Being the ever color vigilant – I noticed something about the updates for the latest greatest ACR (supported versions) on some (not all Nikon NEF files). I am going to show you a camera that is near and dear to my heart and one that now seems to be broken – from my earlier testing and memory – it used to work in ACR 4.5, and 5 – The D200.

Let’s take a look at three quick and dirty conversions, first up is the gold standard NX2 rendering daylight WB (not as shot) and Picture Control Standard.

Next up is ACR 5 using the same profiles, and daylight WB applied -updated with the latest updates – ooops what happened?

Finally Aperture 3 with my patented D200 NEF presets and my ultra secret sauce daylight WB preset.

Hmmm – looks like my way is now the winner. Maybe I should work on the presets some more like with curves vs the brightness/contrast sliders and start charging like ten bucks

RB

I got this one with the lens shown for $70 including shipping! The film rails, pressure place and all of the internals are pristine – the viewfinder is cleaner than my D3- no crap. I wish I had the facilities to take a picture so you could see. Think daughter No. 1 will like it? I hope so I am giving it to her tomorrow with an old tripod, a couple of rolls of TRI-X, PLUS-X, and maybe that Vivatar 17-28 that I got for free. I figured she might considering how much fun she is having with that Fuji Instax she bought a couple of weeks ago – that and she asked me to teach her to make black and white prints.

If you are not familiar with the FM – think Pentax K1000 only better typical Nikon build quality and ruggedness. The really cool thing that the FM can do is mount Non-AI lenses – the FM2 cannot.

RB

Here is a perfect example – Nikon FM2 cameras are extremely plentiful on eBay they come and go very quickly. Hundreds of them at any given time. the market for them is soft – as is the same for 99% of all film cameras that anyone would actually use. You can plan ongrabbing a good example for about 200 bucks some go higher – a lot higher – some go lower. Black examples which are also plentiful go for a couple bucks more – like $20 bucks. Most of these cameras have been used – even if they are really ugly they probably work well. How much did I get mine for? Ready…. Sit down…. $100, actually $109 plus $12 insured tracked USPS shipping.

Why? Timing for one but more importantly – crappy description and crappy eBay photography that made it look like every other FM2 but worse. The description was a typical bullshit – “This is not mine, I am selling it for a friend…” blah blah blah that made you think this guy was weaseling about something – it said nothing about the camera condition and most of the description was about the Vivitar wide angle zoom lens that was sort of broken but worked fine (missing rubber focus grip). Even though the photography was some of the worst point and shoot on camera flash ultra distorted badly exposed full of hotspots awful stuff I have ever seen in a tiny tiny thumbnail size – I used the bad photography to my advantage – I could see that a couple of the areas of FM/FE/FM2 type cameras that are normally worn were in fantastic shape – the paint around the hinge of the film back is typically chipped – just from open and closing the back. Not a big deal all of them are like that – this one wasn’t. That was about all I could tell from the truly off putting ugliness of the photos. So… I watched and with 5 minutes left it was only at $55 so I put in a bid that I would be willing to pay – not $56 but $150 – even if it was a working beater it was worth that you can turn them around all day for $150 with decent pictures and description, probably more. But hey I actually use these things (I have like 3 of them one of which I bought new the other two are eBay specials).

Would you buy this for $100? I swear this is the cleanest FM2 I have ever seen that has actually been used – at all. Camera store demos look worse than this. The photos you see are un-retouched – strait D200 JPEG files resized in Aperture 3. No shit. You want to see them at 100% – just ask. I wanted you to see what I see. The yellow film box lid is mine – I loaded it up with film and am going to burn and develop a roll tomorrow. If I see another one like this for anywhere near this price or even the price I entered as my maximum bid I will buy it in a heartbeat – yes that will mean I will have 4 of them. Who cares at this price – I will give them away as gifts at one of my workshops or something.

As for the photos – I didn’t even dust it or my lens off I just set up an SB-800 bounced  off the wall and ceiling so I was getting the light from a 45 and strong fill from the top. I used myleather char and it’s arms as a backdrop and sort of black cards on the sides so not only for decent lighting but so you couldn’t see the hideous mess of a man-cave I spend time in.

Here is the really funny thing – load this thing up with Velvia and it will take fantastic images that will give you D3x quality – or better. Do what I do and chuck some B+W TRI-X in there and it will give you fantastic images – the hell with the grain.

Thoughts?

RB

I will work on other cameras as time permits but until then I made a new category for all of the Nikon related Aperture 3 stuff – it is under the series block. This is to make it easier to find your camera or info you are interested in since nobody used the search box.

Consider this a lame first step to the Nikon Aperture 3 user community that I put out the little survey on.

RB

Ps. If you have any Nikon/Aperture presets or observations feel free to comment or shoot me an email and I will be glad to share them with the billions of other Nikon shooters out there on this site.

For your enjoyment and amusement.

RB

Okay – I am done with that. WB is still wrong and the WB “presets” included with Aperture 3 are even worse yet. I have no idea why the Daylight WB preset adds a bunch of magenta. Do you? Doesn’t seem to work for any of my files – Nikon or not. Hmmmm. Maybe they got that one confused with the “Make this look like an old Agfa chrome that has laid around for 50 years” preset. I am still trying to figure the rest of them out and what kind of crack the Apple dude that made them was on.

Moving on to Non-Apple white balance topics one of the things that surprised me when discussing color rendition with a lot of readers out there was a really basic understanding of color temperatures in general. Yea everyone knows what WB is and everyone has bought those stupid little overpriced targets that they can waste time screwing with while missing the shot. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about a very basic understanding of the color temperature of light that they are actually shooting in and what settings they “should use”.

This is not a creative use of white balance discussion. This is the opposite. There are plenty of other “creative use” and practical WB tips that I have posted – look them up. This is a couple of things that are NEED TO KNOW.

First off – When you use studio strobes it is NOT daylight WB. When you use little Nikon flashes it is NOT the same color temp as most studio strobes. The “flash” setting on Nikon cameras has nothing to do with studio strobe color temperature. Further more the “5400K” that Nikon lists as the color temp for that setting might be correct but they don’t mention that it also ratchets the entire thing way toward magenta as well.

Okay so now you know all the stuff you thought was the same is entirely different. What is what? Let’s start with Daylight. Nikon defines daylight WB as 5200K – this is an okay setting but reality is that Daylight has a range of color temps depending on the time of the year, time of the day, and atmospheric conditions. Does this mean you shouldn’t use that setting? No – in fact using it will ensure that you capture the color of the light relative to that setting. This might be a fantastic thing depending on the light vs. Auto WB neutralizing it. Depends on the image – if you are shooting RAW I would rather shoot at one setting in one lighting condition rather than have WB all over the map by a few point here and there.

Studio strobes – the vast majority of studio strobes are 5500K or 5600K. They are different. If you buy really good strobes the tubes will be matched on color – this is important. If you shoot with your camera on daylight when using studio strobes your images will be too blue. If you adjust them after the fact and set them to “Daylight” they will be too blue. If you use the Nikon “Flash” setting they will be a tiny bit too blue and way too magenta/pink. Only use the Nikon “Flash” setting with SB’s and then it is not usually the best thing to do.

Hope that clears a few things up for Nikon shooters. Oh – the numbers displayed in Aperture are way way way wrong no matter what setting you used in your camera – that is really funny since if you shoot using a “setting” the EXIF tells you in plain english what the numbers were. Just to illustrate some differences here the image at the top of the post was shot at 6300K using 5500K lights. The next image down is the same one rendered as “Daylight”. The one after that is at the correct color temperature of 5500K – that one is dead neutral. The next one is using the Nikon “Flash” WB setting and finally we have what Apple thinks things should look like from a WB perspective as “daylight”

RB

As for the Nikon D300 – this is a camera I do not own and I have received very few NEF files so my test images are rather limited. Consider these two picture controls a draft – Standard and Landscape. I really would like some feedback from those of you that try them as they are definitely work in progress. The really funny thing is that Apple seems to get the colors wrong consistently but swings wildly on the amounts wrong as well as huge differences in default contrast with cameras – I guess too many Nikon shooters were complaining the defaults were too flat so Apple went the reverse on the D300 – from the samples I have it looks like the default Apple conversion for the D300 is really juiced up compared to the NX2 picture controls.

Anyway – here they are. The more feedback I get and the more files the better they will be. I have found that a lot of people are using my D200 presets for various Nikon cameras with some degree of “success” – I can tell you for a fact that they are WRONG for just about every other popular Nikon. Not as wrong as Aperture defaults but wrong. Also note that I did not include the yellow correction for the D200 presets because of a nasty Yellow – Green cross over. I will put a modified version or both versions out there soon.

On another note – I have test some other presets for Nikon picture control settings that are being sold on the market – I am unimpressed. I took a look at these and there is nothing in there that is remotely correct (for any NEF files). If any of you know of anything actually decent point us all that way. They do things like boost the saturation on the default blue and default green – that’s it. (Really – you are going to charge money for that? You’re kidding right?)

RB

Ps. I know these are way wrong – I want some examples that are way off so I can correct them. I have like 4 different scenes for the D300 right now.

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

First of all if you have been reading my posts for more than a week you have probably picked up on my own personal frustration with this situation. Actually frustration is not the word – maybe bewilderment, rage, disdain, hopelessness, anger, despair  on and on. Over the last few months I have been taking a “glass is half full point of view” on it and trying to work through it as I have done in the past. Hence screwing with the NEF presets for Aperture 3.

There are a lot of people that feel that NX2 produces sharper, snappier files – I am not on board with this thought process – my personal opinion is overall contrast, definition, and sharpness are idiotically easy to deal with. This is really not the source of my frustration – my amazement is how the hell Apple can possibly get the color so very very very WRONG. If it were a simple fix for the color I would not complain – really. I am not talking about all of the color being skewed one way nor am I talking about saturation. I am talking about the color hue values being so far wrong in seemingly random ways it is impossible to believe that it is not on purpose.

I used to give Apple a pass on this when every other RAW converter out there had similar issues with NEF files. Seems just about everyone including Adobe has cracked the code on this about 2 years ago. Apple is a very very rich company with a ton of cash in reserve – why the hell can’t they hire two or three decent engineers and on color expert to fix this once and for all. The funny thing is almost all NEF files have the same exact issues. Five year old cameras have similar issues (just worse) than brand new ones. Brand new ones vary from one model to the next in the specific wrong-ness values. They play with the overall tone curve a little here and a little there – randomly but they seem clueless about the color issue.

So my official position on this is…

WTF

RB

With Aperture 3 the best bet is just to make a few presets for the lenses you use – not a big deal since you can search by lens and batch apply the preset. No need to do it manually all the time. Check out the screenshot at the top – on the left is with the correction. On the right w/o. If you do not know what to look for look at the edge of the hull against the sky and the chrome against the sky – it is well hidden because it is the cyan variety but I think it is a night and day difference.

RB