Requesting Help with Photos taken by Nikon

[firebuffgal]

Went to Yellowstone this last June. I am so thoroughly disgusted with my photos that I am ready to chunk all our equipment and never shoot again. Have been delaying receiving input from you guys because it just irritates me to even look at my photos because I KNOW they can be better.

So please help me understand what I am doing incorrectly. The sun in Wyoming in June is extremely harsh but when the opportunity presents itself you take the photo. The D70s had a circular polarizing filter on the bear shots to reduce glare; it seemed to help a little.

I feel there is too much fuzziness, not enough detail, poor contrast and coloring. Nothing but the subject is adequate. Some will say I'm too hard on myself, no, just very frustrated as this was the BEST trip EVER! And when another guy with the same equipment produces better results, I gotta fix something. I am at the point that I'm willing to pay a Nikon expert to come to my home look at my equipment, do field tests and check them out on my monitor.

I don't do RAW because I can't ever seem to get those to work ether. It's worse than high res jpgs. So the following are from the 2 main bodies and lenses we used. (On one of the moose I used the D70 instead of the D70s.) D100 had a Bigma 50-500 and D70S and D70 had the Nikkor VR 70-200 with 1.7 TC. A tripod and monopod were used.

EXIF info should be available. Any help in understanding is appreciated! :)

D70 Moose


D100 Moose



D70S Bear


D100 Bear



D70S Eagles


D100 Eagles

[engstrom]

Alicia, there are several things at work here. First I would work on composition - look up rule of thirds and try not to center the subject. Even with that, however, your scenes have way too much dynamic range (very dark tones to very light tones) for a camera, any camera, to handle. Like you said you shoot when you have the opportunity, but these shots could benefit from a flash with a better beamer to fill in the shadows. Another big help with dynamic range is to shoot in RAW. You say you can't get RAW to work, but I think you would be able to with a little practice. RAW processing is not necessarily intuitive, but stick with it because it offers great advantages for shots like these.

If you could post a link to the full size D100 bear picture I could also show you what some Photoshop processing tricks could do to help with that picture. I believe that picture has a lot of potential.

[engstrom]

Oh yeah, one more thing. Don't get frustrated. Nobody started out taking great pictures. It's a matter of practice - both taking the shot and processing the shot. And don't be fooled - most if not all of the really nice pictures you see on this forum have been processed. They don't come out of the camera that way.

[Joe_Lorenzini]

Hey Alicia,

First off, any shot that means something to you is a good one.

Your shot settings are all over the place in the photos you posted and it's easy to see why. There are some things I can tell you that you MUST do in order to improve your photography skills:

1. Shoot RAW - Even if you can't edit them correctly now, when you do learn you can easily go back and make good photos better. Always shoot RAW, never do not until you know you can successfully.

2. Auto Exposure - Never, never, never use it.

3. Auto White Balance - Never, sometimes (indoor mixed lighting), never use it.

4. P Mode - Forget it exists.

Start out by using Aperture or Shutter mode all the time and select your WB to use for each occasion.

As for the lens quality, the TC17 can create a soft image from time to time but in your case I don't think it was the TC's fault. Also, I'm assuming if the 70-200VR was on a tripod that you turned the VR off. If not, it can create some ugly results.

Your shots can be fixed.

_/oe

[MikeyG1965]

I am jealous. I was at Yellowstone for a whole week and didn't see a single bear in the wild.

I took a lot of photos of the bison and have some of elk that I wish were better. I did shoot RAW and JPEG.

I am learning and the advise Joe gives will be advise I will use.

[firebuffgal]

Thank you for your replies. The technical help is appreciated.

engstrom: Most of my subjects are 60-80 yards away. I wouldn't think a fill flash would help. Maybe you know something I don't.

I can't get RAW to work becuase I have to uninstall one conversion program for the D100 RAWs to open and then reinstall another program for the D70S to open (Photoshop CS3 is my current photo processing program but this would occur on my CS version). Not worth the time and frustration unless there is another option. And since there are no tumbnail previews, I just didn't have the time to go through 6,000 RAW images to find the one hundred I want to post process, you know?

Joe: Auto Exposure and Auto White Balance? Where do you adjust it? In the digital settings or is it on the body? Is Exposure where you pick a cloudy day or sunny day icon? What about White balance?

P Mode: you are right and towards the end of our trip we began using shutter priorty to avoid motion blur ont eh moving animals but some things came out under exposed so we went back to program mode.

VR was on while using tripod. Not a good thing I guess?



My photo experience: not a newbie to photography. Used a Minolta SLR for 20 years. Went digital in 2003. My fire photos come out great, but can't seem to do squat on my travels. Hence my frustration level.

[firebuffgal]

engrstrom: link to bear photo Thank you.

[timbertoes]

Capture NX is the only program that reads and correctly applies Nikon camera settings to the RAW file.

As for CS something else must be wrong if you cant use the current camera raw file for both cameras. maybe you have some type of conflict with files/filenames.
rename the older file perhaps.

[engstrom]

Originally Posted by firebuffgal

Thank you for your replies. The technical help is appreciated.

engstrom: Most of my subjects are 60-80 yards away. I wouldn't think a fill flash would help. Maybe you know something I don't.

http://www.birdsasart.com/accs.html#BEAMER
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/re...r_beamer.shtml
It's a plastic lens that focuses the flash beam and thus can be used at much greater distances than flash alone. 60-80 yards is a long way off, but I do believe the BB can help, especially at higher ISOs.

Originally Posted by firebuffgal

I can't get RAW to work becuase I have to uninstall one conversion program for the D100 RAWs to open and then reinstall another program for the D70S to open (Photoshop CS3 is my current photo processing program but this would occur on my CS version). Not worth the time and frustration unless there is another option. And since there are no tumbnail previews, I just didn't have the time to go through 6,000 RAW images to find the one hundred I want to post process, you know?

If you have PS CS3 then you also have Bridge and ACR. I believe Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) will convert RAW files from the D100 as well as the D70s so you can use the same program to do your RAW conversions. Also, Bridge will show you thumbnails of the RAW images (you can set the size and layout of the thumbnails) and allow you to quickly and easily tag the keepers for processing later.

Try taking some test RAW files and uploading them to your computer. Then run Adobe Bridge. Use the folders tab in the top left and navigate to where your RAW files are. You should see the RAW files as thumbnails. There will be a slider on the bottom right of the window that controls thumbnail size. Try double clicking on the thumbnail to bring up Adobe Camera RAW. Make sure that ACR works on both the D70s and the D100 RAW files. From ACR you can open the picture directly in PS CS3.

[engstrom]

Oh yeah, one more thing. I looked at the link to the bear picture you provided. I will try some processing on it later but I noticed right away that there is some motion blur. You say in your first post that you used a tripod or monopod. Do you remember if you used it for this shot? If you didn't then 1/200th is too slow a shutter speed for 500mm. Heck, seeing as the rule of thumb is 1/(focal length *crop factor) you should have a shutter speed of 1/(500 * 1.5) = 1/750 of a second. Depending on technique even a monopod might not be enough. And if it was on a tripod what kind of a tripod? How far did you have it extended?

[Mike G]

On images 1, 3, and 5 you have no color space assigned to the images so the colors all appear more muted than they should. Images 2, 4, and 6 all have the proper color space of sRGB applied for web viewing. On images 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 your shutterspeed is too low to not have some blur from the animals moving. Don't know if the D100 has spot metering but if so metering off the birds using spot metering would have helped that shot.

[Joe_Lorenzini]

Originally Posted by firebuffgal

I can't get RAW to work becuase I have to uninstall one conversion program for the D100 RAWs to open and then reinstall another program for the D70S to open (Photoshop CS3 is my current photo processing program but this would occur on my CS version). Not worth the time and frustration unless there is another option. And since there are no tumbnail previews, I just didn't have the time to go through 6,000 RAW images to find the one hundred I want to post process, you know?

Get ACR v4.3.1 - Version 4.3 had a bug in it that affects D100 RAW files. Get the latest and you should be able to open both D100 and D70 files together.

As for the 6000 RAW images, I've been there (I still have my D100). There are ways to batch the process so you can generate those JPG files easily and then do your sort.

More later.

_/oe

[Wes]

Originally Posted by Joe_Lorenzini

Hey Alicia,

First off, any shot that means something to you is a good one.
.
.
.
1. Shoot RAW - Even if you can't edit them correctly now, when you do learn you can easily go back and make good photos better. Always shoot RAW, never do not until you know you can successfully.

2. Auto Exposure - Never, never, never use it.

3. Auto White Balance - Never, sometimes (indoor mixed lighting), never use it.

4. P Mode - Forget it exists.

Start out by using Aperture or Shutter mode all the time and select your WB to use for each occasion.

As for the lens quality, the TC17 can create a soft image from time to time but in your case I don't think it was the TC's fault. Also, I'm assuming if the 70-200VR was on a tripod that you turned the VR off. If not, it can create some ugly results.

Your shots can be fixed.

_/oe

Gotta agree with all of Joe's points here - especially with the 70-200. It's very easy to overlook the VR switch when shooting from a tripod. I tried some tripod-based landscape shots once and they were VERY soft... until I turned off the VR.

Ditto the advice on shooting in RAW. I use Bibble Pro to process my RAW images. I can't TELL you how liberating it can be to shoot RAW, plus Bibble makes it VERY easy to batch process. Shooting in RAW has cut my post processing times down by about 70%.

I also shoot in total manual mode about 90% of the time. It took some time and practice, but the rewards have been worth it.

[engstrom]

I tried playing with the bear picture and, while it may be a little better the overall high dynamic range has lost a lot of details in both the highlights and shadows. Anyway, I think shooting in RAW and using a flash extender would help considerably. Here's my result of playing with the picture - sorry I couldn't get it any better.

[krodgers]

please don't take any offense but it might be good for you to go out with some of these pros and let them show hands on with your camera. your mention on how to change the settings tells me tagging along with someone who knows camera will be your best friend.