Professional Resources for Photographers

I have been goofing around with the Nikon D90 for some time now. I wanted to iron out all the kinks before offering this photo/video fusion to my clients so here is a sample video my wife and I shot just today. As you can see, it is of my little guy, Cameron, and his first time eating solid foods. This is just a quick run of how quick video can be taken and edited down to a decent home movie or more…

I shot this video using a Nikon D90 and a Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. A monopod was used to stabilize the camera some and everything else was pretty much pretty basic. The video was shot in the highest high def quality that the D90 offers (720i) and then converted from AVI to MOV format on my Macbook Pro. iMovie ‘08 was used to edit the video and throw in the titles, transitions and music.

All in all, it took about 1 hour to edit around 40 minutes of video down to the 6.5 minute movie that you see here:

Here are my initial thoughts about the D90…
D90 Pros:
- I love how easy it is to shoot the video and it is all on the SD card for quick transferring over to my computer. My High Def camcorder uses miniDV tapes which is a REAL pain to get the video to my computer. This isn’t an issue with video being on an SD card.
- 720p High Def quality is still awesome! Don’t tell me “Joe Six Pack” (yeah I’m bringing it back) can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p…
- A couple button clicks and you are recording high def video easily. It took my wife 2 minutes to get her groove on with recording video and applying her artistic eye on things. Don’t let her know but it only took me 1 minute ;p
- Quiet: The shutter isn’t loud when taking still captures.

D90 Cons:
- Camera shake when shooting video. The camera body is so light that it is easy to wiggle around.VR lenses will help but there aren’t too many in Nikon’s lens arsenal that are fast enough and worthy for all around use. My only VR lens is the 70-200mm and good luck keeping the camera steady hand holding that bad boy. I am using a monopod to steady the camera but a stabilizer will definitely be my next purchase. I may purchase the battery grip down the road to help weigh this camera down.
- Blur: The only fast and responsive way to focus is manually. The 3″ LCD screen helps to judge your focus but it isn’t always perfect. I like to use the shallow DOF that my lenses have so I really need to be dead on. I also like to do unique camera angles that have me looking at the LCD screen on quite the extreme angle. I look forward to how they will handle this is future camera models.
- Jello Video: The software design of things makes it so that the video appears to jiggle like jello when panning fast or shaking the camera. This isn’t found on camcorders. Hopefully a firmware update can fix this…
- External Mic: No way to add one so we’re stuck with the built in one which isn’t anything to write home about.
- Bumpy: Video tends to flicker or jump at times. If you don’t have some sort of stabilization in place then good luck! Even with stabilization, there still are some skips it seems.
- I miss the D700 feel. The buttons on the D90 are all over the place and it is missing a lot of great features that the D700 has. It is just a pain when switching between the two but hey, it’s a $2000 price difference so what do you expect? This is something that I can totally live without to save that much money.

So all in all, if you have no interest in using the video capabilities of your DSLR, whether it be the Nikon D90 or Canon 5D Mark II, at least give it a go and shoot some home movies. Nothing beats capturing video to help tell a story. I played this video back after editing it and got choked up. Would I get that if I had only images? Maybe… maybe not. I do believe that there is a place for both mediums but this really gave me a nice new view of things. My little background in videography helped as well.

Otherwise, you could utilize these capabilities to the max and begin offering video options as a service. Will these videos put videographers and cinematographers out of business? Not yet.

The photos coming out of this camera are really impressive. Nikon didn’t take the D300 sensor for use in this camera but they did model the D90’s sensor off the D300. So it is similar but different. Can we tell the difference? Probably not. The IQ (image quality) coming out of this camera is very impressive. I shot with it all around California and really got a lot of use out of it when needing that extra zoom. With this camera being in the 1.5x crop factor, I managed to get an effective 600mm zoom when pairing up the camera with a 2x teleconverter and my 70-200mm. As a matter of fact, I took these photos with that setup:

Nice and sharp, even with the teleconverter mounted. I was worried about that since I need some AF fine tuning on my D700 when using the teleconverter.

The files turned out quite nicely at ISO’s up to 1600. The D90 doesn’t have the extreme ISOs like the D3/D700 cameras but that is something that kept the camera’s cost down I am guessing…

So I am extremely happy with this camera. It replaced my camcorder and allows me to get more creative in ways that I couldn’t before. I do miss doing my video so this is a breath of fresh air and has me real excited. I find myself taking this camera with me when going out and especially when hanging out with the family for shots of Cameron. It is very small and portable so I can put it into my Lowepro Slingshot 200 bag along with my SB-900, extra batteries and a couple lenses (24-70mm f/2.8 and the 85mm f/1.8) with lots of room to spare!

If you are toying around with getting a point and shoot like a Nikon P6000 then I would recommend to just go the little extra and pick yourself up the D90. It is portable enough in my opinion without getting in the way and your photos will really shine. More than what a point and shoot can do that is for sure!

I think it is safe to say that RAW workflow is the standard for almost all professional photographers. Even with that, I am sure there are still many pros that choose to shoot JPEG files. There is nothing wrong with either method. If the shoe fits, right? I personally prefer a RAW workflow myself but to each his own right? Applications like Adobe Lightroom further sweeten the deal for me. Programs like this make RAW workflow a breeze. Batch processing allows you to correct one RAW file and process the same settings across multiple images. Presets can be created to recollect your favorite settings and effects even. These various methods all help save you time and allow you to spend more time behind the camera rather than editing photos on your computer. For JPEG shooters, this luxury really can only be done through the use of your in-camera settings or custom actions in Photoshop. And good luck if you need to make some drastic white balance corrections!

Your in-camera white balance setting is a great asset to JEPG and RAW shooter alike. Nailing an accurate white balance in the camera is one of the biggest time savers that I have noticed. The camera’s presets come close to accurate colors but many times they still require additional fine-tuning in order to get the most accurate colors. Auto white balance is fine for a snapshot but the white balance values are all over the place from shot to shot and good luck color correcting those JPEGS! In this article, I plan on going over how to obtain the best color directly in-camera and the tools which work for me.

Color correction was always a nightmare for me. This was my primary reason for shooting RAW for the longest time. My previous gray card targets like the Whibal and so on were ‘close’ but I always had too much magenta or something that looked just plain off. The RAW file has a lot more leverage when it comes to obtaining the best white balance and exposure correction. Now I don’t know about you but the perfectionist in me always questioned my white balance. I have purchased my share of gray cards and color checkers but even the most expensive one is no use when you forget to take it out of your camera bag!

Well, color correction issues became a figment of my imagination once I discovered the BRNO BaLens. The BaLens replaces your lens cap and comes in a variety of sizes so it is likely to fit any of your lenses. Its design is simple; a white translucent dome, which is about the size of a quarter, sits in the center of the cap and can be swapped out with a warmer portrait dome for warmer skin times if need be. The BaLens comes with a neutral and warm dome. The neutral one is ideal for any situation where the warmer one is most beneficial for skin tones and portraits. I prefer to just keep the neutral one on and simply dial in a little warmth to skin tones in post-production if need be.

It is very easy to switch out the different domes but I could just slide the Kelvin slider a couple hundred degrees and that seems to always to the trick for me. The BaLens did require some more steps to follow. It relies on using your test image to be stored as a white balance preset in the camera while gray cards can be captured and worked with in post-production. The steps require me to take the test shot using program mode, manual focus and auto white balance. I use Program mode only for this purpose simply because it takes care of the exposure for me without me having to fidget with my exposure. My camera is set up so it doesn’t take a picture unless focus is acquired so putting my lens into manual focus bypasses this. Because of the BaLens’ design, they recommend taking the test image using auto white balance. It’s quite straightforward from there. I have the BaLens lens cap on and take a photo of the main light source (or in between the two light sources if there are different casts to acquire an average balance). The last step is for me to use that image as the white balance preset value. Refer to your camera’s user manual for instructions on how to set the white balance preset. It sounds like a hassle but I can pull all this off in half a minute tops. Yeah the first couple tries seemed like I was all thumbs but the more you do it, the faster you get. For weddings or portraits, I just make sure to spark up a conversation or have my second shooter take them for a few images while I go through the white balance settings to make the shoot flow seamlessly.

You’re probably wondering what the results are like. Let’s take a look at the differences between my old means of white balance calibration and the new. If your computer monitor isn’t calibrated then don’t expect to really see any color accuracy since your monitor’s color is probably off in some way. I would recommend picking up a monitor calibration device if that is the case.

Image 1: Auto White Balance *WAY too cool.

Image 2: Whibal card: 3050K / -4 *better than auto but it isn’t quite there.

Image 3: BaLens Neutral: 3300K / -13 *notice how that -13 value is what fixes the magenta issue I complained about earlier.

Image 4: BaLens Warm: 3350K / -11 *notice the slight variation in temperature readings. This one wins it for me.

*NOTE: Check out these images for better examples of what the BaLens can do: http://www.michaelalanphoto.net/?p=137

Image 5: Lightroom WB Dropper Tool: 3100K / -2 * Close, but still too much magenta.

There definitely wasn’t much of a difference is the Kelvin temperature but look at the differences in the tint. As mentioned a couple times before, I always noticed that my images had too much of a magenta cast to them after using my other white balance correction methods. This was always bothersome to me and caused me to always be “pixel peeping”. The BaLens did an amazing job of taking care of this for me automatically. FINALLY!

So long story short, the BaLens out performs all my other white balance targets. Are there better white balance targets out there? Probably. Are they as easy to use and convenient as the BaLens? Probably not.

I hope this article was useful to you. As always feel free to get in touch with me by commenting below or register with the inLIGHTin Forum and we can chat about all things photography there. Thanks for reading and take care!

You can purchase the BRNO BaLens at the following locations:
www.balens.ca
http://amplis.com
or at any of these other fine retailers:
HERE

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I met Sandesh Gulchand in Toronto July of 2008 while I was shooting a wedding. We met through a friend of a friend and you know how that goes. Sandesh was very approachable and his sense of humor was something that I haven’t forgotten even to this day. He is relatively new to the photography world but his hard work, perseverence and constant inLIGHTin activity has helped him grow so much in such a short amount of time. So with that, I present Sandesh Gulchand as March’s Member of the Month!

		What’s one word that describes yourself? Sandesh Gulchand: Limitless…. yes I’m also a bit arrogant… =) What’s your businesses primary area of photography? SG: Portraits and small event coverage. I plan on eventually getting into wedding photography after I get some more experience in covering smaller events. When did your photographic journey start? SG: I have been a photographer since December 25th, 2007. Ok so I remember the actual date. It was Christmas and just the night before I was taking some pictures with my family’s point and shoot. The next day (Christmas) I uploaded the pictures and wondered why the pictures looked so plain compared to the ones that I would see published in a magazine. So I decided to go to the mother of all modern knowledge (Google) in order to get to the bottom of this question. It is then that I realized that photography was much more than the Auto setting. I then read the manual front to end that same day, and luckily, our camera was a Canon Powershot that had all the manual modes. So that night I experimented with some of the manual modes and since then photography has been my lover and best friend in life…. =) I started my business about two weeks ago…lol. No, seriously literally started offering professional services about two weeks ago. Just on a side note, the inLIGHTin forum has been instrumental in getting me through this process. These guys are great and have so much information and experience that they are willing to share, that I’m sure if I had to learn some of this stuff the hard way, it would cost me a lot of money. (So if you’re a beginner or someone that doesn’t think they know everything there is to know about photography, the price of the workshop is absolutely worth it….)
What first sparked your interest in photography? SG: I think I answered this above, but it was the realization that photography was an art form and each picture is a process of creation that has the potential to carry over all the emotions of the moment to the person ultimately viewing it. What made you decide to pursue a career in photography? SG: All the comments from friends and family sounding something like: “You’re getting really good at this. You should do this professionally.” How would you best describe yourself and your photographic style? SG: I would describe my style as raw (no not camera raw…lol). I like my pictures to have a raw edge to them that almost looks like they were taken by someone that didn’t know what they were doing. But I feel the raw edge adds an extra element of reality to the picture that makes you feel like you’re right there in the moment. What do you feel separates yourself from other photographers in your same profession? SG: Passion. I’ve met many photographers that take pictures because it’s a job. Every time I put the camera to my eye, I feel a sense of excitement that never fails to remind me of how much I love the art of photography. What other photographer or photographers have been a big inspiration to you? SG: I’ve been mostly influenced by David Hobby’s work. His work is a perfect representation of creating a picture, rather than just showing up and pressing a shutter release. What else motivates and inspires you? SG: It sounds a little strange, but I’m also motivated by frustration. The frustration of life motivates me to pursue photography because when I hold my camera to take a picture I’m free and have no worry in the world. What does a typical day of yours involve? SG: A: Being a full time Business Management student, my day typically starts at 6am. Travel to my campus that is about an hour away from home, do all the typical school related stuff like sit in a boring lecture hall with a dinosaur at the front talking about corporate finance while I sitting there reading Photography blogs, and anything related to photography I find interesting. Yes I’m the type of student that has to go home and learn everything on my own out of a book. I try to shoot whenever I can, that is any where I go. My nickname among my friends is the paparazzi because I’m always carrying my camera. Q: Do you have anyone else working for you? Do you outsource your work? If so then what do you primarily outsource? (i.e. printing, albums, books, graphic design, etc.) SG: Right now I have all my pictures hosted on Zenfolio and I primarily do my printing through Mpix. What is your absolute favorite photo that you have ever taken and why? SG: My favorite picture changes like every two days, but right now, my favorite is a picture I shot in Toronto, during a fireworks show that the city puts on every year. Honestly, I don’t know why its my favorite, the only explanation I can offer is that it makes me feel like I’m still there whenever I look at it and also it’s just *$$^$) cool. What advice can you offer other pros out there to take their business to the next level? MB: The moment you think your on top, keep looking up your only half way there! What camera equipment are you currently shooting with? SG: Right now I shoot with a Canon Rebel XTi. I use the 18-55 kit lens as an all purpose and I use a 50mm Prime for all my portraits. I’m planning to upgrade the kit lens to the 24-70 USM soon, since the kit lens is a piece of $^!#. What’s your lens of choice? SG: Canon 24-70 f2.8 L Where can we see some more of your work? MB: www.svgphoto.zenfolio.com is my web site and you can also see my work on Facebook here: SVG|Photography on Facebook.

Thank you Sandesh for taking the time out for the interview and also for also being a great friend!

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