playing with new camera

[ron david]

was playing with my new Nikon and using a couple of my 40 year old Nikkor lens so here are a few shots . 1st one is of a Ceylon ebony vessel with turned Japanese t/picks. 9"w x 4 1/2"h and the second is off my dog Inde just waking up. Chesapeake bay retriever .
one can sure see the detail at 24 mp before they got reduced for here
http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac281/padresag/wood/DSC_0035_zps57b3da06.jpg
http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac281/padresag/wood/DSC_0046_zpsdf407fce.jpg
ron

[Steve Schlumpf]

Ron, if you upload the photos to the Creek, you have a little more control on the final image because you can size it - not the software. I resize my images to 1024 pixels and then compress so that they are less than 107 kb. Most times that works well but you do have to play games sometimes when dealing with compression.

What graphics editor do you use?

[ron david]

Ron, if you upload the photos to the Creek, you have a little more control on the final image because you can size it - not the software. I resize my images to 1024 pixels and then compress so that they are less than 107 kb. Most times that works well but you do have to play games sometimes when dealing with compression.

What graphics editor do you use?
photobucket reduces them. they would be way to large for here anyway
thks
ron
What I was saying was that they were originally taken at 24.2 mp and that the detail really shows up at that size

[Steve Schlumpf]

Ron, what I was saying is that you can reduce the size of your photo and in most cases maintain that clarity by monitoring the compression of the image. Difference is manually controlling the outcome vs letting a program control it.

Either way, it sure sounds like you are having fun with your new camera and that is what is important!

[Jim Underwood]

You fail to mention which Nikon you bought?

[ron david]

You fail to mention which Nikon you bought?
no I didn't fail to mention it. I just didn't put it in
ron

[Don Kondra]

Okay wise guy :)

What model of Nikon is it ?

Cheers, Don

[ron david]

Okay wise guy :)

What model of Nikon is it ?

Cheers, Don

you already know. now I have to tell them that I didn't buy the top of the line, but at the bottom. a Nikon is still a Nikon isn't it.
it is a D3200 which I basically bought to try my old nikon lens on
ron

[Don Kondra]

LOL

The truth is just about any current camera body in that price range will be just fine for most photography work.

Money is better spent on good glass, be it old or new....

Now if you need extreme low light/high iso or fast frame rates, etc. that's another story :)

Buying top of the line is for pro's, gear heads and rich folk (very large grin).

The most important part of the equation was and still is the skill of the person that presses the shutter button.

Cheers, Don

[Jim Underwood]

no I didn't fail to mention it. I just didn't put it in
ron


Ahem! Hem! That's a distinction without a difference, my good man. :D


Reason I asked is that I'm perusing cameras lately. I'm looking at a bridge camera- Nikon P510- since my Olympus SZ-20 is such a disappointment.

That setup you've got gets pretty good detail.

[Brian Libby]

Nice camera. I have the D60 and D5100. I have had a pro ,that uses top of the line Nikons, tell me that both of these are VERY GOOD cameras. The only thing different between my D60,D5100 and your D3200 vs high end ones is the extra bells and whistles. Happy shooting! You will enjoy it!

[ron david]

Nice camera. I have the D60 and D5100. I have had a pro ,that uses top of the line Nikons, tell me that both of these are VERY GOOD cameras. The only thing different between my D60,D5100 and your D3200 vs high end ones is the extra bells and whistles. Happy shooting! You will enjoy it!
I am quite happy with it and just teasing these guys. Don is a friend of mine and is a lot more involved than I will ever be with cameras. I also have a 8800from about 6 years ago(same body style , but without removable lens.
the picture of my dog should have been used with a tripod as I had the lens wide open at 4.5 and 1/60 sec with my 80-200. could have been steadier but all this new stuff brings new angles. you have to use an electronic shutter device which Nikon does sell and i bought and works with Iphones and other smart phones, but I have a BB z10. I just got the instructions how to sideload(whatever the hell that means) the android platform so that I can get the app to trigger the sensor. life is not as clear and simple as it once was.
but not 1 person has commented on the vessel
ron

[ron david]

Ahem! Hem! That's a distinction without a difference, my good man. :D


Reason I asked is that I'm perusing cameras lately. I'm looking at a bridge camera- Nikon P510- since my Olympus SZ-20 is such a disappointment.


That setup you've got gets pretty good detail.

a play with words i see. one only fails if he does not succeed at an endeavour. so that I didn't originally attempt to include it; it therefore is not a failure.
now back to the camera. I only bought it with the basic 18-55 lense as it was only about $70.00 over the bare camera body. if I didn't have my other lens and wanted an all around camera they did have a package which inc a second lens which is a 55-105 or something for about 675.00 on sale. I would feel restricted with this camera with only the 18-55 lens. it is a 24.2 megapixel camera and if you saw the full detail on these pictures at 24.2 it is impressive. instead of scanning all of my 35mm slides, I will digitize them with this camera and a light source. I also have a slide copy setup with a bellows but this electronic trigger thing again rises it's head as it orig used a dual cable shutter release. unless they do have an electronic servo operated release that could be used in conjunction with the Nikon sensor shutter release for the camera. I believe that there is a solution to that; that money can solve. putting 2 different concepts together is like getting old; it is not for the weak.
just research for what you really need it to do for you. there are other good makers out there. I bought Nikon because I have had nikon fo 40 years
ron

[Tim Janssen]

I am quite happy with it and just teasing these guys. Don is a friend of mine and is a lot more involved than I will ever be with cameras. I also have a 8800from about 6 years ago(same body style , but without removable lens.
the picture of my dog should have been used with a tripod as I had the lens wide open at 4.5 and 1/60 sec with my 80-200. could have been steadier but all this new stuff brings new angles. you have to use an electronic shutter device which Nikon does sell and i bought and works with Iphones and other smart phones, but I have a BB z10. I just got the instructions how to sideload(whatever the hell that means) the android platform so that I can get the app to trigger the sensor. life is not as clear and simple as it once was.
but not 1 person has commented on the vessel
ron

I was going to ask if it was designed to discourage smoking. Too late now
Cheers!

Tim

[ron david]

I was going to ask if it was designed to discourage smoking. Too late now
Cheers!

Tim
but I guess that all depends upon your taste
ron

[Jim Underwood]

Wessel? Heck, I thought it was a porcupine!
;-)
I was actually wishing for a more lighted shot and a couple more angles. But then we got side tracked on the camera.

[ron david]

Wessel? Heck, I thought it was a porcupine!
;-)
I was actually wishing for a more lighted shot and a couple more angles. But then we got side tracked on the camera.
at the bottom of each of my replies are 3 links, but you have to copy and paste them. if you go to this link you will see more views of this one and another one that I did which is in the "Wood Turning Centre"
http://s908.photobucket.com/user/padresag/library/turned%20works?sort=3&page=1
ron

[Eric DeSilva]

I was actually wishing for a more lighted shot and a couple more angles. But then we got side tracked on the camera.

It's been my experience that Nikon's tend to shoot about 1/3 EV too low. I'm told this is intentional--you can recover detail in post-processing from slightly underexposed frames, but you can't pull back detail that is blown out. But still, it means I routinely push the exposure a bit in post-processing, and that has been consistent for all of my Nikons back to the D100.

[Eric DeSilva]

The only thing different between my D60,D5100 and your D3200 vs high end ones is the extra bells and whistles.

"Bells and whistles" covers a lot of ground--with camera, as with a lot of things, you often get what you pay for. The "pro" Nikons--D4, D3X, D800--are all FX sensor cameras, not DX. That means the pro cameras have a much larger CCD sensor and vastly improved high-ISO performance (i.e., less noisy images at low light)--the trade off is that you don't get the 1.6X crop factor you get with a DX sensor and that full frame FX lenses are much more expensive because they require more glass. The sensor difference alone is a major, major distinction and not something I'd gloss over as a "bell or whistle." Moreover, the computer hardware and software is typically better too, allowing more sensor points for exposure metering and focus and faster rendering, which allows faster shooting and less laggy shutters. A pro camera is typically much solidly constructed--my wife's D700 is pretty much completely environmentally shielded, allowing it to be used fearlessly in wet and/or dusty conditions.

The image quality of mid-range consumer dSLRs of today is vastly superior to the image quality of a pro dSLR from, say, 10 years ago, and all of the cameras you mentioned are great cameras capable of producing award-winning images. Heck, I've seen amazing shots from iPhones--like woodworking, it is the pilot, not the plane. But there's a reason that a D4 body costs $6K and a D3200 package costs $650.

[Jamie Donaldson]

A camera is but a tool for the tool holding it, and for best quality images the camera original should be the best possible capture requiring the least post processing.

[Eric DeSilva]

A camera is but a tool for the tool holding it, and for best quality images the camera original should be the best possible capture requiring the least post processing.

A romantic notion, but unless you are a photojournalist that is subject to ethical limitations, kind of misplaced. It isn't really true today and wasn't true back in the film days--Ansel Adams spent a long time in the darkroom dodging and burning to get his images to look they way they do, and if you think that there was no qualitative adjustment of exposure, contrast, or color when you dropped your film off with the processor, you are mistaken. Post-processing is an integral part of digital imaging just as darkroom work was an integral part of analog photography. If you aren't doing it, you aren't getting the most out of your camera. If I want to print or use an image online or anywhere else, there are things I will almost always do to it in post-processing--crop/level (8x10 is not the same aspect ratio as 5x7), correct white balance, use CCD dust eliminators, adjust levels/contrast, and sharpen. If the image is for the web, there are additional steps you ought to take for that media. If you are printing, you should also also color compensate for the type of color printer you are using and, in fact, the type of photo paper you are using--ICC color profiles are for exactly that reason.

Not much of this is new--up to and including image content modification. Studio photographers used color pencils to modify negatives to adjust highlight and eliminate flares. Take a look at these mark ups if you think iconic images just got spit out of someone's camera by chance: http://petapixel.com/2013/09/12/marked-photographs-show-iconic-prints-edited-darkroom/.

You can't use post-processing to make a great image out of a bad RAW image, and I start taking issue with post-processing when it is used to create images that weren't what the photographer saw--post-processing should, in my mind, have the goal of rendering the photo (which is subject to dynamic range and other limitations that don't apply to our eyes) truer to what was actually seen. But the idea that post-processing is somehow "false art" is silly--if you don't do it, you are only cheating yourself. Most of the stuff that I mentioned is stuff that a commercial developer would have done to your film (aside from CCD dust reduction, which wasn't relevant). And all of the things that I mentioned are designed to make a photograph look more like what someone standing there would have actually seen. Including pushing Nikon RAW images by 1/3 EV.

[Jim Underwood]

Not sure why you're taking issue with Jamie's statement. He's not throwing down on post processing. He's encouraging taking the best shot possible before post processing.

And there's nothing wrong with that statement. All the post processing in the world can't correct for movement blur, unfocused images, grainy images, overexposure, low resolution...

[ron david]

A camera is but a tool for the tool holding it, and for best quality images the camera original should be the best possible capture requiring the least post processing.
this also rings true for much other things that are done on this forum. it is always the main tool that gets the job done , but not all tools are the same!
ron

[Eric DeSilva]

Not sure why you're taking issue with Jamie's statement. He's not throwing down on post processing. He's encouraging taking the best shot possible before post processing.

If Jamie's statement is read simply as "take the best picture possible," I don't have an issue with that, but that isn't what I read. He posted in response to my statement that Nikons typically require a 1/3rd EV push in post-processing--I didn't really see post-processing coming up in any other context. I read his response as perpetuating the common notion that what comes out of the camera directly is "pure art" whereas post-processing is "false art" (and therefore that supplying a 1/3rd EV correction is somehow admitting that there was a problem with the Nikon "tool" or the photographer "tool"). That said, if I'm misreading what he said, I apologize (and I did note that I did say that no amount of post-processing will fix a bad image).

My point is that fundamentally, if you have two photographic prints side by side, you don't judge the quality of those prints based on whether one took more post-processing than the other--99.99% of the time you will never know how much post-processing was done. You judge them by whether they are good prints on aesthetic grounds. If I hand you two prints, taken of the same subject with the same framing and in all respects identical, but one is shot with my F5 using Fuji Velvia and the other is shot with my D700 using a Velvia post-processing filter, you will see--for all intents and purposes--identical images (presuming we constrain ourselves from doing a lot of other darkroom/post-processing work). Same thing if I take the shot with a Lomo and replicate the shot with my Nikon and apply a Lomo post-processing filter. Taking Jamie's statement literally, one of those images in each case is a "better quality" image because it required less post-processing. I think that is a romantic, but false, notion.

Addenda. Look, maybe I'm overreacting about post-processing, but I've spent too much time overcoming this notion that resorting to post-processing somehow means you are a lesser photographer or your art isn't pure. Digital images are supposed to be post-processed--at a minimum, you need to do the things that the guy behind the counter did when you dropped off your film. See for yourself. Learn how to adjust levels in a digital photograph--it is something that will make your prints look a lot better, it is easy, and it is a minimal step that most people don't do.

[Jim Underwood]

Well if that's what Jamie said, that it's not pure art, then I'd agree with you. However, knowing how much Jamie helps everyone with their photography (here and on World of Woodturners website), I don't think that's what he was saying. His intent is usually to help people with their photography skills, not be an art snob.

[Jamie Donaldson]

A romantic notion, but unless you are a photojournalist that is subject to ethical limitations, kind of misplaced. It isn't really true today and wasn't true back in the film days--Ansel Adams spent a long time in the darkroom dodging and burning to get his images to look they way they do, and if you think that there was no qualitative adjustment of exposure, contrast, or color when you dropped your film off with the processor, you are mistaken. Post-processing is an integral part of digital imaging just as darkroom work was an integral part of analog photography. If you aren't doing it, you aren't getting the most out of your camera. If I want to print or use an image online or anywhere else, there are things I will almost always do to it in post-processing--crop/level (8x10 is not the same aspect ratio as 5x7), correct white balance, use CCD dust eliminators, adjust levels/contrast, and sharpen. If the image is for the web, there are additional steps you ought to take for that media. If you are printing, you should also also color compensate for the type of color printer you are using and, in fact, the type of photo paper you are using--ICC color profiles are for exactly that reason.

Not much of this is new--up to and including image content modification. Studio photographers used color pencils to modify negatives to adjust highlight and eliminate flares. Take a look at these mark ups if you think iconic images just got spit out of someone's camera by chance: http://petapixel.com/2013/09/12/marked-photographs-show-iconic-prints-edited-darkroom/.

You can't use post-processing to make a great image out of a bad RAW image, and I start taking issue with post-processing when it is used to create images that weren't what the photographer saw--post-processing should, in my mind, have the goal of rendering the photo (which is subject to dynamic range and other limitations that don't apply to our eyes) truer to what was actually seen. But the idea that post-processing is somehow "false art" is silly--if you don't do it, you are only cheating yourself. Most of the stuff that I mentioned is stuff that a commercial developer would have done to your film (aside from CCD dust reduction, which wasn't relevant). And all of the things that I mentioned are designed to make a photograph look more like what someone standing there would have actually seen. Including pushing Nikon RAW images by 1/3 EV.

Eric, you probably aren't aware that you're preaching to the choir here, since I've been a professional photographer/darkroom tech/camera repairman since 1965. I worked with Ansel Adams in a darkroom while assisting at a workshop on the Zone System, using my test equipment for calibration. I also founded a teaching workshop/fine print gallery/darkroom/studio rental facility, and served as a combat intel photographer as an Army Ranger in Vietnam. I do have a broad understanding of both the imaging process and business, and decided to retire rather than undertake the debt of switching my business to the digital domain in 2002. And of course I then started using digital equipment and teaching workshops on photographing art objects such as turnings, and established the Phrugal Photo Studio. I'm glad I kept some of those old Nikkor lenses, and I did have a working knowledge of Agfa Brovira#6, just as I now play with Photoshop!!

[Jamie Donaldson]

Eric,

I refer you to my original statement that reads "least post processing," not stated as to eliminate all such manipulations as dishonest. We are sufficiently impressed with your discursive pronouncements, so lighten up and quit reading meanings into words that are not there!

[Eric DeSilva]

Eric, you probably aren't aware that you're preaching to the choir here

You should understand my frustration then. I encounter too many people who are led to believe that somehow because they have a dSLR, that the images produced by it somehow avoid the need for any post-processing.

[Jamie Donaldson]

You should understand my frustration then. I encounter too many people who are led to believe that somehow because they have a dSLR, that the images produced by it somehow avoid the need for any post-processing.

I know your pain, and 2 of my former assistants are still in the business. There is no entrance exam requirement to be called a "pro," and I lament the fact that most of today's owners of high end DSLR's don't even know the specific terminology of "real photography.":(

[ron david]

here are some better views of the piece
http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac281/padresag/turned%20works/ceylonebonywtoothpicks.jpg
http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac281/padresag/turned%20works/ceylonebonywtoothpicks2.jpg
ron