Nikon Capture NX2 2.3 Update

NX2 made it to version 2.3 this week and it's a significant update bringing a considerable speed boost and greater responsiveness all round. The Mac version supports 64 bit kernels and if your computer boots into 32 bit mode by default but supports the 64 bit kernel, you can boot into 64 bit mode by holding down 6 and 4 at start up (6 and 4 for 64 bit, geddit?). You'll need a wired keyboard for this and you will revert to 32 bit mode at restart unless you repeat the 64 bit boot procedure.

One note of caution: for the first time at a Capture update I was asked to reenter my product key. No problem, I had a pdf of the key saved on my computer. But, as my key was an upgrade from NX1 I also needed to enter that key.  Enter the NX2 key first, then the NX1 key when prompted. A search of the software cupboard yielded the rather dusty six year old NX1 box and disc but now NX2 was refusing to accept the key. After a couple of calls to Nikon technical support I was asked to email across a photograph of the original box, the disc, the key, my receipt and the pdf of my NX2 key together with the front page of that day's Telegraph. OK, I made the last bit up, but still! Message one: Don't update any critical software unless you've time to troubleshoot any problems. Message two: Don't do it if you're in one place and your boxed software is somewhere else. Message three: Download the software in future and keep the receipts and keys on your computer. It'll be much less painful and you'll be greener too.

Update: Several photographers are reporting having to enter their key four times before it would be accepted. This would be in line with my own experience. I made several attempts, contacted technical support and waited for a new key to be issued. That evening I made a fourth attempt and found my original keys were accepted. I'd assumed that Nikon had reactivated my key but it now looks as if it may be an odd bug. So, if at first you don't succeed, try, try and try again.

Nikon Speedlight SB-700

© Tom Parkes

King of the impossible: the SB-700's head rotates 180 degrees in either direction






















In the past week I’ve added a Nikon SB-700 Speedlight to my existing set of SB-800s. This new flash refines some of the most useful features of the SB-800, drops quite a few of the least used ones and doesn’t suffer the overheating which reduces the usability of the physically larger and slightly more powerful SB-900. At the time of writing, Nikon has just announced the replacement of the SB-900 with the SB-910 which attempts to address the overheating by slowing the recycling time as the flash begins to heat.

Comparing the SB-700 with the SB-800, missing are many of the legacy flash modes, a modeling flash button and ports for wired syncing and external battery packs. The latter is not an issue for me as I no longer use external power sources with small flash and the SB-700 recycles in under two seconds with NI-MH batteries onboard. It also accomplishes this in a silence I find disconcerting, so accustomed am I to hearing the whine of a shoe mount flash and taking the ending of it as a sign that the flash is ready to go. I wonder if Nikon will consider extending the optional ready beep available in the remote modes to the  shoe mounted function? It seems to me this would be possible, at least in theory, as like the SB-900, the SB-700’s firmware is updatable via a suitable camera body. On the subject of batteries, using four AA cells to achieve better performance than was previously managed with five makes the use of NI-MH cells more practical as I’ve yet to find a charger which accommodates units of five.

The SB-700’s head also (finally) rotates 180 degrees in either direction, greatly helping with both bounce flash with the speedlight in the hotshoe, orientation of the remote sensor with the master and aiming a camera mounted master at remotes. In that respect, the SB-700 makes a fine master flash, albeit of only two remote groups instead of the regular three controlled by the SB-800, SB-900 and the SU-800 remote controller. Where the SB-700 scores is in its ability to point directly at at least one remote, enhancing performance in open spaces. But more importantly it’s now possible to control remote units in manual mode in increments of  1/3 stop instead of the previous full stops.

Also new with the SB-700 are two clip-on hard plastic filters which appear to be a full CTO and a full Plus Green. With the camera in auto white balance, the filters are detected via switches on the flash which are depressed upon fitting one of the filters with the camera setting the appropriate white balance automatically. In tests, I found the setting chosen by the camera to correspond with the orange filter to be too warm for my taste, with the built in tungsten preset being more accurate and dialing in a kelvin value in the region of 2700-2800K closer still. Interestingly, the green filter sets a white balance on the camera which does match the filter well and importantly, it doesn’t seem to be one which can be simply dialed in from the preset fluorescent WB menu. How useful this will be in the field remains to be seen as fluorescent light sources have changed considerably since colour scientists in Rochester chiseled the 40CC Magenta filtration on camera maxim into the surface of the first 18 percent grey card. Given today’s real world mystery-vapour lamps it’s often worth trying the CTO first. But the new filter/WB combo means we now have an extra option open to us in the war against discontinuous spectra.

Sea project continued...

Four more images from the sea project. The first is the beach huts at Ferring.  Huts like these are currently on the market for £12,000. The second two images are seascapes, one immediately before and one after a squall and the final image is of a type 26 pillbox, one of the last remaining on the south coast. The pillbox was actually my intended target but it will take some thought to extract an interesting image from a concrete cube. This is a preliminary sketch though. By the time I'd variously sheltered from the worst of the weather, given advice on photography to dog walkers and waited for an interesting sky the light had passed. More to come on this one.

© Tom Parkes

© Tom Parkes

© Tom Parkes

© Tom Parkes

News Update

© Tom Parkes

We're into the conference and awards season now and October passed in a whirlwind of motorways, hotel rooms and conference centres. November looks like being similarly busy, working with some great new clients and so inevitably the blog has taken a back seat. On the subject of travel, my Toyota has now been replaced after five years and 96,000 miles of faultless service. Clients who were amazed by just how much equipment could be packed into the old car will be able to see me hone the trick still further with an even smaller car, a Mazda 2 Tamura. Googling Tamura reveals it to be either the name of a Samurai warrior clan or a new town in the Fukishima prefecture. Either is pretty cool, although I'll lean towards the former. I've made my career out of Japanese products and it seems like this is the time to support the Japanese workforce in return, given the events of the past year.  Why a smaller car? In a word, parking. Driving daily in London, when I come to park I'm often taking the only place left, the one no one else can get into and parking spots, particularly in hotels and multistorey car parks seem to be getting smaller every day.

To the picture: I managed to grab a few days on the coast and am exploring seascapes. This image was made with the last last seconds of daylight. I was rewarded by a good soaking from behind when this wave receded. Interesting that the last time something similar happened, the F5 I was using at the time was written off. My D3 and 14-24mm lens escaped unscathed, largely due to improved weather sealing between the lens and body. Although it may not be visible in the web version of this image, I'm also experimenting with subtle colour shifts in the shadows via channel masks in Photoshop.

Long Bench

© Tom Parkes

On the warmest October day ever recorded in England, visitors to Littlehampton's east beach explore the Long Bench.

The bench, by Jane Wood and Sophie Murray is dedicated to the town's most famous daughter, Anita Roddick.

After Bruegel

© Tom Parkes

Testing the P300's macro capabilities: These tiny figures, inspired by Bruegel's Parable of the Blind were made by Chris Goat.

P300 'Hidden' Monochrome Mode

© Tom Parkes

There is a third way when it comes to shooting in-camera black and white with the P300, one which may actually prove to be more useful than the Scene modes Black and White Copy and the special effect High-contrast Monochrome.  And that is to call up the creative slider in one of the main exposure modes - M A S or P - and dial the saturation (or vividness as Nikon refers to it on the P300) down to zero. In ascending levels of contrast we then have the desaturated regular colour mode followed by the Black and White Copy and High-contrast Monochrome scene modes. The latter two restrict the photographer to program mode, auto ISO and a fixed centre focusing point, whereas the desaturated colour setting retains the flexibility of all of the focusing, exposure and sensitivity controls offered by the camera.

© Tom Parkes

Groyne, Angmering on Sea

© Tom Parkes

Sea Front, Worthing

© Tom Parkes

Car Park

© Tom Parkes

Kite Surfers

© Tom Parkes

I spent the first ten or so years of my career shooting, processing and printing black and white images for newspapers and magazines, often sitting on the floor of hotel bathrooms to do it. I enjoyed the darkroom work, but somehow, when it was over I wasn't sad to see it go. I'm revisiting black and white as a medium, together with using a small Nikon P300. Different camera, different medium, different approach. More to come.

iPhone Photo Apps

In an upcoming post, I'll be comparing two popular photo apps for the iPhone and asking are they're just for fun, or do they have any serious uses?

iPhone photo - Hipstamatic app

iPhone photo -  Old Camera app
A week after the London lootings, people passing the Clapham
branch of the Debenham's store pause to read messages of
goodwill written on the boarded windows.

Editorial Portraits 2

© Tom Parkes

I was commissioned to photograph Dr Rabia Malik at the Marlborough Family Service in north London and is sometimes the case, the interview was scheduled to take place at the same time as the shoot.

Having divided access to a subject whose time is limited imposes some restrictions on the photography, but also has some advantages. The first decision to be made is whether to shoot the picture before, during or after the interview takes place. Shooting during the interview means it's relatively easy to make animated pictures where the subject is seemingly unaware of the camera.  The logistical problem is one of arranging the subject against a suitable background, lighting them and still leaving enough room for the writer to work and the photographer to move as unobtrusively as possible around the subject, keeping the both the writer and any microphones they have positioned out of shot. The disadvantage of this approach is that the subject will be looking anywhere but at the camera and once the interview concludes they will be looking to get away, so don't count on more than a few extra pictures to camera.

Given a free choice of shooting the picture before or after the interview I always opt to sit through the interview. The extra time to have a good look around the location, listen to the interview and observe the subject is invaluable and will almost invariably result in a better photograph. The only real risk of this approach is that the interview may overrun or be cut short by external events, leaving only a few moments for the photograph.

On this day, the only practical location available was the medium sized room in which both the interview and photography would take place and there was the added consideration that a short additional interview would be filmed by the writer for the magazine's web site. I opted to shoot the portrait at the beginning, having ruled out an interview style picture. The room was regularly used as a general meeting room for both the staff and clients of the Family Service and was initially fairly unpromising from a photographer's perspective. At one end of the room though was a green chalkboard, it had  been used in a previous meeting and I decided not to clear it. Positioning Dr Malik against a harmonious colour meant the eye would be drawn to her face and the chalk pattern would balance the composition nicely. I've always liked pictures which use a limited colour palette. With relatively little time to spend on set up, I chose a single SB800, zoomed to concentrate the light to a tight beam, shooting through a light panel from almost overhead. At such close range, a speedlight will recycle in a suitably short time but I would have had the option of adding a second SB800 rubber banded to the first to share the load and give either an extra stop of power or half the recycling time.

Editorial Portraits

© Tom Parkes

This picture was made earlier this year for a magazine feature. It's a departure from most of my portraiture in that it was made by available light from a window, albeit diffused with a light panel. The late afternoon sunlight is so warm that a range of white balances were possible, right down to 3000K (equivalent to the warm light from a household tungsten lamp).

Summer Website Changes Continued...

Over at the main website the summer refresh continues with some changes to iconography and the moving of the download buttons to the right side of the screen.

Tip: As an alternative to clicking the NEXT and PREVIOUS  buttons you can navigate to the next page with your left and right keyboard arrows.

The old  DOWNLOAD ALL button has been renamed BATCH DOWNLOAD (shown above in its rollover state) but for the moment is functionally the same as its predecessor.

Note: The batch downloader  requires Java to be present and up to date on the user's computer. If you have problems using the batch downloader, it may still be possible to download individual images.

On the gallery display pages the pop up previews have been changed to increase the size at which upright images are displayed. At the time of writing there are one or two problems to be overcome which affect performance in some browsers. This will be addressed shortly. - Updated Thursday 11th August. The issues affecting Mac Safari users have now been resolved.

Website Changes

As part of a series of new features planned for the main website this summer, the Client Area has now been renamed My Account. For now, this will be functionally the same and I'll be taking a closer look at what this feature offers in an upcoming post.

Piglets and Poo

 

Part of a series on small scale food production. Nikon 14-24mm @f4, focused on the snout of the piggy in the middle. A seriously sharp lens easily outperforming a bagful of wide angle primes.

Post-Tsunami Price Increases Continue

Barely three weeks after I first noted the sharp increase in the price of Nikon professional equipment there appears to be no slowdown, with some dealers now having raised prices by 20% compared with pre-tsunami levels.

Judgement Day For Apple?

In a twist that appears to have slipped by largely unnoticed, the news that Apple's iPhone and 3G version of the iPad are storing detailed location data for subsequent transfer to synchronised computers, broke, in the UK at least, on 21st April 2011. Fans of the Terminator series will recognise this date as Judgement Day.

Quite why Apple is storing the data and what present or indeed future use they intend to make of it is unclear, and Apple aren't saying. It's also true that mobile telephone companies store the same data, but in their case it's held securely behind firewalls. The location data stored on a synchronised computer is visible to anyone with access to that machine.

Although public opinion appears to be mixed, with many people appearing unconcerned, there are clear implications for anyone with perfectly legitimate reasons for keeping regular routes used and locations visited from falling into the wrong hands.

Here's a trip I made to France as stored by my iPhone and recovered from my Mac, showing the route I took by car. Zooming in reveals with fair accuracy, the location of the shoot itself and the hotel I stayed in. My recent trip to Brussels is also shown in the top right of the picture.

Equipment Price Rises and Short Supply Following Tsunami

As anticipated, the price of some professional camera equipment in the UK has risen by more than 10% in the month following the Japan tsunami with some items now in short supply. This means a Nikon D3S now costs a rather eye watering £3,600 from major suppliers. It's worth bearing in mind that "new for old" insurance cover is often based on the price of equipment at the time the policy was renewed and photographers should check that they have adequate cover at the new prices in the event of a total loss.

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium

Back from a whirlwind visit to Brussels covering a conference on behalf of a client; shooting speakers, delegates and the accompanying exhibition space. I do a lot of this kind of work and believe me, it's challenging. Over the course of two days I shot, edited, captioned and uploaded more than 2,000 images to supply media outlets across Europe and it's always rewarding to watch the download statistics building in the hours, days and weeks following an event.

Conference lighting directors often use very low levels of light. It's intimate, and running the lights at such low levels makes skin glow. The eye has an affinity for the warm light of an incandescent light source reaching back to the dawn of time. For photographers this can mean working at ISO values which would have been impossible only a couple of years ago. Today, we shoot at ISO 3200 and above, confident that the quality will be there, and able to focus on an eyeball in levels of light where it's barely possible to see, let alone read.

I always like to include a few images like the one below in the coverage. This sort of picture  always finds a home in a design somewhere.

Moving quickly from a windowless room, lit largely by the reflected light from a projector screen, I made the first image using the 3000K white balance I already had set on my D3S before quickly dialing in a more technically correct white balance for the second frame. I prefer the first version.

Texture and Tone

Photographers are attracted to the strangest things. A splash of light against a wall, a patch of peeling paint resembling nothing more than an artist's palette; decay. The reminder that something passed by today will not be there forever. Stop now. Make a picture.

From a technical viewpoint, the tonal range of this picture is enormous and although the internet version inevitably compresses the shadow detail, in the original file you can see all the way into the darkest recesses. This is an ISO 800 image, hand held and without any reflectors bouncing back the light from the window. And although I carefully selected the exposure to retain the highlight detail, it's otherwise straight from the camera. No HDR tricks. This is a level of performance you only see from the high end professional cameras which retain dynamic range as ISO increases.

Nikon D3 24-70mm f2.8 lens 1/200sec F8

Japan Earthquake Update

A statement posted today on the Nikon corporate website gives an update on how the company has been affected by last week's earthquake and ensuing tsunami. The name of the city of Sendai will be familiar to Nikon users as the location of the plant manufacturing the professional camera bodies. Several other optical companies  also based in the area  are thought to be similarly affected.

The developers of the popular iOS app ShutterSnitch have announced that until 20th March 2011 100% of profits from sales will be donated to the Japanese Red Cross.

The British Red Cross is also processing donations on behalf of the Japanese Red Cross.

Out of Focus

A shoot in the midlands earlier this week meant the opportunity to visit the annual Focus on Imaging show at the National Exhibition Centre.

Attention grabbing product launches were thin on the ground this year with Nikon being between major announcements and Canon's rather dramatic last minute withdrawal.  Plenty to see on the Lastolite stand though with their demonstrations and an excellent lighting tutorial on the neighbouring Westcott stand both making the visit and the £8.00 admission price car park charge worthwhile. Westcott products tend not to receive the attention they deserve in this country and Burgess Meredith was probably the last person to be genuinely excited by a new umbrella, but their ingenious folding designs and optical white covers on the shoot through models make them the umbrella of choice here. The umbrella does seem to be undergoing a resurgence at the moment, with giant sized alternatives to the big Elinchrom Octa on show.

Meanwhile, back at the Lastolite Batcave, their designers have been busy developing a huge number of new products at least one of which I can see being useful in my work on a regular basis. US photographer, Joe McNally's name has found it's way, literally, onto several new products including a development of the light panel which holds four SB900 (or equivalent) flashes on an extension arm. That's £1340 just for the flashes, if you're counting. Not far off the cost of a two head Elinchrom Ranger Quadra kit and not as powerful. Obviously, used individually, four SB900's may well be the more versatile solution, particularly if used together with the product which really caught my eye, the new Hotrod strip softboxes. I've long been a fan of the Ezybox Hotshoe for fast moving location portraiture where huge amounts of flash power is not always necessary.

This portrait of Jaronne for a magazine feature was made at the side of a busy London street using a single SB800 with an Ezybox Hotshoe . A fast way to work without drawing too much attention to a photo shoot.

You're never more than six feet from an Orphan Works bill

Orphan Works legislation is bearing down upon us in the UK once more, less than 12 months after it was last thrown out of Parliament. This time, if it's not our own government it seems the EU is coming for us too.

So what is an Orphan Work and how does it affect photography?

Simply put, an Orphan Work is  any intellectual property for which the owner cannot easily be traced.  Following a "diligent search" in Orphan Speak, the work, or image in our case, may be copied, reproduced and distributed without the inconvenience of any money changing hands. Except that is, for a token fee deposited with a yet to be created government orphan licensing agency.

Unfortunately for photographers, it's all too easy for our work to become orphaned once it appears on the internet. Few sites upload IPTC metadata in image files and many will actively strip it out. Once an image has been downloaded it's an orphan.

If that wasn't bad enough, the global nature of the internet means the work of photographers from the US, with its system of copyright registration and punitive damages, to Germany where intellectual property is inalienable, will find their work has not only lost its protection but the UK Exchequer has benefited at their expense.

Travels with my Quadraunt

  
Two years since the introduction of the Elinchrom Ranger Quadra and some 18 months since the first units arrived in the UK, mine has seen a lot of use. Let's see how it's working out between us.





The Quadra offers 400 W/S of power, delivered asymmetrically to two outputs and I bought the two head kit version, complete with Skyport transmitter and spare battery. The power is split in a 2:1 ratio between the outputs with the lower powered outlet providing a shorter flash duration.

Starting with the heads themselves. They're small and light enough to comfortably fit into a camera bag or pack if necessary and although they look fragile, mine have survived many falls onto hard surfaces without damaging the flash tube. Something which would have almost certainly meant a replacement tube in my previous system. Because the heads are small they require a slightly tricky adapter to fit regular sized Elinchrom softboxes and reflectors. My advice would be to fit the adapter to the softbox and then attach the head before mounting everything on a stand. Elinchrom state that the maximum size of softbox that can be used is the 1 metre sizes but I use a 1.3 metre Octa with no problems. Any larger and I suspect it would become difficult to tighten the adapter sufficiently to prevent the sotbox from creeping.

Attaching the leads to the pack can be a bit of a fiddle, not least because that area of the pack is congested with the strap attachment points and the outlet covers flapping around on their rubber ties. The latter resolves itself fairly quickly as the strap's D rings chew away at the rubber until the ties break free. Once the first one had broken, I cut the second away with a scalpel. So far, I still have both covers. Offering the plug to the socket in the correct position is easier said than done as both are black and there are no external notches or markings to help. In a hurry, it's tempting to try turning the plug in the hope that it will slip into place in the socket but this will eventually bend the pins and as the leads themselves are an expensive item I painted a white spot on the plugs to help align them.

The batteries are quite heavy but I would advise carrying the spare at all times as the pack will go into its slower recycling mode to preserve battery life long before the end of the charge is reached. The best field strategy would seem to be to swap the battery once it slows and place it on charge. With luck, it will be recharged by the time it is needed back in service on the pack. The battery attachment points on the pack are again a slightly fiddly design and one of mine has already snapped. I've spoken to Elinchrom about this and they tell me they've not noticed any unusual call for spares. I'm not the only photographer I know who's broken one though and it's hard to see how any special care could be used to attach the battery. So it's something to watch for. A turn of gaffer tape around the pack should be enough to hold the battery in place in an emergency.

The Skyport transmitter can be used  not only to sync the flash, but also to adjust the power and turn the modeling light on and off.  The reliability of the radio system is good, although not quite on a par with Pocket Wizard Plus units. I've encountered situations where the Skyport wouldn't fire the flash more often than I have with Pocket Wizard's which in my experience have only ever been thwarted once, on the roof of a police station in the middle of the radio masts. The Skyport does occasionally seem to freeze, requiring the removal and reinsertion of the battery, so this is always something to try when problems occur.

Design issues notwithstanding, the Quadra has generally exceeded my expectations of it, particularly in terms of durability and unless you really need the extra stop and a half of it's bigger brother, and particularly if you have to carry your own equipment, I'd recommend it.

Wow, great picture!!

"I found these great pictures on this site. It's on the internet so they're free, right?"

Actually, probably not. In fact if you can't see it explicitly stated in proximity to the picture, you should assume someone will require paying for you to use that image on your site. If in doubt it's always best to contact the photographer.

Sadly, there are tools that make it only too easy to indiscriminately  harvest pictures from insecure sites. If you're using one of these you're almost certainly one step away from breaking the law depending on what you do next, once your hard disc is heaving with booty.

My own images are stored using the Photoshelter system. That's where the links on the right take you. They're safe. If you're a photographer with your own server you might want to think about blocking the harvesters via an .htaccess file. No, I don't know what that is either. Luckily, US based photographer David Brabyn does.

Thanks for your interest. This blog is under construction. In the meantime please visit my main site

© Tom Parkes