How to live with the ergonomy of a D5100 or other "low end" camera

One reason to buy a "high end" or "professional" camera like a Nikon D3S, D300S, D700 or even a D90 or D7000 is that it is easy to change common parameters. It is also easy to change some less common parameters. The chances are that if you want to change a particular setting, you can do it without going into the monitor menus.

But what if you bought a "low end" camera, like a Nikon D5100? How do you quickly change settings there? Well, funnily enough, the chances still are that you can do them without going into the menus. Arguably, the most common changes you will make are shutter speed and aperture, and you do that almost as easily on a D5100 as on a high end camera.

There is no denying that several settings are easier to reach on a high end camera. There may be some settings you have chosen to change all the time in your daily shooting that are cumbersome to change on the D5100. But if Nikon have done their user studies correctly, most people should be reasonably happy with the ergonomy of the D5100.

Let's have a look at the difference in buttons between the D5100 and a D7000 or a D90. The D7000 and D90 have dedicated buttons for the following functions, that are not by default easy to access on a D5100:

1. ISO
2. White Balance
3. Release mode (one picture, many, etc.).
4. Bracketing button.
5. Quality button.
6. Metering (spot, matrix, center weighted).
7. Autofocus mode (single-servo, face priority, subject-tracking, etc.).

For the first five of these, the photographer can select one of them to be assigned to the fn button on a D5100, which makes it easier to access them. I change the ISO all the time, but rarely the other ones, so the choice is easy for me.

For the Metering and Autofocus, they can be changed directly on the Monitor without going into the menu system on the D5100. It is admittedly more cumbersome than on the D7000 or D90, but even on those ones, you often have to take the camera down from your eye to look at the top LCD screen to see which values you choose.

And when it comes to ergonomy, a large number of buttons is not necessarily good, as the photographer will have to learn where they are, and s/he is likely to occasionally press the wrong one, as the choice is so big.

This does of course not mean that a D5100 is as good as a high end camera. It is not. It lacks plenty of functions, and one does not have to be that experienced a photographer to take advantage of the additional buttons of a higher end camera.

However, if weight or price or a swivel screen are important factors, one should not discard the D5100 for its bad ergonomy. It is not a perfect camera, but to most photographers in most situations, its limitations should be acceptable.

Pronouncing "Bokeh"

Bokeh is a modern word to describe the background blur of a photo like in the photo below. The rusty iron is in focus but the sea behind is not.



A common question is which lenses have the "best" bokeh, but that does not interest me very much. It is like asking which colour is best, red or green? Or which is best, food or drink? Sometimes you need one and sometimes the other. Sometimes a lot of blur is needed. Sometimes it just looks artificial.

However, what I think is interesting is the pronunciation and origin of the word.

It is generally agreed that it comes from Japanese ボケ (boke), which is a technical photo term with the same meaning as in English. The Japanese word is an abbreviated form of the verb 暈ける (bokeru), which means "fade" or "appear blurry". It may be worth noting that Japanese classical art, like the 狩野派 (kanōha) or Kanō school, works a lot with detailed foregrounds and non-intrusive or even empty backgrounds. However, the expression ボケ is usually not used in this context, but only when it comes to photography.

The word has only been used since the late 1990s in English, so no widely accepted pronunciation has yet evolved.

If you want to use the Japanese pronunciation, it is /bɒkɛ/, with "bo" of "Bob" and "ke" in Kenneth. However, in English, it does not sound very natural to end a word with a short ɛ. Besides a vowel before a syllable starting with a single k in English is usually long, so the "bo" bit does not seem natural either. It therefore seems perfectly acceptable to pronounce it exactly like "bouquet" in English.

If someone laughs at your pronunciation, you can be confident that other people laugh at their pronunciation as well.

And now for a warning. If you think that you learnt a Japanese word today, you need to make sure the context is right, when you use it. Even though 暈ける (bokeru) means fade, the word 惚ける with exactly the same pronunciation means "to become senile".　呆け or 惚け, both pronounced /bɒkɛ/ mean senility. Another meaning of the same pronunciation is the plant 木瓜, Japanese Flowering Quince (Chaenomeles speciosa). In other words, when you use it, make sure the context shows which boke/bokeru you are talking about.

Deleting photos from your iPad

Deleting a large number of photos on your iPad may not be obvious. There are a few solutions.

Deleting Several Imported iPad Photos using a Mac

The most convenient way to delete a large number of photos is probably to use your Mac. (It is probably possible to use some similar method on the PC, but I do not know which application to use.)

1. Connect your iPad.
2. Open Preview on your Mac (Image Capture would also work with a slightly different scenario).
3. Go to the menu item File > Import from (the name of your iPad)...
4. Select the pictures you want to delete.
5. Click on the red delete icon at the bottom of the screen.

To better select the photos you want to delete, you can use the two icons in the bottom left corner.

In the icon view you can get reasonably large previews of the photos.


In the list view, you can sort the images according to a large number of criteria. You can also move the columns around, so you see the information that interests you.


To select several pictures, you can use the standard multi-select shortcuts: Click and shift-click on another photo to select all photos in between. Command-click to toggle selection of an individual photo without affecting which other photos are selected. Command-A to select all photos on the iPad (in all folders!).

Deleting Several Imported iPad Photos on the iPad

You can also delete several photos at the same time on the iPad itself, but it is not that elegant. If you have a large number of photos in the same folder, it is not easy to select them all, and if you have photos in several folders, you often have to delete them folder by folder.

1. Locate a view with the photos you want to delete.
2. Click on the Export (!) icon with the arrow in a square in the upper right corner.
3. Do not click on the tempting red Delete button, but click once on each of the pictures you want to delete. You can also drag with two (!) fingers over the photos you want to select. (In the first version of the Photo app, you used one photo, but Apple thought that was too easy.)
4. Click on the Delete button.

Synched photos

Photos you have synched with iTunes, you can remove in iTunes, by simply not synching them any more. It seems impossible to delete them from the iPad itself in iOS3.

1. Connect the iPad.
2. In iTunes, click on the iPad icon.
3. Click on the tab Photos.
4. In Projects and Albums, unselect the folder you sync.

Updating metadata in a CR2 file

To find images quickly using a disk search tool, like Mac OS X' Spotlight, you can update the metadata of the images. You can for example set the description to "Holiday in Sverdlovsk". Searching for that string in Spotlight will quickly show you all the images.

For JPEG files, you can use for example Adobe Bridge to quickly do this. I assume Lightroom also works.

However, when it comes to RAW files, like NEF and CR2, Bridge adds the metadata in a separate xmp file. When you search for the string using Spotlight, you will find the xmp files but there will be no preview of the image in the search result.

Bridge itself finds the data of course, but you may have moved the files to a computer without Bridge installed.

To update the Description field you can use View NX (free) or Capture NX for Nikon's NEF files. For Canon's CR2 files, however, it seems like it is not that easy.

One solution is to use Aperture.

1. Open the file in Aperture.
2. Click on Metadata and choose the "General" set.
3. Update the field "Caption". That is the field that other applications usually call "Description".
4. Go to File > Export > Master...
5. Enter the data as you want, but make sure the option Include IPTC is set.
6. Save.

You can of course export several images at the same time, and even mix different formats.

There are other solutions than Aperture, I am sure. It should for example be possible to use the utility exiftool which is free. However, Aperture is the most convenient solution I found so far.

Which Nikon camera settings matter when you shoot RAW?

Almost all the settings in a Nikon camera matter when you shoot JPEGs, as a JPEG is supposed to be good enough for immediate use.

When it comes to RAW/NEF files it is a little more complicated. Some settings matter a lot. Some settings do not matter at all. For some settings it really depends. There does not seem to be any exhaustive list of which settings matter and which can be ignored - probably because it is so complicated. The following list is not exhaustive.

Shutter speed is important, as it obviously cannot be changed in software.

Aperture is equally important, as it cannot be changed in software.

ISO is less obvious, but it is also important. ISO is not just a matter of how bright the picture is, but it sets the physical light sensitivity of the sensor. The incoming light is amplified by hardware. When a lot of amplification is needed (high ISO), the system is more likely to introduce noise. Even if my explanation may not be one hundred percent clear, a simple experiment can show that a NEF taken with long shutter speed (much light) and low ISO has less noise than one with short shutter speed (little light) and high ISO.

Long Exposure NR seems to matter. There is no way to undo it even in Nikon software.

White Balance can in theory be ignored, but it is practical to give it a correct value. It is visible to virtually all RAW conversion software, and it can be changed freely in most software. However, some software is unable to correctly adjust bad White Balance, like Picasa or the Finder previews in Mac OS X.

Exposure compensation does not really matter on its own. However, it affects shutter speed and aperture, so it indirectly matters what you set it to.

Active D-lighting is not clear cut. The setting seems to be ignored by Adobe software. At the same time, it cannot be switched off in Capture NX, if you use that software. Anyhow, when you switch it on, it will change images to a somewhat darker exposure by changing shutter speed or aperture, so it indirectly affects the image.

Picture Controls can safely be ignored. They can be changed freely in Capture NX and View NX, and they are not even visible to non-Nikon software like Adobe Camera RAW, Lightroom or Aperture. This is the reason why a black and white NEF file is displayed in colour in Photoshop.

NEF - what is it?

NEF, Nikon Electronic image Format, is Nikon's format for RAW files.

This blog has a number of entries that concern NEF files.

Nikon's Active D-lighting - what is it?

"Nikon has gone through great pains to promote this feature without telling anybody what exactly is going on."

Frans Waterlander

I have no idea who Frans Waterlander is, but I think he was spot on in a discussion forum. This blog post lists some known facts and some important guesses - if you switch Active D-Lighting (ADL) on.

ADL is a technology Nikon uses to handle pictures with big contrast - a lot of light and a lot of darkness in the same photo.

To make it work properly, use Matrix metering.

Switching on matrix metering on a Nikon D300.

ADL is not the same thing as D-lighting. D-lighting does about the same thing - it reduces shadows and highlight, but it is made after the picture is taken. Active D-lighting is made while the picture is being taken.

How it is done, no one seems to know. One theory is that it is done by the camera sensor itself. Another is that it is a setting applied to the RAW camera data.

You cannot change the level of ADL in Capture NX or View NX. Normal D-lighting can be changed in those products.

It is rumoured that ADL does not work when you take pictures in Manual mode in the camera.

When you use ADL in A, P or S mode, it makes the general exposure slightly darker.

From experiments it seems like Adobe products ignore ADL in NEF files completely. In other words: if you shoot RAW and use Adobe products like Lightroom or Photoshop, Active D-lighting will serve no purpose.

Normal D-lighting can be applied in the retouch area of the camera in many models. It can also be applied in Capture NX and View NX.

My own strategy currently is to switch ADL off. It is complicated to handle, it takes time to switch on and off, there is a risk factor that you do something wrong, and life is too short to learn all the aspects. If there are high contrast images to take, they can often be handled by post processing anyhow.

What use is Adobe Photoshop - for a photographer?

Adobe Photoshop CS4 is probably the most powerful image editing tool on the planet right now. It can do a vast number of things and integrates well with other programs like InDesign (for publishers) or Dreamweaver (for web designers).

Some basic functions that apply for photographers is described in the following.

The program Adobe Bridge, which comes with Photoshop, contains tools to display and organise photos of a wide range of formats, including RAW files from a large number of manufacturers. With Bridge one can also initiate actions in Photoshop like stitching a number of pictures together.

From Bridge, one can open RAW pictures in the program Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) which also comes with Photoshop. In ACR one can adjust RAW files, remove noise, change brightness, convert to black-and-white, fix vignetting and chromatic aberration and a ton of other things - much like one can in Aperture, Lightroom, Capture NX or DPP.

Once the image looks good, one can save it in one of several formats or open it in Photoshop. In Photoshop, one can cut and paste pieces of the different photos and mix them. One can add patterns, text and a lot of other things. The final picture may be resized and saved for use on the internet.

With smartobjects, one even mix layers of different colour spaces and file formats.

If one fully masters Photoshop, there is a good chance that one does not need any other image editing or RAW conversion software at all.

To explore Photoshop further, one can often download a trial version from Adobe.

What use is Aperture? Or Adobe Lightroom?

Apple's Aperture is a RAW converter and image management system for Mac OS X. It is a high end program with a vast amount of options and functions. It supports RAW files from a large number of manufacturers, but not as many as the competitor Adobe Lightroom.

As so often, it is very difficult to tell which program is "best". If one of the programs does not support your camera, you should clearly stay away from that program. If you have Windows, you do not have to consider Aperture, as it is Mac OS X only. If you need to batch process files, either program will do fine. If you need to script a program, Aperture can be scripted with AppleScript, but it seems like Lightroom 3 still has very limited scripting capabilities.

Aperture uses the same RAW converter as Mac OS X, which means that any image that can be opened in Aperture, also can be opened in Preview or Quick Look. Lightroom uses the same RAW converter as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw, even though the version may differ.

Both programs have the following main purposes:

• Adjust RAW files.
• Sort and manage images.

If one already has other programs that do this well enough, one probably does not need either of the programs.

Both Adobe and Apple often have trial versions of the software to download to further explore the programs.

What use is Digital Photo Professional?

Digital Photo Professional (DPP) is Canon's RAW conversion tool. It comes for free with Canon cameras that produce RAW pictures, and once you have it, all updates are free. However, you cannot download it for free without an original copy to update. DPP opens CR2, TIFF, CRW and JPEG files.

When it comes to high end RAW converters, like DPP, Adobe Camera RAW, Adobe Lightroom and Apple's Aperture, they all have their strengths. It is very difficult to tell which one is "best". Someone who masters any one of them, can usually do what s/he needs to do with that program. Anyone who does not fully master any one of them will probably not achieve the best possible result.

Comparing DPP with Nikon's RAW conversion programs is not easy either. DPP can do more with CR2 files than View NX can do with NEF files. Capture NX has more functions for NEF than DPP has for CR2, but what you find in DPP may be more than enough.

If you want a full blown image editing program, neither DPP nor Capture NX cuts it. You cannot use them to paste a face from one person onto another. Neither can you render patterns or add text strings to a picture. For such tasks, you need to use a tool like Adobe Photoshop or the gimp.

DPP can perform batch jobs on several pictures at once. However, it is not scriptable with any internal macros or AppleScript.