In addition to adding ads to this forum in the middle of posts, is DxO trying to monetize it by turning it into a builders’ fair?
I remember @mikemyers criticizing me for once quoting the brand of my camera on the pretext that I’d come here to advertise.
Times have changed …
Hmm… I saw that ad after making my last post, but didn’t know why it showed up, or how to remove it. Annoying.
“nano texture”… I will remember.
I don’t remember this at all. I try to avoid seeing ads, and seeing the ad for DxO optics modules, still up above, is annoying, but I have no idea how to turn them off.
Waxholm fortress that stopped Stockholm from being attacked by the Danish fleet in the sixteen houndreds and the Russian fleet in the seventeenhoundreds.
No, it is not the same boat on the to pictures in my earlier post. These older boats don´t get stuck normally (sometimes when it´s bad they just don´t go to certain jetties but it happens up north but there we have a few really big very specialized icebreakers that escorts convoys of cargo ships. I have a childhood friend working on one of these state icebreakers.
Some of the Waxholm -boats like Waxholm 1 have cranes and are used to transport all sorts of goods throughout the 30 000 islands out here. People at some of the more remote and isolated islands with no regular boat traffic get to go by helicopter once a week here in the winter time.
Usually no problems with my cameras lubrication, because of the cold but if you take in a camera from -15 degrees into a warm and humid restaurant it might be a bad idea to switch the lens there before it gets warm because of condensation that might occur on glas, mirrors and sensors.
Minus 15 is not so bad but when it gets down to minus 30 in the Stockholm and Vaxholm area (last time in the eighties) it is far more of a problem than in the north because it is much more humid here normally. Last time that happened was in the eighties. It is easy to get nose and cheek frost bites then especially when like this winter when there is very strong winds too. In Lapland we had a simultaneous hurricane with over 40 meters/sekond heavy snowfall just a few weeks ago. Then it might look like last year in March when you wake up :-).
Our infrastructure in our area is not really built to cope with -30 temperatures for longer periods. In a school I worked in the eighties the roof isolation was to poor to take -30 for days, so the water in the sprinkler system on the inside of the roof froze and the pipes burst and the big locker room of the school was flooded and turned into an icerink. The school was closed for three days and the pupils were overjoyed :-).
Heavy snowfalls caused a long stop on one of our main roads in the very south and 200 km north is a place at the coast that use to get enormous amounts of snow (called snow canons). Once maybe 15 years ago they got more than 130-140 cm snow in just a day or two. It was so much that people could not even recognize their cars. When that happen there is nothing else than the army’s band wagons that helps. We are lucky to never get isolated since we have car ferries both to the west and east of our island.
You have to see this video from that place called Gävle 1988
Se de makalösa bilderna från snökaoset i Gävle | SVT Nyheter
The snow is not really a big problem (people have often down jackets and gloves without fingers and good boots with spikes under, the real killer is the ice, especially when we get soft powder snow on top of really slippery ice and don´t use spikes. Many old people get their femoral necks broken and some never recovers. some people die every year from icicles that falls from the top of the roofs especially in the sidewalks of the city streets.
Another example of how peculiar the light can be here - here an example from the dark 28th November of 2018. It is both a blue sky and a strange darkness. Picture taken 8:48 in the morning.
At a roundabout close to Rindö School some of our more creative Rindö-children in Elementary School has just about finished their snow art exhibition.
Interesting colors in some of your photos. Some, such as the second, third, and last photo, look like a natural scene that I probably would have seen had I been standing there. Others, like the first, and 4th photos, look (to me) like you went out of your way to capture those beautiful colors. Especially the next to last photo, which I suspect is just like what you saw with your eyes, but without realizing the whole story, I might have thought to be manipulated. …on the one hand, I would have loved the opportunity to be there… …but on the other hand, I think I would be miserable because of how cold, and probably windy, it is. I REally love that next to last photo. Since I’m sure you didn’t manipulate it, I consider it an amazing scene!
Did you do anything special in the camera, or in PhotoLab, to bring out those beautiful colors?
Your last photo, then through a windshield - those are the colors I would have expected - I feel cold just looking at it!
An update on my electronic flash setup. Perhaps I’m just dense, or perhaps I don’t recognize the “obvious”, but I had several hours of free time today, and I wanted to learn how to configure my flash - calling Nikon Tech Support was my first idea.
Wasted effort - the fellow at Nikon kept giving me irrelevant information, and then told me they don’t have any more paper manuals (understood, the flash is from the early 1980’s). Then he told me a lot of stuff that made no sense to me. He told me he would send me the latest manual, but the things he described on certain pages were nowhere to be seen on my own old paper manual. The manual he sent me just got me an error message that the document no longer exists. Oh well.
Next was to call B&H Photo, and the sales person I spoke to had no idea of what to do in what order. The best thing he told me was to go to the B&H web page near the top of the page and type: “Video Chat”.
This brings up the following, and anyone can select Photography, which will eventually start up a Video Chat with an expert at photography questions. I need to remember this for the future. Anyway, here’s a screen capture:
Finally, the answers, for Nikon flashes:
At the top of the information screen on the back of the flash, it will likely have a couple of flash icons, followed by TTL. The TTL means through the lens, so the flash is automatically coming up with settings good for a whatever it sees being captured.
The other main option has the flash icons, then TTL and then BL. …where BL stands for “Back Lit”. This is what I needed in India, where the distant view was quite bright, and the people standing in front of me were all very dark.
I’m sure there is a LOT more to be learned just for basic flash photography, and I now know there is a HUGE amount of other stuff I should learn, and if I’m ever going to create good photos using flash lighting, I probably need to get more flash units, and use the flash on my camera as a “master” to tell all the “slave” flashes when to fire.
All those links up above about creative lighting - I’d like to learn some of that too, but not until I’ve learned the “basics”.
Gee, I’ve probably written way too much already.
Yikes, another advertisement. Maybe DxO is following me around?
I just wanted to say how much I love the way you arranged this photo, with the lines at the angles, and how the lines in the foreground match the lines in the background. That, plus where the boat is, and the sun is… It’s even nicer when I view it full-screen.
I’d love to play with the settings in PL, to make it “jump out of the page” more, but what you’ve posted shows the atmosphere of where you took the photo. I really like the composition. Even the reflection in the water cooperated with you. The sky is beautiful, but bizarre! Looks like a painting. Lovely photo!!! You’ve got everything positioned so well.
One of the mainthing you need to know of flash, is that the camera and the flash uses 2 different metering systems.
TTL means more then through the lens.
https://www.nikonimgsupport.com/na/NSG_article?articleNo=000049306&configured=1&lang=en_SG
George
mmuahhh … almost fell of my chair
some informations
- manual SB800_en.pdf (3,1 MB)
- overview SB800.pdf (187,7 KB)
- https://cdn-10.nikon-cdn.com/pdf/SB800_techniques.pdf
- Ken Rockwell w/ links
note !
If you want to travel light, a flash this big and heavy is NOT suitable.
No it´s a hard backlight that in that case almost gives a silhouette like effect where most of the colors has vanished, but it is for sure an RGB and not a B&W-picture. Below I have lifted the same image four steps in Photolab. Now you can see the yellow and blue exhaust pipe or chimney or what ever is the right word for it.
That image is what it is but I think it is a little “too much” to my taste. I grew up here and we have a word that some say is sort of unique in the world but I don´t really know if that is true. That word is “lagom” and it means something like “Just enough and not over the top”. It is like filling a cup just as much as it can take before an overflow occurs. That is lagom.
The first four images and another three in my blogstory “Stockholm Noir” are all good examples of this light phenomenon we sometimes can see especially in the winter times. All these pictures are taken on a lunch break 13 January 2010 when the light was just magical between about 13:00 to 13:30. The clock in my camera was set in a wrong way showing 01:00 to 01:30. I rushed out and took a ferry to Djurgården where there are quite a few nice motifs. Not the least a lot of boats.
Like the Waxholm sunrise boat image there is both a pretty strong backligt with a light source that at least partly is pretty hidden and filtered behind the clouds and often also a partly clear or at least bright sky somewhere else on the motif. Often the main motif appears almost like a silhouette. The difference is that the Stockholm Noir images almost lacks pronounced colors. Pesonally I like them better because I feel they are more “lagom” 
During my seven years at the City Museum of Stockholm I have spent many mornings and evenings on the commuter boats between Vaxholm and Skeppsbron, often during the sunrises and sun sets ( these boats are landing at the old harbor of Stockholms historical Old City (Gamla Stan), a trip that normally takes about 75 minutes. So I had many opportunities to catch pictures with these rather special “late autumn and winter light conditions” in the Stockholm/Vaxholm area. Don´t miss to go out there in the Archipelago if you happen to visit Stockholm.
Ouch - I thought I made a very boring comment.
Since I returned from India, the only things on my schedule are doctor’s appointments.
Learning how to use my flash properly - well, I used to do that easily, and it ought to be mostly automatic, with the camera selecting how much flash to use. This is all for “snapshots”, not carefully composed images - yet. Just like turning the headlights on the car on, when it gets dark outside.
Well, after reading that article, I am thoroughly confused. TTL in the old days referred to Nikon’s film cameras, and the choices on the back of the flash refer to measuring the reflected light from FILM. But back in the early 1980’s, all the Nikons shot on film.
I guess nowadays the systems in the new cameras is calibrated for DIGITAL. The SB-800 is so old, that I’m speculating it is only supposed to work with Film cameras.
It now sounds logical to me, that if I want to use an external flash on my D780, I need to buy a newer flash.
(The camera seems to work on TTL mode,. I haven’t yet tried TTL-BL mode.)
From what I read in the article you linked to, my SB-800 is a dead-end street, despite the fact that it seems to work. Time to contact Nikon again… or to ignore all this, and shoot in the two standard TTL modes, ignoring that I’m using a digital sensor, not film.
I suspect the obvious answer is to just buy a new flash, designed for digital cameras, hopefully using TTL, and also capturing TTL-BL.
Gosh, I don’t know how to reply. There is a sentence about stuff like this - “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. What I MOST like about your image, is the composition. But I love boat related photos, so that’s a bonus.
I think you start to talk nonsense again. The SB800 is a modern flash, you can use it for what you want.
I found the article. Read it, all the chapters. It gives a no-nonsense explanation of what happens with /between camera and flash.
By head, you can get BL only with a D-lens and matrix or center weight metering.
George
1 Like
George, you just took it out of my mouth. 
1 Like
Well, if you really want to throw money away, go ahead and buy something else. But the truth is that there is no difference between using a flash on film or digital. I have a couple of Mecablitz flashes that work perfectly with every camera I have, film or digital.
Just read the manual, choose the appropriate mode and set the appropriate sync speed…
https://onlinemanual.nikonimglib.com/d780/en/14_menu_guide_05_e01.html
@mike
Sure but I live in a country where some think 3% of fat in milk is an alarmingly high level so those packages (might also be a coincidence) are of course red. Low fat milk is blue and there is of cource a “lagom” middle way with 1,5 %. So we also live in “Mellanmjölkens land” the land of the “middle milk” and of course that package is green.
I once was at a carpet Emporium in Kashmir. The seller asked me where I came from and when I said Sweden he showed me a carpet in exactly my taste, a greyish blue almost magical carpet. I was astonished and asked him what he would ha showed a German and an a
American.
In the first case i showed a carpet with a sort of a pastoral landscape in green. The Merican taste was not far from that yellow-orange sun in that boat sunrise picture from Vaxholm. A carpet to far from “lagom” for the Swede in me.
For a full explanation, please read this:
Nikon camera TTL History - What is TTL, D-TTL, iTTL.
If I’m “talking nonsense”, blame Nikon and the author of that article I linked to.
Does any of this affect me, or my use of the SB-800 - probably not.
Behind the scene, inside my camera, it does seem to make a difference as to how the system works, if the author of that article is to be believed.
As for me, the fellow at B&H on-line tech support (and others) told me that for general photography, I should set my SB-800 to TTL, and that for photos of people in front of a bright scene behind the people, I should set it to TTL BL (where BL is using Back Lighting, his words).
As a photographer, I think @Joanna is correct, as that long technical article is about things “behind the scenes” that I might not need to understand. I have no intention to buy a new flash - didn’t want to, but then I found instructions for how to use the D780 with my SB-800.
Am I “talking nonsense”? From your point of view, sure.
Unless someone can show me how I’m wrong, I will accept those articles as correct.
Curious though - how do you guys think the Nikon D780 camera measures a flash exposure?
More information:
Nikon electronic flash metering for DSLR
Pure nonsense.
Did you read the cls practical guide? It’s old but still valuable. And he used a D200 for the example pictures.
George