Looking at some pictures my friend Wen shot at Olivia’s birthday party, indoors at a gymnastics-themed place, I realized that I should have opted for a higher minimum shutter speed – even if it came at the cost of having a higher ISO setting, and thus more noise, in the pictures.  After all, you can add some noise reduction after the fact, but there’s no blur reduction!  However, this made me realize that despite the existence of a large number of shooting modes, none of them actually does what I want.

Basically, every Nikon DSLR (and many film SLRs before it; same story for other brands) has the same core set of shooting modes that you can choose from:

Almost regardless of which camera you pick in the line-up, you’ll essentially get the equivalent of the dial you see above:

• Professional-oriented bodies – the D300, D700, and D3 models and variants – only give you the M/A/S/P  shooting modes.  These modes are the ones that it really makes sense to use anyways once you get the hang of things; more on this below.
• The D7000 pictured above adds a couple of programmable user  modes (U1/U2), an Auto mode where the camera picks everything, a useless flash-off mode (just push down the pop up flash or turn off the attached flash!), and access to scene modes (with pre-defined settings for portraits, landscapes, etc).
• The D90, D5100/5000, D3100/3000, and other cameras even back to my film-based F75 have the same M/A/S/P options, Auto, plus individual icons for selecting different scene types directly from the mode dial.

So basically, you always get M/A/S/P, and depending on what model you have, you might also get some automatic modes which are probably not why you decided to buy a DSLR anyways (but can be handy for learning).  The above is Nikon’s terminology, but Canon and other manufacturers all basically seem to take the same approach.  Each of the M/A/S/P modes (and most scene modes) control how aperture and shutter speed are chosen when taking pictures.

If you’re not familiar with how these affect what your pictures look like, it’s well worth understanding.  I can’t do the topic justice here, but I’ll provide a one-liner for each anyways.  Aperture controls how “open” your lens is – the wider the aperture (lower f-stop number), the more light it lets in, but the less depth of field you have (not as much will be in focus).  Shutter speed controls how long the sensor takes a picture for; longer (slower) shutter speeds let in more light, but if the object you’re taking a picture of moves during this time, you’ll get a blurry shot.  It’s all a trade-off – you generally want more light and it’s a question of what you’re willing to pay for it.

With that in mind, the M/A/S/P modes are very simple to understand:

• M – Manual.  You set both aperture and shutter speed to what you want.  Set them wrong, and your pictures will be too dark or blown out.
• A – Aperture Priority.  You set aperture, and the camera picks the matching shutter speed to get the right exposure (brightness).
• S – Shutter Priority.  You set the shutter speed, and the camera picks the aperture.
• P – Program Auto.  You set neither, the camera chooses for you – but allows you to adjust between options that allow an equal amount of light.  For instance, 1/200th @ f/4.0 is equivalent to 1/100th @ f/5.6, in terms of how bright your picture will be.

I usually use Aperture Priority, because aperture usually has the most impact on what you pictures look like.  Sometimes you want everything sharp, sometimes you deliberately want the background to be blurry to focus on the subject.  Many lenses aren’t quite as good wide open, but you get less light if you use a smaller aperture. Indeed, the difference between an inexpensive lens and a ridiculously expensive one – unless you look really close – is often in how wide an aperture is supported.  Stop down to f/8.0, and many lenses are hard to tell apart.

By contrast, shutter speed matters but only really makes a difference in one of three scenarios:

• If you are holding your camera in your hand (usually the case, especially for non-photographers like me), then a slower shutter speed increases the chance of a blurry picture because YOUR hands are shaking.  The rule of thumb here seems to be to shoot at a shutter speed that’s the inverse of your effective focal length.  So if you’re zoomed to 100mm, then use a shutter speed of at least 1/100th. Technologies like vibration reduction [VR] (called image stabilization [IS] on Canon) minimize the effect of camera shake and allow you to get away with longer shutter speeds without inducing blur.  You almost never want camera shake in your pictures.  For this reason, there’s a minimum shutter speed you typically want.
• If you are taking pictures of a fast moving object, like your kid playing sports, your kid jumping around in a gym, or your kid just being your kid, and you want to freeze the action, you may need an even higher minimum shutter speed.  Much depends on how fast things are moving, but 1/200th to 1/500th of a second is around what you may need.  Getting this fast is a challenge indoors in low light, though.
• If you want deliberate blur, you may want a lower shutter speed.  Non-photographers will rarely use this, but often in pictures where there’s flowing water, you’ll see this done on purpose.  Sometimes, some amount of blur of this kind is also desirable to highlight motion.

Okay, so the above is a bad explanation of photography basics that was much longer than intended, though necessary to make the point I opened with. The problem that I see is that each of the M/A/S/P shooting modes is a legacy from the days when shutter and aperture were the only things you could adjust. Every digital camera, even the one in the iPhone, now gives you at least one if not two added options:

• ISO – this controls the sensitivity (gain) of the sensor in your camera.  It used to be impossible to change this in the film days, except by changing the roll of film in your camera, which few people did at least until they finished the roll.  Now, it’s as easy as changing anything else.  ISO is also the easiest choice to make – higher ISO means more noise (grain) in your images, so you always want the lowest ISO necessary for the aperture & shutter speed you’re using.
• Flash output – the camera can actually control how much power to use when activating the flash, which is pretty handy both for not blinding your subject, not draining your batteries faster than necessary, and getting the picture you want.  How this happens is a whole other complex topic, which we can skip for now.

So, with all that in mind, here’s how I wish my camera worked:

• First I pick the aperture I want, knowing that wider apertures means more light, less depth-of-field (i.e. blurry backgrounds), and perhaps less sharpness (depending on the lens), with narrower apertures doing the opposite.
• Then I pick the minimum shutter speed I want (unless I want to blur some flowing water, in which case I will just want to set the shutter speed to a fixed value). This the faster of:
  • The camera shake minimum speed, which in turn is determined by the focal length (longer focal lengths = higher required shutter speed), whether or not the lens has VR (and how good it is), and how steady the camera users hands are.
  • The subject movement speed, which can vary from totally still, to a speeding race car, all the way up to the average movement speed of your kids.  (Relative to the camera, the kids indeed can move faster than a racecar!)
• Then I want the minimum ISO necessary to get the right exposure given the above.

This seems pretty logical (to me, anyways!).  Flash complicates this otherwise simple formula, and the way the D7000 handles this is one of my few complaints about the camera, but that’s a topic for another day.

Can the camera work this way?  No.  Despite all those shooting modes and lots of menu options, it actually can’t.  There are two options that come close, and both depend on a feature that exists on Nikon cameras and most others called Auto-ISO, which automatically raises ISO if shutter speed falls below a specific value that you can set. The two options, both of which have their own failings, are as follows:

• Use Aperture Priority mode, with Auto-ISO on, and the minimum shutter speed set to whatever you need.  This mostly works,  it’s how I have my camera configured by default, and it’s how I take most non-flash pictures.  What doesn’t work?  Ergonomics.  While you can normally change shutter speed with one touch by rotating the rear command dial (which is easily accessible), you can’t change the auto ISO minimum shutter speed this way.  The latter has to be changed via a deeply nested set of menus.  Even if you assign one of very few programmable buttons to take you directly to this menu option (as I do), you still need to navigate through things on the back LCD and scroll through all available shutter speeds to find the one you want.  Did you zoom in or out?  Different required shutter speed.  Did your kid switch from the balance beam to the trampoline – or did they stop for a second allowing a portrait shot?  Vastly different shutter speed requirements.  It’s just impossible to use the menus to adequately adjust for this on the fly.  At Olivia’s birthday, I stuck with a default of 1/100th – 1/125th for most shots as it was impossible to switch shot-by-shot, but this was more than necessary for some and not nearly fast enough for others.
• Use Manual mode, with Auto-ISO on.  In manual mode, the minimum shutter speed you set for Auto-ISO doesn’t do anything, so shutter will be whatever you tell the camera to use, and you can set the shutter speed via the rear command dial (which means you can adjust very quickly without menus).  What’s the problem?  Now you’re setting the absolute shutter speed, not the minimum shutter speed.  Since Auto-ISO can’t go lower than the base ISO of your camera (ISO 100 in the case of the D7000), very bad things happen once you get to base ISO – any additional light means your picture will be overexposed and blown out, potentially quite severely so.  But ironically, you want the lowest possible ISO for the best image quality – so if it is bright enough for you to get to base ISO in at least some shots, you are constantly trying to adjust your shutter speed for the lowest speed that is both higher than your minimum requirements and doesn’t cause overexposure.  This is near impossible, and you will lose pictures if you try (at least I did, in dynamic situations).

What I’m asking for is actually trivial to implement – in Aperture Priority mode with Auto-ISO enabled, allow the rear command dial (which sets shutter speed in manual mode) to set the minimum Auto-ISO shutter speed (and show this in the viewfinder).  Sadly, I have no friends or family who work at Nikon, so they’ll never see this, and even if they did, updating firmware is sadly not Nikon’s thing.  If the firmware was open source, I’d add this myself, but unfortunately it isn’t.

If I wasn’t just tweaking the current interface, then this whole mess of M/A/S/P + ISO vs. Auto-ISO + aperture/shutter settings could be simplified much further:

• One setting for aperture, which can be a specific value like f/2.8, f/5.6, or AUTO.
• One setting for shutter speed, which can be any valid shutter speed or AUTO, plus a qualifier of whether the shutter speed is a fixed value or a minimum requirement.
• One setting for ISO, which can be a specific value like ISO 100, ISO 400, or AUTO.  I’d probably just replace the mode dial with this.

The above would take fewer controls and less menu items than exist now, and is essentially about just treating ISO as an adjustment like any other setting – which it has been, ever since digital cameras were introduced.  It’s kind of amazing that with so many knobs and options, the simple one I want isn’t somewhere to be found amongst them!  Just as amazing is that even compact camera designers, like Canon with my PowerShot S90, has the same idea about how things should be (Av = A and Tv = S in Canon’s terminology):

Well, here’s to hoping that some future iteration of cameras simplifies things down and just does what seems to make the most sense, at least for how I use the camera!

One page I spent a good amount of time writing up earlier was this one on processing, in which I really just wanted to recommend Lightroom, but wound up rambling at some length about how processing is especially important for the non-photographer because of the latitude it provides to fix basic mistakes that a professional would never make.

I didn’t talk at all about one important thing that processing helps you do, though, which is black & white conversions.  At least one reason for the omission is perhaps that I’m pretty bad at doing such conversions! However, I do think some black & white pictures look better than their color counterparts, so when I saw this blog post from David duChemin for a $4 (regularly $5!) eBook on better B&W conversions using Lightroom, I didn’t waste much time before buying it.  I haven’t gotten through everything yet, but have already learned several things I didn’t previously know – I’d highly recommend it.  I don’t know why it’s called a “Masterclass” but the book itself is written assuming you know nothing about B&W, so don’t let the title fool you.

At first it might be counter-intuitive as to why getting a black & white image isn’t trivial; after all, you can just set your camera to black & white, and even simpler tools like Picasa have one-button B&W conversions. But in reality, there’s a huge amount of choice in how you do the conversion, including on how each color is converted to some shade of grey. I personally find this more difficult than color processing; you have to make many more choices about what you want the end result to look like. Whatever you do, don’t set your camera to B&W mode!

Here’s an example image from Olivia’s 3rd birthday, which we just celebrated a couple of days ago with a gymnastics-themed event.  The original color photo, with fairly limited processing, is as follows:

Yes, I wish I could get rid of that hand in the upper right too, but as typical for kids you don’t get to set things up or get a 2nd chance at a shot!  Still, I kind of liked the picture, and as I was reading the book I thought it would be handy to pick a reference image to follow along with and decided to go with this one.

Lightroom’s default B&W conversion of the original photo looked like this:

It looks OK, but not too encouraging, I personally prefer the original picture over this B&W conversion.  Now, I’m still not going to win any awards or even pass B&W 101 with the 30 minutes of added knowledge I gained today, and you may think that this is even worse than the default conversion – but it’s still a bit closer to what I had in mind:

While there are a few non-B&W related adjustments, like a little cropping and a decent amount of post-crop vignetting (which is especially visible when looking at the small version of the image above – click for a larger version where it’s less noticeable), a good amount of the difference comes from how specific colors were blended to create the final result. Most notably, I brought the blues down a lot to try and separate Olivia a bit more from the environment (and note how the default B&W conversion makes the mat on the right look monotone, even though from the color photo you can see it’s high contrast red vs. blue).

In any case, this is just scratching the surface of things (as am I); I just hope it reinforces how much flexibility you can get out of processing your photos in different ways!

[Picture of the lens was taken by Nikon]

I’ve wondered a few times whether a non-photographer like me can make use of a macro lens as part of their toolkit. I think the answer is still “no”; since my definition of non-photographers is people who shoot to remember things vs. shooting to create art, it seems fairly unlikely that what you’d want to remember is the hair on a bug that turned up.

Still, when an AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED showed up on Craigslist, in new condition, at what looked like a pretty reasonable price (asking $750), I finally decided to take the plunge.  With under 10 pictures since I picked it up last night, and no natural light to work with, I can’t say I know anything about it yet, but hopefully that will change.  If not, the nice thing about buying used is that you can always sell a lens for roughly what you paid for it!

Now, in defense to my credentials as a non-photographer, I thought it’d be nice to have one macro lens for rare occasions, but most of my interest in the lens was that it’s supposed to be stellar for portraits too.  All data seemed to indicate that the 105VR is as sharp as my 85/1.8 at f/2.8 (which is about as wide as I go with the 85/1.8).  But at 85mm+, with my shaky hands, the addition of vibration reduction on the 105/2.8 is very attractive, and while it’s not as acclaimed as the 85/1.4 (which I’ve never touched) for portraiture, the consensus seemed to be that it would outdo the 85/1.8 for this purpose.

Finally, since the amazing 24-70/2.8 is by far my most used (and thus carried) lens, the 105mm is a better complement at the long end than the 85/1.8, which I don’t carry or use if I’ve got the 24-70 with me; it’s not worth it for 15mm extra.  So if I’m out and about with 3 lenses in a situation where I can’t predict in advance what I’ll use, I’ll likely bring the 10-24, 24-70, and either this 105 or the 70-300.  Big difference vs. the 70-300 at the long end, but I rarely go that long.

On macro – it didn’t take too much playing around last night to realize both how little I knew and how much there is to learn if you want to get half decent macro shots.  I have a reasonable sense of depth of field on “normal” shots, but I was just stunned how little there was when operating at very small distances.  The tiniest back-and-forth motion of the camera completely knocked any handheld shots out of focus.  Finally I stopped down a little, got out the flash and tripod, and found an innocent strawberry to throw up on the chopping block for the first real test shot for the lens:

That’s not even close to the minimum focusing distance of the lens, and already just the surface of the strawberry is in focus (it’s stem is somewhat blurred).  Always hearing that diffraction kicks in after f/11 (not to mention my flash power kicking out), I bumped it up to f/11; things were a little clearer:

The edges of the strawberry are still not too sharp if you look at the bigger version, though at least you can see some texture in the stem now.  Still, it sure does highlight that depth of field kicks out much faster than diffraction kicks in!  At least know I understand why anyone would bother with techniques like focus stacking (where you digitally combine multiple shots of the same object that each have a different focus point)!

The other thing I learned from the exercise is that the exact positioning of the light source matters that much more at macro distances, because the surface texture and details look so remarkably different.  The two shots above look quite different in this regard, even though the change to the position of the flash was relatively minor.  I like the top better for primarily this reason.

I don’t think I’ll be taking many macro shots, but I have to admit it was pretty cool looking at some of the shots that were much closer than the two above, because there’s so much you don’t see with your naked eye.  The 105VR seems well suited to the macro task, though, and I’m really looking forward to trying it out in good light with the family on some definitively non-photographer shots!

My friend Herman asked earlier today about potentially switching from Canon to Nikon, and what model might make an appropriate replacement for his current 30D.  Apparently there was a spectacular (sounded too good to be true) deal on a D7000 kit valid till the end of the day Thursday, but he had to run before we finished the discussion.  But in case he’s not already the proud new owner of a D7000, I’ll share a few thoughts – also because I know quite a few others with D90s, with whom I’ve had this discussion!

Like me, Herman is definitively in the amateur category (although having seen “amateur photographers” organize dedicated photo trips, either Thom’s term ‘consumer’ or perhaps even ‘non-photographer’ would be more appropriate – more on that later).  In particular, he’s going to mainly be capturing memories of places he goes and things he does with his family, not trying to make a living some day through photography.  Still, this is a significant enough want for him that spending over $1,000 on a camera body is in the realm of possibility.

Now, I can’t comment on any offering other than Nikon (and I’m sure there are good choices from other brands), but let’s consider which Nikon DSLRs might be a fit.  First, we can quickly throw out those that aren’t:

• D3100 – well received, but ergonomically it’d be a step down from the 30D, and lack of an AF motor prevents use of some of the lenses that Herman is interested in.
• D5000 – aging and due for a replacement, it’s probably not a great pick right now and also lacks the focus motor.
• D300s – for non-photographers, I just can’t see any reason to get the bigger, heavier, more expensive D300s over the D7000 at this point.  It’s faster shooting speed, better weather sealing, and other particular pro features just won’t see that much use by non-photographers.
• D3s/D3x – prohibitive size, weight, and perhaps most importantly, cost.  I’m sure they’re great cameras!

That leaves three cameras in the current lineup – the D90, D7000, and D700.  Conveniently, I’ve used all three, even though my time with the D700 was the most limited.

The D700 is a fantastic camera; you’re at the threshold of being able to call yourself a non-photographer when using one, but in my opinion it produced the best images under a given set of conditions (often less-than-ideal light levels) of the cameras I’ve owned, and I’d recommend it to anyone.  I bought mine used for around $2,000, and have seen a few for less than that; the gap between $1200 + tax (for the D7000) and $1800 for a used D700 is not that huge.  Still, it’s price (and size) make it tough to recommend for most people until they’re really sure they’re going to make good use of the equipment.  This is especially true because full frame lenses for the D700 cost a fortune.  But if money were totally no object, it’d be worth considering.

Now we’re down to the title of the post, D90 vs. D7000.  Lots of photography sites run down the difference in specs and features; for instance, the excellent D7000 review at dpreview.com does a good job of highlighting the differences between both cameras.  What might be less obvious is which of these actually matter to the non-photographer; here’s my take:

• More resolution (16MP vs. 12MP).  Perhaps a headline feature, but in reality, makes a minimal difference.  A D7000 image is 4928 pixels across; a D90 is 4288 pixels across.  In practice, I don’t notice the difference except perhaps with extreme crops.
• More auto-focus points (39 vs. 11).  The D7000 is definitely better at auto-focus (and the D90 wasn’t bad), but oddly enough I still usually use single-point AF and recompose, so no big deal for me.  But I think most fellow non-photographers will find this to be a real upgrade.  AF fine tune (on the D7000, but not the D90) could also be a life-saver if you have a lens that consistently front/back focuses on your camera.
• Base ISO of 100 (vs. 200 on the D90).  Wow!  When you’ve got enough light to actually shoot at ISO 100, it looks really awesome as the images are really clean.  I completely underestimated the significance of this.  You can really recover from under-exposure when shooting at ISO 100. When I first got the camera and was taking useless shots to try it out, this shot convinced me – though you’ll need to click for the bigger version and zoom in on the eyelashes to see why (note: limited depth-of-field at f/3.5 limits sharpness elsewhere, and warning, the original image is huge!):

• Better high ISO.  It’s not quite a full stop better – but let’s face it, good quality at higher ISOs is *the* reason for most non-photographers to get a DSLR in the first place.  Compact cameras are often fine out in the sunshine, but your family is usually indoors as are your gatherings, birthday parties, and various other things that the non-photographer wants to take pictures of.  People also don’t hold still like landscapes or models, and we don’t lug tripods around, so decent shutter speeds are needed.  Indeed, high ISO is probably more important to the non-photographer than to most pros (those that aren’t doing indoor sports, concerts, weddings, or other low-light events). For me, ISO 800 was the limit on my D90, until Lightroom 3 noise reduction came along and bumped that to ISO 1600.  By default, I use auto-ISO up to ISO 3200 on the D7000 – so it is effectively a stop higher for me.  It’s no D700 at ISO 3200, but it’s good enough for shots you otherwise wouldn’t get.  And even though you can see some visible noise in the output, it’s less blotchy and annoying than the D90 (in my opinion). Here’s a recent ISO 3200 example:

• Better manual focus.  The D90 works with manual focus lenses, but can’t meter with many of them, and can’t input data for non-CPU lenses.   The D7000 not only meters, but has a three-segment focus indicator which *really* helps; I talked about this in an earlier post.  Most non-photographers won’t care about this – and I admit, it was nice to play with this but I don’t actively shoot with manual lenses.  It’s nice to have that freedom, though, and I really liked the ones I tried.
• Dual memory card slots.  I’m paranoid about data loss (whether uncontrollable or caused by my own errors), so I love this feature, because the two slots can be used in backup mode.
• Better video (1080p H.264 vs. 720p MJPEG).  The D90 was occasionally interesting but mostly unusable for video.  The D7000 isn’t great, but it is much better.  First, it has an external mic slot that the D90 lacked, which is mandatory if you want decent sound.  Second, it records 1080p with a better codec.  Third, it does have AF during recording, but it’s still not very good.  Honestly, I don’t care that much about video, an HD camcorder from two or three years ago still performs better in most respects (unless you want to get creative).
• Built-in intervalometer.  I’ve yet to use this, and I think most fellow non-photographers will rarely use it too.  But, during an amazing lightning storm when I had the D90, I really wished I had this, because I was clicking the shutter manually to get about 300 shots, hoping for one that worked.  I’m way too lazy to try and do a time lapse with this.
• 100% viewfinder.  Surprisingly nice; now you really can see when vignetting occurs (with some hoods or filters), and you really know what’s in the frame or not.
• 1000+ shot battery.  The D90 wasn’t too bad, doing 500+ shots on a single charge, but the D7000 is just amazing in this respect.  I haven’t even bought an extra battery yet.  When you see the warning indicator, you have something like 200 shots left, which is more than I’d usually shoot in a day!  It’s nice not having to bring extra batteries or a charger on many trips!

After such a long list of things I really like about the D7000 over the D90, you’d think at this point in time I might say it’s a no-brainer to go with the D7000.  And in one of two cases, it might be:

• Money is truly no object.  For some non-photographers, even if you had an infinite amount of money the D7000 might be the optimal choice, as it’s the best available DX camera and much lighter than a full-frame setup.
• You already have all the lenses and accessories you want.  Perhaps you wisely got a D40 years ago and all your subsequent money went into a nice set of lenses.  In that case, if you can spring for the D7000 over the D90, there’s a lot to like.

However, few people fall into either of the above categories, and that makes things a lot more complicated.  A used D90 is $600; there aren’t many used D7000s, and a new one costs $1200+tax so it’s a $700+ difference.  That’s enough for a decent telephoto zoom like the 70-300 VR, a nicer general purpose zoom like the 16-85mm or 18-200mm, and even comes close to some specialized things like the 105mm f/2.8 VR macro lens, the 10-24mm DX ultra-wide, or a used 85/1.4 portrait lens.  Indoors, a D90 with an extra 35 f/1.8 for low light and a SB-700 flash will do a lot better than a D7000 with the kit-lens and pop-up flash.  So if you’re buying a whole Nikon kit on a fixed budget, I’d actually recommend the D90 with better lenses/accessories over the D7000 and skimping on lenses.

For me, I had a set of lenses and accessories that I was already very happy with (this page has a list of my stuff), and I take enough pictures every year that the upgrade to the D7000 seemed worthwhile. Now that I’ve used the D7000 for a while, I’m really glad that I did, and found more to like than I had anticipated.  But every situation is unique – and in many cases the D90 really is a great choice if it means you have cash left over for lenses.  Both are great cameras and either way, you’ll definitely be happy.

Thom Hogan, perhaps my favorite writer on photography-related topics, ironically posted a rather interesting commentary on amateur vs. enthusiast vs. pro needs.  It’s well worth reading, but since it’s currently on the front page of bythom.com, Thom’s site, I can’t yet post a link to it – he does indicate that due to response, he’ll create a permanent URL.  Incidentally, it’s a shame he doesn’t use something like WordPress so that every post automatically has a permanent URL, and so that nice things like RSS work for keeping up to date with the site.  Still, I’m a big enough fan of what he does that I think I’ll finally get rid of the default WordPress links and put a link to his site there instead!

I’ll comment more once his updated article is linkable, but he’s clearly a pro that writes for enthusiasts.  In contrast to that is Ken Rockwell, who is also a pro that takes some great shots, but with advice much more targeted at amateurs.  I bothered to start writing down some of my thoughts here (vs. E-mailing them to friends) because I think that since both are pros, they forget at times what it means to be definitively in the amateur category – even if you are trying to do the best you can within that category!

As an example, this is one of Ken Rockwell’s pictures of Half Dome at Yosemite, linked directly from his site and not copied here, copyright owned by him, and directly linking to his site.  (Which I think makes it OK for me to post a link to, but I’m no IPR lawyer):

Ken or Thom probably think of all the people up on Glacier Point shooting with cameraphones as the amateur, but my amateur version of the shot is this one:

Well, I seem to have almost exactly the same framing of the shot itself, and this is back from my JPEG-only no-processing days so it’s what came straight out of the camera with no changes – so no, I didn’t crop this after the fact to match.  Wow!  Maybe I don’t do everything completely wrong.  My shot is from September 2009, Ken’s is from October 2009, so same available camera technology (Ken may have more budget for said purchases, but that’s not why his shots are better than mine).  You might notice a tiny, little bit more detail in the rock face if you look really close in Ken’s shot.  Oh, I guess his lighting is spectacularly better too – he went there just before sunset, we went there right after baby nap time.  And of the approximately 6,900,000,000 people in the world, perhaps a hundred (those that know my wife Valerie personally) might prefer my shot, with the other 6,899,999,900 preferring Ken’s shot.

But that’s just fine, because us amateurs are shooting for those 100 people.  And even better, I’m probably the world’s #1 photographer when it comes to pictures of Valerie standing in front of stuff.  At least if you measure by quantity :).

I added a rather long page on processing which you can find HERE.  It’s yet more thoughts from a completely amateur perspective, this time on why it makes sense to process your photos instead of just copying them off your camera.

When I started that page, all I intended to say was “at least use Google Picasa (especially if you’re a  JPEG shooter or want something free), but I personally really like Adobe Lightroom”.  Then I realized that anyone for whom that was a useful piece of advice might not know what processing entailed, and I got a little carried away (considering how much is out there on the Internet already).  In any case, the end result is probably more than most fellow amateurs will want to read, but hopefully helpful nonetheless.  Processing makes a big difference!

There’s a few example pictures in the article itself, but I’ll share another example here of what was a pretty boring shot of a playground we visit that at least seemed to become worth keeping with a little processing.

I definitely didn’t remember feeling like things were that yellow, and maybe I had the white balance wrong.  And no, I wasn’t carrying a grey card, and if I was, Leo would probably have eaten it – he’s pretty good with destroying any kind of cardboard.  Plus the little monkeys were just off to my left.  In any event, what I remembered was a little more like this:

That was during the brief period during which I had a D700 – a very nice camera, even if it’s somewhat big and rather pricey!

Note: For this and future examples, I’ll set the image you see on the page to link to a larger copy, in case you’re interested.

I’ve long felt that a lot of what I read online about photography – and I’ve spent quite a good amount of time reading a variety of sources – is written by and geared towards working professionals, or those who aspire to become working professionals.

By contrast, I tend to believe that most of the friends and family that I discuss photography with – and probably most of the broader set of people that are out there – tend to look a lot more like me, which is to say, they care to some extent about taking decent pictures, but their goal isn’t to sell their work, or to optimize something that is their daily job.

As an example, when you read a lot of the debate about shooting in RAW vs. JPEG, you see comments about getting maximum image quality out of a capture, versus simplifying workflow and spending more time out shooting additional images.  For me, neither of these points of view capture what it’s all about; I choose to shoot RAW so I have the most room to fix my many amateur mistakes, which are inevitable given that the subject I shoot the most – my kids who are under 3 – don’t pose and give me a few seconds to get a picture of them.  Did I check to make sure I had the right white balance setting and picture controls before clicking the shutter?  Absolutely not!

So, I hope to capture some of my thoughts and experiences as a dedicated amateur.  This might save others from making the numerous, sometimes expensive mistakes that I made in picking things up over the past three years or so.  And it might allow someone smarter than me to point out the errors in my current thinking, so that I can improve further.  I started with the first step in the process – the shooting itself – and put this on a page you can find here.

While I was over in Asia, I had the chance to try out a couple of manual focus lenses.  Prior to getting the D7000, when using the D60 or D90, manual focus lenses weren’t very practical; there was no metering and the single-dot focus indicator didn’t provide a great deal of focusing assistance.

Since the D7000 accepts non-CPU lens data, meters with manual focus lenses, and has a 3-segment focus indicator, it’s  great for a consumer/enthusiast like me who doesn’t have a pro-oriented body (like the D300s, D700, or higher), but would like to use some of the older AI-s lenses on occasion (and I suppose it makes Zeiss and other such lenses a possibility too).  In many ways, I think it pairs better with manual lenses that the pro-grade bodies, since the D7000 is notable smaller and lighter than the pro bodies and thus pairs well with typically compact manual focus primes.  I didn’t get to use any dedicated manual lenses with the D700 in the brief period I had that body, but the ergonomics seemed near-equivalent when using an AF lens in manual mode.  If you’ve got manual lenses, it’s a real argument for the D7000 over the now much less expensive D90.

On one outing, I took the Nikkor 35mm f/2.0 AI along and wound up using it for 90% of the pictures I took that day (although the only other lenses I brought were the 10-24mm and 70-300mm, so I had no other midrange options).  I’m not sure I’d regularly use this lens over the fantastic and inexpensive 35mm f/1.8G AF-S, but I was quite satisfied with the shots that day and surprised that I didn’t miss focus more often (since I’m no pro *and* have almost no experience with manual focusing).  In some shots, with splashing water, I think focusing was easier than with  AF.  I also found the bokeh a little more pleasing than the 35/1.8.  A couple of shots are below:

I also had the chance to try out a Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 AI briefly,  indoors, and in relatively poor fluorescent light.  I’d never tried an f/1.2 lens before, and my impression was that it performed a bit better wide open than the 50mm f/1.4 AF-D that I have a little more experience with; since I was playing around I pretty much only used the lens wide open.  Depth of field is pretty darned limited at f/1.2, but with a kit zoom I’d have been @ f/5.0 and almost ISO 10,000 for the picture below:

The other observation, which will be fairly obvious to anyone whose used a dedicated manual lens before, is that it’s nothing at all like throwing most AF lenses into manual mode.  The focus ring on these lenses was just fantastic by comparison, with enough travel distance to give even people like me with limited fine motor skills a sufficient level of control.  The 50mm in particular felt great, with just the right level of resistance.  It’s definitely worth a try, pretty fun, and much easier than I though to at least take pictures that were usable!

Okay, I really returned home from Asia about a month ago, and have been pretty busy since then.

Thanks to the ongoing generosity of my step-father (a semi-retired professional photographer), I added a couple of new items to the list of things that I use – a Nikon AF-S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR lens, and a Gitzo tripod with a Manfrotto ball head.  The stability of the Gitzo tripod is really a world above the lighter but much more plastic Velbon tripod that I was using previously!

I don’t use longer lenses like the 70-300mm or the 80-200mm that I already had very often, because at the current age of our kids, if I’m shooting them at 200mm+, they’re probably too far away from me.  Still, there’s definitely situations where that range is helpful; the 80-200 was great at a wedding in limited light, and that or the 70-300 are pretty useful at the zoo if you want any pictures of the animals (though even at the zoo, I’m more often shooting our little monkeys as opposed to the animals that reside at the zoo permanently).  The 70-300 was definitely handy at the Kuala Lumpur bird park, though:

It’s not as versatile as the 18-200mm in these situations (where I often find myself switching from the kids right next to me to something much further away), but definitely has an edge in both sharpness and bokeh at the long end of things.  Hopefully I’ll make good use of the lens, I guess I’ll see in my usage stats for 2011!