Model: Ashley Larose

Someone posed the question on Flickr today, asking my thoughts on getting tack-sharp photos.  Well, my theory is pretty simple, but would love to hear your thoughts as well:

1. Tripod. No matter what.
2. Sharp lens at it’s sweetest spot. (I like the Nikon 85mm @ f/4 range – give or take a bit)
3. Tripod.
4. Wired or wireless trigger. Again, remove all chances of shake.
5. Lock up the mirror prior to the shot. Reduces a minute amount of shake.
6. Tripod.
7. Focus on the eyes.
8. Did I mention a tripod?
9. Lighting can always help to keep the shutter fast, giving your subject less chance to flinch.
10. Damn, don’t have a #10. Let’s throw in the tripod again.

What do you think?

Tagging Photos - Be Creative - But Be Honest

If you are maniacal egocentric shooter and sheerly enjoy having people gawk at your photos to give you words of commendation and love, then smart tagging is a skill you really need to develop to feed your Ego.  Proper tagging will get your proper hits.  There are a mind boggling 60,000,000 sites out there with information on how to do this properly, so I am not re-inventing the wheel here.  Just adding my 2 cents to the topic.

I ran a test with the above photo on Flickr this week.  Among the tags, I added “sexy,” “naked” and “porn” as a play on words for this lens.  (I am also adding those tags to this blog to see what traffic is driven here).  I got over 100 hits in the first few minutes of posting the image.  Triple what I usually get in the first few hours! Sure, I got some pissed off people who were expecting to see Danica McKellar from The Wonder Years who just did a half naked photo-shoot with Maxim, but I also got the people that were searching on the legit words like “Nikon” “85mm” “portrait” and “lens” to stop by.

These are the guys I want to check out my work, leave comments on my stream and possible begin to follow me.  The ones that got here under false pretenses are not going to leave any constructive criticism – other than perhaps a few choice words about my mother.

By using proper tagging, you are making it easy for people to find your work.  You are making Google index your photos properly.  You are not being a pain in the ass.

For those that got here on my misleading tags, I apologize.  It was just to prove a point.  But I did give you links to the Maxim spread above!

Nikon D700's Best Friend

The photo above says it all.  Jamming that 85mm onto my D700x (just kidding, it’s still a D700) is a dream.  First off, I feel the D700 is the strongest camera in the Nikon lineup, yes, even over the D3x. Paired with the Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 lens – a fraction of the price of the f/1.4 – you get tack-sharp images across the entire focal range, a bokeh to die for, and a photo that needs very little post work.  I thought this was the ultimate set-up.

But wait, there’s more! After adding CS5 into the mix – well, now it’s just now heaven.

As I said in my previous post, CS5 offers a ton over CS4. Now that I have begun to dig into it, I am finding that I no longer need the quick tools for editing photos.  I used to used Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 3 and Silver Efex Pro within Photoshop to help me curve and balance my shots, tone map, or slam into B&W.  But the controls are so much better in Cs5 that I no longer have the need to use these quick little plugins.  I am able to generate any one of the effects they offered (for $300) very easily with the CS5 tools.  Yes, even tone mapping through the pseudo HDR tools built into CS5.

It doesn’t get better than this.  I could live a happy and full rest of my life with just these three items.  Well, of course I need my Mac Pro to do my edits, but that’s a given.

Color corrected in CS5

Wether you are shooting with a bottom of the rack Canon EOS Rebel (and by no means is it a slouch), a phantom D700s / D700x / D800 or a top of the line Caddy of Cameras, the Nikon D3x, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is looking more and more like your weapon of choice.

When I first began test-driving this program last week, I was under-impressed.  It seemed to have the same old stuff – be it jumbled around a bit – with no real flare to it.  But that’s because I wasn’t looking at it’s potential.  I was merely line curving and stamping my photos with my signature.  That’s not even scratching the surface of CS5.

What’s Better?

I found that as I dug deeper, there seems to be a much better control of RAW images and color correcting (as in the tulips above).  Also, though it wasn’t used in this image above, the selection tool is much more accurate then in previous editions of Photoshop.  Clicking on the center tulip above, the tool seemed to have no trouble differentiating it from the background.  Much better.

The content-aware fill is freaking witchcraft.  And yes, that’s a good thing.  I could punch a hole in one of the tulips above and CS5 will fill it in with how it believes it should look.  I didn’t think it would work that well, but gaddamnit, it’s amazing.

I also played with lens correction (not in this shot) and it does a much better job at correction distortion and vignetting. Pretty much how the old one worked, but better.  It’s nice that it just pulls the EXIF off the image and does the rest for you.

Another enhanced feature I like is the B&W conversions.  There is a new B&W Lab that will give you a ton of more options when converting, even, get this, HDR B&W Conversion.  Yes, create an HDR image while converting to B&W.  Cool!  There is also some new HDR creation tools built right in (for color shots)!

My favorite things have to be the better 64-bit support for my Quad Core Mac Pro and the impressive RAW file management.

This shit is the bees knees.

Astrophotography - 34 seconds @ ISO 1600 f/6.3

Yeah, another new something to screw around with – astrophotography with my D700.  I’ve done so damned many sunset shots in my two years of shooting with my D80 that I wanted to see what happens when the sun goes down with it’s big brother, the D700.

So, I gathered up my implements of destruction (Nikon D700, Sigma 15-30mm lens, Bogen Manfrotto tripod and a manual cable release) and I went out into the pitch black night to grab this shot above.  This is ISO 1600 and it lets in just the right amount of starlight (actually, a bit too much). The D80 I could crank up to 1600 and it sucked wind – then would overheat.  I will assume that the D700x / D700s will do roughly… exactly the same in low light.  This is what they are built for!

These shots are a little on the bright side from light pollution.  I am 40 minutes north of Boston and about 10 minutes east of Manchester, NH.  Those lights really make the night sky dim.  But, to get something close by, heading down to the lake gives a nice wide-open expanse of space that I can use for testing.

27 seconds @ ISO 3200 f/5.6

Anyhow, I got to the lake around 9:00 p.m. and did several test shots across the landscape.  I started off at ISO 6400.  WAY too much light.  Turned the night sky into day.  ISO 4500, ugh, still daytime.  Same with 3200.  Way too much freaking light coming in.  The shot at the right is the 3200 ISO shot.  As you can see, it’s damned daytime looking.  And that’s at 9:45 p.m.!  The trees in that shot are so bright because I flicked my high-beams at them mid-exposure. But the D700 is so damned good that I really have to adjust my thinking for the next night out.

What I Need to Do

What the hell was I thinking?  I’m on a tripod here and no need for this crazy-high ISO.  1600 is too much light,especially if I want to start doing star trails.  I need to crank it all the way down to ISO 200.  Also, f/5 is stupid.  I need to be down around f/11.  This will allow for a nice long exposure (or series of exposure for star tracking).  Could I crank it to f/34 and leave it open a half hour?  Sure, but from what I read, I want to do a series of 30 second exposures.  120 of them an hour!  Then stack them in Photoshop CS5.  This will keep the dark skies dark, but the major stars really showing their stuff.  I hope to get out this week and play more with my ideas.  There is a bunch to learn with this!

Got tips?  Send them to me or reply to this post or my Flickr posts!

Rainbow Finch @ 85mm

Did I mention I picked up the Nikon 85mm f/1.8 prime this week?  This is simply a stunning piece of glass and a fraction of the price of the f/1.4.  Though I have never shot the 1.4 and can’t give valid comparative data (and won’t make up facts like the US government would) I can tell you that this is a fast, sharp and brilliant lens.  It takes stunning portraits that require little or no post-work.  Hell, this lens could even make Rosie O’Donnell sexy.

The shot above is of the Rainbow Finch, also known as the Lady Gouldian Finch or Gould’s Finch, taken from the Buttery Place in Weston, MA.  This shot was taken with fairly good lighting through frosted skylights at f/2 from about 2 feet away.  Luckily, the bird was used to people and didn’t flutter off at the site of my D700 in it’s face.  Not much had to be done with this shot in terms of clarity and color.  I did a slight curve in the new Photoshop CS5 to balance the light, but that’s about it for this one.  The lens and camera did all the rest.

See?  Who needs a D700x or D700s when the plain old everyday D700 can do this?

You can comment on the photo itself at my Flickr account if you care.  It’s actually doing well on Explore today – not that I give a crap about Explore.