Tip: Workflow considerations

I hadn't yet announced it on this blog (it's still beta), but Nikon announced the “successor” to its Nikon Capture NX2 (raw) image editor a couple of weeks ago. Naturally I was thrilled reading about this; I predominantly use NX2 in my image editing workflow and consider it a great and versatile tool. Over the last couple of years Nikon has maintained NX2 relatively well, but only released small updates to it, no new functionality. So hearing about NX-D, as Nikon calls it, was really met with a positive feeling by me (and I'm sure lots of other photographers).

After going over the specs and learning more about NX-D though (there is a beta available from the Nikon beta website), this positive feeling soon got replaced with a huge sense of disappointment. While the overhaul of the interface is probably welcomed by many, NX-D does away with all that was great about NX-2; edit results no longer embedded in the raw file itself, no local adjustments, no control points (really smart selections), no concept of layers/blending modes, no spot removal/retouch brush (!), etc. Most of these things I, at least partially, see as critical for a raw editor so you can imagine I was very disappointed.

The only great thing is that NX-D will be free! The way I see it, though, is that it is more a replacement of View NX2, not of Capture NX2. A real shame.

So knowing that NX2 is going to be end-of-life in a couple of months and also knowing that NX-D isn't really going to be a successor as it lacks critical tools, I had to reconsider my imaging workflow. For some time now, I have been investigating a new workflow (one without NX2/NX-D), and I think I have found one that works (at least for me).

Why use a lens hood?

When out photographing, I see a lot of people who do not use one of the basic lens accessories: the lens hood. Worse, some people keep it “reversed” on their lens while photographing, making handling the lens more difficult as well…

My advise is to always use a lens hood when photographing. Most lenses come with a lens hood, but if yours doesn't (I know some of the cheaper Canon lenses don't come with a hood), buy one. They are usually not too expensive and they will certainly improve your photography.

Here are three good reasons for using a lens hood on your lens:

1. Contrast improvement – The lens hood will keep out stray light from entering the lens. Stray light that isn't part of the scene, but which does remove some of the contrast. You can visualise this easily yourself: look at a scene without your eyes shielded and than look at the same scene and shield your eyes by holding your flat hand above your eyes. You’ll notice the difference in contrast immediately. The brighter and the more “into the light,” the more dramatic the increase of contrast.
   Note that while e.g., inside or in a studio there is probably less “stray light,” my advise is to also always use a hood there too, just in case.
2. Less chance of lens flare – By keeping out the stray light, you will also lower the chances of flare. This is also easily visible.
3. Lens protection – A lens hood also offers very good lens protection, way better even than any protective filter will (for even more protection, you can also mount the lens cap, of course).

Happy photographing!

Ball head maintenance tip

A ball head on a good tripod is a great supporting tool for the photographer. Very flexible and quick to adjust. The better ones you don't even have to loosen when you want to alter them. This can be a boon to the photographer and certainly adds to the precision and ease
of handling.

A good ball head is pretty low maintenance; the very tight space between the different moving parts prevent dirt and other stuff to get in. Just wiping the ball head with a clean (lint free) rag after use is enough to keep it going and operating smoothly for ages. Even when you've used it in adverse weather.

Sometimes, however, you'll notice your ball head isn't operating as smoothly as it should. For instance you'll notice that you need to apply some extra force to start rotate the head on it's base plate. Worse, after you've conquered this initial friction you may even have the head “shoot through” and move further than you intended. This stuttering movement is a real pain when you're using your ball head to precisely follow moving subjects.

In these cases it is likely some dirt (e.g., very fine African dust) has gotten into your ball head anyway and now acts as a small blockage, adding friction where it shouldn't. Luckily there is a solution to this: Just apply a small amount of WD40 to the parts that need smoothing.

Applying WD40 to the rotating base plate

For example, my own ball head (a Markins M20) really didn't move smoothly any longer, making it well nigh impossible to properly follow e.g., birds in flight. This was becoming quite a pain. Even before my ball head troubles, I had always wanted to have a can of WD40, but somehow I had never been able to locate a store that sold it. But now I needed it I searched a bit harder and I actually stumbled across it at a very common place: Halfords… It should be for sale at other shops that sell e.g., parts for car and bike repair too though.

Anyway, when I finally acquired the WD40, I immediately applied it to the base plate of my ball head. I then rotated the base a couple of times to get the WD40 distributed internally and already noticed it moved a lot smoother than before. When I looked at the rim just above the base, I noticed a trail of brown gunk, most likely a mix of fine African dust and other stuff. No wonder it didn't operate as smoothly… After wiping the gunk off and applying a bit more WD40 to be sure, testing confirmed I had a smoothly working rotating base again!

Applying WD40 to the ball

When the ball head itself seems to move less smoothly, applying some WD40 to the ball itself will make it run as smoothly as before too.

When you apply WD40, distribute it by moving the parts you want lubricated (e.g., rotate the base plate and wriggle the ball in every direction). You need to use only very little, one short spray usually does the trick. Wipe off any excess fluid, and dirt that came with it, to keep things nice and clean.

Enjoy your smoothly operating ball head!

What is the best memory card for you?

While at first this may seem like a silly question (just get the cheapest and fastest card available), choosing the card that's best for you is in fact not a straightforward thing…

Size and number of cards

First there's size to consider. Bigger is better, right? Well, not particularly.

The problem with a bigger card is that if something goes wrong (e.g., the card breaks, you accidentally format the card, etc.) with the card, you potentially lose more pictures. Recovery will be harder (and definitely take longer) as well.

So smaller is better then? Well, again, not particularly. Chances of one or more cards failing out of a number of cards is much higher than the chance of an individual card breaking (in fact even more than the number of cards times higher). Luckily chances of a card actually breaking are pretty minute (as long as you stick with the major, reputed, brands).

So the answer is probably something in between. My advise would be to have enough space on one card to allow you to shoot one “session” without having to switch cards during the shoot. For instance when I'm out shooting wildlife I usually shoot up to about 16GB worth of images on a day. So I'd choose a 16GB card for storage. However, as my D3, has two card slots, I actually use 2x8GB cards. This decision was also based on economics: at the time I bought the cards, 16GB was not readily available and more than twice the price of 8GB. These days though, I see no reason not to go for 16GB any longer and given the same decision I'd opt for one or two 16 GB cards instead. Note that when I don't expect to take a lot of images and shoot “slower” (e.g., architecture/interior), I usually use one of my older, lower capacity, cards (e.g., 2GB). That way they still get some usage…

The size of your average session will of course vary and depends heavily on number of shots, resolution (mega pixels) of camera, whether or not you shoot JPG or raw, etc. If you shoot video (frequently), be sure to take this fact into account when deciding on card size as well!

So now you know the size of the card that would be “ideal” for you, should you buy one, two, or ten? Well, this depends; I always bring some sort of storage device with me (two in fact, one for backup) and offload the images each day. The cards are then formatted (in camera) and ready for use the next day. This means I only need one session worth of storage capacity (plus some additional spare space for if the session suddenly gets bigger). If you don't have the means to offload your images, you'll need to buy more cards, at least enough to last you until you can offload them again. You'll also need to buy multiple cards if you do offload them, but want to keep the card as extra backup (e.g., until you can properly back them up at home).

So in short: get a memory card the size of your expected shooting session, and get as many as you need to last until you can safely offload them. Use older/smaller sized cards as emergency storage for when you run out anyway.

Note instead of getting multiple cards, you could of course also buy a single larger card, but remember the risk involved with choosing this way. Economics may drive this decision too; larger cards may or may not be more expensive than multiple smaller cards.

Card brand/type

So now you've decided the size of your card, what brand and type to use? For the brand, I'd really advice you to stick with the reputable brands (e.g., Lexar, Sandisk) and never ever buy cheap, counterfeited, “brand” cards. As with everything on the internet: if it looks to good to be true, it probably isn't true. So stay away from those cheap eBay deals, promising you a brand card for half the normal price…

Sticking with the reputable brands the deciding factor really comes down to speed, and what you're prepared to pay for it (faster usually is more expensive). Card speed is basically important for two things:

• How quickly your camera can write to the card – This determines how quickly you can shoot bursts of images consecutively, and for how long. Each camera has an internal buffer that fills up at the maximum frame rate of your camera, but once that buffer is full frame rate drops to the speed at which your camera can write the images to the card. So if you frequently shoot burst of images (e.g., with sports, action, and wildlife), a faster card may be an advantage to you. If on the other hand you shoot “slow” (e.g., landscape, architecture), a faster card doesn't really hold any benefit for you here.
• How quickly you can download the images to your computer – The faster the card, the faster you can offload the images to your computer and the shorter it takes. If you shoot a lot, a fast card may literally save you hours…

So you frequently shoot high frame rate bursts and/or you don't like waiting for your images to offload to your computer, you should be getting the fastest spec'd card, right? Well, maybe not…

The problem is, a faster spec'd card may not necessarily be faster in your situation at all. Actual speed depends on the particular combination of card technology (XQD, CF, SD), card type, card size, camera, and card reader. For instance, taking a SanDisk Extreme IV 8GB card, my D3 is capable of writing at a rate of 24.4MB/s to it. The new Canon 5D III on the other hand is capable of writing at the much faster rate of 34.2MB/s. A card that is the fastest for one type of card reader may not be the fastest for another, etc.

Generally speaking, Compact Flash (CF) cards are faster than Secure Digital (SD) cards. The new XQD cards, introduced with the Nikon D4, are faster again, beating even the fastest CF card by a margin. Deciding on card technology therefore can be important if your camera supports two types of cards.

For card readers, the interface connection to the computer is important; USB3 is faster than Firewire-800 which is again faster than USB2. But here also speed comes at a price…

To help you decide which card or reader to get, have a look at the XQD/CF/SD Performance Database as maintained by Rob Galbraith. It contains data for many popular Canon and Nikon cameras.
Please note that Rob Galbraith is no longer maintaining the database. Even though, it still provides valuable input for the card selection process.

Getting the most out of your camera (part 2)

This is the second part of simple tips on how to get the most out of your camera equipment, using the right techniques.

While quality gear may help in getting good pictures, it certainly is no guarantee. The right technique (and a good eye for composition) gets you much further. Even with “mediocre” equipment, a point well proven by Chase Jarvis in his book “The Best Camera Is The One That's With You: iPhone Photography by Chase Jarvis.” While all photos in this book were taken with a meagre 2 MegaPixel iPhone camera, they still look great…

Here are some more tips:

• (Always) use a lens hood. Lens hoods are designed to keep out stray light from entering the lens and influencing your picture (e.g., lowering contrast, producing flare, etc.). If you're looking towards the sun, you use your hand to shield your eyes too, don't you? Well, the lens hood does the same for your camera. And while the effects of stray light are most obvious outside on a sunny day, stray light can be everywhere. So, better to always use your lens hood to prevent possible problems. Besides, a lens hood provides great protection for when you accidentally bump your lens into something.
  Note: Sometimes the lens hood alone isn't even enough to keep out the stray light. In this case use something else to shield the light (e.g., your hand, a piece of (black) board, etc.)
• Use the best possible lens for the shot. Know where your lenses perform at their best (e.g., focal length and aperture). Especially if you have multiple lenses with overlapping focal ranges, knowing where each of these performs best, helps in choosing the right lens for the shot. Note that the best lens needn't always be the most expensive one. For instance, on a full frame body, the relatively cheap 70-300 Nikkor lens has better corner sharpness than the first version of the much more expensive 70-200/2.8 (note: the new VRII version of this lens has solved this issue). The quality and feel of the unfocussed parts of your image (bokeh) is different for each lens too, again something to take into account when choosing lenses.
• Be aware of diffraction. Diffraction is the phenomena where light waves hitting a small object can actually bend around the object, instead of going straight., This can result in lost image sharpness. The effect gets stronger, the smaller the aperture you use. So instead of closing down the aperture to its maximum (e.g., f/22) to get the biggest depth of field and sharpness, you may actually reduce overall image sharpness. Diffraction kicks in at different apertures depending on the lens and body (sensor pixel size) used and sometimes sacrificing a bit of overall sharpness in favour of depth of field, may be better too. But as a general rule of thumb, you shouldn't go beyond f/11 on a crop body and f/16 on a full frame body (f/11 on a D800 and similarly high resolution cameras).
• Don't use filters, unless you have to. Every filter on top of your lens potentially degrades image quality and increases the chances of lens flare and unwanted reflections. With digital this problem is even bigger than with film as the sensor unit is much more reflective than film. Lens designers take great care to prevent (internal) reflection and lens flare problems, so don't throw away their efforts by adding a filter!
  Luckily in the digital era there isn't much use for most filters as their effects can be (better) accomplished in post processing anyway. Noticeable exceptions here are the Polarising filter and Neutral Density filters. Note though that Gradual Neutral Density filters are mostly obsolete now as there are better alternatives in post processing (e.g., HDR or manually merging two exposures).
  When you buy filters, get good quality (coated) filters; these considerably reduce chances of flare/reflections when compared to the cheaper, uncoated, ones.
  Personally, I don't believe in using a “UV” filter for protection either (I use the lens hood and lens cap for this). Unless I'm shooting in really adverse conditions (e.g., on the beach with lots of sand blowing around), that is; then I would certainly think of adding a protective filter. Talking about filters for protection, by the way. Modern cameras already block UV light, so adding another UV blocker really has no added function. Therefore, instead of buying a UV filter for protection, you may be better (cheaper) off to buy a simple, but high quality, clear filter (e.g., a Nikon NC filter).
  
• Instead of taking a single shot with wide angle lens, consider taking multiple shots with a longer lens and stitching them together. This will leave you with more, and better quality, pixels to play with. (Note though that the depth of field changes too when you use a different lens)
• Use the right camera settings. This means exposure (expose to the right, part 1), aperture (depth of field), shutter speed (motion blur), ISO (as low as possible, part 1), and, (especially) if you're shooting JPG, White Balance, and Picture Control (Nikon)/Picture Style (Canon) settings. Getting these settings wrong at time of shooting either means having lost the shot, or having to perform quality degrading post processing to correct the mistakes.
• Block the viewfinder when not looking through it. On most modern cameras, light hitting the viewfinder eyepiece, influences the light meter. So if you've determined the correct exposure (compensation) while looking through the viewfinder and then, when taking the actual shot(s), you do not look through the viewfinder any longer (e,g, when using the self timer, cable release, etc.), the camera may in fact be using a different exposure than you set up for (unless you were using manual exposure of course). To prevent this, simply cover the eyepiece before taking the shot.
• Keep your equipment clean. It's simple: clean equipment works better and more reliable. Dirty lenses or a dirty sensor can ruin your pictures, dirty contacts can prevent your gear from working at all (for instance, most complaints about non functioning lenses are in fact caused by dirty contacts, not by a broken lenses), etc. So at the end of every shoot, simply check and clean your equipment.

Previous episode: Getting the most out of your camera (part 1)

Getting the most out of your camera (part 1)

With the introduction of the new super high resolution D800 and D800E it is perhaps a good idea to reiterate some of the tips on how to get the most out of your camera. Please note that these tips are equally valid for existing cameras so if you're not already doing so, you should take these tips to heart!

• Hold your camera steady, use a tripod whenever you can.
  
  • Hand holding – Shoot your camera like a gun. Stand steady, brace yourself against something if possible. Breath normally and shoot on the exhale. With long lenses, support the lens.
  • Tripod – Don't extend the centre column; this makes a monopod of your tripod, greatly reducing stability. Lock everything down and push down on the top of your camera or the lens (with longer lenses when the lens is mounted on tripod head instead of the camera).
• Focus right.
  • People and animals – Get the eyes in focus.
  • Landscapes – Focus on the subject of interest (in the foreground). As our brain uses the detail (focus) to help determine whether or not something is close or far away, it is a good idea to have your images gradually blur in the distance. The much advised hyperfocal distance will produce “flat” looking images so may not be a good idea after all…
• Don't “hammer” the shutter, this will introduce camera movement, potentially ruining your picture. A gentle depress of the shutter gets you there.
• Improvement – Use the self timer on a short delay to remove any movement introduced by pressing the shutter.
• Good – Use a remote/cable release. This prevents all movement caused by depressing the shutter.
• Best – Use Mirror Lock Up mode (alternative on Nikon cameras: Exposure Delay) in combination with using a cable release to also get rid of the movement caused by the mirror moving. This “mirror slap” is especially noticeable on semi-long (e.g., between 1/20” and 1” exposures). The longer the lens the more noticeable it gets.
• Use as low an ISO as possible. The lower the ISO the lower the noise (in general).
• Shoot raw. Look at the raw file as your digital negative and a JPG as the print from a cheap laboratory. While the latter may look ok to you, there's probably a lot more potential in the raw file with a bit of careful processing (which, with modern tools can be a highly automated process). Remember that an Ansel Adams was only an Ansel Adams when he developed and printed it himself; much of his signature quality came from the “post processing” he performed in the darkroom.
• Check the histogram. Change the exposure to improve it. Because digital cameras capture the most information in the brightest parts of the histogram, it is best to “expose to the right.” This means taking an as-bright-as-possible exposure where the (important) highlights aren't blown. This way you have the camera capture the most possible information. Even if the resulting image is too bright, this is still the best approach. You can always darken the image in post processing; this will not degrade image quality.

More tips in Getting the most out of your camera (part 2)