Back to normal

The week long "Indian Summer" has ended, the weather is back to normal for early October and I've returned home. It was however a remarkable few days with record-breaking temperatures for the time of year and I was able to photograph an area I hadn't visited before in wonderful light.

Leica M9 Voigtlander 28mm f/2 Ultron lens

Nikon D5100 55-300mm lens

As usual I walked miles and the picture count was around 2200. Virtually all are edited, captioned and keyworded and many are already for sale on library websites. 

The majority were taken on my Nikons. D7000 and D5100. One of the reasons for using these cameras was the very fast turnaround I can get with the images. There is very little to do in terms of editing, there are no dust spots to remove and they come out of the camera with "punchy" colour. 

By the end of the 10 days I was struggling with an aching back, but I was walking a lot every

day, so it was really to be expected.

Nikon D5100 55-200mm lens

Nikon D7000 55-300mm lens

With luck the next time I do this, I should be using a Sony NEX-7, and I'm really hoping that it will work as well as the Nikons while giving me less to carry.

I used the Leica M9 quite a lot too, though much less than the Nikons, keeping it for situations where I had more time to compose and shoot.

Leica M9 Voigtlander 75mm f/2.5 Heliar

Leica M9 Voigtlander 28mm f/2 Ultron lens

I was back to changing lenses, so there is quite an accumulation of dust spots. Its back to Calumet for a clean!

Nikon D7000 16-85mm lens

Nikon D5100 55-300mm lens

Nikon D7000 16-85mm lens

Nikon D7000 16-85mm lens

I'm now off to collect my Olympus 45mm f/1.8, which is apparently waiting for me at my local post office. So expect some camera porn and test shots in the garden fairly soon!

Lens "correction" on m4/3

There was a comment on a forum about how m4/3 kit lenses perform better because they have in-camera lens corrections performed on them. This was in response to my recent posts on "Kit lenses - are they any good?"

I decided to look at this.

Knowing that Nikon lenses also do the same thing I compared the Panasonic 14-42mm kit lens on a G3 with the 16-85mm zoom on a Nikon D7000.

I compared the in-camera jpg. with a raw file processed in Rawker, a dcraw based programme, which includes none of the manufacturers "corrections"

Here is a file from the Nikon D7000 and 16-85mm zoom, with the file processed in raw from Rawker overlaid on top of the in-camera jpg. The two small inset boxes show the differences.

Here they are enlarged.

In terms of in-camera correction for CA here is the same file.

The white border shows the area I selected.

Here is the raw file processed in Rawker.

 Here is the in-camera jpg.

So the CA reduced, but not the purple fringing.

It can be seen then that Nikon, via their in-camera jpg (and in programmes like Photoshop) do some "correcting".

So what of the 14-42mm lens on the Panasonic G3?

Well I would show you what the in-camera jpg. has corrected in terms of distortion, except for the fact that there wasn't any!! The in-camera jpg and the raw file processed in Rawker were identical.

In terms of CA - heres a blow up from the Rawker raw file (remember no manufacturers corrections)

And here's the in-camera jpg.

A very slight improvement in the purple fringing here.

So the next time somebody tells you that m4/3 lenses only produce such good results because they are "software corrected" (lets be polite here!) you can suggest that may be somewhat exaggerated.

Raw processing

I've been making quite a big thing out of the fact that there is no support as yet for the Olympus E-P3 in either Photoshop or Lightroom. Indeed, at the moment Adobe is a little slow in releasing ACR 6.5. There is a beta version normally available of new updates and Dpreview have already mentioned that they are using it. However for some reason Adobe have chosen to keep this one secret. 

The Panasonic G3 and Sony NEX-C3, cameras which have been released a while are also unsupported. 

This does make a difference to me, as I always get my best results using Adobe Camera Raw. Quite simply I find the parameters for the adjustments are more sophisticated, enable greater control and work much quicker than the fairly ordinary software that is bundled with cameras.

Here are some examples of what I'm currently using for the Nikon D7000.

 

These are the basic settings I will use. Most are determined by the information within the file, but if shot outdoors I always make sure the white balance is set to daylight and recovery is full on to give the highlights as much protection as possible.

As a further aid to highlight protection I use the above tone curve.

In terms of sharpening I add quite a lot but keep the radius setting quite slow. This does add some luminance noise to the image and I generally select all the sky in Photoshop and "smooth" it out. My benchmark as to how a file should look is my Leica M9. By using this amount of sharpening I'm able to get the look of an image shot with a sensor that has no anti-aliasing filter. 

The D7000 files are actually quite soft due to the AA filter and as far as I'm concerned need more sharpening than say my Olympus or Leica cameras. I have different settings for them.

After a bit of straightening and tidying up in Photoshop, I then make sure I'm happy with all the colours and contrast, adjust them if I'm not, and I end up with a finished file.

I do very little batch processing and work on the files on an individual basis, which takes time but ensures good results. I've never been able to get this level of control and speed in any other software, including Lightroom, and this explains my impatience for Adobe to release their new version of ACR.

Nikon D7000 video

I tried a bit of video yesterday with the D7000 and the 16-85mm lens. With the VR switched on and running it through the iMovie stabilisation function, I was able to get very smooth hand-held footage.

As you can see, I didn't lock the exposure so its adjusting that on its auto settings, but its very smooth indeed and just as good as the results I got from the Sony A55.

Very useful.

Nikons D7000, D5100 and no more Micro Four Thirds.

So the transition is complete. Yesterday I sold my the last of my m4/3 cameras and lenses plus the Fuji X100 on ebay. Its optical viewfinders all the way now.

I have my four cameras, as this is my superstition, after having two cameras out of action on a trip to France and the 3rd. one I was left with struggling with a winder problem.

Its two Leicas and two Nikons with lots of shared lenses. I'm happy with the image quality from all of them. I'm happy with the handling of the Nikons especially. They are certainly very fast, very efficient and a delight to use.

I would have liked them to be lighter, but anything lighter will have an EVF, and I would rather have to carry a bit of extra weight if it cuts down on the migraine problem.

The D5100 + 16-85mm lens is however a pretty light outfit and should prove ideal for long distance work.

So enough testing, enough buying and selling. All I need now is some sunshine to start using all of this to take some pictures with.