Off-Topic - advice, experiences and examples, for images that will be processed in PhotoLab

DxO PhotoLab
2976

Please explain what, when, and where you expect to shoot in India, and what is the photo quality expectance. It would make it easier.

Light in India can be very contrasty and in many places there’s a lot of smog or dust. If you go to Kashmir, the light and air will be very different than in Kerala, obviously. Expect problems with highlights inside temples (e.g. candles, brass reflections). Remember about the monsoon season, etc., etc. (like don’t eat if there are monkeys around :slight_smile: )

with the moment already gone…

It seems you were a photojournalist documenting buildings and other static things, so you come from a very different school than me. But still you seem to have a good eye.

Personally, for walkabout use in new places, I use a 24-70 or 24-120 lens (e.g. with D780), mode set to ‘A’, Auto ISO 100-6400 (with DeepPRIME you can try max ISO 25k on D780, but with D700 set max in the 1600-6400 range) with ‘Minimum shutter speed’->Auto->Fastest (to be safe, if you are tired, but adapt to your skills and stamina) and set F-number according to DOF that I want. You will miss less moments that way and you will see more. The goal is to think about the subject, not the camera settings. In some places it’s good to use less intrusive camera/lens. It’s always good to contemplate the scene before or after the shot, otherwise it will remain only on the photo and not in your brain (this is a really important point). If you intend to shoot only static things indoors, the recommendations would be different, the above is generic.

After each shooting series, if you changed aperture, reset it to your favorite default right away (e.g. f/4-f/8). You’ll be in a safe position for a possible next fast shot, when you’ll have time to focus only, composition and DOF not perfect, but that’s better than loosing the moment. However, if you intend to shoot Taj Mahal and have a lot of time, then you can go fully manual with base ISO and wait several days (or months) for perfect light and few people around. This all depends on the context.

Auto ISO is one of the main differences between digital and film phototography. The other major difference being drowning shadows into blacks and more tolerance to overexposure by the film. And of course you can take more photos on a single digital “film” than on a roll, fortunately or not. Sometimes it’s easy to see, if the photographer came from the film era and is still there.

Perhaps I can write more about flash, but I would have to know something about the context.

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2977

Thank you for that last comment.

“What is cheating, and why?”

For me, a huge amount of what and how I think has come from posts by @Joanna. For the most part, I accepted them as what I needed to (learn how to) do. Then, after I felt overwhelmed, I argued back, and did things “my way”. Over time, and a lot of reading, I decided she had it right (for me) all along.

Lots of stuff went in my dumpster. I mostly quit using ‘jpg’ for anything serious, and with the few (but adequate) tools I had available, I only shot in ‘raw’ (but used the review images to confirm I was close enough.) I bought the best 300mm lens I could find, but my opinion now is I should have bought the lens @Joanna recommended, and only carried that one lens with me, which would capture 95% of my images. There are several old-time posters here, who I wish I had understood what they were posting, but I didn’t. In retrospect, I see that now.

In India, the people I work with at the hospital require clear, sharp, photos suitable for their newsletter, for posting around the hospital, and for printing and posting in the various clinics. Photos of people MUST be clear and sharp, and they prefer images taken with an on-camera flash.

I’m supposed to be able to capture perfect images for the hospital - vertical lines need to be vertical, not tilted, everything needs to be clear, and sharp, and suitable for publication, or posting around the hospital. I’ve always been a few steps ahead, until I showed up using cameras without a flash.

I wish I had a camera with all the view camera controls - I hate giving them images with the vertical lines not parallel - and PhotoLab can fix that, and just about every concern they have had, other than poor exposure of people’s faces - thus, my desire to re-learn flash photography.

That’s how I started my photography, but I want to be able to do “anything”. Maybe before I die, but I’ve got a LOT to learn.

@Wolfgang knows a lot of stuff that is beyond my ability to understand. I think I’m gaining, but there is a long ways to go.

By tomorrow, I will post one of my photos of the fishing fleet returning, with their catch. I’ve tried to photograph this with my Fuji cameras for years, mostly wasting my time. With my Nikon Df and my 300, I could finally capture what I’ve wanted to photograph for decades. I had to treat them like “action photos”, finding the perfect moment to shoot. Sometimes I used “burst mode”. This is the first year I’ve ever been satisfied.

2978

@Wlodek
I look at this in a very similar way like you do I think but since I use Sony A7IV or earlier A7III I use a similar function called Auto ISO Minimum Shutter Speed as a basic setting in order always be ready. It only works in Aperture Mode. AIMSS is both very flexible - if you need or very simple and never let me down. It has five steps Slower, Slow, Standard, Fast and Faster and the basic is Standard.

If I have a zoom lens on and AIMSS set at Standard, it will give me a basic setting that automatically sets the shutter speed to 1 / the focal length which is the old thumb rule for the appropriate shutter speed in order not to get blurred images through camera shake. With the help of that I can totally focus on my timing and the composition - the camera takes care of the rest.

Together with the fantastically accurate and smart Real Time Tracking Focus and Eye Focus it gives me a very smart Kodak Click Full Frame that never lets me down.

The last two things are setting the ISO levels between base ISO and 8 000 or even 10 000 and handle the eventual noise with Deep Prime.

With my A7IV I think the smart camera auto tech finally drastically have changed everything. Finally, I have almost ceased to think of camera buttons wheels and menus because after many many years the camera have ceased to be an obstacle hindering my creativity. Today cameras are extremely complex and complicated BUT properly configured they have never been easier to use.

Some of you might think that this sounds like a very rigid setup but it is far from that. I have AIMSS configured on my AEL-button and with a push on that I then can chose between the five differens AIMSS-levels (back wheel) or to set the minumum shutter speed to a certain value with the front wheel very quickly

Mostly it is just to select a suitable aperture - or skip that too if you don’t have the time, because as you wrote it can be set to 5.6 or 8 as a default, just to release you and to make you set for fast action. If I do this, I will rarely miss a moment like I often did during the analog days - I’m a slow photographer. It has taken me and Sony quite a few years together to get here. My first A7 cameras A7R and A7 II could not even be configured this way because Auto ISO Minimum Shutter Speed was not invented then.

If you have a modern Sony try it and if you have a Nikon I’m sure you will have something pretty equal with a slightly different name.

I travelled in India several times in the seventies - both in Kerala and the south and I also visited Punjab, Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh bordering Tibet. I wished I have had the gear I have today even then. In these days I missed quite a few motifs trying to adjust the focus manually with microprisms and split screen using films with sensitivities between ISO 50 and 100. Just that limited us a lot then in a way we hardly can understand today.

Kashmir 1978_kuchinomader_54K_2
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This little pashtun girl started to cry hysterically after me trying to set focus with the poor technical support systems of my analog Pentax 1978 in Kashmir.

Kashmir 1978_kuchinomader_34K_2
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This women were surprisingly cool when I took pictures of them, their camp and their daughter but when she got afraid and started to cry they asked me to leave.

Timing is everything and the best thing is that it easily can be drastically improved today with just a little smart configuration. If you don’t know how, look at one of Mark Galer’s videos on Auto ISO Minimum Shutter Speed.

2979

Two photos from India, Nallavadu Fishing Village, January 2024

DF1_5322 2024-01-13
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DF1_5457 2024-01-13
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DF1_5322 | 2024-01-13.nef (33.2 MB)
DF1_5322 | 2024-01-13.nef.dop (13.6 KB)

DF1_5457 | 2024-01-13.nef (34.0 MB)
DF1_5457 | 2024-01-13.nef.dop (13.1 KB)

The Nikon Df has less resolution than my other cameras, and lacks a fold-up/fold-down viewing screen. We got there a little too late in the day - the goal was to get there at sunrise.

2980

Reminds me of when I came by boat from Talimanar in SriLanka to Rameshwaram in Tamil Nadu in southern India in 1976. It is so many years ago and I don’t think I’m prepared to get dysentery once more.

2981

I’m happy that works for you. I would prefer to use Manual mode all the time, unless I don’t have the time to do so (fast action). All my Nikons stay in Manual Mode, and the closest I come to what you’re suggesting is “Auto-ISO”.

Of the two photos I just posted, the boat was taken in Manual mode, and when I finished, I set the camera to Program mode, as we were walking away.

Any photo I care about now, that I have time to capture properly, will be shot in Manual mode, and I will be checking the exposure indicator in my viewfinder to see that the meter is close to the center, and neither greatly overexposed or underexposed, based on where I told the camera to meter - usually “center weighted”.

There is no “one size fits all”. I can explain what I’ve learned to do, and why, but I’m not feeling like telling anyone else to do, or not do, something. You (or I) can post a new thread in this forum, asking people which shooting mode(s) they use, and why. I would prefer that you do this, not me. :slight_smile:

2982

I use ‘M’ mode if I want to control aperture (say f/3.2) and the shutter time (say 1/2000 sec) for very fast action. But then I have to use Auto ISO, because I cannot control the light (assuming no flash is allowed). Sorry, if being obvious.

2983

A-mode = Aperture-mode.
https://onlinemanual.nikonimglib.com/d780/en/06_shooting_settings_01.html

2984

If you search further on the internet you’ll find my point too.
The differences between them is that RAW is a 1 channel registration in the input color space and that the JPG is a 3 channel construction in the output color space. Plus some more additions. But in photography we only deal with the output, after conversion. It’s the only tool you have.
Don’t try to become more catholic as the pope, Dutch saying. Both the histogram in PL as the histogram on your camera use a treshold.

George

2985

See my post above.
I think I see the misunderstanding.

And don’t listen to that nonsense of it being based on the jpg

…and not the RAW

George

2986

And regular?

George

2987

Apologies for omitting the sarcasm emoji in my post (is there even one?). I had literally just read what Mike said about Automatic Mode when your response, “A-Mode” popped up.

2988

Can happen.

George

2989

Please excuse me if this seems patronising, it is not meant to be.

Why don’t you use the exposure meter and manually change the ISO?

2990

@mikemyers right or wrong is only dependent on the final result and if you wish to exclude certain things from your workflow (e.g. AI sky-replacement - this is just an example). And of course if you’re doing things commercially and time equates earnings.

Otherwise there’s nothing wrong with doing things, for example, like using PhotoLab to restore scans of old photographs even though there are other tools better suited for the job. Sometime I use a cleaver to peel and chop garlic and onions though a different blade is clearly the better choice.

When I was familiarising myself with my current (camera) body, I knew that I’d likely end up shooting mostly manual, because I had seen too many shots that could have produced good images if the camera had decided to use different settings in automatic mode. However whilst I tended towards using manual, I also sometimes switched to automatic to prevent myself from panicking about how to set the exposure. The results were always better than nothing.

Keep in mind that anyone(for the pedants: yes, lots of exclusions and exceptions - which prove the rule) can write anything on the internet and there are very few people admit when they’ve been wrong or who put any effort into letting people know. Don’t let your mind be made up because information is coming from a particular source.

Also dahl and veg curries are good for you.

+1 to this - which often makes we wonder if ISO setting on digi will ever be renamed. I read a post elsewhere recently about a young person trying analog and not knowing they had to set the ISO on the camera body to match what it said on the box of film, but rather went by what the setting reccomended for digi for the kind of shot they wanted to take.

2991

What good is the exposure meter if aperture and shutter speed are fixed, unless you’re going to let the camera decide which ISO to use (i.e. automatic*).

EDIT: *Keeping in mind you can limit the range.

2992

Because you can adjust the ISO until the exposure meter is centred (or offset to suit)

2993

And auto ISO plus exposure compensation does what exactly?

2994

It’s there for those who can’t be bothered to learn how to use true manual exposure.

Any automatisms can be useful for high speed action shooting but, it still means relying on somebody at the camera manufacturer deciding what they think is a good exposure, rather than the photographer taking full control.

When I get to a location, the first thing I do is estimate what ISO I feel suits the lighting. But that comes with experience.

Then I set the aperture to control depth of field and take a meter reading, usually based on the brightest part of the image. If I cannot achieve a good aperture/speed combination, I tweak the ISO to bring it into range.

But then, I come from an era when we had choose which ISO film to buy before we even got to the location.

1 Like
2995

Maybe it would prevent you from learning but I doubt it’s generally applicable.

My experience tells me that human perception is a variable that cannot be relied on. Especially when to comes to something so dynamic like light and vision.

I was alive and taking photos around such a time too and ended that phase of my life with a “New F1”. One thing I’ve learned is that today things that are called the same that they were several decades ago, aren’t actually the same any more (leads to confusion between generations).

At everyone reading this, I joined this forum because of what I learned from @Joanna and @mikemyers