DSLRs. Three years ago I was more inclined to agree with them as the loss of detail through noise reduction or the overwhelming amount of noise produced in the image made it near impossible to see what was what. Put simply, as a photographer, all we do is chase the light around. Today, however, if you’re not venturing down the higher ISO road, you’re missing out on some great light.

I love night photography. The color cast from lights at night are anything but normal. The strong shadows and eerie light patterns are a draw to my photographic eye. Normally higher ISO ratings aren’t a necessary tool with night photos, a sturdy tripod is, however, a must have piece of equipment. My daily tripod is the Manfrotto 3021BPro which is the earlier version of the 055XProB.

The image above (click for a larger view) was shot without a tripod because I can’t find my quick release plate for my tripod head. I know, I know… =/ so the thought enters my head, lets see what light is out there. With my D700 and my 70-300VR lens hand-held (lens hood pressed against a glass door) I looked across the backyard, dialed the ISO to High 2 (25,600 ISO, this is two stops above 6400 with each stop acquiring two times as much light), set the aperture to f/11 (the sweet spot on that lens) and the shutter speed to 1/2 seconds. This metering set is equivalent to 200 ISO, f/11 at a 60 second exposure time (shutter speed). Keep in mind VR in your lens can compensate the same 2-3 stops regardless of what shutter speed you start from. I braced myself against the back of a chair for a little extra stability.

B/W picture control was set at the camera. The image was processed through Nik Capture NX2 for sharpening only. NO noise reduction was applied (NR was off in the camera, also).

I don’t normally venture above 6400 ISO on my camera, but i didn’t often cross-process slides either. Some days it just feels right to be a little abnormal.

Go shoot something differently tomorrow.

Get outside your comfort zone.

___________________

John Scott

Gadget Lab Casually Reviews Lensbaby Fisheye and Soft Focus Optics

Lensbaby Soft-Focus Optic

So, Charlie Sorrel, Gadget Lab’s resident camera nut, has finished his casual hands-on review of Lensbaby’s two newest optics, the soft-focus and fisheye swappable optics for all of the current generation Lensbaby lenses. And, he tries them on a D700 and a Panasonic GF1, so you get both ends of the sensor-size spectrum.

Now, maybe it’s just my love of everything Dave McKean has ever done, but I do think the soft-focus lens is more useful and desirable than Charlie does, but I agree whole-heartedly with his assessment of the fisheye optic as a cheap route for those who want that and already have a Lensbaby.

Also, I never found the optics to be all so finicky to swap around, but your mileage may vary, of course.

Anyway, not much to say otherwise, if you want to know his thoughts you should really just hit the external link below.

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Nikon Updates Firmware For D3x, D3, D700, D300s

Nikon issued a buncha new firmwares, apparently to support those new boffo 64GB cards that’re starting to trickle out (like this one, maybe?). Anyway, I found this news at DPReview, and they have it laid out the best for getting ahold of those, so rather than reinvent the wheel I’m just going to float them some traffic and send you there to grab those. Just to remember to come back to us when you need the cameras themselves, k?

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Nikon Rocks Indy, Derek Shoots a D3, Pigs Nationwide Take Wing

photo by Dawn Boarman

So, as mentioned by the stalwart Mr Henry, the photo walk was great fun. Thanks go to Jeff and Erin for making it what it was. I spent the first half working with my normal tackle while Nick, at my recommendation, got some one-on-one love with the very sweet D700 and the (old/current) 70-200 VR. Then, near the end and at Jeff’s suggestion, I picked up the D3 that had remained strangely untouched and started running around with it and the 14-24, 24-70, and the 85mm f1.8.

The D3 was as impressive as I remember from the last time I got to handle one briefly, and the CH drive mode was so fast it took me a second to realize it wasn’t just a funny sounding shutter action but in fact three of them every time I pressed the button. Hair trigger on that beast.

Jeff was great to have out, he’s really quite knowledgable not only in specs but in methods, and he was very forthcoming with help and tips. And, afterwards at Rock Bottom, we were all (Dawn, Nick, Jeff and myself) talking it over, and we think maybe we haven’t been pointing out enough that these aren’t just photowalks for the guys and gals who know what they’re doing, that they are in fact learning experiences and that we’re out there to help you understand photography better. So, if you’ve been holding off on coming out because you’re not a ‘shooter’, stop it. Come on out and ask Nick and myself any questions you have, we’ll give you all the advice in our noggins in exchange for your company.

Photowalk – Success!

Voice activated lightstands

Things went rather well. The weather cooperated, so I didn’t need to use my rainsleeve. And even though I managed to convince everyone to park something like, nine miles from the shooting sites, everyone seemed pretty pleased with the outcome. Above, you’ll see our volunteer model Erin, framed by two voice activated light stands with Tony’s elbow poking in from the side.

Later on we’ll have footage to put on the Roberts Imaging channel on youtube, and as Derek and I filter through and spruce up our shots we’ll get them added to the Flickr feed for y’all to ogle and mock. Dawn’s got some pretty neat shots (and some hilarity) from the fish-eye she borrowed off Jeff.

We’ll be having another informal walk on Tuesday, August 18th about 5:45pm at the corner of Illinois and Washington (kinda by Champp’s, under the Artsgarden) and if the weather get’s nasty we’ll head inside. We’re working to arrange another model to come out and hang with us as that seems pretty popular. I know I get tired of shooting Derek.

Photowalk with Jeff Penn of Nikon Aug. 11th

ZOMG! Photowalk!

Here we go, Photowalkers. We’ve missed you. We’re looking to stop missing you come Tuesday, August 11th at 6:00p. You’ll get to hob-nob with our very own Jeff Penn of Nikon, who’ll be bringing some gear we can pass around.

What do you need to bring? Well, your kit and a spare CF card and maybe a friend, a tolerant spouse, or a volunteer model. (For the lucky, I guess that’s be all one person. )

We’ll meet at The Circle at 6p and all take a walk up Meridian to one of the lovely parks north of The Circle and use up the scenery with Nikon’s Creative Lighting System.

Remember that these are welcome to everyone and any camera system or device. We like taking pictures, and we like it when you take pictures. Heck, my girlfriend brings a flip and shoots video.

See you there.

Drop me a line at nhenry at robertsimaging.com if you’ve questions or comments.

Glass LCD Screens

So, let’s start off-topic. I’ve been looking into buying a new MP3 player to replace my rather agéd Zen Xtra (a device roughly the size of an internal SATA drive it’s so old now). Not being a fan of the iPod culture, I’ve been doing my due dilligence on its practical competitor, the Zune, and I found the most amazing video ever.

It’s a guy talking about how he feels that for devices with glass screens, people are just wasting money on screen protectors. He then goes on to prove his point using the highly scientific approach of attacking the screen with various metal objects.

Now, to bring this around to topic. About halfway through I looked over at Nick, who had put down the game controller and was now watching the fun along with me, and said ‘you know, Nikon uses glass screens on their DSLRs.’ Which is true, I remember our rep making a big point about in in the D300 training, and the D700, D3, and D3x share that screen.

So, you Nikon pro users, watch below and understand why Nikon is so proud of the durability of that screen:

If anyone uses any other DSLR brand and can get me some documented proof they use glass LCDs (it’s quite possible, just no one else has gone out of their way to make it clear to me like Nikon did), I will more than gladly update this post.

Nikon D700: A Little D3

So, because we just had a call about this, I thought I’d throw it out here that in the world of Nikon digital SLR cameras, the D700 is seriously not all so different from the flagship D3. You got the same sensor, same AF, same lens compatability, same auto-cropping viewfinder when used with DX lenses. The changes?

No integrated grip. Though, there is an available one (same as the D300, for convenience).
Different continuous shooting rate (again, a la D300, and improved with the D3′s battery in the available grip).
Built-in popup flash. This is here more as a wireless flash master than as a flash, before you all start ragging on the poor popup flash. Line of site remote TTL with Nikon flashes = awesome.

And… well, really, that’s mostly it. It’s been a while since I got to handle one, but it might only have 1 CF card slot. But, image-wise, you’re not looking at a heck of a difference.

Did We Mention We’re Having an Expo?

Spring Expo 2009

So, I somehow miraculously keep not mentioning this, but the 24th and 25th this month at or two Indianapolis (area) stores is our annual Spring Expo. We’re going to have most anybody who’s anybody (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Mamiya, Leica, Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, Profoto, Induro, PocketWizard, FJ Westcott, RPS Studio, Manfrotto, Gitzo, Lastolite, and on and on and on…) out in our store, showing you the merch. If you’re within traveling distance, it’s really a good time to swing by and give us a visit, because there’re just too many toys to play with. It’s one of the two times a year I get to try one of the f2 constant zooms for my E-3, for instance. (Although, dyed-in-the-wool Oly shooter I am, I think I’ll step down and play some with the A900 and some Zeiss lenses and with Nikon’s under-rated D700, both of which are systems I’d have in a giant rolling case if my pay-grade allowed for it.)

I’m sure specials will abound as well, and for those of you who unfortunately can’t come out and see us I’ll be mirroring as much of them as humanly possible on our website as well, so remember to swing by the site that weekend and check on that equipment you’ve been scrounging for (and maybe some you didn’t know you needed, occupational hazzard).

The tech of the future?

Right now the photo market is full of a lot of highly competent DSLRs with slightly different specialties. The D700 Nikon digital SLR camera, for example, is a low-light king. The Alpha 900 Sony digital camera is a high resolution monster, Canon digital SLR cameras are famed for having great dynamic range across the ISO range.

And if Fuji can follow through on its promises, we might soon have a new breed of camera starting to arise that has to make no compromises and specialize in one of those fields while sacrificing a little of the others.

Announced recently for a compact camera, but with potential application in larger sensors that has a lot of advanced amateurs watching with interest, is the new EXR technology. At the foundation of this technology is a restructuring of the traditional Bayer filter. The Bayer filter is a filter over the sensor on basically every digital camera going and tells the camera how to see the world in color, and not just values of light.

On the left is a traditional Bayer filter. A row of alternating Red and Blue and then a row of Green (turns out our eyes favor green pretty heavily). On the right is the pattern reworked for their EXR technology. You can see there’s still twice as much green as red or blue, but the new trick is that there are two pixels of each color next to each other at all times.

Further beyond that is that one pixel is high gain, it absorbs light very quickly. The other of the two is low gain, absorbing light slowly.

What’s all this mean, especially in relation to low-light, resolution, and dynamic range? What Fuji is saying is that the sensor can be switched between three different “modes.”

On is resolution. You can tell the sensor to use every pixel traditionally, which gives you high resolution.

The next is dynamic range. Those two pixels, the high and the low gain? The high gain lets shadows expose quicker, the low gain protects highlights. It halves the resolution, but should give a fairly notable increase in dynamic range by treating each type (high/low) as a different image and then combining the data, sort of like in-camera HDR.

The third is low light. Since the two pixels side-by-side see the same color, the camera can “bin” them together. This halves resolution, but creates a pixel twice the normal size, which means the picture will have less noise by nature. It sounds like it can do further binning, effectively letting you get unbelievable ISOs at the cost of resolution, not noise.

Time will tell what impact this has on the market, but as far as photo tech goes I think this is one of the neater announcements I’ve seen in some time.

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