As most have seen today Nikon has announced the successor to the D3 lines of cameras the D4. I have enjoyed the larger sized “Pro” camera since the F5. I like the larger sized hand grip and the easy move to portrait mode where I spend the bulk of my time photographing. I missed out on the D1 line, but I have purchased the last larger bodied film camera the F5, D2H, D2x and the D3. I missed out on the D3s. After the $5,000 for the D3 I didn’t see a compelling list of new features outside of the addition of video mode on the D3s. So I sat on the sidelines waiting on the D4. Frankly there hasn’t been a dud in that line-up and so I eagerly wondered what the D4 would bring to the table that might revolutionize this space in the Nikon line-up. Though there is some nice features and specs this is again more of an evolution than a revolution. For certain Nikon probably wouldn’t be able to follow-up the ground-breaking D3 line with a similar ground-breaking D4 line. What we are seeing is the relative problem camera manufacturers are having topping what they have done in the previous 10 years.

Keep in mind though that this camera is aimed at the photo-journalist and wildlife photographer. They are the ones that need the fps and fast AF that this camera has. Though I will appreciate them for what I do, they are not a necessity. As this Pro level line has evolved though the price has continued to increase. It was $2,000 for the F5 the D2H was $3,500 and the D2X was $4995. The D3 came in at the same $4995 price tag. The D4 however has arrived and it is priced at $5999.95. I must be getting old because that just sounds expensive. I am not however the target market. So what do we get on the next flagship camera from Nikon?

ISO

The top level ISO has remained unchanged at a whopping 12,800. They have allowed an expanded range up to 204,800. The other change in ISO is the base ISO has once again returned to 100 with an option for 50. Neither of those is critical to my photography. Certainly a nice feature to not have to make an addition of a polarizer or Neutral Density filter, however most of the time that I would need that ISO I would have a CP already on the camera. For me this is not a selling point.

FPS

They have also jumped the Frames/sec up to 11. That’s fast. Very Fast. The D3 clocked in at 8 and I thought that was fast. I wonder if they can engineer a mechanical shutter to go faster than that or might the D4 be the end of the line for the mechanical shutter and the next camera have an all digital shutter. Time will tell. The buffer size is now 200 images. This ROCKS. I can attest when I do wildlife photography that when the action is heavy and you have to wait to dump your buffer to get another shot off, well it is ROCK less. Having 200 shots you can put in the can sure would be nice, but is that worth the upgrade cost? If I shot birds year around…you bet.

AF and Face Recognition

The AF anticipates to be much better than the D3 and with the addition of Face Recognition to the AF system, that in itself will be a very nice feature. Provided it works well. I expect it will. From all reports that little Nikon 1 system with Face Recognition works, so I would suspect it would be very good on the flagship system. I have enjoyed Face Recognition on my LX5. I enjoy it more when I hand the camera off to someone else like my son. I turn out in focus and those are typically the only photos with me in it.

Sensor

The D4 increases the megapixels from 12 to 16 and maintains that same ISO range. Since my wife doesn’t like any photo much to my dismay larger than about 8×10 the 16mp would give me a little cropping and a bit more detail, but I won’t see it. It’s a nice feature, but for me again probably not worth the upgrade cost from the D3.

Better Video

No you haven’t missed all of the videos that I have been shooting, I haven’t been. It is something I am currently trying to work into my workflow. I just don’t remember to take the time to create them. Let alone do it well. That being said just as I discussed in my thoughts on the D800 I want video on the next DSLR I purchase. The D4 has it and from those that know video much better than I do, they seem to be happy. So I am.

Nice LCD Monitor

The LCD monitor has become critical to some shooters. I use it on a regular basis to make sure that I have proper sharpness and exposure, I also find Live View indispensable for the macro photography that I do. Nikon has upped it’s pixel count from an already impressive LCD on the D3. Another nice feature, but I don’t have that many issues with the other LCD.

Battery

Nikon is saying that you can get 2600 images on what charge of the D4 battery. This will also be a nice upgrade though I have only on rare occasions run down the D3 battery. For those that do video this will also really help.

Final Thoughts

Keep in mind I am evaluating this camera based on my own needs and how I use the tool. That does not mean I don’t think this is an impressive tool, I do. There is something for everyone in each of the upgrades for the target market this is aimed at. It’s basically a pumped up D3s. Each of the upgrades is well thought out and aimed nicely at the target market. What the D4 really shows me though is exactly how groundbreaking the D3 was when it was released 4 years ago.

If you were adding up the check boxes in the previous sections you probably don’t see too many checks in the must have category. Throw all of that out though. It’s a flagship Nikon and I want it. Will I get it though is another question. I can’t justify it, but sometimes that doesn’t mean anything.

Let me know in the comments below what feature in the D4 you like best.

The holidays are always a good time for me photographically. My real work winds down and I have more opportunities to not only experiment, but to also photograph without the interruptions of my ‘non-holiday’ life. I also get to see my children more. Both of those add up to more photographic experiences. I recently posted the above image on my FB page and multiple people asked me how I went about creating the effect. There isn’t any photoshop here this is one effect that can be created ‘in-camera’ with only a few setting changes and knowledge that most photographers already have in their arsenal of tools. My difficulty is that I need to take the time to think of them and then recall how to do them. Like all things photographic it starts with vision.

I have written in other blog posts about vision, what do you want to convey with your photo and how can you do the best job of telling that story. Thus the story starts with the pogo stick itself. Although my daughter is on the pogo-stick jumping the gift was in reality for my son. Buddy however was a little more timid of just jumping on and getting to it, Punkin’ wasn’t though. After a short demonstration by my wife (I won’t show that photo) Punkin’ was ready to venture out on her own. She very quickly grasped the concept and was able to quickly get 5-6 jumps in before she lost her balance or became tired. I have enclosed some of the early photos. Though I alike them they are missing a very important thing to making a better photo. MOTION! Jumping on a pogo-stick is not a static activity, there is movement and with movement there becomes a need to capture it best in our image by showing motion. What separate’s out the featured photo from the other photos is the ability to capture the motion in our image. I will detail how to do that below.

Most don’t think of static images as showing motion. In reality the photographer has a tool in their tool kit that the videographer doesn’t have, shutter speed. With photography you not only have control over depth of field, but also how long or short you gather light from the scene. A shorter shutter speed assists in freezing the action. When you want to capture activity football, soccer, auto or even bird photography the faster the shutter speed the better. Even if you have ample support with a tripod you might still have some motion blur from the person, car or animal. That little bit of motion ruins photos of this type. There are situations where you want to imply motion and for those situations blurring the subject may lead to some interesting and more important some eye-catching photography. Using motion blur as a creative device depends on basically two factors; Ambient light and the speed of the subject.

Some experimenting will be needed either before or during the session to make the creative decisions that will lead to the best photography. If your shoot is a one time event without redo’s then it will be critical to spend some time beforehand getting the correct shutter speed to capture the amount of blur that fits your image. Too little and it looks like your photo is just blurry. Too much and you may have a much different creative photograph than you intended. For the above situation I experimented with everything from 1/60 to 1/3. The photo you see above was at the 1/3. As you can see below of the collage of images there isn’t any wrong answer, it’s all what creative vision is. Along with ambient light the flash helps create the effect that you see highlighted image. The flash and how to use it or more importantly when it flashes.

For the sake of this article I will keep our flash sync discussion to a minimum. Suffice it to say there is much more information on front curtain sync and sync speed than will be discussed here.

My thanks to www.scantips.com for the images contained to help describe front curtain sync and rear curtain sync.

Generally front curtain sync is the mode that your flash uses during standard operation, any flash on any camera. When it fires it will be firing in front curtain sync mode. To my knowledge there isn’t a camera that has a setting for front curtain sync. The flash fires the instant the front curtain has fully opened and as you can see from the below photo you want to freeze the motion at the beginning of the exposure. As you can see below the ambient light creates a motion blur ahead of the subject. The motion blur is caused by a slower shutter speed than is needed to freeze the action. This can vary from image to image and situation to situation. For a speeding auto this could be 1/200 of a second for the below photo it was set at 1/20 second. Typical normal sync speed on most cameras is 1/60 of a second. This can sometimes be altered with a camera setting to slower or faster.

Many cameras, even some P&S cameras offer rear curtain sync mode. Unlike front curtain sync which is on every camera that has a flash. Rear curtain sync has to be selected in the menu system most likely, but is sometimes on the camera or in more rare cases the flash itself. This mode is used to freeze motion at the end of the exposure. What this means is that all of the ambient light is gathered and then the flash fires. Then the second curtain closes ending the exposure. As you can see below, rear curtain sync creates motion blur trailing the subject.

So why did I choose rear curtain sync? In this case I made in incorrect decision in the field that led to the correct visual photograph. After the initial photos which captured the action looking static I was left feeling *blah*. Because motion is important to this image, I opted to try a more creative photo. I made the decision to slow the shutter speed down in steps. Even then the initial photos also weren’t what I wanted. My vision for this photo was to capture the blur as the pogo stick hit the ground and then have the crisp shot at the crest just before she started her way down. I initially didn’t read the ambient light with my meter and that was my first mistake. I could have gotten to the correct photo much more quickly had I remembered to do this in the field. I chose Continuous High so I could fire off as many photos as possible and with her moving in the room I wanted to make sure the camera focused with her so she was always in focus. The initial setting the camera chose for me. For most cameras when the flash fires it will want to set the shutter at 1/60 since that is the standard flash sync. That 1/60 setting is what caused the earlier static photos. The second creative decision I made was to remove it off of front-curtain sync or standard mode. I was able to select rear curtain sync mode on my D700 on the camera. I did this correctly thinking that I needed to get the camera from making the decisions on shutter speed because it will always want to choose that 1/60 shutter speed. Rear curtain sync mode allows me to more easily alternate what shutter speed I need to use. The camera changes from wanting to light the whole scene with flash and defaulting to that 1/60 shutter speed to reading the ambient light. That is the default for front curtain sync. With this change it allows me to make the creative decisions to affect the photo the way I want.

After some experimenting with the correct amount of motion blur those decisions led to the highlighted photo. I could have gotten the same result another way and still kept it on front curtain sync. Do you know how that could have been done?

For those that thought take the camera to manual you would be correct. For most cameras you could have also selected aperture mode as well, but let’s focus on how I could have gotten to my final photo quicker.

Since the motion blur was of the up ’n down variety instead of from left to right I could have used either front curtain sync or rear curtain sync. If the motion was from left to right in the photo as seen in the above examples you would have to make a choice. To achieve the results I did using front curtain sync you need to put the camera in manual mode and measure the ambient light. Thankfully reading the ambient light is easy with your cameras internal light meter. There are many tutorials about this already online, I reference one here from Adorama. I would take two readings. One from the girl jumping and then another from the room around her. I would avoid the light on photo left since that will lead to problems. Average those two together and then set your camera for that in M or manual mode. Mount the flash on the camera in TTL mode and the flash is smart enough to give you just enough light for the scene and then fire. If you set the ambient light incorrectly you will get something similar to the photo below. The flash is exposing her nicely, that black blob is what the ambient light version of Punkin’ Not nearly as nice of photo. Since this was inside it was pretty easy to get to the desired 1/4 shutter speed and still only be at f/4.5. If you were outside and needed this slow of shutter speed you may need to use a smaller aperture or in some cases a ND filter. Experiment and find out!

There are many opportunities to use this technique to imply motion. I have only described one here, can you name some others? Add those to the comments below.

You know I am on the fence about this camera.  Though I am impressed if Nikon is able to go to 36mp AND get similar ISO performance to the D700.  The 36mp I tend to think might actually hold me back from getting it.  Well that and money of course.  The photo budget can only take so many 35mm f/1.4 lenses before it’s….well…exhausted.

My other concern is the computer horsepower I will need to handle 36mp files.  I am not certain that I have it.  I will be interested after it is announced whether:
1.  Is it actually 36mp?
2.  Will they make RAW files available before release.
3.  On a minor point is ISO 6400 similar to that ISO on the D700?
4. Do I really need a camera at 36mp?

Surprisingly, I will handle these in order. Number 1. We will find out if all of the rumors circling the internet are true when Nikon actually announces the camera. It seems far fetched that they will go from a 12mp sensor in both the D3/D700 up to a 36mp sensor. Even the D3X has a 24mp sensor. Ok 24.5mp. *Geesh*

Number 2. This is a critical factor. Why you might ask? Let me explain. It all has to do with horsepower. Computer horsepower. In the past Nikon has usually offered multiple RAW files available for download.  Others have even made their way from pre-release cameras at sites like DPReview. For a change I will not only look at them, but I hope to be able to download them for the sole purpose of importing them into Aperture and seeing how badly I may choke the system.

Sure I have the 3-year old MacPro in the basement that I’m pretty certain it’s 8-cores could move along those 36mp files, but I’m not so certain my 2010 Macbook Pro where I currently do most of my image processing will do very well.  I hope to see.  That test alone will show me if I am interested in the camera.  Time and RAW files will tell.  I know I can’t afford an at least $3,000 camera and a $2700 new Macbook Pro.  That would put me up into D4 land.  Heh….maybe I can do that…….Kate?

Number 3. I don’t want to go backwards with my ISO. I really like shooting at near darkness. It’s nice.

Number 4. Really do I need 36mp? Even if my computers can take it do I really need it? It’s always good when it comes to cropping a photo, but I don’t make too many large prints in a year and mostly I am sharing my photos via the internet at 1600×1600 at the largest. So what does 36mp get me? I could punish pixels better in Photoshop, but that’s not my thing either. I would like to experiment more with video, but in order to justify a new DSLR I need to do alot more of that than I currently am. So do I really need 36mp?

In order for me to plunk down my money on the new D800 I need to answer these questions. What questions might you need answered? Put them in the comments section below.

Thanks,

http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2011/10/31/happy-halloween-and-a-quick-look-at-retrographer-from-mr-retro/

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Happy Halloween! A quick look at Retrographer from Mr. Retro. | STEVE HUFF PHOTOSUntitled Document
Happy Halloween! A quick look at Retrographer from Mr. Retro! Today I thought I would take a quick look at a new plug in for Photoshop called Retrographer

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http://www.adorama.com/ABPSCS5WE.html

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http://campl.us/iPhone-Camera-Comparison

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See the best pictures and most popular photo galleries from Outside Online. See the best gear photos, adventure travel photos, extreme sports photos, behind-the-scenes photos, and the best from Outsi…

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Did you know that the photos you adjust on the iPhone and sync to Aperture via Photo Stream carry their editable adjustments with them? Neither did I… check this out http://www.apertureexpert.com/tips/2011/10/17/iphone-image-adjustments-live-in-aperture.html

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iPhone Image Adjustments… Live in Aperture – ApertureExpert Tips – ApertureExpert.com — Your resource for tips, training, presets and more for Apple's Aperture 3

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