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Nikon Wednesday 2014: #3


Matt Laur

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<p><strong><em>Important:</em></strong> please keep your image under 700 pixels on the longest side for in-line viewing, and <em><strong>please keep the FILE SIZE UNDER 300kb</strong></em>. Note that <strong>this includes photos hosted off-site</strong> (at Flickr, Photobucket, your own site, etc).<br /><br />Are you <strong>new to this thread?</strong> The general guidelines for these Wednesday threads are <strong><a href="/nikon-camera-forum/00W7km" rel="nofollow">right here</a></strong>:<a href="/nikon-camera-forum/00W7km" rel="nofollow">http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00W7km</a>. This forum's moderators are allowing up to three images per week, so share some work!</p>

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<p>Hello Nikonistas. Hope everyone got through that arctic blast in good repair last week. Don't often see sub-zero (F!) temps here in our area, so that was exciting. No big snow dumps for us yet, but some visually interesting evenings here and there, with some big flakes coming down. Here's one from the other evening. I was standing in the parking lot outside our favorite Chinese restaurant, waiting for carry-out, and looked up through the snow to see a construction crane looming over some steel work in a back-lit haze of snow.<br /><br />Turns out it's more of an abstraction than it is a useful way to depict what I saw. But maybe that's for the best. Let's see some no-context oddness this week, if it suits you. Share!</p><div>00cJMM-544860584.jpg.af30d99ce3918086fe010b8df82c3af5.jpg</div>

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<p>That pesky "Get it right in the camera" dictum seems to keep turning up like gum on a shoe, on every photo forum I haunt and even among some social media contacts. For an experienced photographer, this is akin to requiring advanced amateur pianists to play scales for the judges before they can move on to the actual compositions. That's why the Olympics eliminated compulsories in figure skating. At that level of experience, it's a pointless waste of time.</p>

<p>So, just to say I'd done it, I decided to try it the other evening on a familiar subject I've been exploring under various sky conditions. This time the sky was spotlessly clear, with only the natural dusk polarization for a gradient.</p>

<p>I set the V1 to raw plus JPEG, as usual, with the V1 set to b&w, red filter effect, maximum contrast and brightness, with sharpness dialed back a bit to avoid oversharpening halos - those don't always show on prints, but do onscreen. I knew from previous experience with in-camera filter effects and post processing the naturally polarized sky would produce a natural gradient, dark in the upper right corner toward the south from the deepening blue, lighter toward the westward lower edge at the sky took on red, orange and salmon hues. I added the in-camera sepia effect, which is risky for online web display since some sites recompress JPEGs and made a mess of delicate gradients, introducing ghastly posterization and artifacts.</p>

<p>On this setting, the in-camera red filter effect produces really grungy photos as noise is exaggerated, even at low to moderate ISOs. It's an interesting effect but not one I'd use often. Normally I use the in-camera orange filter, which has a similar effect, only slightly less dramatic, and without the exaggerated grunge in continuous tones and gradients.</p>

<p>No cropping, straightening, etc., just resizing in Lightroom with a wartmurk copydon't added. I'm pretty sure I turned off output sharpening too, but don't recall.</p>

<p>I didn't even use a tripod - they won't reach high enough. To get these particular compositions, without any background clutter, I have to lift the camera overhead. Usually takes two or three tries to get the composition just right, since I can barely see the LCD. Yup, my next camera will have an articulating screen. And thank goodness for image stabilization - without it these photos, at 1/10th and 1/30th second, would be blurs. Lovely, artistic blurs, but not what I wanted. Aperture priority, something I rarely use, but I wanted these one stop down from wide open for maximum resolution, with a little minus exposure comp to darken the skies for a silhouette effect.</p>

<p>And now that I've "gotten it right in the camera", I'll never feel the need to repeat this technical exercise, since I could have accomplished the same thing in Lightroom in a minute or two with less grunge.</p>

<hr />

<p>When I showed photos from "this place" on Facebook, one of my cousin's quipped "This is a 'place'? Looks like a bunch of sticks." So I've dubbed it the Stickplace Heath.<br /> <img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17652270-lg.jpg" alt="The Stickplace Archer (V1 straight JPEG)" width="679" height="1014" border="0" /><br /> <em>The Stickplace Archer</em><br /> V1, 10-30 VR at 30mm, ISO 400, f/6.4, 1/30th second, handheld<br /> *<br /> <a href="/photo/17652269&size=lg"><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17652269-md.jpg" alt="Eye of Horus, straight from the V1" width="679" height="455" border="0" /></a><br /> <em>Wadjet's wink</em><br /> V1, 10-30 VR at 24.4mm, ISO 400, f/6.4, 1/10th second, handheld<em><br /></em></p>

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<p>Last weekend, I stayed with a couple whom I have known since junior highschool. The husband and I were quite close when we were teenagers. They remodeled their house completely a few years ago, and the kitchen is beautiful.</p>

<p>The Df is showing very respectable results at ISO 12800: Nikon 18-35mm/f3.5-4.5 AF-S lens @ 27mm, f4.5, and 1/40 sec hand held.</p><div>00cJOG-544865984.jpg.cd23221932600cdbd555e21f6c31fb54.jpg</div>

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