Tag Archives: Photography

Going Mirrorless

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Image: Nikon – https://goo.gl/images/vjxgtk

I turned what I laughingly call “professional” as a photographer about 4 years ago in early 2015, having left  the IT sector (marketing/PR).  My last employer had gained great advantage from my enthusiasm for photography and I ended up being the photographer-in-residence, doing event reportage and corporate mugshots – very convenient as my employer didn’t have to pay extra money to engage a proper photographer.  I was fortunate enough to have had the chance to work with real professional photographers at some company events and I am particularly indebted to Rob Matthews, who did some work with our PR team and enabled me to learn a huge amount about corporate photography simply by watching him in action.  Oh, and badgering him with endless, probably stupid, questions.

Having left full-time employment, my goal was to carry on doing corporate photography, and my first gig was February 2015.  It was also my first attempt at videography, which was not ultimately successful but which taught me a huge amount, mainly about how much I still had to learn about video.  My main gear at the time was a pair of Nikon D300s, which were really good for stills but had serious shortcomings for video work.  So, I invested in a Nikon D5300 which would enable better video capabilities whilst still allowing me to make use of the lenses I had.

Here are my camera purchases since I invested in the D300s:

  1. Nikon D300S – October 2009 and September 2011 (second body)
  2. Nikon D5300 – February 2014
  3. Nikon D750 – November 2015 and December 2015 (second body), replacing the D300s
  4. Panasonic TZ100 – October 2016
  5. Nikon D500 – November 2016 (replacing one D750)
  6. DJI Osmo – August 2017, swiftly replaced by an Osmo+  (small stabilised video camera)
  7. SonyFDR-AX700 – July 2018 – an actual video camcorder

Looking through this list it becomes clear that my requirements were evolving.

  • The D750s were very well-rated full-frame cameras with HD video capabilities
  • The Panasonic was partly for personal use, to save me perpetually having to lug a full-sized DSLR around when I thought I might need a camera to hand, but also has reasonable quality from a larger-than-standard-compact sensor (1″ for those who care about these things) and was also capable of recording video.
  • The D500 was because I realised that full-frame was not the be-all-and-end-all I had expected; there are occasions when the extra reach of a crop-sensor camera is an advantage, particularly in corporate event photography, for capturing speakers on stage at a distance. The autofocus coverage is better on the D500, something I felt I particularly needed. And, like the Panasonic, the D500 can do video.
  • The last two entries on the list are for video cameras which can take stills, rather than the other way round.

It was becoming clear that having video capabilities was becoming more and more important. And I was finding that the big Nikons, which are wonderful for still photography, have their shortcomings when used for video – particularly autofocus and image stabilisation.  So my thoughts had turned towards moving (shock! horror!!) away from Nikon in order to get cameras that would handle video better.  The main contenders were from Panasonic (G or GH) models and Fuji (XT series).  The key difference between these cameras and my beloved big Nikons was – the mirror.  All DSLRs have a mirror whose normal position is down so you can frame the picture through the viewfinder; it then flips up so that the image can be exposed onto the sensor.  I loved the feel of all of this complicated mechanical stuff every time I pressed the shutter of the D500.  It just felt….right.   But the mirror has to stay up for video work, and the focusing mechanism is therefore perforce changed to a much slower, inferior method.  One is effectively condemned to using manual focus, since autofocus brings so many unwelcome effects into play.

Changing camera manufacturers would be a Very Big Deal for me.  It’s not the cameras, it’s the lenses.  I have six Nikon lenses, half of which are pro spec, beautiful to use and very expensive.  If I were to change to another manufacturer, I would have to completely reinvest in lenses, and I quailed at that prospect.  So I put off the decision and put it off and Made Do with what I had and its shortcomings for video work awaiting the time when I screwed up the courage (and the funds) to make the big leap.

However, I’m glad to say that Nikon saved the day!  THey an announcement that shook the industry – two brand-new mirrorless cameras, the Z7 and Z6.  The photographic press went berserk, of course, and it quickly became apparent that these cameras were held in high regard by almost all the photography journalists who reviewed them.  My particular go-to sites are dpreview and Amateur Photographer (you can take the photographer out of the amateur, but you can’t take the amateur out of the photographer). MIchael Topham’s glowing review of the Z6 was the tipping point, and in late November 2018 I put my order in with the idea of replacing my D750.  I have just (late January 2019) received the camera, along with the adapter that enables me to use all my lovely Nikon glassware with it, and initial impressions are that it will do in still photography anything that my D750 will do and will also do a vastly superior job at video.

Here’s hoping…..I’ll report back.

Why I use RAW

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This was my first ever blog entry and it established this website as being a very modest but useful resource.  It used to be to support my professional photo work, but I retired. While I still count myself as a photo enthusiast, the main purpose of the site is for me to record my thoughts whilst travelling so that the experience doesn’t disappear into the mists of my unreliable memory.

However, there are some matters photographic that matter to me, hence the occasional posts on the subject.  Following is an updated version of this first-ever post, now featuring a rather better example of the benefits of taking photos in RAW, which I do whenever it’s important to get the maximum quality out of an image.

Before I get to the specific example, let me up what RAW means for those not familiar. You can skip ahead if you know all about this. If, on the other hand, your object of photography is to get an image online as soon as possible (e.g. for Instagram), you can stop reading right now, because every RAW image needs post-processing before display. (I use DxO Photolab. It’s brilliant, as it automates corrections for many things, such as lens distortions, without my needing to ask.)

When a sensor captures an image, it records everything it captures as a RAW file. It’s not an image as such; the popular categorisation is as a “digital negative” – not immediately viewable, but with everything you need to produce a final image. If you are just getting JPEGs from your camera, then you’ve lost some data already, since the camera will make decisions (some of them yours, some of them not) about what to do with the data (make the colours stronger, turn it black and white, whatever). Also a JPEG is a compressed format, and you lose some data in the compression. So, if you’re serious about getting everything you can from an image, make sure you’re capturing RAW versions. Personally, I capture RAW and JPEG. That way I can quickly see what I’ve captured as part of selecting what I then decide to process.

If you really want chapter and verse, read Wikipedia on the subject. And then donate to them; they do a grand job.

Now: an example.  When I was in Iceland recently, we visited a historical area called Thingeyrar, which has a church – specifically, a Catholic church.  This means that the contents are somewhat more lavish than your typical Icelandic church, which is Lutheran and a lot less ritzy inside as a result. Sadly, the church was locked; we couldn’t get inside to take photographs, so I had to point my camera (Nikon Z6) through the window to capture what I could.  At first blush, this looked rather unimpressive.  Here’s the photo, a JPEG image, out of the camera.

As you can see, it’s a horror – backlit and everything in silhouette.  Digital cameras, however, are normally pretty good at retrieving detail from dark areas, so one can take this photo and improve it a great deal, even as a JPEG:

But processing the RAW file gives an even better result:

It’s not an award-winner by any stretch of the imagination, as I have flare and reflections and all sorts going on, but the processed RAW photo is clearly better – more detail has been retained in the windows, for example, the shadows are much less indistinct and it’s clearer and crisper overall, as I was able to get at all of the information in the image (RAW), rather than what the camera had decided I should get (JPEG). It’s also a lot less noisy, as I was able to process it with DxO Photolab’s excellent noise-reducing capabilities – which are only available on RAW images.

I made sure to underexpose the image in order not to lose detail in the bright areas, as I was certain I could retrieve detail in processing the image.  And there’s the rub – as I said above, every RAW image has to be processed – “developed”, as it were –  in order to display it.  I could have used just the JPEG version, but I prefer to have the version that has all the edits in it that I want. And I’m prepared to invest the time to do this.

It can be considerable, but it’s worth it, don’tcha think?