A View from the Isle

One of the best features of DSLRs is the ability to get more features or extended capabilities through firmware upgrades. I had heard rumours that Nikon was prepping an update to the D300’s firmware, but last time I looked it wasn’t out yet. Last night cruising through my feeds I saw that UK-based Digital Photographer posted links (sorta) to the update and I quickly zipped over to Nikon Canada to get my copy and update.  Here’s what the firmware update for the D300 gives you (and I think it’s pretty impressive):

D300 Modifications enabled with upgrade of A and B firmware to v.1.10

• The Highlights playback option has been moved from Display Mode > Basic photo info > Highlights in the playback menu to Display mode > Detailed photo info > Highlights.
• The size and color of "Demo" displayed in the monitor with playback when No memory card? in the Custom Settings has been set to Enable Release have been modified.
• The range of settings available for ISO sensitivity settings > ISO sensitivity auto control > Minimum shutter speed in the shooting menu has been increased from 1/250 – 1s to 1/4000 – 1s.
• When shooting in hand-held live view mode and the frame is magnified prior to autofocusing, operation has been modified so that display returns to the magnified display rather then the full frame display.
• Images captured with Rotate tall, in the playback menu, set to On, are not automatically rotated for display immediately after capture (image review).
• A Copyright information has been added to the setup menu. When Copyright information is enabled, the copyright symbol ( © ) is shown in the shooting info display.
• Recent settings can now be displayed in the place of My Menu.
• Custom Setting e3 Flash cntrl for built in flash ( e3 Optional flash when an optional Speedlight is mounted on the camera) can now be added to My Menu using the Add items > Custom setting menu > Bracketing/ flash.
• The degree of the High ISO NR setting can now be confirmed in the shooting info display while the High ISO NR setting item, in the shooting menu, is being applied.
• Ankara, Riyadh, Kuwait, and Manama have been added to the Time zone options for the World time item in the setup menu.
• When a GPS device is used and no heading information is available, –.–° is now displayed for the Position / Heading option in the GPS item in the setup menu.
• When shooting in live view mode using Camera Control Pro 2 (ver. 2.2.0 or later) with a PC-E lens, the aperture setting can now be adjusted from the computer.
• Focus acquisition performance in dynamic-area AF mode has been improved.
• Focus acquisition performance with contrast-detect AF has been improved.
• Auto white balance performance has been improved.
• The fourth digit in seconds display for GPS latitude and longitude information is now rounded off rather than omitted.
• The current MB-D10 battery type setting can now be confirmed in the shooting menu display when R6/AA- size batteries are used with the Multi-Power Battery pack MB-D10.
• An issue that caused an increase in noise when shooting in [M] exposure mode at a shutter speed setting of bulb with the shutter held open for less than 8 seconds and Long exp. NR enabled has been resolved.
• An issue that prevented shutter release at the specified shutter speed when no operations were performed for 30 seconds in mirror up mode has been resolved.
• An issue that caused abnormal image display when Image review was set to On and the playback zoom in button was pressed immediately after shooting at the following settings has been resolved.
• • Image quality: NEF (RAW) + JPEG
  • NEF (RAW) recording: Lossless compressed or Compressed
  • Image size: S or M
• When the Speedlight SB-800 was mounted on the camera with flash mode set to distance-priority manual (GN) mode, and the camera recovered from standby mode triggered by the auto meter off function, the distance information in the SB-800 changed. This issue has been resolved.

My favourite, and the one that I set up almost immediately, is embedding the artist and copyright info into the picture meta data when the picture is taken. I used to have Lightroom do this on import, guess I don’t have to any longer.

Since I’ll be at the Vancouver Board of Trade event later today, I’ll get to test out the AF and contrast detection improvements.

The D80 also got a firmware refresh, albeit not nearly as interesting:

D80 Modifications enabled with upgrade of A and B firmware to 1.11

• An issue that, in some rare circumstances, caused the battery indicator to blink, regardless of actual battery charge, has been resolved. 

I only have one gripe with Nikon about the firmware update process: logging into the Nikon site and having an account. To download an update you need to create and an account at your country’s Nikon site (I presume, I haven’t actually tried to go to the US or UK sites) and enter the serial number of your camera, then go back and search to download. It would be a lot easier if they didn’t require an account or at least give you quick links to your camera’s updates (I have my D80 and D300 linked to the account, wonder if you can update a Speedlight?).

Still updating your camera’s firmware is probably the easiest thing you can do to get more out of your investment.

Oh and remember copy only one firmware file to your flash media at a time to update. Yeah I made that mistake once.

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Like all art forms, photography is a life-long pursuit. Of course, we all “learned” how to take pictures in a few minutes—especially with today’s point-n-shoot cameras—but for those of us who strive to go beyond the basic snapshot, it takes work. Work and a ton practice, patience, and humility. The practice part is pretty easy. Take lots of pictures. Experiment. Emulate pics that you like and see if you can do the same thing. Humility?

Yes. I don’t think there is a photographer worth his/her salt who can’t learn something new. For me learning how to use white cards/gray cards for setting white balance (including that blacktop is a great sub for a gray card in a pinch) and using bracketing better in my shots. Yes, I’ve been taking pics for a long time, but I know that every time I go out to shoot I learn something and get just a little better.

All that said, bracketing, playing with settings, gray cards, I do love my auto-settings.

First off, I pretty much stick to aperture priority mode. I like wide-open apertures (usually f/1.8-2.2), especially with my prime lenses (50mm f/1.8 and 85mm f/1.8) for the tight depth of field and clarity. I guess that’s my “style”. Regardless, this means that shutter speed is up to the camera.

I don’t stop there though, I’ve learned that auto-ISO is really handy. Even on my short walk going from sun to cloudy to shade for the best results I’d have to tweak my ISO often. With auto-ISO I pick a good ISO for the walk in general, then let it float. Yeah I know that if I picked and ISO I’d have more control, but I check after a series of pics what ISO the camera picked so I can see if I like it and want to shoot again.

I also I stick to auto white balance instead of flipping around to different settings. Both the D80 and D300 have pretty decent auto WB and because I shoot in RAW/NEF I don’t really have to worry about it. I always look at each pic and adjust the tone, white balance, and contrast (I love Lightroom’s “strong contrast” preset), so I get a chance to tweak a bit. Of course if I’m lucky enough to have blacktop in the pic, then my WB is just a click away (another great feature of the digital darkroom, IMHO).

There is something to be said for setting everything by hand, and I do this sometimes, but the freedom of letting the camera do some of the work so I can just focus on composition and practice is freeing.

Of course I’m not not always happy with the results, and that’s when I tweak more for another shot.

Practice, experiment, practice, learn.

And one more tip: read the manual. As obtuse as it can be, sometimes you learn a great new feature or two.

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When I only had a Canon point and shoot camera I stuck to Automatic and the presets for most of my pictures.  Then I got into Program mode and started to play with white balance and such.  With my D80,  shot in auto a little bit, but pretty much started with aperture priority from the get go.

However, is shooting in auto or one of the presets a bad thing?  According to Natalie Norton writing on digital photography school, shooting in automatic has a lot of benefits:

ANY friend of mine who comes to me early on in their photography “career” asking for lessons is forbidden from shooting in any mode other than AUTO for at LEAST 3-6 months. In my mind that’s enough time to get your framing style down to the point where it’s just, for lack of a better word, automatic. . . second nature. When that happens, THEN you’re ready to explore other settings. I’ve known too many photographers who are technically off the chart but can’t frame an image worth poo. Don’t fall into that trap by plugging up the artist in you by focusing too much on the technical aspect. It will come. It will. I PROMISE. Source: 4 Reasons Not to Write off Shooting in Automatic

I’ve been shooting long enough that I’m pretty good at framing (I can always improve of course), but the freedom of auto, and the other presets, does let you focus on the subject not the settings.

So on Saturday the kids and I went to a park by the ocean and I figured it was the perfect time to give this a shot (so to speak).

This was shot in automatic mode:

It’s not bad, a little washed out I think.  The depth of field is a little too much for my liking, as well.  It’s pretty good though.  This is a shot using some of my standard aperture priority settings (f/2.5 ISO 250, -0.3 exposure, more vivid colour):

Of course I like this one better.  But … I think for general practice I’m going to play with automatic and other presets so I can work on framing better pictures and capturing things that I might lose in fussing with settings.

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I’m not a newcomer to photography.  From my first Polaroid One Step to my Kodak Disc to my first 35mm Pentax K-1000 to digital point and shoots to now my Nikon D80 DSLR I’ve used a lot of different cameras.  My dad was an amateur photographer and took some great pictures too–I don’t have any of them here with me, but maybe I can get some soon–and I learned a lot from him.  I think he would really love the new digital world (he had his own dark room at one time), thinking about it I wonder what kind of pictures he would take.  However, I didn’t get the chance to learn everything about photography from him.  I was just doing vacation shots and such when he passed away.

So while not a newbie photographer by any means, I am doing something new now–taking my photography seriously and trying to learn as much as I can on how to get better and better at it.

The Magic of Cropping
Recently I’ve been reading a few photography blogs and trying to learn a thing or three.  The first thing I picked up was learning how to crop the pictures I’ve taken to make them really stand out.  I got the tips and ideas from the Digital Photography School blog from a recent post on, of course, how to improve pictures with cropping.  Taking these tips, here are some of the results (not nearly as stunning as the examples in the post).

First here is the uncropped original picture:

And here is the same image cropped to a 5×7 image:

Okay the differences between those are pretty subtle, but this is a better example:

vs.

I wanted to highlight the cool architecture better, cropping did the trick here.

It’s the glass baby–50mm prime f/1.8 lens
Of course photographers will tell you that it isn’t the camera but the “glass” (aka lens) that makes all the difference in your pictures.  I read, and was inspired by, this article on Josh Hallett and his photography (which I love) from mediabullseye.  The one thing that the article made me really crave was a 50mm prime lens.  Since Josh said that they were pretty affordable (around $100, which is really affordable for a lens) I thought I’d shop around for one.  This past weekend I bought one and just like the woman at Kerrisdale Cameras said, I’m addicted to it already.  Why?  Well this post I was sent via Twitter says it all:

I suppose my favorite thing about prime lenses is the fact that you have to use your head. Composition becomes a thinking game. You have to move your feet to get that shot you had in mind, so you really start to evaluate what’s important in the scene. Fast primes also make you think a little harder about your f-number. The DOF can be extremely shallow; sometimes too shallow to produce an effective shot. Not only that, but on bright sunny days, you actually can’t use the lens wide open without an ND filter because you’ll let in too much light and max out your shutter speed. From: 7 Reasons To Love Prime Lenses

Here are some of my favourites from my first few times playing with the lens.  I’m still learning it so they aren’t as great as I’d like yet.  Its ability to pull in light is just mind blowing and the clarity speaks for itself.  Like Brian Auer said in the article above, you have to think when using this lens.  That is something that makes this even more fun.

I keep saying I’m going to go on a photowalk with this lens, but still haven’t made it.  Maybe Tuesday…

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