One of the side conversations that I had surrounded Nikon color, the “beater camera” post that I put up a few  days ago, and believe it or not conversations about one of my personal “beater” cameras. The Nikon D2H – The beast. There are a lot of shooters out there that are not super familiar with this camera except that they know it is “only” 4.1 megapixels. Some new found buddies wanted to know if I really still shoot it and why I would ever shoot it when doing workshops, etc. etc.

Well at the risk of repeating myself I will give you a random bunch of thoughts on this camera and why I still shoot it. Not as my main camera but just for the heck of it. All of the photos in this post are 100% crops of images that I shot very quickly – I was shooting on the same days and shooting freehand full length and 3/4 length shots. These are NOT tripod shots of head shots they are really small portions of the 4 megapixel frame. So the lighting is optimized for 3/4 length and full length shots and is a bit “off” for a head shot.

The D2H was and still is one of the most responsive cameras ever made. It feels so close to my D3 you cannot tell. You turn it on and shoot. Shoot shoot shoot and shoot some more. It takes the same batteries as my D3′s. I dare you to wear out the battery on the D2H – there is a good chance it will wear you out first. The focusing is fantastic. Even if you shoot wide open at large apertures. Fast – Fast – Fast.

The files are small – even RAW files – JPGs are tiny. When I tether the camera via wireless the images show up almost as fast as I shoot on a giant monitor that I use for demos. Why the heck would I want bigger files to do that – they are already 2x as big as HD anyway. Oh and the files look fantastic – “tonality” is awesome. Color is awesome. They look fantastic at ISO 200 and I rarely need more – actually never – in a lighting workshop. I could actually use less. Especially when I mix flash with full sun. The only place this camera “fails” is at high ISO or when you need a big big file.

This is the very first digital camera that I ever owned that I took seriously. When I bought it Iwas shooting mostly medium and large format film for my commercial work. The imagesfrom this camera looked like film. Really. I actually used this camera for some commercial work that was not destined for larger print sizes. Yep no kidding. I shot film and I shot the D2H on most occasions. I really didn’t care too too much about the 4 megapixels I cared much more about the ability to differentiate tones and capture color that was out of the realm of possibility for digital at the time. Some cameras still have issues with certain colors and differentiating subtle hues within troublesome ranges. When I shoot color I care about color.

These crops are from the out of Camera JPGs with NOTHING done to them. The camera settings were “flat”. Normal, normal, normal, normal – across the board. 80% were color mode I and the other 20% were color mode III. You can tell which ones where which as they are night and day different color. The reason they look warm is because my lights are 5500K  - my camera was set to 6300K. That is the equivalent of somewhere between an 81 and 85 series warming filter in sunlight. No problem If I want neutral color – I shot RAW+JPG.

The biggest thing about this camera was the color and the ability to differentiate tones – a year or two later I bought a Hasselblad H1D with a Leaf back it had great color as well. It was not nearly as fast – sometimes that is way more important. The biggest workshop mistake I ever made was using that camera when it was brand new – nobody wanted to talk about topics that mattered. Everyone wanted to talk about that camera. That is another reason that I use the D2H – nobody gives a crap about that beater. The other fantastic thing about the D2H was and is how it handled highlights – sort of “film like” – yes you can still blow highlights – but it looked a whole lot like slide film. No funky strange colors and even when the highlights went through the roof the transitions did not look at all “digital”. Some of the colors and the values they are rendered at in these photos used to throw other digital cameras into fits and looked horrible – not the D2H. Yes the D2x is just as good, so is the D3. But hey this was way back in 2004. That is like ancient times in digital.

The funny part is that the D2 cameras handle and feel exactly like the D3 cameras. Except the D2H is a tad lighter – another reason it is one of my favorite beater cameras. I know what you are thinking – it is not a light camera – no it isn’t but… If you stick a vertical grip on other cameras it is just as heavy and they are not nearly as comfortable as the D2H. Comfort, speed, good color. decent dynamic range, sharp, did I mention fast. Why wouldn’t I shoot this camera in workshops.

This is probably my favorite beater camera – you don’t have a beater camera that you can use to train yourself not to be so worried about your camera. Get one of these. You can probably get them for like 200 bucks. I doubt used ones are broken – even if they are ugly. These things are like hammers. As a bonus for your 200 bucks you will get to see what kind of difference shooting a pro body is like vs. a not pro body. I am serious on this point. If you have a D5000 or a D80 or something like that and have ever wondered why people pay a lot more money for a camera that cannot really do a whole lot “more” technically you will know after shooting a $200 beat up D2H. This thing is so much faster and more responsive – so much more comfortable and the controls are so much better there will not be any doubt in your mind as to “why”. Of course that may make no difference in your images. Then again it might make a world of difference and suddenly you will find yourself in the market for a used D2x – also a song or a used D3 in a year instead of the next biggest baddest D5002 with 25 megapixels and HD video.

Well – there you have it. I know that is a bunch of strange stuff but maybe it will be some food for thought for a couple of folks out there one way or another. It may also give you an idea of why I am such a crazed lunatic when it comes to the perfect work-flow tool (Aperture) that screws up the perfect colors on my perfect camera (Nikons). Sane folks just accept things – I do not and cannot accept things. I must change reality and bend it to my will.

Any other D2H questions?

RB

I am a little picky – I admit it. I think 99% of commercial images published today are at best mediocre – formulaic – flat – juiced up in PS. I blame the audience for being so… accepting of what amounts to juiced up crappy images shot with not much care nor attention to detail. So what kind of glue was he on when he shot these images? Here is the blog post if you want to learn how NOT to position your lights, unfortunately he does not detail how he set his camera and gelled the lights to get one of the most horrific color balances I have ever seen between background, fill, and key.

Is it me? Are you this lax? I sure hope you can see what has me all twisted up here.

RB

One of the things that I use automatically are the modifier keys when it is appropriate. I forget to explicitly mention them in concert with the adjustment tools until someone reminds me. Like a in a One On One Aperture help session I was having the other day. Since it is fresh in my mind I thought I would introduce you or at least remind you about the adjustment controls and some tricks they have when used with the command, option, and shift.

First off a lot of the adjustment controls do not dead end where the slider stops. They go beyond the slider range either by typing in a number or holding down the left mouse button and dragging over the number. Try them yourself if you need more range out of an adjustment in a special circumstance. Here is a partial list.

• Exposure
• Brightness
• The color controls – specifically hue, luminance, and range
• Vignette – amount
• White balance
• Contrast
• Saturation
• Noise reduction – yep even this one.

With most of the sliders and when dragging over the number value for that adjustment the shift and option modifier keys speed up or slow down how fast the adjustment changes. These are really useful for both cranking things through the roof with shift or very fine tuning with option.

The command key will show you “blown” channels via a color coded display if you hold it down while dragging certain controls – it can really help. It is probably most useful with exposure and recovery. Try it – see if for yourself. If you forgot about these make it a point to use some of the adjustment “extras” that are useful to you for everything to special effects with the vignette and noise reduction to extremely fine control with the color sliders and option drag.

RB

Personally I think the default Capture One Pro settings for “film curve” and the default sharpening and saturation are way over the top but that first impression kills – doesn’t it. This became a huge “issue” when a lot of people new to photography in general went digital and then went “serious” and started shooting RAW – prior to that contrast curve, default edge sharpening, and color saturation were not the gold standard for evaluating RAW conversion quality or image quality. In fact those things get in the way to really evaluate a RAW converter.

To be blunt – all of the major vendor’s RAW converters here today in 2010 are pretty darn “good”. So are the sensors. Apple’s is actually in the top tier in terms of “goodness”. The screen shot at the top is a RAW conversion from a readers D700. The left image is Aperture, the right one is Capture One Pro. I turned the tables on this a bit because I decided to leave the “default” curve and saturation blow the whites in Capture One and I turned off the default unsharp mask in Capture One – I meanwhile added three adjustments in about 5 seconds to juice up the Aperture conversion – really less than 5 seconds but any of you could do it in 5 seconds. I further gilded the lilly by adding a very subtile edge sharpen block while leaving the Capture One turned off.

Not really my taste in color, etc. but you can get pretty much anything you want from Aperture’s RAW converter – save the adjustment as a “preset” in an album of presets that you like as a “default” and stamp them on your images when imported in like 1.285 seconds. Still way way faster than Capture One Pro that is as slow as a dog. The screen shot in the text is the way the RAW NEF came into Aperture. This is NOT how you evaluate RAW converter “quality and goodness”

RB

Ps. F.C. If you want me to take your image down I will just drop me a note.

First I had about the same number of emails that agreed with my dissatisfaction as asked me what I was so upset about. Here is the bottom line for all of those out there asking what I am so upset about Aperture’s continued NEF horribleness. One word – COLOR. A picture is worth a thousand words so here are a couple.

The image at the top of the post is every single relevant in camera image control of a so-so camera compared to the latest greatest, the D200, set at normal, normal, normal, etc. So this means that Capture NX2 does nothing to soup up the image – this as “normal” as it gets using the default NX2 RAW conversion. Other shooting details Auto WB, ISO 1600, first thing that caught my eye hand held not even steady about 5 minutes ago.

Here is the default Aperture RAW conversion

Here is the NX2 conversion with one thing changed – a Nikon Picture Control set to vivid.

If you are asking what’s the big deal? Download the images and look at them side by side. Most of you can probably see the huge difference in the thumbnails. Which one is the crappiest? The Aperture default conversion. Why is it a big deal that it is crappy? My most succinct answers are as follows:

1. A lot of this is caused by a huge difference in WB and there is no easy way to make a universal correction to any one camera let alone a universal correction across a couple of different NEF files produced by different camera models. Every different lighting temperature takes a completely different set of adjustments. Even if there was a good way to set this as an incremental set of change the WB by X amount for a single NEF file type it wouldn’t matter because Aperture seems to “guess” differently on every image seeming to ignore WB settings. This really sucks for both Auto WB people that shoot in lighting that is all over the map as well as preset WB people that use a specific camera setting under multiple different controlled lighting conditions. I swear figuring this out is way worse to get good predictable color than when I shot film and had to figure out filtration/lights/gels for a new film. Or it’s about the same if you want consistent results without bit twiddling to get there.
2. Even with WB set dead neutral on the same target and the same lighting color is way way way off in ways so strange that it is extremely difficult to correct with one set of preset color adjustments – no it isn’t just different – it is wrong. Tie this in with the WB situation and you have to fool around a lot to get good color. Not brighter, not more saturated, good color. Apple – get the freaking WB and color right for NEF’s or I am definitely outta here.

The other thing that I continue to whine about is picture control. Now I cannot take full advantage of Nikon picture control without using NX2 but I can get real close using ACR in it’s present incarnation. I think I have explained this before but I will do it again briefly for those that are not familiar. Nikon picture control is way more than a couple of presets. They are profiles that are applied either in-camera to the JPG’s and are recored as metadata in the RAW file that gets interpreted and applied in NX2 but it does not end there. Picture control settings match across bodies. Yep if I take my old D2 series cameras and apply a Nikon picture control to the NEF files the color and contrast are virtually identical to my brand new D3 with the same picture control. Great concept. If you don’t care for the built in picture controls you can make your own, upload them to newer cameras if you want (you don’t have to if you shoot RAW) and voila your own color/tone curves that are completely reproducable across all NEF’s, very very cool. If you have a newer camera they will even be applied in-camera to the JPG’s.

Adobe thought this was cool to so now ACR has camera profiles. You can’t upload them to the camera but they work in concept the same way. To prove that they work they give you the exact same “camera profiles” for NEF files that Nikon supplies as “picture controls” and they match unbelievably closely. Yep they match across Nikon camera bodies as well. Theoretically you could actually create a custom camera profile across different brands as well. It is way more work than creating a picture control because you have to do all the work but it is possible.

If Adobe can do it then so can Apple or at least match the freaking WB and default color response. As a Nikon shooter this is getting really really old. Maybe some more regarding some other conversations that were generated by that post as well as my current existential crisis tomorrow.

Any questions?

RB

1. I either want Adobe’s RAW procesng engine and camera profiles or I want Apple to do something at least as good. I am a Nikon shooter and the state of afairs in NEF processing in Aperture sucks. Screw debating about the merits of this and that, screw pixel peeping. I like the color I get from NX2 and now from ACR. I like knowing how my WB is going to interact with color. Apple’s RAW engine has gone nowhere in most respects with NEF’s. I look at a new camera body the way I used to look at a new film back in the day – A giant pain in the ass. Apple your NEF processing blows and I am sick and tired of having to screw around to get my color the way I want it. See the image at the top of the post – that is NX2 picture control standard – here is the Aperture default.
2. Aperture’s keyword and metadata tools were freaking great – back in version 1.0 too bad they have gone absolutely nowhere. For god’s sake keyword hierarchies are great. To freaking bad Apple can find their way clear to find a freaking way to freaking put a freaking G.D. check-freaking-box to embed all of the freaking hierarchy in exported images. This sucks. Screw this I am freaking tired of using my piece of freaking crap script to do this in a backwards dumb ass way. While you are adding the check box think about doing something innovative too. Like maybe keyword synonyms, maybe one upping Lightroom and allowing you to embed not only the primary hierarchy but all of the synonyms for all of the keywords too. Now this would be a huge win for people that actually shoot stock. Heck it’s great as a search tool too. WTF Oh and give some real support for XMP – it is amazing how easy it is to get out of Aperture why not make it easy to get XMP in and not just once but some sort of sync mechanizm.
3. Printing is and has been hopelessly broken since V2. Let’s add to the fact that the printing features are not even useful for anything but a print either. We are talking about Aperture prints going wonky without rhym or reason. Yes I know what I am doing. Yes I have a backwards ass way of fixing it by trashing this and that and then waving some chicken bones to get printing to work again but again WTF? Let’s assume that half of the printing issues that come up on the support forum are idiots that have no idea what they are doing. Okay that’s 6,349 per day divided by 2 for the idiot factor and we’ll round down for the anecdoteal factor we’re left with 3000 issues per day. This is broken. Hey while you are at it take a look at Lightroom printing.
4. Please let me select and manipulate more than one freaking project at a time in the inspector, please, please. I promise if I accidently delete more than one instead of accidently deleting only one I will not call support and blame you guys.
5. Give the book tool some love. I was a great start with V1 but has also gone nowhere. It still has potential and may be the only reason I still use Aperture but…
6. Gimme some local adjustmens like Lightroom only way better.
7. Gimme a really good surprise like Photomagico integrated only better. Like a way way better slideshow and a way not only to show them but output them to a bunch of different places really easy. Sort of a book tool for slideshows, you know Photomagico integrated only better.
8. Either get rid of the web tools or make them do something useful and really cool. Not like iWeb, iWeb sucks. Gimme some web tools that really really help somebody that does photography and web stuff more than like twice a year.
9. Not that I am a big HDR fan but you would surprise everyone if you gave the world a reall kickass state of the art and easy to use HDR toolset integrated with Aperture and maybe some stitching stuff to go along with it.
10. Although not really on my make or break list I will through in a bone for some additional file management and syncronization features. Just make sure that if you must include some idiotic mobile me sync crap that you help the rest of us that deal with a laptop and a main library to speed things up with easy but sophisticated and controlable features that are not broken when mobile me is broken.

There it is that is my list, anythiing surprising to all of you folks out there? Anything that I missed that you guys thing absolutely must be in the next Aperture? If so let me know what you think. I swear if Apple goes and puts some dumb ass mobile me shit and faces in there or some asinine mapping crap that does me no good on a daily basis (and most other people that actually use this stuff more than the 5 minute in store demo) I will be done with the product, I swear I will. I will be done if there is just some freaking window dressing and no meat that helps me spend less time and produce better quality.

Over and out.

RB

If anyone would like to post the results please do so in comments on this post – may be just a link to the JPG along with your approach in Aperture. I will do the same as soon as we get a couple of adventuresome soles to kick it off. I am positive we will all learn a thing or two even if it is different approaches to get to the same/similar places.

RB