The Lord of Visions

High ISO Nikon D4 Real World Testing

I'm one of those weird freaks that needs to read a new product's instructions in it's entirety prior to diving in to start playing. Some may say I have remarkable patients not just jumping in and playing with the hottest new Nikon since the D3s, but it's really just my strange idiosyncrasy of reading the instructions first that has held me back up till now. It's now been some time since I first received the Nikon D4, a whole week actually. A week to you might not seem like a lot, but for me it seems an eternity, especially since I've been waiting for this camera for what seems years. Having muddled about in the digital SLR realm since the introduction of the D200 in 2006, then most recently the D7000 in 2011, the D4 will be my first real pro kit since my beloved Nikon F4 from years past. Well I have now had a chance to read through the instructions, in their entirety, and had an opportunity to give the D4 a go during this past weeks Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) monthly meeting at HBO in New York City.

The meeting was held in the beautiful HBO auditorium just as it had been in 2011. I was familiar with this theater as I had photographed the very same meeting one year earlier! Last year I was testing out the Nikon D7000 and used a combination of flash and available light to produce some very nice images. This year, being that the D4 has been herald as the best low light camera on the market, I went 100% available light. Not only that, I shot almost everything at ISO 12,800, yes that's right ISO 12,800! Quite remarkable I must say. I probably could have gotten away with ISO 3200 as I did last year but I really wanted to increase my shutter speeds in order to work fast and not worry so much about remaining rock steady all evening.



First off I'll say working with the Nikon D4 was a pleasure right off the bat. The ergonomics and button placements on this camera just felt so natural in my hands. The camera is not small mind you, but my hands aren't that small either. Working with the smaller D7000 always seemed a bit cramped to me, whereas the D4 seemed just right. Being that it is a full frame, full bodied camera I believe it weighs in at around three pounds. That weight seems well balanced when paired up with large telephotos or zoom lenses. I was primarily shooting with an 80-200mm f/2.8, and then a bit with a 35-135 f/3.5-4.5 That combination worked very well, especially for this shoot.

Rarely do I ever shoot faster that one frame at a time. The D4 is capable of firing off up to 11 frames per second and perhaps one day I'll play with that, if only just to hear the Nikon sound like a machine gun! What was interesting to me however was that even though I had the camera set to single frame mode, the shutter was so responsive that I was able to fire off many rapid shots without going full auto so to speak. Kind of like the three round burst I am so fond of, however that is another topic altogether now isn't it.

The quality of the images at ISO 12,800 is pretty damn impressive if you ask me, not perfect but pretty damn impressive indeed. My image settings for this shoot were NEF RAW, lossless compressed at 14bit. High ISO noise was certainly present in these images but nowhere near what we had ever seen before at these levels. To be honest I was quite blown away when I previewed the fist few shots made at ISO 12,800 and that was just the unprocessed RAW files viewed in the cameras 3.2" LCD.



One more notable item was that I was recording the images to a brand new Sony 16Gig XQD card. No lag was detected at all, not that I would have expected it. It worked just fine. I just wish the XQD cards would come down in price a bit as they seem a bit pricier than the same size CF cards at the moment.

I used Adobe Lightroom 4 to process and edit the NEF RAW files. I applied minimal corrections to the images, the usual stuff you know. A bit of white balance here, a tad of clarity there, a smidgen of contrast over there, and a crop or two.


More examples of this test can be found on my flickr page. http://www.flickr.com/photos/landon-smyth/sets/72157629803525106/

All in all I am very happy with the Nikon D4 so far. I have many more tests and experiments to preform with this fine new camera and I look forward to sharing them with you.

The Kino Flo Celeb 200 LED looks like the most interesting new lighting fixture I have seen in a long time.

The Kino Flo Celeb 200 LED looks like the most interesting new lighting fixture I have seen in a long time. Lightweight, energy efficient, with flicker free kelvin settings between 2700-5500k. This new light is at the top of my most wanted list for 2012!

http://kinoflo.com/Lighting%20Fixtures%20(LED)/Celeb_200/Celeb_200.html

Wise Words From A Cookie!

Today's fortune cookie reads "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity". How very true this is. Rarely does good luck bestow those that do nothing to earn it. If you have a passion, pursue it with everything you have, if you are lucky, it will find you!

Winter Moon

I've always liked looking at the moon, especially on clear winter nights. This will mark my entry into the world of astrophotography. This image is better than I have made previously of the moon but intend to continue improving upon my moon images and possibly other celestial objects. Note the lack of noise at 3200 ISO.

This image was taken with a Nikon D7000, Nikkor 500mm f/8, 1/1000sec, ISO 3200

 

New Nikon Coolpix Cameras

Nikon updates Coolpix lineup with a bunch of new cameras. http://www.nikon.com/news/2012/0201_cpx-s_01.htm

New Years Resolution for My Blog

Well another year has passed and although I have added more to my blog in 2011 than I did in 2010 I do belive I can do better in 2012. I have no intention of keeping pace with the many film and photo bloggers out there but will try to post some bits of intrest. Until then, cheers!

Happy New Year!

As 2011 draws to a close I give thanks to all the good that has happened & grateful for all the new friends I have met either online or in person. Wishing you all a very Happy New Year!

Camera Leapfrogging

Every few years camera technology changes and pushes professional photographers to continually update their gear. This was not always the case. Before the advent of the digital camera, manual film based cameras ruled. Once you had a professional quality film camera, you were set for years to come, unless you happened to destroy it on a particularly dangerous or difficult shoot. Decades later, I still have fully functional film based cameras, some of which date back to the 1950s! Four cameras that I have worked with that have stood the test of time include the Leica IIIf, Hasselblad 500C, Nikon F2, and the Nikon F3. I’m sure there are others, but those I can attest to.

Well those days are over and have been so for most professional photographers for many years now. Today we are faced with an ever changing world of improved imaging technology that our clients demand that we use. Not only that, those new cameras cost a small fortune! I don’t know about you but the high cost of some of this gear is very challenging to keep up with. My strategy for dealing with this I call Camera Leapfrogging!

What the heck is Camera Leapfrogging you may ask, sounds like a video game I used to play as a kid. If you are a pro, you know that just one camera body is not sufficient on the job. A minimum of two camera bodys are essential for most professional photography situations. The need for a reliable backup camera is essential should anything happen to your primary camera while on the job, that is if you intend on maintaining a career as a pro! How the heck can I afford two cameras when they are so expensive and changing all of the time you may be asking? Not an easy thing for sure but this is my strategy for dealing with the situation.

When finances are tight, and not many jobs are coming your way, it is very difficult to make additional equipment purchases but you do need equipment to do your job. When first starting out I recommend getting the best camera you can afford, I will call this A-cam. Additionally you will need a reliable secondary camera that is capable of at least the minimum requirements of your typical job, lets call that B-Cam. When I was just starting out my first A-Cam was the Nikon F4s and B-Cam Nikon FM2. That was expensive gear for someone just starting out and I sacrificed on other items such as a fancy car. A $700 used Buick was all I needed to get me to the job and I had a camera package I could trust. In the days of film that combination was all I needed, in the age of digital we need to upgrade our equipment every few years. That is where Camera Leapfrogging comes in.

Since I am mostly familiar with Nikons I will use Nikon digital SLR cameras in my example of the Camera Leapfrogging technique. Lets say I start out with the following camera package: A-Cam D200, B-Cam D80. This combo of mid-range and entry level DSLR works well for a while, both very capable cameras but time goes by and Nikon introduces a new mid-range camera, the D300. Since the D80 is not really a pro grade camera I purchase a new D300 and it now becomes my A-Cam where the D200 becomes my B-Cam. Since I am a pro, that means I take good care of my equipment, therefore retaining value of the old D80 and sell it to help offset the cost of the newly acquired camera. A year goes by and now Nikon has introduced the D300s! Hey wait a minute, that’s not much different from the D300! It does have video though but not like Canons 5DMkII, do I really need video in an SLR at this point? Maybe, maybe not. One thing for sure is that most of my old Nikon lenses were designed for a full frame 35mm imaging area whereas the imaging sensors on the D200 and D300 are of a smaller APS-C size, also known in the motion picture world as “Academy or Super 35mm” more or less. I really missed the imaging capabilities of full frame so decide to buy the Nikon D700 which is a pro grade full frame DSLR. Even though I also shoot video and motion picture film, at this point I am not worried about video capabilities in my DSLR. So now I have sold the D200 and D700 becomes my new A-Cam and D300 the B-Cam. I believe you see the leapfrogging going on here. I believe this Camera Leapfrogging technique can help you stay current with technology while spreading your investment costs out over time.

I believe 2012 will be a banner year for Nikon with the introduction of at least two, if not three new cameras to their professional DSLR line-up. With the incredible rumored capabilities of the D800, D4 and yet to be disclosed D400, I do believe 2012 will be a Camera Leapfrogging kind of year!

Testing the iPhone 4S Camera

  

I was standing in the kitchen rinsing my coffee cup as I saw the UPS man approach the house. As he climbed the front stairs and stepped onto my porch, a small package slipped from his hand, and fell crashing to the floor. I approached the door to greet him as he retrieved the small package. Seeing me, the UPS man raised the small package above his head and cheerfully asked, "Is this an iPhone"? "It was" I replied.  The UPS man then told me that today they had over 800,000 deliveries of new iPhones just in the USA alone. That was Friday, October 14th.

The phone I would be replacing was the iPhone 3G which I have had since late 2008. Up to this point the iPhone 3G had been my favorite personal computing device. I had never thought of the iPhone as a phone, but rather a tiny personal computer I could take with me everywhere, and that is was. In addition to all the wonderful applications and music playing capabilities, the iPhone 3G also had this nice little 2 Mega Pixel (MP) camera that I found myself using all of the time. I have amassed a nice little portfolio of images captured with the 3G and refer to it as my postage stamp size portfolio. Only so much you can do with a 2MP image.

Well the iPhone 3GS with added video capability, then the iPhone 4 with improved 5MP camera, High Definition video, and Retina Display came along, yet I still held onto my trusty little 3G. I could only hold out so long. 

Two specific improvements made to the iPhone 4S were fairly significant to me; Dual-core A5 chip (faster), and an all-new 8MP camera and optics (better image making). Even though other competing brands exist, some maybe on par or better, I didn't care. I had to have this gadget, and so it was.

The iPhone 4S is now able to record full 1080p high definition video, and I am sure I will get around to playing with that, but I was very interested in seeing what I could do with the improved still image making capabilities of its new lens and 8MP image size. The video accompanying this blog post  contains a compilation of some still images I have taken with the new iPhone 4S between October 14th and 27th. I tried to capture various subjects and treated them with a variety of different stylistic approaches. At first I wanted to only include perfect images, but then decided to include some not so perfect images in order to highlight some of the challenges this little camera can and cannot deal well with. Some of the image borders I had applied during image retouching have interfered with the video frame placements in iMovie. I could have worked around this issue had I used Adobe Premiere for the video edit, but I wanted this project to be 100% created on the iPhone. Next time if I decide to use iMovie, I will forgo the image borders. I do notice a significant hit to the sharpness of the images after being processed by iMovie, and then again by Vimeo conversion. Thats a problem with how compressed images like jpg and h.264 degrades with each subsequent copy. I will not go into depth with every image, but rather let you, the viewer decide what works and what doesn't. 

If you like it, please let me know and share with your friends! 

All of the images, image retouching, color grading, video editing, titles, and effects were created and assembled on the iPhone 4S. Quite remarkable if you ask me.

Software used: Adobe PS Express, TapTapTap Camera+, Apple iMovie

Hardware: iPhone 4S

 

iPhone 4GS Camera, First Impressions

Last week I had a good opportunity to test out the camera in my new iPhone 4GS and I was quite pleased with the results. Rather than my typical day at the office, I had to go downtown to attend some ITIL training. For those that are wondering, ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library. ITIL has nothing at all to do with image making but rather an information technology industry set of best practices. Good stuff if you are into managing IT operations. OK, back to the topic at hand, my first impression of the iPhone 4GS camera.

During breaks, and during my walk uptown later in the afternoon, I was able to capture a handful of nice images with the iPhone. The picture of the Upper New York Bay above, was taken through a dirty window on the 31st floor of One New York Plaza. Taking pictures out of dirty windows was not an easy task with this camera as the auto focus kept wanting to focus on the dirty window rather than the scenery outside. I was finally able to get the thing to focus on what I wanted and grabbed the shot I wanted. One interesting new feature with this new camera is the option to enable High Dynamic Range (HRD) while shooting. In essence with HDR enabled, the iPhone takes three separate shots of varying exposures and automatically merges them together to create what it thinks is a great photo. The result can be quite pleasing but can also be dreadful if not used with care. 

Below is the impressive Charging Bull located in Bowling Green Park, lower Manhattan. I thought it would be fun to grab a shot of the bull, unknowing that a heard of tourists would be doing the same. You can't see the tourists in the shot but believe me there were plenty and I had to work my way to the front and then wait for the folks to stop posing in front of the bull. The shallow depth of field and nice border was achieved via an app called Camera+. I have a bunch of photography apps and use different apps for different looks. I never know which app, if any I will use until after I have taken the shot. 

All in all I'd say not bad for a camera that's built into a phone! That along with all the cool photography apps that can be purchased, make the iPhone 4GS a winner in my book!