Battery management

[Garth Herrick]

Really great pictures Mike!

Your D70 on autopilot seems to manage the image highlights perfectly. I don't see too much evidence of the dreaded white hole, as so much digital photography is prone to. You may find with a digital camera that you no longer can expect a correctly balance exposure by using a gray card like with film. You may blow out your highlights because a digital reacts to light differently than film.

Instead of the gray card:

The new rule is to 1: "Expose Right" (on the histogram, make sure the exposure fills NEARLY the full highlight range to the right), and 2: make sure you don't exceed the range to the right of the histogram, or you will get those blown white holes. 3: If you are in doubt, then manage your image exposure to conservatively preserve the highlights. This may mean adjusting your exposure compensation to - 0.3 (minus, not +), or more. If you can keep the exposure compensation at 0.0, all the better for the shadows. You will catch on!

In a nutshell what I am trying to say is:

Rather than expose for a middle value, like with film, you must now expose for the best management of the highlights, in digital photography.

Congratulations on some great pictures,

Garth

[Geary Wootten]

Thanks for posting Mike, Garth and Marvin on this thread. It's VERY timely for me. I think this has just caused me to sign for the D-70. I've been shopping for a year! This has GOT to be the best bang for the buck right now ....for awhile, I'm hoping.


So.....Garth.....are you saying that to ensure richness and balance you "stop it down", isn't that the same as film F-stops? Or am I hallucianting....or tired as it may be.

-Geary

[Michele Rushworth]

A simple way to be safe is to bracket all shots. That way you get some with good shadow data and some with good highlight data. My camera will take 3 bracketed shots in rapid succession without having to reset anything. Since it's two years old and was not particularly high end, I'm sure most of the newer more professional quality cameras will do this too.

As for RAW image format, I agree with what's been recommended here. My sister (the professional landscape photographer) shoots in RAW format and gave me a demo of some Photoshop color correction capabilities afterwards. We shot some intentionally bad photos - wrong exposure, wrong white balance - and the ones in RAW format retained enough color data that we could do some very nice color correction later. The ones that were in JPEG format could never be brought back into line, to give believable skintones. I imagine it was due to some data loss in color storage with the JPEG format, I guess, even though the original RAW and JPEG images looked the same.

[Jean Kelly]

I have two batteries, and three cards (256, 128, 128). The battery charger is fast so I always have a fresh battery with me. I don't have RAW but the TIF images are excellent for color. I can fit about 10 TIF or lots of JPEG (hundreds). But I have used up to three memory cards at concerts or festivals. I have some good images of Bob Dylan up by Minneapolis last summer. They could have been much better if I'd known more about the camera and photography in general. Being disabled has its benefits sometimes, I can always get really close to the stage!

This conversation has taught me something, after reading it earlier I actually learned how to use the manual controls (aperture and shutter) and took some pictures in low light of my dog that were clear and not under or over exposed! Eureka! Thank you.

Jean

[Mike McCarty]

This went well ...

[Michele Rushworth]

Great light, nice diagonals in the composition. Too bad about that Kodak smile, though. No one ever shows real emotions in their portraits nowadays.....

[Geary Wootten]

Originally Posted by Mike McCarty

This went well ...

Oh, thanks Mike....I just spit yogurt on my monitor...Sheeeesh!




So, this was the subject of your shoot today. Ya havin fun with the D-70, eh?

Gear