First Wedding using new Nikon D2X

I did a wedding this past Saturday using a D2X with 17-55DX and 70-

200VR. Feel free to check it out on my folder.

 

My full review of the camera:

It's awesome! Forget waiting for the price to drop. It's worth every

penny. Buy it now, shoot now!

 

Since it was the first time I took the camera to a gig, there's not

enough miles on it to find anything wrong with it. But so far, no

complaints.

 

The files on the gallery don't do justice but at least

they're "regular shooter" sample images that everyone's been looking

for.

I've done several portrait sessions with it -- first D2X wedding is this weekend. Here's one sample from tonight (Fine JPEG converted to Level 10, no sharpening): www.RichDutchman.com/temp.jpg.

 

It does excellent portraits, but the files are overkill for weddings. With slightly customized WB settings, I'll be shooting JPEGs instead of RAW for the first time in a long while. I'll see how it goes. Even when ACR supports D2X RAW, I might stick to JPEGs - at least for candids. I've already printed a couple of 20x30s from JPEGs and they are stunning.

Rich--why will you shoot jpegs with the D2X rather than RAW? What's changed--is the dynamic range better?

I just don't want to sort through 800 39MB RAW images per wedding. Multiply that by 72 weddings this year, and I would never leave the computer.

from what i can gather, the d2x is a fine, fine unit, but it puts your optics at their

limit and in reality a total overkill for a wedding situation, " I'd like some 5x7

prints and 2-8x10 please", it will put to test your computer and basically most

of your life will be spent on your ass staring at your monitor while your kids

grow up without you, a brutally sharp camera, Nikon good work.

Gary, I take it you don't believe in batch processing.

Gary & Rich,

if you're using photoshop there is a funtion there called batch processing. I have a really simple script that will open a RAW, do an 'auto levels' then save as JPG. This is good enough for the proofs. When it comes to prints for the album etc, then I go back to the RAW's and have all the functionality that RAW provides.

 

No need to sit in front of your computer while this happens, kick of the script, come back a few hours later and it's done.

 

Appologies Tony as it seems this thread has been hijacked.

Just to add to John's points... and I'm sure this has been said millions of times on this forum.

 

A camera is a camera, digital or film. If you shoot it right the first time (exposure is dead on and framing is good), you don't need to do anything on your PC but download and burn to CD and take it to the lab.

 

No need for apologies John, this is everyone's thread. LOL

Thanks for that Tony, nice work. How does it compare to what you shot before?

 

BTW, what did you shoot before?

batch processing works if the images are exposed with the same lighting

conditions, existing colors, and other variables, which must be taken into

consideration, those images must be organized into files, i.e. indoor shots,

outdoor shots, flash shots, shot under flourescent , whatever, some images

may have to much grain and that will have to be dealt with, images converted

to black and white have to be dealt with unless you want to go the down and

dirty desaturate route , images must be sharpened according to their output

size,after you have done the work to make the batch processing work. lets not

pretend processing 500 raw images out of a dx2 is gonna take an hour our

two, who ya kiddin.

"A camera is a camera, digital or film. If you shoot it right the first time (exposure is dead on and framing is good), you don't need to do anything on your PC but download and burn to CD and take it to the lab."

 

yup, thats why wedding photographers shoot slide filmthe whole time.

 

If your exposure does go bad on a crucial shot when shooting jpg, for whatever reason, you are totally screwed. Ditto for white balance problems which are very hard to solve with a jpg. Remembering that digital has almost no latitude in the highlights, if something infront of your subject gets burned out by the flash, you cannot recover with a jpg.

 

I agree that you need to get it right in camera, but to say that jpg is good enough for weddings, as I said, if you would shoot a wedding with slide film.....

Damn it Ben, you beat me to it ; -)

 

If shooting a wedding in the real world were that simple, everyone would've been using

slide film all these years and making Cibachromes for the prints.

Before we go too far off a tangent, Tony had posted some of his experience with the D2X earlier in the Nikon Fourm. Each uncompressed RAW (NEF) file from the D2X is like 20M, and the amount of CF memory card space Tony has is for his D70. Therefore, he didn't quite have enough memory cards to get thru an entire wedding shooting RAW on his new D2X. That was why he was using mixed RAW and JPEG to save space, using the latter when he was pretty sure about the exposure.

 

People are still experimenting with these new DSLRs. Since memory prices are dropping, I am sure D2X owners will buy addition memory as well as upgrade their computer ....

 

Speaking of that, Marc, how much total CF/SD card space do you bring with you to shoot a wedding? And what kind of computer do you use? I recall that 3, 4 years ago, 512M of RAM was a lot and was more than enough for most PhotoShop work. Now cameras have a lot more pixels and we are talking about 1G of RAM minimum and prefereabley 2G.

Michael, I used to shoot with D70's. Before the D70 came out I was just an assistant so I shot with whatever was handed to me. I don't own or ever shot with a Canon DSLR so I have nothing to compare it to. Thanks for the compliments!

Ben/Marc -

 

Real men/women shoot JPG! LOL just kidding...

 

Scrolling up this thread, I never said JPG is good enough for weddings. So I don't know why I'm getting beat up for it. (yes I did tell Shun on another post that I was going to shoot this wedding with JPG at the reception and RAW for church) Because I received the camera just before the wedding and didn't want to pay local prices for extra cards. I'm confident in my reception shooting (thanks to Nikon's consistent SB800) so I settled for JPG. I usually shoot everything RAW and will do that this weekend if I get my cards in by tomorrow. Otherwise it's RAW at church again and JPG at reception.

 

The point I was trying to make with "If you shoot it right the first time" was that you don't need to spend your life in front of the PC if you get it dead on when you shoot it.

 

Never said anything about JPG vs RAW. This is not a JPG vs RAW thread...

Tony,

 

"A camera is a camera, digital or film. If you shoot it right the first time (exposure is dead on and framing is good), you don't need to do anything on your PC but download and burn to CD and take it to the lab."

 

with RAW files you cannot just download and burn to CD ergo my inference & comments. :-)

OK Ben...

 

Here's what I do and I hope I have your approval but that doesn't really matter now does it because I have over 50 weddings this season and I'm only a part time photographer. And the booking season is not even over yet.

 

I shoot everything RAW.

Upload to PC.

Covert to JPG in batch mode. (I don't to TIFF, I don't have enough experience and resources for that)

Then I look for any images that need correction.

If they do, I open the RAW file to edit. 95% of the time, the exposure is good so I don't need to use the RAW files.

 

What ever workflow I have works for me and I'm happy with my results. Different strokes for different folks right. There are several pros out there that shoot all JPG's. I'm not one of them, but it's all preference.

 

I'm not a seasoned pro like you so I'm not going to pick up debate with you because I know you know way more than I do. All I'm saying is what I do works for me and my clients.

 

BTW, that's a cute portrait of you...

Tony, I apologize for using RAW & JPEG in the same post, which led to a new direction for your thread.

 

ACR does not yet support the D2x. So, you need to shoot JPEG, suffer through the pains of Nikon Capture conversion, or use another body. My point was that the D2x JPEGs look stunning, and I prefer them to RAW conversions from the D1x or D70.

Rich, no apologies needed from you. =) I wasn't aiming my comments towards you.

 

Because of my workflow, I end up with JPG's anyway and JPG's haven't disappointed on prints for me neither.

Rich, let us know how your wedding goes this weekend with the new toy!

Shun, minimum of 4 two gig CFs, and 4 one gig cards that are backed up by 4 one gig SD

cards for dual shooting in the new Canon 1D cameras. Mac G5, dual processor with four

gigs of ram and scratch disk for PS.

 

I don't think the discussion was drifting toward a RAW verses J-peg debate. The counter-

point was more about the notion that one should shoot a wedding perfectly, then there

would be less labor after the fact. While true, it seems to forego reality of shooting

weddings, where much can happen in a split second leaving little time to fiddle with your

settings.

 

That said, the RAW/J-Peg work flow mentioned sounds reasonable and quite quick, if you

are getting the quality you want.

Thanks Marc. I am afraid that it is time to upgrade the computer again, along with DSLR, memory card, etc. In my case it is worse since my wife edits video on the computer, and she has been talking about upgrading to HD (high-definition) video lately. That is roughly the video equivalent of going to more mega pixels.

Wow Shun, HD Video. You really need some PC/Mac power now! Too bad PC technology changes faster than DSLR technology. After you take it home, there's something better next week! Good luck on the HD, I hear only the serious videographers are moving to them right now.

Yeah, video is a memory hog. We're gearing up to edit video also.

 

Just spec'ed out a new liquid cooled, dual processor Mac G5 for one of my Art Directors at

the ad agency. Darned thing has 8 gigs of RAM, an 8X DVD Super Drive, Firewire 800, and

a 500 gig hard drive !!! That PUP is gonna ROCK !!!

Tony, you made a comment which sounded very patronising to RAW shooters, I replied as to why I thought that you were wrong. Apparently you hadn't meant that and seemed to get pretty het up about what I said eventhough Marc came to the same conclusion that I did. I was not trying to patronise you, and your sarky comments are not the most mature...

 

You shoot more weddings than I do a year, though I am a full time photographer. I'm sure that you have more experience than me, and if you find that a method works for you, hey, enjoy. I was just trying to defend RAW shooters in my original post not start an anti-jpg tirade.