Which lenses autofocus on a D40, D40X, D60 or D5000?

The low range Nikon cameras D40, D40X, D60 or D5000 can only autofocus with lenses with built in motor, for example Nikon's own Silent Wave Motor (SWM). These cameras lack autofocus motor themselves - something which makes them smaller, lighter and cheaper.

Nikkor lenses with "AF-S" in their name should auto-focus on these cameras.

Sigma lenses with "HSM" (Hyper Sonic Motor) in their name should auto-focus on these cameras.

There are also a number of Tamron lenses that should auto-focus on these cameras, but I have not found any reliable way to tell which ones. The secret letters to look for may be "di" (digitally integrated), but there seems to be no confirmation that it is a fool proof sign.

Using "hidden" NEF data in Photoshop or Aperture

If you shoot raw nef files with your Nikon camera, you may have camera settings that are not readable by non-Nikon applications. One of the most striking ones is if you choose to set the picture controls to create a black-and-white picture. When you open that nef file in Photoshop or Aperture, for example, the colour will come back.

To see this kind of information in non-Nikon applications, you will have to convert the files in a Nikon application. You can for example batch process all your nef files to jpeg or tiff format using View NX (menu File > Convert Files...) or Capture NX (menu item Batch). Then import the tiff files to the other application.

But don't forget that conversion from nef to both jpeg and tiff will lose some data. Tiff is a lossless format, but the only thing that is lossless is what is visible. In the nef file you can always go back and change the picture controls to some other setting. However, there is no way you can get the colour back in a black-and-white tiff file. In other words, it is always good to keep the nef as backup, in case you need to make some other modifications.

Chromatic Aberration

Chromatic aberration is a consequence of the fact that light of different colours do not focus on the same plane when they go through glass. Think of a simple prism, where white light goes in and a rainbow of colours come out.

Camera lenses are not always good at compensating for this, and the result may be a blue thin line around objects.

To get rid of the line semi-automatically, you can use tools like:

• Adobe Photoshop - Filter > Distort > Lens Correction. Adjust the slides in the box "Chromatic Aberration".
• Adobe Camera Raw - Open the file. (If it is not a raw file, you right-click on it in Bridge and select "Open in Camera Raw..."). Click on Lens Correction. Adjust the slides in the box "Chromatic Aberration".
• Capture NX - In the Edit List, click on "New Step". Select Adjustment > Correct > Color Aberration Control.

You can also manually replace the colour using things like the "Hue and Saturation" adjustment in Photoshop or the Gimp. In Photoshop you can also use Image > Adjustments > Replace Color.

If you do not succeed in getting rid of the chromatic aberration, do not feel bad about it. It is a tricky thing to handle. Good software takes into account the camera and the lens. As an example, Canon's RAW editing software Digital Photo Professional does not make the Chromatic Aberration correction tool available for pictures taken with the Canon EOS D20. Neither does it attempt to correct TIFF or JPEG pictures. This is undoubtedly because Canon knows they cannot make good enough corrections for those pictures.

Wikipedia has a more information on the subject.


The Lens Correction tab in Adobe Camera Raw.


Example of a picture with both green and red chromatic aberration.

Detail showing red aberration on one of the birds.

Detail showing green aberration on another of the birds.

Incompatible "DNG" files

On the home page for Scott Kelby's book Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers, one can download several hundred megabytes of sample files. Strangely enough, many of the sample "DNG" images cannot be opened in Adobe CS4 Bridge or Photoshop - at least not unless you have Lightroom installed. It turns out that many of them, like SaveYourPresets1.dng or SaveYourPresets2.dng are not dng files at all, but psd files with the wrong extension. Funnily enough, many of the correct dng files contain features that make them incompatible with Mac OS X 10.5.6, which in theory opens dng files.

I take this as yet another proof that dng is not a more compatible or safer format than many other raw formats, even though it probably is due to some bug in Lightroom.

It may seem strange that Scott managed to miss this, but Lightroom reads the files without problems, and if you double click on them within Lightroom a copy of them opens in Photoshop, so it looks like they are dng files, even though they are not.

How to fix it? Simply change the extension from dng to psd, and you will be able to open the files in programs that support the extension.

How I figured out that they were PhotoShop files? I opened the files in the Terminal text editor less, and noticed that they contain the code 8BIM, which is a Macintosh Photoshop extension.

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.