I've avoided taking photos in RAW format for many great reasons. 1) the files are bigger and take forever to copy to the computer 2) JPG is easily shared 3) JPG is quickly displayed by every photo editor known to man 4) there weren't many free editors/organizers that read in RAW 5) Nikon does a great job of getting the picture right in JPG format if I do an adequate job of photographing...
Google Picasa does read in RAW format but for the D50 NEF - it's just a little dull. The colours aren't vibrant. Sometimes the exposure for the RAW is horrid. Picasa does a lot of great things well. It's great for uploading and sharing to web albums like Flickr and Facebook. The thumbnail display is super fast. It continues to improve the easy editing like retouching (getting rid of skin blemishes, dust spots on the sensor or snot in baby's noses), red-eye reduction and if I was using JPG entirely, I would never use anything else.
But I got my hands on Photoshop Elements - which I recommend you try the free trial. Picasa has spoiled me on a few things. In Adobe Organizer, the thumbnails are slower, the interface is far less intuitive, and the editor brings my computer to an absolute crawl... However a LOT of my RAW photos that would have died in the recycling bin in Picasa have been completely revived. For absolute vivid control around colour, Adobe's RAW Converter is top of the line.
So when I'm in the field, and I know that I'm clipping highlights or I know I need a little flexibility when I get the shots home, I'll shoot RAW and have some lattitude with Adobe Elements to save those few mistakes that I would not have kept before. And for those perfectly exposed, perfectly composed and perfectly shot photos that would have been great even as JPG? Well that's what the Save As is for.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Two New Things
Contrary to various philosophies of the camera manufacturers, your photography will not improve simply by buying a new camera, lens or flash. If your composition, exposure and subject matter sucked before, it will probably suck after whatever purchase you've made. Investment in the craft will push personal improvement far higher than throwing money at it. Even sucky equipment has the ability to make great photographs with a little patience and skill.
What I love about photography is that I keep learning new things about my camera years after I bought it. For instance, almost every new camera out there has ISO speeds of between 100-3200. These ISO speeds are often crappy past 1600 but the camera makers offer them anyway. Ken Rockwell pointed out along with some guy on Flickr that a D50 can do the same thing - sort of. By underexposing an image at ISO 1600 by one or two F-spots, you can work the image once you get it home with the S-curves etc in Photoshop to push or pull the sensor (like they used to push/pull film) to extend the ISO on the D50 from ISO 100-3200. There will be more noise in the image - but that would be true too in the new cameras that offer the ISO 3200 (or 6400+). Taking a 'free' version of noise reduction software like Neat Image would improve it further.
Should I ever find myself out in the field without a fast enough shutter speed, this is definitely an option to try.
Second thing I learned: you can set the D50 to PRE for the White Balance. Take a photo (like aiming it at a 18% grey card or something pure white (OR just aim it directly at your light source if it's not the sun) and from then on, your camera will use that white balance. Great for those lighting situations where you have no idea what kind of light it is and can't quite seem to get a 'balance'.
So now my D50 is now taking pictures just like it did before, but now I have no reason or goal to buy something new for the features my D50 already has.
What I love about photography is that I keep learning new things about my camera years after I bought it. For instance, almost every new camera out there has ISO speeds of between 100-3200. These ISO speeds are often crappy past 1600 but the camera makers offer them anyway. Ken Rockwell pointed out along with some guy on Flickr that a D50 can do the same thing - sort of. By underexposing an image at ISO 1600 by one or two F-spots, you can work the image once you get it home with the S-curves etc in Photoshop to push or pull the sensor (like they used to push/pull film) to extend the ISO on the D50 from ISO 100-3200. There will be more noise in the image - but that would be true too in the new cameras that offer the ISO 3200 (or 6400+). Taking a 'free' version of noise reduction software like Neat Image would improve it further.
Should I ever find myself out in the field without a fast enough shutter speed, this is definitely an option to try.
Second thing I learned: you can set the D50 to PRE for the White Balance. Take a photo (like aiming it at a 18% grey card or something pure white (OR just aim it directly at your light source if it's not the sun) and from then on, your camera will use that white balance. Great for those lighting situations where you have no idea what kind of light it is and can't quite seem to get a 'balance'.
So now my D50 is now taking pictures just like it did before, but now I have no reason or goal to buy something new for the features my D50 already has.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Expose Yourself
Every SLR photographer deserves to learn how to properly expose a picture in their camera. So far, I've slowly accumulated knowledge in a series of steps.
1) There are usually 3 metering modes in your camera. Leave it on Matrix until you know what you're doing.
2) When using the Manual mode, there's a small graph you can see in your viewfinder. Changing the Aperature and Shutter Speed cause the little meter to move left or right. If you're too far one way or the other, an arrow points away from the centre. When you're in the middle, the picture will be exposed correctly - as guessed by your camera. Once I figured this out, I happily centred the (Matrix) meter before pressing the shutter, feeling marvelous that I was taking photos just like a professional.
3) Then I realized that my photos at night or in snow weren't turning out. That's because the meter works as it was engineered but not as expected. The meter wanted to make the photo average - and around cloudy winter days the meter's centre made the snow dirty grey. John Shaw's book "Nature Photography" corrected me. Using the spot metre and determining what would be exposed as light (like snow) or medium (like grass, sky, skin tones) or dark (like shadows), I now choose what should be exposed correctly and choose the settings appropriately. You can really mess up the Aperature/ Shutter Priority settings if you leave it on Spot and aim it at something light or dark. Be aware.
4) Shooting during mid-day causes unwelcome, ugly shadows to show up on subject's faces. Using flash (on-camera first, then off-camera TBA) can change the exposure again, leaving the settings you select to only capture ambient lighting. I haven't mastered flash yet.
5) Now I find out (from Understanding Exposure by Bryan Patterson) that shooting in RAW can fix exposure settings by 2/3 of a stop to reduce/soften clipping (jagged over-exposed highlights). This is another tool to fix the photo should you miss it in-camera.
Good luck. May the light shine soft and inviting.
1) There are usually 3 metering modes in your camera. Leave it on Matrix until you know what you're doing.
2) When using the Manual mode, there's a small graph you can see in your viewfinder. Changing the Aperature and Shutter Speed cause the little meter to move left or right. If you're too far one way or the other, an arrow points away from the centre. When you're in the middle, the picture will be exposed correctly - as guessed by your camera. Once I figured this out, I happily centred the (Matrix) meter before pressing the shutter, feeling marvelous that I was taking photos just like a professional.
3) Then I realized that my photos at night or in snow weren't turning out. That's because the meter works as it was engineered but not as expected. The meter wanted to make the photo average - and around cloudy winter days the meter's centre made the snow dirty grey. John Shaw's book "Nature Photography" corrected me. Using the spot metre and determining what would be exposed as light (like snow) or medium (like grass, sky, skin tones) or dark (like shadows), I now choose what should be exposed correctly and choose the settings appropriately. You can really mess up the Aperature/ Shutter Priority settings if you leave it on Spot and aim it at something light or dark. Be aware.
4) Shooting during mid-day causes unwelcome, ugly shadows to show up on subject's faces. Using flash (on-camera first, then off-camera TBA) can change the exposure again, leaving the settings you select to only capture ambient lighting. I haven't mastered flash yet.
5) Now I find out (from Understanding Exposure by Bryan Patterson) that shooting in RAW can fix exposure settings by 2/3 of a stop to reduce/soften clipping (jagged over-exposed highlights). This is another tool to fix the photo should you miss it in-camera.
Good luck. May the light shine soft and inviting.
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