Richard Bernabe
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What’s your day job PR guy for Cannon USA.
Actually, outdoor photography is my day job.
I never said that you or anyone else should do what I did.
Bill, I agree about the Nikon lenses and landscape photography. Nikon never changed their mount, so you could use the old MF lenses on the some of the newer bodies. Advantage Nikon.
However, if you like doing landscape photography (or more creative commercial outdoor photography) and have some $$$ to blow, the Tilt/shift lenses of Canon’s are awesome. Nikon has an 85mm lens with this feature, but its not exactly the most desirable focal length for these features either.
Canon’s 24mm and 45mm ts-e lenses are perfect for landscapes, particularly the near-far landscapes where you need alot of DOF. Instead of stopping the lens down to f22 (and getting softness due to refraction) you tilt the focus plane of the lens and have everything in TRUE focus at f8 – just like a view camera. You can do the reverse and narrow the DOF for an effect you see in many commercial fly fishing images, where there is exaggerated DOF (actually a shallow focal plane). They are all MF, by the way and work with the Canon teleconverter. So, you can have a 24mm, 34mm(with the 1.4x) 45mm, 62mm(with the 1.4x) 90mm and 125mm(with the 1.4x) each lens is about $1100, though.One other thing, in addition to tilt, you have shift as well. You can do amazing panos by taking three seperate images without even moving the camera or tripod. Shift to the left, take a shot. Shift to the middle, take a shot, shift to the right, take a shot. I just finished stitching together a pano of the Davidson River that is ended up being 34.5 megapixels, 467 MB!
What makes Cannon so qualified to make sensors?
It’s not that they are more qualified, its just that Canon has more resources than Nikon. Its not about mechanical shutters and film anymore. Its all about R&D-driven digital technology. Canon pulled ahead of Nikon when photography made that quantum leap.
Its now a race as to who puts out the latest and best technology the fastest. The gap is going to widen – I am sure. I wanted to position myself there now to benefit from that advantage later. I feel like I am benefitting already.
The Canon 5D (half the price of the D2X with more megapixels too) has a full-frame sensor, ZERO noise – even at 400 ISO – and an amazing dynamic range. I bought two for the price of my D2X. Nikon’s response? The D2Xs, with the same sensor – just some meaningless upgrades that I wouldnt even benefit from.
Nikon will hang around with decent market share in the consumer/prosumer niche. They are losing the pros in droves.
Oh, and Sony makes the sensors for Nikon. Sony (now Sony/Minolta) will give Nikon a run for its money in the prosumer market, as well. Would you want your competitor making a component as important as the sensor for your cameras?
Yup,
I just sold my Nikon D2X and all of my Nikon lenses and switched to Canon. The digital noise problems with the APS-sized sensors finally pushed me over the edge. I was a member of Nikon Professional Services for 8 years and a Nikon shooter for 16 years.
Back in the old days (I cant beleive I just began a sentence like that) Nikon ruled. When cameras were mechanical and even fully electronic film cameras were the norm, Nikon had the best product out there. Nikon glass is still as good as any in the world. But photography is about digital technology now and Nikon is a much smaller company than Canon. Canon has 5 times the R&D budget as Nikon and they are being left behind, unfortunately. I am sorry to say it. Nikon cant even make thier own sensor
Here is what I do – and I have cleaned my D2X about once a week.
First, make sure you have a full charge on your battery. Set the camera to manual mode and the shutter speed to “B” or bulb. USe a locking remote release cable and open the shutter. Now the mirror will be open and you will be able to see directly into the anti-aliasing filter and sensor. Take a bulb blower to remove any loose dust or impediments first. Keep the camera turned upside down during this. Then, take a lens pen set (a set usually has two lens pens – one small and one large) and clean the filter with the large lens pen and then the smaller one for the corners. Take the blower and blow clean again.
This usually does it. Point the camera at a light, even-colored surface, set the lens at the smallest aperture, and minimum focusing distance and take an image. View onscreen at 100 percent to see if you got it all. If not, repeat. Once is usualy enough.
Lens pens can be found at almost any camera store and its what the major camera manufacturers use to clean camera sensors and lenses.
Good luck
NEF capture and open in either Adobe Camera RAW or Capture One Pro – depends on the image (if the image is ultra high-contrast, I prefer Capture One over Adobe Camera Raw. Abobe has problems with tonal gradations and posterization often occurs with high, high contrast images)
I make as many adjustments as possible in the RAW converter. I shoot in AdobeRGB, work in AdobeRGB. save in AdobeRGB. I set my image size to 200 percent and SAVE to dng. I prefer dngs to psds or keeping the original nef because it saves all of your RAW work without the sidecar file. dngs are slowly becoming universal in their acceptance.
Then I open straight to Photoshop. Make final touchups and save an unsharpened TIFF file to my harddrive, alongside the matching dng. The TIFF is a flattened 16-bit, AdobeRGB file, approximately 143 MB.
If I want to make a print, I open the TIFF in Photoshop then duplicate. Close the original and work with the copy only. If I want an 8×12 print, I resize to 8 x 12, 300 ppi. Convert from 16-bit to 8-bit. Then I sharpen the image for final output. I use Pixel Genius output sharpener. It automatically adjusts for ppi and image size.
Flyreds,
If your camera offers that option (almost all, if not all DSLRs do) there is a proprietary format for RAW capture for each camera manufacturer. NEF for Nikon, CRW for Canon, etc. This is what you would choose instead of a formal file format such as jpeg or tiff.
This makes camera functions such as WB, saturation, sharpening, contrast curve, etc. irrelevant. RAW captures ALL options – only to be decided later (by you) during the conversion process – ideally at home or office on a calibrated computer monitor.
Without using RAW, you only capture the info thats set on your camera or your camera’s processor deems relevant. All other info is discarded, lost forever. With a jpeg capture, the processor has to edit further, compressing the image to the jpeg format and discarding yet more info.
RAW captures EVERYTHING and ALL possible editing options.
You will need a RAW converter. Nikon and Canon offer them, as does Adobe and several other independants. Your computer will not recognize your NEF or CRW file like it will a jpeg or tiff. Only your RAW converter will – or Adobe Bridge, if you use ACR.
Once you open the file in the converter, you can choose the file size – with uprezing up to 250% without image or pixel destruction. You can fine-tune WB, Tint, Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, Shadow Detail, Saturation, Sharpness, Noise Reduction, Chromatic Aberation, Vignetting, Curves, and individual Color Channels.
Normally, if these adjustments were done on a jpeg or tiff file in Photoshop, they would be pixel-destructive, limiting color options, tonal gradiation, and uprezing ability. The fact that these adjustments were made prior to the file even becoming a jpeg or tiff, the file is clean, complete, without damage. Its also 16-bit (really closer to 12-bit) which gives you much more editing headroom than a vulnerable 8-bit file.
When you are done, you can save the file as a jpeg, tiff, dng, oropen straight to Photoshop for final tweaking and cloning, etc.
Ian,
No disrespect to Mr. Rockwell – but he just doesnt get it.
I wont count the ways – at the moment – but will only say, different strokes for different folks.
The “getting it right in camera” is irrelevent.
Ian,
Basically everything looks good. Even the midday shots hold up well on the DR front.
I would definately back off of the saturation slider, if I were you. Are you shooting jpeg or RAW?
There should be no difference in color from one computer to the next, if the monitors are calibrated.
You should set you camera’s color mode to Adobe RGB or ProRGB as well as your working space in photoshop and your RAW converter. (Adobe RGB and ProRGB have a much wider color gamut than sRGB.) Save your masters in that working space and always send editors and printers Adobe RGB files. They convert to CYMK much better, if that is neccessary. When you want to save a copy for the web or digital projector, or any similar device, CONVERT to sRGB or the device will clip essential colors and it will appear washed out and dull. Conversion will not clip anything.
Also, the biggest problem with color management with digital capture is improper White Balance. If you are shooting jpegs, this can kill you. If you are shooting RAW, it doesnt even save your camera’s WB setting, so it doesnt matter. I think using Auto WB is the biggest mistake digital photogs make. It is rarely accurate and its impossible to get accurate colors without an accurate WB starting point. I advise keeping it set to “Daylight” or “Sunny” at all times. If you can set it to a precise 5500K, all the better. With this setting – whether it is midday (5500K), early morning or late evening (3200K), or cloudy or whatever, your results will mimic film – which is also locked in at 5500K. Then you can adjust from there. But with a bad WB starting point, no PS work can accurately represent the colors you saw in person.
It works, but it takes alot of practice.
Its basically a technique to increase dynamic range in an image.
6mb is massive???
When I convert my raw files to tiffs at 200 percent in PS, they are 143.5mb in 16-bit mode!
Photoshop is the easiest way to resize your images.
I’m not sure about the Mount Rogers area, but the Roan Highland’s Catawba Rhodos peak right around the 3rd week of June. It should be pretty close.
By the way, you might want to consider Roan if you are looking for that type of image.
Here is what I have, and I am extremely happy with both…
70-200 2.8 VR – perhaps the best lens Nikon has ever made.
300 f4 AFS – love it.
I owned the 80-400 VR years ago and overall, I liked the lens – but it did have some flaws that irritated me greatly. First of all, the VR really works. If only they could have made that lens with both VR and as an AFS. It focused sooooo slow and often had trouble locking focus on a subject.
Yup, flyfishertoo nailed it…
Always capture as much info as possible with your images and leave your self as many options as possible for post-processing.
i dont think there is a need for Nikon to introduce full-frame sensors in their DSLRs anytime soon. They have invested alot in their DX lenses, especially on the wide and mid-range lenses.
Zach,
I still beleive you can do 17×11″ with the D70 – in fact I am sure of it.
The digital capture can be uprezed easier and without degradation unlike a film scan.
