Counting Shutter Clicks on a Nikon DSLR

If you are interested in how many times your shutter has gone off in your Nikon DSLR, you can look at the EXIF data of your most recent picture. The information is embedded there, but it may not be very obvious how to find it. The following has been checked on a D40X, D50 and D300.

If your latest photo is a NEF, open it with Adobe Photoshop. Then go to File > File Info... > Advanced. Expand the schema http://ns.adobe.com/exif/1.0/aux/ . The field aux:ImageNumber contains the shutter count. (If you try opening a JPEG from the camera, that field is not available in Photoshop.)

If your latest photo is a jpeg, and you have a Mac, open the photo with the free EXIF Viewer. The shutter count is in a field called "Camera Actuations".

If your latest photo is a NEF, but you do not have Adobe Photoshop or money to buy Photoshop or any additional software at all, you can convert the NEF to JPEG using ViewNX (which is free) and then open it with EXIF Viewer, and the information will be there, still called "Camera Actuations".

People with Windows seem to often use Opanda for the same purpose.

I have not been able to localise this kind of information in Nikon's own software.

If you have a Mac, the shutter count can be found in Preview: Tools > Show Inspector > I > Nikon.

Crashing Adobe Bridge CS4

If Adobe Bridge is crashing, it is likely that it tries to handle files it considers corrupt. For example this file has crashed Bridge on both Windows Vista and Mac OS X 10.5.

The "solution" is to identify the corrupt file and remove it, or open it in Photoshop and save it under another name. This is of course not a long term solution, as you never know when you will stumble over another jpeg, that Bridge considers corrupt.

I also had problems accessing any folders that contained PDF files for some time. The solution here was more subtle. I had just installed some new free fronts (CODE2001.TTF,
KurKlim.0804207-6.ttf, jiret.ttf, Kedage.dfont, MalOtf.ttf, malayalam.ttf, Rupali_0.72.ttf, SolaimanLipi_0.52.ttf, Malithi Web.ttf and Pothana.ttf, in case you wonder). Removing those fonts from the Font folder fixed the problem for Bridge and pdf files. The annoying thing is that putting them back, did not cause the problem again, so it may have been something with a corrupt font cache or so, and it is possible that we will never know exactly what caused the problem.

Step back one Camera Raw version

If there is a problem with Apple's Camera Raw version (like there was with 2.2), you can revert to the previous version:

1. Delete the file "System/Library/CoreServices/RawCamera.bundle".
2. Reinstall the previous version from Apple's site. You should be able to find them here.

Things you did not know about Bridge

To open a new window with another folder, command-doubleclick the folder.

You can get a flat view of all images in all subfolders of a folder with the menu View > Show Items in Subfolders.

To skip Camera Raw, shift double-click in Bridge. This will open the file directly in Photoshop.

Photoshop Navigation - things you did not know

A quick way to zoom in to many points in different parts of a picture is command-0 (fit on screen), and then drag with the zoom tool around the part you want to check. Then command-0 again and drag with the zoom tool against another part, and so on.

To cycle through open documents: ctrl-Tab (yes, dear Mac users, not "command"!).

Photoshop: Masks - things you did not know

To toggle between a view of the mask and the image it covers: alt-click the layer mask.

To create a black new mask: alt-click on the "add layer mask" icon.

To delete a mask: drag it to the trash icon.

Photoshop: Warp - things you did not know

If you know what Warp is, you probably know how to access it. In case you don't it is in the menu Edit > Transform > Warp.

Using Warp, you can drag about any point of the warped object. You do not have to click-drag on the corner points or lines. You can click-drag on the vast empty spaces between the lines as well.

If you end up with a Warp grid that goes outside the current window, press command-0 (View > Fit on Screen) to see the entire grid.

Photoshop: Layers - things you did not know

To duplicate a layer press command-J. Another quick way to do it is to press V (activate move tool), and then alt-drag the layer.

To copy part of a picture onto a new layer: select that part and press command-J.

To find out which layer contains a visible part of an image: command click on the image. The layer will be highlighted in the layer palette.

To display one layer at the time: alt-click on the eye-icon.

To fill the current layer with the foreground colour: press alt-delete. To fill the current layer with the background colour: press command-delete.

To load layer transparency as a selection: command-click the thumbnail.

To quickly change Blending modes: press V (activate move tool) and then press shift+(plus) or shift+(minus). For the each of the blending modes, there are shortcuts beginning with shift-option, like shift-option-F for Soft Light or shift-option-M for Multiply. They can all be found in the manual under the title "Keys for working with blending modes".

To change opacity: press V (activate move tool) and then type a number. 1=10%, 2=20% and so on. You can also change some of these methods.

To merge all visible layers to a new layer above the currently selected layer: Shift-option-command-E (or alt+ Layer > Merge Visible). This can be useful if you have smart objects, whose pixels you cannot edit directly.

To create a new layer from another image: drag the other image to the current one. To make sure it is centred hold down the shift-key as you drag.

Photoshop: Channels - things you did not know

To display only one channel at a time, type command-3, command-4, command 5. You can also drag the eye from one channel to another. You can also alt-click on the thumbnail - not the actual eye, to deselect all other channels.

To make a selection from a channel: command-click the thumbnail.

Photoshop: Curves - things you did not know

To get a fixed point in a curve from a picture: click on the hand tool in the curves dialogue and then command click on the picture. That will fix a point at that particular colour.

Photoshop: Gradients - things you did not know

To apply a gradient exactly horizontally or vertically: hold down the shift-key, as you create it.

Photoshop: Brushes - things you did not know

When the brush tool is active, you can hold down alt to make it to a colour picker, so you can change colour of the brush by clicking on the image.

To change the colour of the active brush from the current image: hold down alt to temporarily make it to a colour picker, and then click on the colour in the image.

To change the opacity of the active brush: just type a number. 1=10%, 2=20% and so on. Or use one of these methods.

To get a straight line with the brush tool: click on one place - shift click on another, and the line will appear between the two. If you go on shift-clicking somewhere else, you get another line, which makes it easy to make a polygon.

Usability trap: In the Brushes palette, you can activate a feature, like Scattering or Noise by clicking on the checkbox next to its name. However, this will not display the options for that feature. You have to click on the feature name to see the options.

When you create a Brush (Edit > Define Brush Preset...), it does not matter if you leave white space around the brush, as all white will be discarded. This is different from when you create a pattern, where the white space is taken into account.

To change the size of a Brush there are two shortcuts: Method 1: Press [ or ]. Method 2: Hold down ctrl+alt and drag horizontally. To change the Brush softness: Command + Ctrl + Option + click-drag.

Photoshop: Selections - things you did not know

To fill a selection with the foreground colour: press alt-delete.

To fill a selection with the background colour: press command-delete.

Photoshop: Eyedropper - things you did not know

To choose foreground colour from an image, use the eyedropper tool (I) and just click on a part with the desired colour. To choose background colour from an image use the eyedropper tool (I) and alt-click on the desired colour.

To select a colour on the screen outside an image: click and hold down the colour picker and drag it to the point on the screen with the desired colour.

To swap foreground and background colours: press X. To set the default foreground and background colours to black and white: press D.

Photoshop: Numeric values - things you did not know

To change numeric values in most dialogues in Adobe Photoshop, you can use one of these methods.

• Type a new number.
• Click on the label for the number and drag horizontally.
• Command click on the number field itself, and drag horizontally.
• Put the cursor in the number field and press or hold down arrow-up or arrow-down.

Photoshop - things you did not know

I will soon add a number of "things you did not know" entries about Photoshop. They will not constitute a manual in any way, but they will contain small tips and hints, which are not always obvious. If something is useful, but it is so well hidden that a user may miss it, it fits the concept. Some of you will obviously already know some or most of them, but some of you may not.

The option/alt/⌥ key is consistently called "alt".

The command/⌘ key is consistently called "command". The Windows equivalent is almost always ctrl.

Bridge's raw xmp files

Whenever Adobe Bridge updates a raw file, it stores the data in an external "xmp" (Extensible Metadata Platform) file with same basic file name as the original. If your raw file is called "sunrise.nef", then the corresponding xmp file is "sunrise.xmp".

The idea behind this is excellent. The raw file contains exactly the data that came out of the camera and nothing else, and you can trust that nothing has been changed - by Bridge.

The drawback is of course that you have two files that need to stick together. If you move all files created a certain date from a folder, it is not at all certain that the raw and xmp files are created the same date, so they may get separated.

Nikon's Capture NX instead stores all modifications in the nef file itself. That may be seen as a drawback - a raw file is no longer what came out of the camera. However, there are ways inside Capture NX to remove the modifications, so it is not that much of a drawback.

Aperture has yet another approach. It stores the modification in its own database. When you export the Master you get the choice whether you want to include the IPTC data or not. The IPTC is the only data Aperture allows to change in a raw file. The rest of the image is intact, as it came out of the camera. Other changes need to be exported through other file formats, like tiff or jpeg.

Index of NEF files with keywords

There are plenty of good reasons to use RAW file format instead of jpeg. However certain things get trickier. One of them is keywords.

The great thing with metadata like keywords and IPTC fields is that you quickly can search your entire harddisk for files about a certain subject, taken at a specific location or by a specific photographer. You just have to make sure that the information is stored in your files.

That is fairly easy with JPEG files. You update the metadata with, for example, Bridge, and the files can be searched in Bridge itself, in Aperture or Spotlight.

However, if you update NEF files or other RAW files using Bridge, the data is not stored in the files themselves, but in the associated xmp files. This means that for example Spotlight does not find the image, but just the xmp file. Neither does Aperture see the field, if the file is imported to Aperture.

The only way I found to make sure that they keywords are found by both Bridge, Spotlight and Aperture, is to use Nikon's free application View NX to set the metadata.

This is a funny roundabout way of doing things as View NX itself does not have any search engine. In other words: you need to use one tool to set the metadata, and another to look for it. Well, that is how things work today anyhow.

Doing the Impossible with Smart Objects

Before CS3, there were plenty of things you simply could not do in Photoshop. With CS3 and the introduction of Smart Objects, a lot has become possible.

One (almost) obvious thing is that you can apply lossless filters. Just create a layer to a Smart Object and apply the filter. You can add loads of filters and remove or activate them, and of course edit them with Layer Masks.

Smart Object layer in Adobe Photoshop CS4

But not only that - you can now mix layers of different kinds. You can have one layer as a 16 bit image in LAB colour space, while you have another in 8 bit grey scale, and blend the two layers. You can even add RAW files using File > Place, so you have a RAW file layer, which will open for adjustments in Camera RAW every time you double click on it. This means that you can have an almost endless number of different image formats - all stored in the same file.

And if that is not enough, you can have one Smart Object contain another Smart Object that contains a third one and so on.

To have several instances of the same Smart Object, highlight the layer and press command-J. You can have as many instances of the same Smart Object as you like in a file. You can apply different kinds of layer styles and rotations and transformations of them. If you then update the Smart Object, for example by changing its colour, the modification will apply to all instances of that Smart Object in the file.

To replace the content of a Smart Object: Go to Layer > Smart Objects > Replace Contents....

You cannot edit the individual pixels in a Smart Object (unless you open it). However, you can make a copy of the Smart Object, for example with merging all visible layers to a new layer above the currently selected layer with Shift-option-command-E (or alt+ Layer > Merge Visible).

Master a few tools well instead of many tools poorly

One of the marvellous things with Photoshop is that you can achieve the same thing in so many ways. That is also one of the sad things. You may rush around, trying to learn as many of the different tools as possible, and you end up being able to do the same thing over and over again, without acquiring the skills to do anything really well. Two things spring to mind in particular.

Blend modes. Some people claim that a great way of lightening a picture is to add the picture to itself as a new layer and applying, for example, screen blend mode. Likewise, it is alleged that multiplying a picture with itself is an excellent way of darkening it. Well, those methods definitely work, but they are not very flexible. You can equally well achieve the same thing using curves or levels on an adjustment layer. Using an adjustment layer takes much less disk space, and it is much more flexible, as you can choose in which way you want to darken or lighten the picture. There are admittedly quite a lot of flexibility with a duplicated layer as well, if you use Blending options, but no matter which way you use, you need to do some work to get it exactly as you like it.

Another thing that may be overrated is LAB colour space. It can be used for several things, one of them being to get more colour into a picture as described here. However, you can also get more colour into a picture using the adjustment layer Vibrance or Hue/Saturation. You may not get exactly the effect you get using LAB, but the effects you can get with LAB are not necessarily better. And LAB is very destructive. You have to change colour space for the full image, and once you have gone back to RGB, there is no way to go back to LAB to undo or modify the changes you made.

LAB has other uses of course, and so do Blend modes. The point is simply that it sometimes is more efficient to look at how best to use the tools you have and to master them well, instead of trying to find a solution in other tools.

Using new tools is often fun. Using old tools is often efficient.

Photoshop Masks - Trouble Shooting and Quick Keys

Sometimes it may feel like editing layer masks in Photoshop does not work. For example, the eraser tool may not erase. If that is the case, there are a few possible reasons and remedies.

1. In a mask, erase and delete changes colour to the background colour. To make it erase from the mask, make sure black is the background colour. A quick way to do this, is to highlight the mask and simply press "D", which sets the foreground and background colours to their default values - white and black. (The default values for an image area are the opposite - black and white.)
2. Make sure the mask is highlighted. (If it is not, edits will obviously go somewhere else.)
3. If you have a selection, make sure it selects the thing you want to edit, and not the reverse. (shift-command-I).
   

Some keyboard shortcuts for working with masks:

• To move a mask from one layer to another, just drag it.
• To copy a mask from one layer to another, alt-drag it to the other layer.
• To copy a mask from one image to another, drag the layer icon it is attached to to the other image. You cannot drag the mask alone.
• To temporarily hide the effects of a mask, shift-click on it.
• To make a selection from a mask, command-click on it.

EXIF and IPTC

For a photographer EXIF and IPTC data can often be regarded as the same thing. They are collections of metadata that are attached to an image file.

However, they have different origins.

EXIF, Exchangeable Image file Format, was created by the Japan Electronic Industries Development Association to store camera specific data in files.

IPTC or IIM (Information Interchange Model), is a specification for adding metadata to a large number of file types. It was created by the International Press Telecommunications Council, which is a UK based organisation that works with standard for sharing news.

It is not always clear if a particular piece of information shall be stored as an EXIF field or an IPTC field.

HUD - what is that?

In for example Apple's Aperture, there is a HUD or Head-Up Display. (In Aperture, you activate it by simply typing "H".) This is a display of data on top of the current picture.

The name HUD originally comes from military aircraft. Before the HUD, the pilot had to quickly look down to read indicators, thereby taking attention from the view in front of him. With the HUD, the indicators were displayed on a transparent background just in front of the pilot, so he could read it at the same time as he was looking out the windscreen.

Copyright info and Aperture - EXIF or IPTC

With the firmware update 110 for the Nikon D300 one has the option to add a copyright note in the images, just like one could already before with the Nikon D3.

This is excellent news. It would have been even more excellent news if the information had been easy to find outside the world of Nikon.

There are now three fields to play with in the camera. They are all entered under the Setup menu.

1. Image Comment is entered under the menu heading "Image Comment".

2. Artist is entered under the heading "Copyright Information".

3. Copyright is also entered under the heading "Copyright Information".

If you use low end products like gimp (2.6.1), Preview or iPhoto (7.1.5), none of this information is to be seen anywhere.

The following explains how some more high end applications display the fields.

Image Comment

• Aperture - field not visible.
• Bridge CS2: "Camera Data (EXIF)". Field called "User Comment".
• Capture NX: "Camera Settings" > "Shooting Info". Field called "Image Comment"

Artist

• Aperture: EXIF field called "Artist". It does not seem to be visible unless you go in and customize the Metadata displays.
• Bridge CS2: "IPTC Core", field called "Creator" AND "Camera Data (EXIF), field called "Artist".
• Capture NX: "Camera Settings" > "Shooting Info". Field called "Artist"

Copyright

• Aperture: Field not visible. There is a field in Aperture called "Copyright notice", but it is not filled with the information of the Copyright field in the D300.
• Bridge CS2: "IPTC Core". Field called "Copyright notice".
• Capture NX: "Camera Settings" > "Shooting Info". Field called "Copyright". (It is not under IPTC as it is in Bridge.)

In Nikon View NX all the three fields appear with the same name as in the Camera, but under the heading "File Info 2".

Spotlight finds information in the Image Comment field but not in Copyright or Artist.

Clearly Nikon's own software is the best option to view data entered using Nikon's cameras. If you happen to be somewhere without access to Nikon's software, you can look for dedicated EXIF readers that will fine at least some of the data. For example the free little application EXIF-O-Matic, is able to display the fields Artist and Copyright.

Macro with a Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6 APO DG MACRO lens

The Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6 APO DG MACRO lens has a macro mode that may be difficult to switch on and use. It is only available when the focal length is between 200 mm and 300 mm.

The switch on the lens cannot be changed to "Macro" when you take the lens out of the box, as the focal length is at 70 mm .

Only once you have zoomed to a higher focal length than 200, you can change the switch.

You now have a minimum focusing distance of 95 cm. Without macro mode, the minimum focusing distance is 150 cm, as with a lot of other 70-300 mm lenses, like Nikon's own one. In other words, you can get much closer to the subject with the Sigma.

If you now rotate the focus ring to a smaller distance than 150 cm, then you cannot switch macro mode off. To switch back to normal mode, you first have to rotate the focus ring to a distance above 150 cm.

Manual Focus with a D40X, D40, D60 - or any other Nikon

If you use a low end Nikon DSLR like D40, D40X or D60 together with a number of lenses without built in autofocus, like Sigma, Tamron or even Nikon's own AF 50 f1.8D, then you have to use manual focus - that is, you have to move the focus ring around the lens until you are in focus.

Nikon has an in-focus indicator, that lights up in the form of a green dot in the viewfinder to show when you have the subject in focus:



The in-focus dot is there on most other Nikon cameras as well, in case you choose to use manual focus on them.

(I feel like an idiot for not having realised this before. I probably shot around 1000 pictures with manual focus without looking for the green dot. But it is quite well hidden in the manual.)

Digital Single Lens Reflex Camera - why?

A Digital Single Lens Reflex Camera, or DSLR, is a camera that in theory has only one advantage over a compact camera or the camera in your phone: when you look through the view finder, you see the same thing as the camera will see when the photo is taken. You use the same lens.

In many cases, this is completely irrelevant. In many settings a compact camera that fits in your pocket takes as good pictures as a DSLR. Besides, the compact camera is usually easier to use: point, click, and you are done.

However, there are some other advantages with DSLRs compared to compact cameras.

With a DSLR, not only you, but the camera itself sees through the only lens. That means that all automatic settings (auto-focus, shutter-speed, aperture, ISO, white balance...) are done in the exact same space as the picture will be taken. For example, there may be a slight difference between the distance the camera measures and the the actual distance to the subject, so the auto-focus may be slightly off in a compact camera. That will not happen with a DSLR.

Next, the DSLR has removable lenses. You can buy lenses with much bigger magnification and much better precision than you will ever get with a compact camera. You can change lens depending on the circumstances, so you have one glass for wide angle photos and another for zooming, for example.

As the DSLR tends to be bigger than compact cameras, it often has an image sensor that is much bigger than in compact cameras. It seems any of the current Nikon DSLRs have an image sensor that is at least ten times as big as the one in my pocket Canon Digital IXUS 970 IS. A bigger sensor means more light, more data and better pictures - if you only use the data right.

DSLRs usually give much more flexibility to the user. All the basic things can be set manually, like shutter speed, ISO, aperture, white balance, and so on. This is not always an advantage, as it is much easier to really mess up the settings on a DSLR. However, if you know what you are doing, you can often get a much better result than with a compact camera.


Compared to an older SLR with film instead of electronics, the DSLR also has a number of advantages.

With a film SLR you need to develop the film. With the DSLR you get the picture straight away on the built in monitor.

With a film SLR every photo has a certain cost. With a DSLR you can take as many pictures as you want and erase them, if you do not like them. It costs virtually nothing.

With a film SLR you have to carry around rolls of film, if you wanted to take many pictures. With a DSLR, you can easily fit hundreds, sometimes thousands, high resolution pictures on one memory card. If you decide that you want to take tens of thousands of photos, the memory cards hardly take any space at all compared to the film rolls.

With a DSLR you can easily modify the pictures on a computer and improve colours and quality within seconds. If you mess things up, you can just go back to the original picture and start again from scratch. With a DSLR it is much easier to make a stitch of several pictures together, to get a huge photo.

With a DSLR you can send your picture to your friends on five continents within seconds. With a film SLR you had to wait not only for the development but for the post to arrive.


However, there are also still some advantages with the old film SLRs.

In really cold climates, electronics will not work. A mechanical film SLR can work at much colder temperatures.

In low light situations, a DSLR will produce noise, individual pixels that are of the wrong colour. This is a fairly unattractive thing. With a film SLR, you instead get grain, which are bigger dots, which in some cases look artistic and have a certain attraction.

About D50

My first DSLR was a D50. I changed it for a D40X (later complemented with a D300). The move D50 > D40X was a step both up and down.

• The D50 has less pixels than the D40X. This is not necessarily a problem, but for cropping photos, the additional pixels on the D40X really help.
• The D50 has a control panel with shooting data on the top, just like the D300 and other more expensive cameras. The control panel display can be convenient, but the same information is of course accessible in the D40X in other places - like the big monitor on the back and in the viewfinder. The control panel makes the camera bigger.
• The D50 has vertically positioned focus points, something I used all the time. Sometimes I rotate the D40X to portrait mode just to get the focus points righ.
• The D50 has an auto-focus motor for lenses without built-in motor. If you only have lenses with built-in motors, this is of course no big advantage.
• The D50 does not accept SDHC memory cards, which means it is limited to 4G cards. On the other hand, the images are smaller, so that never turned into a problem for me.
• Settings like white balance and ISO are easily accessible on the D50, but you have to know where to look for them. On the D40X they are easier to find, but less easy to use. Neither camera is particularly good in this respect, if one compares with the D300.
• The D50 is heavier than the D40X, which is extremely small and light - at least for being a DSLR.
  

All in all, I do not miss the D50, in spite of its advantages. It was a good entry level camera, but everything it did well, my D300 does even better.

Chromatic Abbreviation

There is nothing called chromatic abbreviation, but the statistics of this site shows that there are people looking for it. My guess is that what they really are looking for is chromatic aberration.

About D40X

D40X is a very light entry level DSLR from Nikon. When carrying weight is more important than getting the absolutely best possible photo, the D40X is much more useful than a bulky but excellent camera like the D300, D700 or D3.

The most important difference between the D40X and its sibling, the D40, is that the D40X has 10.2 million pixels, while the D40 only has 6.1 million pixels. For many situations there is no reason to aim for more pixels, and in a few situations it is even bad for the image quality. However, all new DSLRs from Nikon have at least 10 million pixels, so it is something we will have to adapt to.

Like other entry-level DSLRs, and most compact cameras, the D40X has a number of "programs", like Portrait, Sport or Close-up, with settings that supposedly are good for particular situations. However, it is very difficult to figure out what kind of settings the camera maker considers good for a particular situation. As experienced users prefer more control, high end cameras do not have this kind of preset programs.

The D40X is reasonably flexible, but Nikon does not seem to think that the user can handle all settings efficiently, so some are half hidden away. To change the ISO, for example, there is no way of doing that without accessing lit up menus or windows on the LCD, which can be embarrassing in some low light situations, where the light potentially disturbs bystanders. For a user who trusts the auto-ISO function, this is of course not a problem.

Like many older DSLRs the D40X does not have Liveview display of the motive on the LCD screen.

The D40X does not support bracketing.

The D40X has only three possible focus points, aligned horizontally. This can be a problem when taking photos of ships at the horizon, as the logical disposition often is to have the ship fairly low on the photo with a lot of sky on top.

The D40X works well with almost all Nikon lenses, even really high-end ones. The ability to change lenses is one of the big advantages of DSLRs compared to compact cameras.

The D40X uses SDHC cards to store images.

About D300

D300 is a "mid range" DSLR from Nikon. Here are some of the features that makes it stand out against low range DSLRs, or at least compared to the D40X.

• The D300 has Liveview, so you can see the motive on the LCD screen before taking a photo. The function is somewhat clunky compared to compact cameras, but there are situations where it is indispensible.
• The D300 has easy access to standard configurations, like changing ISO or image size and quality.
• The D300 has bracketing, which means that the camera can take several pictures in a row with slightly different configurations. This is very useful for HDR.
• The D300 has an auto focus motor, so lenses without auto focus motor still work without manual adjustments.
• The D300 has higher ISO and much better noise control in low light situations.
• The D300 has slightly more pixels than current low end Nikon DSLRs.
• The D300 has more 51 possible focus points, so the focus point can be virtually anywhere in the picture. Low end cameras have much fewer points - sometimes just 3.
  
• The D300 has a faster motor, so it can take 6 photos per second, while a low end camera may only take half of that. The high speed is very useful for photos of moving objects like birds, acrobats and Formula 1 cars.

The cameras that currently are defined as high range are the D3 and D700. However, already the mid range D300 can easily create pictures that can be used for serious professional purposes.

Solving the Low Light Problem

Most of us occasionally end up in situations where there is too little light for a good shot. There are several more or less obvious solutions.

Flash. I have not got much successful experience of flashes, which I find often end up too hard and artificial. Besides they do not work in long distance situations, like public evening football matches or Peking Opera.

Aperture. Increase the aperture (lower the F-value), and more light falls on the image sensor.

Shutter speed. Increase the shutter speed, and more light falls on the image sensor.

ISO. Increase the ISO value, and the image sensor becomes more light sensitive and can handle low light. At the same time noise increases in the picture. How high ISO values one can use with success depends much on the camera.

And then my favourite solution:

Change lens. It may not be intuitive to talk about "fast" or "slow" lenses. A lens is mostly fairly static glass, after all. However, some lenses allow for bigger aperture than others. That means that they work better in low light situations. Even in normal light, you can increase the shutter speed more, so it is easier to capture, for example, birds in flight.

My "fast" lens is a AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D. It is small enough to fit in my pocket. It weighs just 155g compared to the 560g of my AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 18-200mm lens. It cost not much more than 150 euro. And it is much faster than the 18-200mm lens, which has a maximum aperture of just f/3.5.

The 50mm f/1.8D is not a DX lens, which means that the equivalent picture angle for most digital cameras is 75mm.

The 50mm f/1.8D has no zoom, but that is actually often a blessing. As I know I cannot change the zoom, I concentrate more on getting the other values right when in a hurry.
Luckily, 75 mm is more or less my favourite angle. I often end up there around even with the 18-200 lens.

The 50mm f/1.8D has no auto focus, when used on Nikon's low end DSLRs (D40, D40x or D60). That is not always that bad. It is sometimes easier to manually adjust the focus than to select the right focus points. Besides, manual focus is what our grand-parents used, and it worked fine for them.

With all other current Nikon DSLRs (including my D300) the auto focus should work.

Some review of the 50mm f/1.8D, claimed that it provides "super sharpness". That is a slight exaggeration, but the lens is more than adequate in most situations. I tested it on a tripod against my 18-200 zoom and the low end AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm that came bundled with my D40X. I applied each of the lenses to my D300 and shot the same section of my bookshelf at maximum and minimum aperture. The low end 18-55 actually did slightly better than the 50mm f/1.8D. However, the difference was very small. In a handheld test, the 50mm f/1.8D of course was much sharper than the other two, as it allows for much bigger aperture and therefore quicker shutter speed.

What's the JPEG compression level?

When you save a file as jpeg you usually get an option to choose the compression or quality level. To know which level to choose you have one single reliable source: your own experience.

I did some experiments with a 2 Megabyte tiff file and measured the size when exported from different applications. The sizes varied widely between each application. Note that the only thing that can be measured absolutely is the file size - not the file quality. Quality can vary even more. The test was done with one single file. Other files may show very different behaviour.

Aperture and Photoshop have a scale from 0 to 12. An Aperture 12 jpeg was bigger than Photoshop 12. On the other hand, Aperture 0 was smaller than Photoshop 0, so Aperture's spread was wider.

Photoshop has a "Save for web..." option that increases the compatibility of the files. Here, the scale confusingly goes from 0 to 100. Both of those values are smaller than the corresponding files that result from "Save as..." in Photoshop with the settings 0 and 12.

Capture NX also goes from 0 to 100. It's 0 value is unusable, but Photoshop's 0 quality files, which are smaller, might work in some low requirement circumstances.

The gimp also goes from 0 to 100. It's 0 value quality looks like a bad computer game for a character based DOS program from the 1980ies, but it also is the smallest of them all.

All high quality jpegs look decent of course.

Numbers

Highest quality jpegs in each application: Aperture (1.1 M), Preview (1.1 M), Photoshop (912 k), Photoshop saved for web (780 k), Capture NX (712 k), gimp (644 k).

Lowest quality jpegs in each application: gimp (12 k), Photoshop saved for web (48 k), Capture NX (60 k), Preview (72 k), Aperture (76 k), Photoshop (88 k).

Lowest quality jpeg in Photoshop

Lowest quality jpeg in the gimp

Resizing JPEG, TIFF and PSD in Mac OS X

To resize pictures it is usually safest to use an application like Photoshop or the gimp to do it, to keep control of what is happening.

However, in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) one can also automatise resizing directly without any additional applications. The blog PagesFAQ describes how to do it with AppleScript or Automator.

How much ... do I need?

Every now and then a question is asked with the pattern "How much of X do I need?": "How many pixels do I need?" or "How much zoom do I need?" or "How much ISO do I need?" There is only one valid answer to those questions. It is: "That depends".

There is basically no upper limit to what we could do, if we got a little more of everything.

Hasselblad just introduced a 50 million pixel camera. That is probably about 5 times as much as on any camera you ever held in your hands. Clearly you do not need that much to take a recognisable picture of auntie Kate. But equally clearly there are situation where you might want to crop down a picture to a level of detail, where you could use all those pixels. And if you had such a camera and you could take a highly detailed photo of Manhattan from the Empire State building, you would probably do it, and perhaps even print it out in large format and put it on your wall.

Nikon's D3 has ISO 6400. You would never use that if all the pictures you were taking were sunny beach pictures on the Seychelles. However, if you had it, you could take a lot of pictures you otherwise cannot take, like in badly lit streets late in the evening. Even on the Seychelles.

The weight in grams of your SLR may not feel disturbing. But if you are going on a long hike over several days, you usually want everything as light as possible. In the end you may select a simple pocket camera or just a phone camera, as carrying a sufficient amount of water into the dessert is more vital than a top notch camera.

The number of frames per second, the zoom factor, sensor size, there are always situations where you could use a little more.

That does not mean that it is worth the cost, of course. And even if it is worth the cost for your rich neighbour, it does not mean that it is worth the cost for you.

If someone says "I have all the... I want; I really do not want more," then there is a fairly good chance s/he lacks imagination. On the other hand if someone says "I absolutely need..." then there is a fairly good chance that he lacks the ability to adjust to reality and the size of his/her wallet.

Taking pictures for HDR

To work with HDR one needs pictures that are almost identical. Each pixel needs to match, even though their values may be different.

To achieve this one needs a) a tripod, b) a good camera.

I have not figured out if this is possible with my D40X, so the following just describes how to do it with my D300.

The task is to take a series of pictures of exactly the same motive but with varying exposure - bracketing. The D300 has different kinds of bracketing, but here we talk just about exposure bracketing.

• Make sure the Custom Setting e5 in the camera is set to "AE only".

• Press the lower button next to the lens and turn the small command dial (away from you on the camera) to select the bracketing exposure increment. Possible values are 0.3, 0.7 and 1. Check the LCD display to see the values.

• Press the lower button next to the lens and turn the main command dial (closest to you) to select the number of shots in the bracketing sequence.

Values to the left of "Off", toggle between positive and negative. For example "-3" means that 3 frames will be taken that are increasingly underexposed. "+2" means that 2 frames will be taken that are increasingly overexposed.

Values to the right of "Off" increase the number of frames on both sides of the current setting. Check the LCD screen to visualise the settings.
The lower button next to the lens is called "Fn button" in the manual.

To launch the shooting of images

1. Attach the camera to a tripod.
2. Go to the Shooting menu > Interval timer shooting > right arrow (to enter the Interval shooting panel).
3. Highlight Now and press left arrow. (Not right arrow, unless you have modifications to make.)
4. Press up arrow to highlight "On".
5. Press "OK".

The images will be taken with a start after about 3 seconds.

The number of images entered in the Interval timer shooting panel does not matter. What matters is what you selected with the Fn button and the command dials. Neither does it matter what start time you enter, unless you really use the start time option. "Now" means "in three seconds".

Self-Timer mode and the time set for it in Custom setting C3 is not used. It even prevents the Interval timer shooting from working.

Do not bother with the camera setting "Multiple exposure". That is just a setting to make one picture of several shots inside the camera - something we do not intend to do now.

(The explanation above may not be simple, but the usability in this particular area is confusing and incomprehensible without several trials and errors. Try and err. You may soon understand it.)

HDR with the gimp

Basic HDR can be handled in for example the gimp.

We start off with this image:



The areas where the leaves are in the shadow are underexposed, so no details are visible. The sand in the foreground is overexposed, so hardly any details are visible. It would be very difficult to find a setting where the camera captured everything correctly.

Luckily two other pictures were taken at the same time. One was had a longer shutter speed, so it is even more overexposed:



The other picture had a shorter shutter speed, so it was more underexposed:



The trick is to use the good parts of the overexposed pictures and the good ones from the underexposed picture and put them together with the good bits of the original picture.

1. Open all three pictures in the gimp.
2. Copy the underexposed picture, and paste it as a new layer on top of the original. (Click on the underexposed picture > ctrl+A > ctrl+C > click on original > ctrl-L to display the layers > click on the New layer icon.)
3. Copy the overexposed picture, and paste it as a new layer on top of the original. (Click on the overexposed picture > ctrl+A > ctrl+C > click on original > display the layers > click on the New layer icon.)
4. Save the original image in a new xcf file, in case something goes wrong.



In the image above I have also renamed the two pasted layers.

We now want to hide the overexposed areas of the overexposed picture. To do this we use a layer mask.

5. Highlight the overexposed layer.
6. Go to the menu Layer > Mask > Add Layer Mask.
7. Select "Grayscale copy of layer" and "Invert mask".

We now want to hide the underexposed areas of the underexposed picture with another layer mask.

8. Highlight the underexposed layer.
9. Go to the menu Layer > Mask > Add Layer Mask.
10. Select "Grayscale copy of layer" but not "Invert mask".

We now have a picture where the sand no longer is overexposed and the leaves no longer are underexposed.



To change it further, we can apply curves to the layer masks, to fine tune which parts of the picture are hidden by the layer.

11. Click on a layer mask.
12. Menu Colors > curves.



Of course other changes, like increasing saturation can also be applied.

HDR? What is that?

HDR or High Dynamic Range, is a way to get more into a picture than the camera can capture in one shot.

Let's take a metaphor to see the need for this. You sit at a sunny beach with almost white sand. Next to the beach is a dark cave, where you put your Perrier to keep it cool. You can look into the cave and see the water bottles. You can move your eyes and watch the sunlit sand next to it, and you will clearly see it - perhaps after having adjusted your eyes for a few seconds.

The camera, however, cannot be adjusted at the same time to capture both the cave and the sand. Everything has to go into the same picture.

With HDR one takes several pictures of the same motive with different settings. One then mixes them to cover a larger range of exposures than the camera was able to handle.

The result often looks unnatural and strange - sometimes natural and sometimes enchanting.

There are different programs in the market to handle HDR. To get a really good dedicated program, you need to pay quite a lot. However, some basic HDR can be done in Photoshop (which you already may have) or the gimp, which is free.

Wikipedia has more information of course.

The Abbreviations

In the world of photography, like in most worlds, there are abbreviations people use assuming that everyone else knows them. Of course, we all saw each abbreviation for the first time at least once, and then we may probably were confused. These are some of the common ones.

ACR - Adobe Camera Raw.
ADC - Analogue to Digital Conversion.
ADL - Active D-Lighting.
AF - Auto Focus.
AF-S - Auto Focus lens with SWM.
AI - Automatic Indexing. Used to describe a lens technology from Nikon that was introduced in 1977.
CCD - Charge-Coupled Device - A type of camera light sensor. Not CMOS.
CMOS - Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor. Not CCD.
CMYK - Cyan Magenta Yellow blacK. A colour space used mainly for printing.
CNX - Capture NX. Nikon's program to edit raw NEF files.
CR2 - Canon's current raw file format.
CRW - Canon's old raw file format.
DAM - Digital Asset Management. Storing, cataloguing and finding digital documents like digital images.
DNG - Digital NeGative. Adobe's attempt at a standardized raw file format.
DOF - Depth Of Field. A long or deep DOF means that objects both close to the camera and further away are sharp. A short DOF means that only objects at a particular distance are sharp, something that makes them stand out against the blurry background and foreground.
DPP - Digital Photo Professional. Canon's program to edit raw CR2 and CRW files.
DSLR - Digital SLR.
DX - Abbreviation for the digital format used by sensors in most Nikon SLR cameras and in DX lenses. Not FX.
DR - Dynamic Range.
ED - Extra-low Dispersion. Nikon's special glass to avoid chromatic aberration with tele lenses.
EV - Exposure Value.
EXIF - Exchangeable Image file Format.
fps - Frames per second. The number of images a camera can take per second.
f-stop - Predefined values for Focal number.
FX - Full size.
HDR - High Dynamic Range.
HSM - Hyper Sonic Motor. Sigma's name for an ultrasonic motor.
HUD - Head-Up Display.
IF - Internal Focusing.
IPTC - International Press Telecommunications Council.
IQ - Image Quality.
ISO - Hardly even an abbreviation but a setting to control how much light the camera will need to produce a picture that is not underexposed. High values mean that the camera does not need much light, but at the same time, one will lose colour and increase noise in the picture. It is an abbreviation, anyhow, and it stands for International Organization for Standardization.
JPEG - The arguably most common format for digital photographs. The abbreviation means Joint Photographic Experts Group.
NAS - Nikon Acquisition Syndrome. A state of mind where you cannot help but buy more and more Nikon gear.
NEF - Nikon Electronic image Format. Nikon's format for raw files.
NR - Noise Reduction.
OOC - Out Of Camera
OVF - Optical View Finder
PP - Post Processing. Any change to a photo after it has been imported to a computer.
PS - Adobe PhotoShop
P&S - Point and Shoot (compact camera). Not a DSLR
RAW - Not an abbreviation, even though it usually is written with upper case letters. It means raw data, as in unmodified data directly from the camera.
RGB - Red Green Blue. The most common colour space for digital images.
SLR - Single Lens Reflex. Originally used to differentiate from a twin-lens reflex cameras. Now used to differentiate high end cameras from Bridge and Compact cameras.
SWM - Silent Wave Motor. Nikon's name for an ultrasonic motor.
TIFF - Tagged Image File Format. The arguably most versatile non-compressed image format. (There are also compressed variants.)
TTL - Through The Lens.
USM - UnSharp Mask. A filter in Photoshop. Also UltraSonic Motor, Canon's name for an ultrasonic motor.
VR - Vibration Reduction in Nikon lenses.
WB - White Balance.
XMP - Extensible Metadata Platform.

How many pixels do I need?

If you want to take normal holiday snaps and family photos, the number of pixels in a modern digital camera is irrelevant.

You can stop reading there, if you want to, but if you want more details, you can go on.

All modern digital cameras have more pixels than you will need. The lowest number of pixels of any camera in the 2008 catalogue of fnac is 6 million, and that is a DSLR. Among the compact cameras that fit in your pocket, you do not find anything below 7 million pixels. With 6 million pixels you can print on A4 size without much problem. You can stretch it to about A2 format (42 × 59.4 cm) with acceptable quality.

With 12 million pixels, like the D300, one has enough to easily print out a high quality picture the size of an A4. Stretching it and accepting lower detail, one can get a decent print out the size of an A1 (59.4 × 84.1 cm). One can, of course, ask oneself how many A1-size pictures one will ever print out, and where one would put them.

Usually one says that high quality print is 300 dpi (dots per inch). To see how big a picture you can print with a certain image size, just divide the dimensions by 300. (And then multiply by 2.54 to get it in centimetres.)

(Width of image file in pixels) / 300 * 2.54 = (Width of high quality print out)

As a comparison, and A4 printed at 300 dpi contains 8,739,900 pixel, and a North American Letter size photo contains 8,415,000 pixel.

And what if you you do not want to print your pictures? If you just want to show them on computer screens?

Let's say you buy Apple's biggest Cinema Display that is 30 inches. To fill out every pixel of that screen you need no more than 4 million pixels - that is less than the worst digital camera you can buy today.


What is much more important than the number of pixels is the quality of the camera, the lens, the autofocus, the sensor and all that. If you compare the specifications of a DSLR with a digital compact camera, it is very possible that the compact camera has better specifications. However, when it comes to clarity and picture quality, the DSLR is almost always far superior.


A higher number of pixels may even make the picture worse. Let's say, that 6 million pixel sensors fit on a certain space in your camera. If you buy another camera the same space for sensors, but the number of sensors is 12 million, clearly each sensor is smaller in the 12 million pixel camera. Unfortunately a smaller sensor is also more sensitive to electric noise in the camera, so they are slightly more likely to register wrong values. This is especially visible with low light conditions and high ISO values. The result is noise, lighter dots, on the image. All cameras show noise under some conditions, but high pixel cameras have more noise than low pixel cameras.


Is there then no reason for a multitude of pixels? Oh, yes there is.

One is obviously if one really does want to print large highly detailed photos.

Another is if one crops a lot. In some conditions, like if one takes pictures of flying birds or fast cars, it may be difficult to target the camera right at the subject. One solution may be to use less zoom, take a picture of a larger area, and then crop it afterwards. If one does not have enough pixels to start with, this may turn out quite difficult.


There is just one main device one should avoid when taking holiday pictures, and that is the camera in a mobile phone. Currently none of them has any acceptable quality. It is very convenient to have a camera in one's phone. One always carries it around anyhow. However, in most cases the pictures that come out of it are not pictures one will be happy to look at in the future.

Why is the size in pixels wrong in Aperture?

If you open a RAW file in Aperture and compare the size of the picture with another application, it is very possible that the size is different.

This is not a bug. In contrast to tiff or jpeg, RAW files do not necessarily have the exact number of pixels defined, but small variations can take place.

I did some tests on one particular nef file from a Nikon D300.

First I converted the file to DNG, so I could open it in Photoshop CS2.

I then opened both DNG and NEF in the gimp with UCRaw. Result for both files: 4320*2868 pixels.

I then opened both DNG and NEF in Aperture. Result for both: 4304*2852 pixels.

I then opened the NEF in Capture NX. Result: 4288*2848 pixels.

And finally I opened the DNG in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop. Result: 4288*2848 pixels.

As you can see, out of four unrelated applications with different development teams, only two agreed on the number of pixels. And the applications that agreed, opened two different files (the dng and the nef).

Why is the sea red?

Sometimes you may encounter images that look like complete inversions of the original colours. They may be on web pages, embedded in PDF or MS Word documents or in about any location. The picture may for example turn all blue to red and vice versa, so the sea looks red.

The reason for this "corruption" may be that the document reader or the original document generator was not able to handle CMYK colours. If the image uses CMYK and the document reader tries to interpret the picture as RGB, that gives inverted colours.

The solution may be to open the document in another reader, or extract the image and open it in a better image reader, that correctly interprets the colours.



The problem may not have anything to do with CMYK of course. A similar problem with red sea water appears in Picasa 2.7, when you try to read compressed NEF files from a D300.

LAB colour

LAB is a colour space, like RGB or CMYK. RGB is used to describe colours on a computer screen. CMYK is often used to describe colours for printed material. LAB's main advantage is that it is very easy to adjust colours using it.

The secret trick is to keep all lightness information in L.

If you have an RGB picture and you use curves to adjust the values for R (red), you inevitably make parts of the picture lighter or darker, and you will probably have to adjust G (green) and B (blue) as well to get the lightness of the original back. In LAB you have no such problem.

The L value (channel) goes from 0 to 100 and indicates Lightness:

This is more or less a black and white version of the image.

The a channel is the axis green-magenta. "A" is admittedly not a good abbreviation for green magenta, but that's the way things are.

Negative values, from -128, indicate green while positive values, up to 128, indicate magenta. In the image above, the dark areas are negative, so they will turn out greenish. The light areas are positive, so they will be more red. Note that the shadow on the flower is almost entirely invisible. A shadow is lightness, not colour, so it should not be visible in the a-channel, and it is not.


The b channel is the axis blue-yellow.


Negative values, from -128, indicate blue and positive values, up to 128, are yellow.


If we add the three channels we get this picture:


A typical modification in the lab colour space is to emphasize the colours using curves, like this for the b cannel:


The values that seem to be cut off at the edges here are unlikely to actually be used in the picture. The extreme values of Lab describe colours that the human eye cannot see or that do not exist. The modification to the curve is basically just to make it steeper.

Below is a stone that at first may seem mostly grey, but looking a little closer one can see that parts of it have a shift towards red. With LAB colour adjustment, one can emphasise the red, so a casual onlooker will see it much quicker. At the same time the moss got a little more intense green, and the image becomes more interesting.

Before LAB colour adjustment.


After LAB colour adjustment.

Clearly, this is not the only way to increase the colours of a picture. Often, it is quicker to simply increase the saturation. But LAB adds a different kind of flexibility, which may be just what you need.

Why does not Aperture read my DNG file?

If you have a DNG file that Aperture refuses to open, is it possible that the DNG file is from a camera which has a strange format. Aperture 2.1 has support for DNGs from many cameras, but not all.

In some cases Aperture opens some DNG from a particular, camera, but not all. It then may depend on the lens, like in the case of an Olympus E-P2 ORF file.


Another possible explanation is that the DNG was generated with the "Convert to Linear Image" option turned on in Adobe DNG Converter. It has to be turned off. This is not obvious. The Linear Image option is there to increase compatibility compared to "Preserve Raw Image", but it is increased in a way that Aperture cannot handle.


Wrong setting in Adobe DNG converter.


Then, there is of course also the possibility that you cannot import the file, because you do not have any project, or because you highlight the wrong part of the screen, when you do the import. But in this case no files can be imported, DNG or not.

What's that... eh... thing, in Capture NX?

The documentation of Capture NX is not perfect and the usability of the product is far from perfect. Here are a few things I have not found in the documentation.

Sometimes you see a yellow warning triangle in the window title bar.

This triangle stays as long as the the text "updating image" stays in the title bar, so it probably means the same thing. In other words, it does not mean the file is corrupted or contains bad data or too much highlight or that anything else is wrong. It simply means "wait".


When you display the white balance settings for a file in Base Adjustments > RAW Adjustments > White Balance, you may see numbers and letters after the Camera WB. It may be something like "Auto, A3, G2" or "Incandescent, 0,0" or "6000K, A2, G3".

The first information is the white balance type or the colour temperature expressed in Kelvin. The following two numbers are the adjustments you may have done in your D300, under Shooting Menu > White Balance > right arrow.

The first adjustment is the value on the Amber (A) - Blue (B) axis, and the second one is the value on the Green (G) - Magenta (M) axis. Coincidentally, this corresponds to the LAB colour model. The amber-blue axis confusingly corresponds to colour temperature as well, with each step equivalent to about 5 mired. The green-magenta axis is simply an adjustment of green-magenta, like a cc filter (colour compensation/colour correction filter).

The Lure of DNG

DNG, Digital NeGative, is Adobe's attempt at a unified RAW file format for all cameras world wide. Some people are all worked up about this and list numerous advantages.

I am not one of them.

There is nothing wrong with dng, it just so happens that it is not much better than other things either. Some people duly convert all their Nikon nef files to dng, but that may be a waste of time and a loss of some data.

However, if your camera produces dng files, by all means, keep them. They are not worse than other raw formats.

Let's look at some of the alleged benefits.

Archiving is one of the often quoted arguments for dng. As dng is supposed to be a universal standard, it seems reasonable to assume that support for it will be around for ever, right?

The answer is perhaps. A standard does not become a standard by someone calling it a standard. The internationally defined format for writing dates is year-month-day, like 080619 for today. However, apart from Finland and Sweden hardly any country uses that date format in daily life.

Adobe supports dng, and a few camera makers support it, but most camera makers do not see much advantage. The by far biggest SLR camera makers, Nikon and Canon, do not support it. That means that most raw pictures that are taken today use other formats than dng.

It is very possible that there will be dng readers in 50 years time, but it is equally likely that there will be readers for Nikon's nef files and Canon's cr2 files.


And it seems reasonable to assume that a program that can read one dng can read all, right?

But that is not the case. Just like for tiff or psd files, there are many flavours and extensions. If a program cannot read the native raw file from a particular camera, it is quite possible that the program cannot read dng files from that camera either. It is also possible that it can read some files but not all, depending on the lens used.

In some ways, a dng is simply a wrapper around some other file format. A dng can even embed the full original of another raw file. If the program cannot read the original, it cannot read the dng.


One claimed benefit for dng is the file size. The story is that raw files for early cameras were only lightly compressed. The nef file of a Nikon D1X from 2001, for example, weighed in 7.8 Megabyte, while an equivalent dng file only was 4.8 Megabyte. A Canon 300D from 2003 had a crw file of 6.0 Megabyte, while the equivalent dng was just 4.2 Megabyte.

However, there is nothing inherently large with Nikon or Canon files. The companies can modify the formats, and they compress them more and more. A lossless compressed 14 bit nef of 14.4 MB from a new Nikon D300, for example, is converted into a 13.3 MB lossless compressed dng file, which hardly is any significant gain. A non-compressed dng with embedded jpeg preview turns out to be 25.4 MB - much bigger than the original.

There are still cameras that have huge raw files, and in these cases a conversion to dng has a certain sense. However, often it may be as useful to convert the raw to tiff or even jpeg - formats that are easier to manipulate for other purposes.

If you convert a raw file to dng, you may not lose any information - at least not unless you use the "Linear Image" option. However, there may be camera specific information in the raw file, like the Picture Control data in a NEF file, that no program can interpret correctly when it hides in a dng. The information is definitely there, but it may in practice be impossible to actually use it.


But then, as said before, there is nothing wrong with a dng. If you see any use for dng, by all means use it. I for example convert my nef files from my D300 to dng in order to open them in Photoshop CS2. It is either that or upgrade to Photoshop CS3 or use Aperture. Most often I actually use Aperture, as I prefer to work on the original file.

D50 vs. D40X & D300

There are two things I consider incredibly important in a camera:

1. It should be good.
2. It should be light.

My first Single Reflex Camera was a Nikon D50, which was a good compromise. It was fairly good and fairly light. However, this year I decided to upgrade in both directions. Therefore I got a D40X, which is incredibly light as SLRs go, and then a D300, which is really good.

The D40X I use when I travel or go on hikes, and the D300 I use when I want to actually take good pictures.


D40X with AF-S DX VR 18-200 f/3.5-5.6G lens. Light and powerful.

For a comparison between these and other Nikon DSLRs check for example Nikonians' comparison chart and Imaging Resources' reviews, which have some interesting performance information regarding auto-focus speed.

Image Authentication

There is a menu item in the Nikon D300 to switch on "Image Authentication". This applies to several old professional Nikon cameras like the D3, D700 and all the way back to the D200.

Forget it. It is only of any use if you are willing to invest even more time and money, and even then the use is limited.

This is how it works. If you have the option activated, when you take a picture in nef, tiff or jpeg format, then a flag is stored in the file which can be read to check if the file has been changed.

The files can still be modified without any problem using for example Capture NX or Photoshop.

To read the flag, you need to invest in Nikon's Image Authentication Software. The software costs a few hundred dollars/euro.

This is clearly interesting for legal purposes. But if you just want to prove that the neighbours' cat really walked through your living room, it is probably overkill.

Besides the system was cracked in 2011, so there is no certainty left that the images were not modified. The new professional cameras, D4 and D800 do not seem to have the feature.

Updated 7 July 2012.

Should I use RAW or JPEG?

The disappointing answer to that question, is that it is up to you to choose.

Raw (Nikon's nef) files contain more information.

Jpeg pictures are quicker to load and quicker to save. Many more of them fit on a memory card, and they can be sent straight to all your friends without more ado.

If you try to send a nef file to a computer illiterate person, or even an experienced Windows user, he will probably have problems opening it. It is even possible that his or your mail system does not allow the file to be sent, as it is too big. A 14-bit uncompressed nef file from a Nikon D300 weighs in at around 25 Mb.

If you try to take the ultimate perfect picture, then nef is probably the format for you. However, you may want to consider the number of small jpeg pictures you quickly could have taken and processed in the same time.

What a NEF contains

As a raw nef file is a dump of camera information and not an actual image, it is very different how the nef file is displayed in different applications.

Let's for example assume that you take a black-and-white picture with your Nikon. FastStone, IrfanView and xnview all display the image as black-and-white. However, the gimp, Picasa, Aperture 2.1 and Mac OS X' Preview ignore the tag that says that the image should be black-and-white, so they display the image in colour.

Nikon's Capture NX keeps the camera information, so it appears black-and-white, but one can also go back to the original colours.

1. Go to Base Adjustments > Camera Adjustments > Picture Control.
2. In the dialogue that comes up, change "Non-Picture Control" to "Picture control".
3. Change the settings to what you prefer.

Sometimes it is not obvious to see what changes have taken place in the camera. I for example had a picture where the White Balance was far off. There is no indication in the adjustment panel of Capture NX, that the White Balance had an unusual setting in the camera, so I had to look around for some time, before I found where it was.

White balance is, by the way, one camera setting that Aperture takes into account.

This may appear confusing for a simple reason: it is confusing. Not only are the names for the features sometimes confusing, but the concept itself is confusing.

There are a couple of metaphors one can use.

Think of the raw data from the camera as a Word document. If you switch on Track Changes in Word (or Record Changes in OpenOffice) you can make as much modifications you want. Add text. Remove formatting. Change pictures. You can always select Reject All Changes to go back to the original. You can also reject some changes and keep others. In the same way, you can always go back to the original camera raw data in a nef file, no matter how many changes you have made. You can also revert some changes, even if they were made in the camera, but keep others.

A more real life metaphor is a dinner table. Let's say you change the tablecloth every day. You use different kinds of china and put different dishes on the table every day, so it looks very different from one day to the next. No matter what things you add, you can always remove them at the end of the day. What you are left with is the original naked wooden table. In the same way, you can add effects to a nef file - sharpening, blur, white balance, noise reduction. But at the end of the day, you can remove them all, and what you are left with is the original camera raw data.

Many applications open nef files, but they almost never save to nef format. If you make a modification, you will have to save the image as tiff, jpeg or some other more mainstream format.

Capture NX is an exception, as it saves the modifications in the nef file itself. However, it does not touch the actual raw data in the nef file.

Some of the data that can be stored in a nef without touching the actual raw data.