e2Photography

In this note, I will talk about my experience with the new Nikon D800.  I currently shoot with two D700 and the best Nikon glass so that is my starting perspective.   There are many differences between the D700 and the D800, but the three things I was most interested in was computer processing differences of the D800 36MP images (did not want to gum up my post processing mechanism), ISO performance under low light and the video capabilities of the D800.

 ISO Noise

I did a series of exposures from 800 to 12500 ISO, but I will only show you the ISO 3200 results.  First are the full images downsized for the blog.  To do this test, I have my 70-200 f2.8 VRII lens zoomed to ~85 mm on the D700 and a Nikkor 85mm f1.4 lens on the D800.   In both cases the cameras were set to aperture priority at f2.8.  No corrections were done to the images other than import them under standard conditions into Aperture.  White balance was set to auto.

D700 image at ISO 3200

D800 image at ISO 3200

For both of these images, the focus point was on the middle of 'Be Nice Or Leave' sign.  Throughout the series the D800 images were a bit brigher and used a slightly slower shutter speed (expose to the right a bit more).

I then cropped a tiny area in photoshop and saved the crop as a tiff file.  Imported the cropped tiff files and then exported them to equal pixel size JPEG.

D700 ISO 3200 100% crop

D800 ISO 3200 100% crop

Based on this comparison, I believe that the same sized image from the D800 has a little bit better ISO performance than the D700.  This conclusion is similar to other people's impression as well.  For this particular case, I did not  downsize the the D800 image through photoshop but just exported it to a identical size as the D700 as a JPEG.  This small point is very important from a work flow perspective:  The ISO gain by downsizing the D800 image can be achieved through the image export process!

Now, if you don't see much difference in the top pictures that is understandable.  It is important to remember that the resolution of your monitor is likely to be less than the D700 resolution and very much less than the D800 resolution.  So when displayed on a computer screen, the only time you will notice the difference is when you pixel peek or expand the image to 100%.   And unless you make very large prints, it is unlikely you will see much difference in the prints between a D700 and D800.  For prints, if one assumes you want 300 dpi printing, then the D700 will provide the pixels up to about 14 inches on the longest dimension, while the D800 will provide pixels up to about 25.5 inches.  

 Image size

For me, the next series of pictures is one of the biggest advantages of the D800 for my type of photography (I don't really shoot landscapes or do high fashion.  My focus is wedding and portrait photography).  These pictures were taken with the D800 with my 14-24 f2.8 lens and yes, I know there is distortion, but that was intentional.  ISO 100, f5, 1/80 at 14mm.

ORIGINAL PICTURE

FIRST CROP

SECOND CROP.  This image below is 2704 by 2163 pixels.  This second crop could readily be printed as an 8x10 with a dpi in excess of 240 dpi.  And while you can not tell here, this picture is sufficient sharp that you can see the individual eyelashes!  Also see the 100% pixel view below for detail.

For me the bottom line is pretty simple:  The D800 36 megapixels makes a lot of sense if one wants to do very large prints and or one wants to have the ability to significantly crop images.  The later would be of considerable value to me as it would provide lots of flexibility.

Video

One of my interest was the ability to do video in the same device as my still photography work.  I have used the Sony Nex-5 and Nex-5N in the past and was very excited about this possibility.  I was very naive.  The D800 is a very serious about its video tools, but it really requires the skills of a professional videographer.  Focus needs to be manual and the camera will need to be stabilized for pleasing video with devices like the Glidecam HD 3500.   

When I get a chance I will post some video examples which highlight the fact that I am NOT a videographer.  Having said that, I believe that learning more about videography and how videographers think will likely improve my performance as a still photographer. 

Computer Performance

One of my big concerns was computer performance with the larger files.  I tested several things on my system: 27" iMac, 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB.  I have an aging Calumet USB 2.0 card reader, CF are Sandisk Extreme (60MB/sec).  Overall, this system seemed to handle both the pictures and video with relative ease and at no time did I think the large files were causing problems.  

A few metrics related to import and export functions were evaluated with 100 lossless RAW 14 bit images:

CF card --> Import into Aperture Library residing on Passport USB 2.0 1TB drive--- 5:01 minutes

CF card--> Drag and drop folder of pictures to Passport USB 2.0 1TB drive--- 6:28 minutes

CF card--> Import into Aperture Library residing on Western Digital 6TB Thunderbolt (RAID 0)--- 3:01 minutes

CF card--> Drag and drop folder of pictures to Western Digital 6TB Thunderbolt (RAID 0)--- 3:10 minutes

My conclusions from this test is reading from the card reader/CF card is not limiting because I can get a huge increase in import time by moving stuff to a Thunderbolt drive.  Without showing the data, exporting the images as either full size JPEG or downsized to match the D700 (4256 by 4256 pixels) was identical in time and again, doing this on the Thunderbolt drive was much faster (5:30 minutes vs 4:45 minutes)

Miscellaneous thoughts

First, let me say that I found the D800 very comfortable to hold and operate. 

Other things I noticed

1. It took a little bit of work to figure out the new focus switch.  But once I figured it out, it was easy to operate.

2. The slight slope on the left side top switch felt good

3. The fire rate of only 4 frames per second did not bother me at all, but I really don't do sports and fast nature things.

4. The view finder and exposure meter on the top left move opposite from the D700.  Not sure why they switched it, but in a mixed shooting environment (D700, D800, I could see some problems coming up).  I understand that I can switch this by some menu item.

I post this blog for two reasons: to remind people of the need to generate hard copies of pictures that are important if they want them to survive for more than a few years and secondarily to talk a bit about different elements of processing hard copy pictures into the digital world.  

In the above picture composite are myself, my brothers and my sister-in-law at the time (I have more since).  They were taken in late 1960's or very early 1970's.  While grainy, not terribly sharp, with lots of color cast, they are still  capable of evoking memories of a wonderful summer afternoon in northwest Indiana and the images are valuable to me.  Lots of hair, now for the most part, long gone.  I have these images because my father carefully saved hard copy slides of the pictures he took.  Had they been simply digital files, my guess is I would never be able to look at them today, slightly over 40 years later.  

I believe the pictures we take today serve many roles (we email them to friends, we post them on facebook, they entertain us at the moment), but, perhaps more importantly,  these pictures form a recorded history of our life that we can give to our future generations.  This gift is only possible if these pictures are viewable in the future.  So ask yourself of those thousands and thousands precious pictures you have taken thus far sitting on your iPhone or computer, where will they be in 10-20-50 or 100 years?   Will your children's children ever be able to see them?

For me I have come to one conclusion: hard copies of important pictures is essential to preserve our memories.

For a 9 month period in 2010, I worked on a project to scan 100 carousels of slides that my father took from the late forties until his death in 1988.  The above picture, taken in Antarctica, was indexed: “Iceberg on the way to Anvers Island.”   It was one of the last pictures he took.  

In total, there were about 11,800 slides.  In talking with various people nearly everyone suggested to project the slides and only pick the pictures I was interested in.  In the final analysis I rejected those suggestions and decided to scan all the slides.  At the end of the project, I was glad I decided to scan all the slides.  The best way to explain is by analogy.  Consider the concept trying to understand the story of a book by looking at one word out of every 50, 100 or 200.  Those individual words are colored, enhanced and meaning added by the surrounding words.  To have scanned only selected slides would have lost much of the meaning of the story.  I think the other reason for my decision was my father had annotated essentially 100% of the slides.  To this day, I wonder what he was thinking as he put so much energy into these pictures.  Was it something just to keep him busy or was it something more?  

Fortunately, I had done a small project a couple of years ago but it only involved 500-1000 slides so I had a little bit of knowledge.  I will try to summarize the process by listing the different components.

First, I needed a system to automatically scan a batch of slides at a time.  I had access to a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 and slide feeder Nikon SF-200 through my step son.  I could batch 25 slides at a time (the number is important..see storage below).  This is a wonderful device when it works, but it really does not work all that well unless you make some adjustments.  Four things:  You have to disable the pressure devices that hold the slides in position, place small plastic barrier to prevent multiple slides from loading if they stick together a bit, tilt the scanner/loader at a 15-20 degree angle, and use two C batteries to apply constant pressure to the in and out slide trays.  The positive polls need to point toward the scanner.  If you want to know more, send me a note and I will send you a picture of the set up.

About half way through the project, the scanner quit working.  To the best of my knowledge, it is not possible to buy anything similar in functionality, but with great fortune, I discovered that Nikon would actually repair it!  Cost me $300 which was fine with me.

I used VueScan software to capture the images on my Alu - iMac and stored the images on an external USB 2.0 Western Digital 1 TB Passport drive in 8 bit TIFF images.  VueScan is a true work horse and has lots of features that helped in making the process much easier.  I have about 20 of the Western Digital Passport drives and so far they seem to be quite reliable.  As I scanned, I back up the primary storage disk with a second 1TB Passport drive.  I also automatically named each file (using VueScan) with the Carousel # and then a 4 digit number which represented the slot in the carousel the slide occupied.  The digital files from each carousel were stored in their separate folder (C-1 through C-100)

To manage all the image data, I used Aperture 3.   This made sorting through the images, rotating them into proper orientation and making sure the scanned image was ok much much easier.  I am now in a position to adjust and enhance those images as I wish.  Also using Aperture 3, I converted all the images to JPEG files as well.

Finally, as I scanned, I transferred the slides to archival boxes from Archival Methods.  The specific product I used was the slide storage system.  Each large box holds 1200 slides in six smaller boxes which holds 8 slide containers that accept 25 slides each.  There is a small amount of assembly required, but otherwise it seems like an excellent acid free storage system.

I really like doing pictures that are different than the typical picture.  This is a family portrait and I like the sense of motion and energy in the picture.  In my opinion, it feels more dynamic.  But this post is not about family portraits but my experience in moving my website off of MobileMe.  As some of you may know, the MobileMe service will no longer be hosting websites as of June 2012 and the future of Apple's iWeb software is very much up in the air.  When these changes were announced last summer, I started looking around for options.  

The simpliest option was to obtain another hosting site and point iWeb to that new site.  While simple, all of my blogs would disappear and there was no easy mechanism to generate a blog as part of the new site.  I think that this issue combined with the uncertainty of the future of iWeb forced me to the conclusion that I needed another website building software.  So the problem was two-fold: a new web hosting site and new software to do web design.  

Web design software:  I spent a fair amount of time on Freeway Pro and while I could get a site sort of put together, any addition or change seemed to be complex and it was tedious to use.  I then tried Rapidweaver and rather quickly abandoned it as too complex.  While I enjoy learning new software, my real goal was to allow people to understand my photography services and not learn new software.  I then downloaded Sandvox and read their support pages.  It seemed simpler to use, but I could not find a design that I liked.   Eventually I found Grafite from Behind the Rabbit as a plug-in which is the design you are currently looking at.  In my humble opinion, the dark background is more conducive to viewing pictures and video.  But Sandvox offers many different designs and while it is difficult to modify these designs (if your skill level is similar to mine), there are some many different designs you should be able to find one that suits your needs.

There are several capabilities that make Sandvox relative easy to use.  There are multiple objects available from a Contact Form to Facebook buttons to more powerful tools such as the RAW HTML editor and inserter.  It integrates well with Aperture so all I need to do is drag a picture in Aperture over the page in Sandvox.  On the Sandvox site they walk you through the insertion of Google Analytics and StatCounter. There is also excellent support for slideshows , videos and blog structures.  

For slideshows, I use JAlbum.  As a photographer, this is one of the best pieces of software to display your pictures.  It comes with many different skins, online help is excellent and email support is pretty quick as well.  I use the Turtle Skin and it is possible to insert analytics code.  It take a little bit of time to figure out how to get the best displays.  Under settings, in Pages I use 'Link to originals via scaled images; in Images I use 'Smooth, 25 Sharpening, and 100 JPEG quality, thumbnails at 140x100 and images at 2048x2048 pixels.  I also select the option 'Attempt to use hardware accelerated scaling'.  Under the turtle choice General, I select 'Fit images to browser'  There are many other very nice features such as just dragging an mp3 music file to the album and adjust the setting in the turtle:Audio and video.  Once done, make the album and you can test it  before uploading it.  When you are satisfied, select the upload button.  You will need to webhosting information, but it is pretty straightforward.

To add new pictures to my individual albums, I export a 2048x2048 image from Aperture to the Jalbum folder, remake the album and upload.  Very simple and easy.

For webhosting, I eventually decided to go with a2hosting.  They offer great support and made the transition away from MobileMe to be quite easy. 

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me and I will try to help.  But all of things I mentioned above have great online support and responses to email where both informative and relatively quick. 

When I want a clean white background, I use a very simple approach.  Polar white paper, two strobes lighting the background, one on each side shot into an umbrella that shields the subjects from any direct light.  In this particular session, I set the background lights f/11.6.  Two subject lights were set to f/8.  The picture was taken at ISO 200, f/9, 1/125.  In post, I adjust the exposure upward in Aperture causing the background to drop to a very pure white and the exposure of the subjects to brighten to a very nice level without being over exposed.  You can see other examples from this session in my 'Recent Favorites'.

This picture is another one of a location business shoot primarily for the purpose of headshots and website use.  I placed another one from the session in Recent Favorites and the concept of setting up this picture are the same with a slight variation of placement of lighting.  

One thing about on location portraits is the highly variable character and quality of light.  For this particular picture, I decided to position the client in front of a window so the outside buildings would be visible.  As usual, I set my shutter speed to the maximum sync speed (1/250), set my aperture (f4) and ISO (400)  to obtain a slightly over exposed background (about 1/2 to 1 stop over) and then filled her face with a strobe (SB900 controlled with a miniTT1/AC3 and Flex5 from PocketWizard).  If memory serves me correctly I used a manual setting to adjust the strobe based on what I was seeing on the camera screen (chimping).  I was also sending the strobe through an umbrella.  In an earlier pictures, the light was a bit flatter so I moved the strobe further to my left to generate a bit more short lighting. 

By setting the shutter speed first (at 1/250) I am able to reduce the background light to the maximum possible extent relative to the front lighting (I could use hypersync technologies to use a faster shutter speed, but that did not seem necessary for this picture) and still not reduce the efficacy of the strobe lighting.  I also wanted a bit of a depth of field (hence f4 vs something lower) and then I adjusted ISO to get to the exposure I wanted.