Part 2 - Off-Topic - advice, experiences, and examples for images being processed in DxO Photolab

[mikemyers]

@Wlodek

Charge the flash periodically, if kept unused. If you admired your SB-800 for 10+ years only, without shooting a single photo, it’s probably unusable.

When I switched to digital, I removed the batteries from my flash, and put the flash away for probably over ten years. Put in new standard AA cells, and the flash works fine.

@Wlodek

Always have a backup flash.

If I was a “working professional” I would agree with you. I’m retired, and I’m re-learning how to use my SB-800 for “fill flash”. I wish the D780 had a built-in flash, like my D750. As for batteries, the support person at Nikon suggested I just use disposable AA cells, so there is no re-charging.

@Wlodek

I’m sure your monkey’s shots would look far better for 99.9% of audience. The light would be softer and some background would be visible.

I never used to take a flash with me, unless I knew I was going to use it. I certainly wasn’t expecting to get those monkey photos. I suppose you’re right, I should always have all my photo gear with me. But I didn’t even have my Nikon, just the Fuji, and I did use the flash for several of those shots. Certainly good advice, but I thought we were just going to an old temple. Of course you’re right, hindsight is always 20:20.

@Wlodek

personally I don’t believe you were ever a photo-journalist, otherwise you wouldn’t have asked such elementary questions.

Since I was being sent all around the world to cover certain events, which got published in three or four magazines, does that mean I am a photojournalist? As to questions, I’ve forgotten so much, it’s sad (for me). Film? You want me to write about film? That probably deserves to be done in a film related forum, not here.

Interesting reading:

Artistic_Journalism_Confluence_in_Forms_Values_and_Practices.pdf

When I took the ship photo I just posted, that was “journalism”, not “art”. PhotoLab seems to be just as valuable for both, and if I wasn’t using PhotoLab, I would be posting elsewhere. But so many people here have so much good, relevant, and useful advice. PhotoLab takes a lot of work and effort and practice to start to get good at it.

@platypus

One can start doing things differently right from the start or stick to one’s proven recipes before venturing “into the wild”. The risk of sticking (to proven recipes) is to get stuck (in adequacy) and leaving a trodden path early will help to discover new areas sooner. The point is to go to extremes without evaluating or judging the results, as they are no results yet, but mere stopovers on the way to push the envelope.

I agree that this is good advice, but it’s not how I do things. Before I go out on my own, I prefer to learn the basics well enough before doing so. You’re correct though that as I push the boundaries, it is good for me. Two weeks ago I would have never shot at ISO 25,000. Now understand it better - mostly because of what @Joanna explained, and my experiment proved her right.

There are also downsides for me to follow this path. As good as it is, my D780 feels like a machine that I am operating. My M10 felt like it was a part of me. The Leica was good for a different style of photography. The D780 does things the M10 can not do. The M10 has a very small number of “settings” in the menu system. The D780 has so many menus and settings that I continually forget things. That’s a fault in me, not in the camera. Heck, if I picked up a new M10, it would take less than 10 minutes to set everything. With the D780 it wouldn’t be done in under 10 hours, perhaps several days.

Back to PhotoLab, I used to feel totally overwhelmed by the software. So many settings, and I was always confusabobbled. It took many months to start to feel better about it. If I don’t actively use a tool in over two months, my memory of how and why to use it vanishes, and I’ve got to learn it all over again. I would probably have gone back to Lightroom but for the wonderful people in this forum. People here are pushing me to learn new things, and there are so many how-to videos online that learning is easier - PhotoJoseph for just one. And even more frightening, I’ve bought several of the other DxO programs, that are now part of my PhotoLab. My attitude today is that they do things I don’t “need”.

I’ve got some attitudes that I know limit me - like I would never switch things to a “mirror reflection”. It goes against everything I learned in my past. It’s painful to “erase” irrelevant details in a photograph - although even that is OK if I call it something other than a “photograph”. I guess “Photographic Illustration” would be my choice. For so many years I tried to follow the rules of photojournalism, that they’re baked into my brain, for better or worse.

I write too much…

[platypus (Canon & Mac (Intel and M1))]

@mikemyers

I’ve got some attitudes that I know limit me

Who hasn’t? Once one knows about it, one can act on it, but it can be an effort to get out of the grooves that have built up and served for many years.

As for technical things, there are ways (techniques) to create. e.g. by doing this

• describe what you have (goats walking away to the right)
• negate (not goats not walking not away to not right)
• try alternatives for each negation (goats skating)
• combine all alternatives and see what they create.

It is imperative to NOT judge combinations before all have been outlined in order to keep your mind open to perceive rather than to interpret.

Sometimes, things look right but feel wrong. Such a discrepancy us a call for action - or at call to consider action.

[mikemyers]

@platypus

It is imperative to NOT judge combinations before all have been outlined in order to keep your mind open to perceive rather than to interpret.

I don’t know about others, but something I have learned over the years is to know what image I want before I press the shutter release button.

Since I often leave some “wiggle room” for editing, I just make sure what I want is included in the frame.

What you write is excellent, but for me, much of the time (like this ship photo, and even more so for the goats), there wasn’t time to plan things out - I couldn’t “act”; I had to “re-act”. Such as the hand going up pointing to the ship, and the fellow raising his phone - a split second later and those would be gone, and in very little time the ship wouldn’t be where I wanted it to be.

I think that for most people, most of the time, those concerns would be irrelevant, and as you suggest, people can plan what they want in the photo. The photos I enjoy taking the most, usually involve taking a photo at the perfect moment.

@Joanna may well be correct, that the arm and finger ruin the photo, but in my mind, that added to what I wanted - as long as her hand did NOT cover the ship.

Similarly, for the goats, there was no time, only enough to raise camera from my lap, pre-set for taking images on the road, and capture three quick images - first image was junk, second image I liked, and the third image had the hood of the car covering up the lower parts of the ladies feet and the goat’s “hooves”. That’s something I learned from photojournalism, and magazines, and lots of missed photos - have the camera ready and set to take a photo of something in only a moment’s notice.

@platypus

It is imperative to NOT judge combinations before all have been outlined in order to keep your mind open to perceive rather than to interpret.

All of this may have to be done in a quarter of a second. Only time to “do”, no time to “think”, although I usually trust myself to get what I want - as long as I do NOT have to fiddle with camera settings.

Much of the time, for most of my photos, there certainly IS time to evaluate everything, and think it through, long before taking a photo. Maybe I need to move one way or another, or get closer or further away, and either Zoom or change lenses. For the ship photo, I did consider those things, and re-positioned myself to be able to capture the ship, which I did, and once that shot was “in the bag”, I was mostly watching the crowd.

Even Ansel Adams - for his most famous photo, he only had seconds to capture it. In the time it took to insert a new negative carrier, that “special moment” of the light was gone.

…in my film days, long before I took the 24th or 35th photo, I put in a new roll of film. I suspect you all did the same.

@platypus

Sometimes, things look right but feel wrong. Such a discrepancy is a call for action - or at call to consider action.

Could you please elaborate? I don’t understand what you mean. How can something simultaneously look right, and feel wrong? …and were that to happen to me, I would take the photo anyway, even if it would end up in the trash. Better to take it “now”, and figure it out later, rather than wishing I had captured the image. But maybe I don’t understand what you are saying??

[noname (Captain Obvious)]

@mikemyers

When I switched to digital, I removed the batteries from my flash, and put the flash away for probably over ten years. Put in new standard AA cells, and the flash works fine.

there is something along the line that electrolytic capacitors deteriorate with age relatively fast and they need to be kept in use to prevent even more untimely demise… so your flash might have used modern solid-state ones

[mikemyers]

@noname

electrolytic capacitors deteriorate with age relatively fast and they need to be kept in use to prevent even more untimely demise.

o467325v410%20SN019_EN_d.pdf

My SB-800 seems to be working, once I found the detailed instructions for using it for “fill flash”. I plan to continue to use it (infrequently) for fill flash.

Are you suggesting I continue to use it, or replace it? It may or may not be “as good as new”, but I suspect it is still useful. I wish I understood the technical wording better.

As I see it, my biggest concern might be the “color” of the flash not matching the scene being photographed. I might need to buy the colored “gels” to correct it. PhotoLab may exaggerate this, making the change in color look very strange?

[noname (Captain Obvious)]

@mikemyers

Are you suggesting I continue to use it, or replace it?

I do not suggest anything - I was merely writing that different types of capacitors behave differently… I have no idea what type is used inside your specific speedlite, sorry - and even it has degraded capacitors, what is need to replace it now ? let it die in use

[Joanna (Joanna Carter)]

@mikemyers

Not sure what you think of as a problem with the lady’s finger pointing at the bridge of the ship, to me, that added to the photo, just like the fellow with the phone at the right, and the other people with phones photographing the ship.

The problem I see is that the primary subject is the people in the foreground and they draw far more attention than the ship, which is the lesser, background subject.

@mikemyers

I guess this was more of a “photojournalist” type photo, as my intention was to take the best photo I could capture of this new ship - the reaction of the crowd added to the photo

As I said, it is the ship that provides the background context to what the people are photographing, not the other way around.

@mikemyers

I’m curious what kind of photo you might have taken, had you been at this location

I’d have found a low level location, with uninterrupted view of the ship, possibly a small boat. If I wanted people for scale, I would have placed them far enough away to reduce their apparent size.

@mikemyers

What you write is excellent, but for me, much of the time (like this ship photo, and even more so for the goats), there wasn’t time to plan things out - I couldn’t “act”; I had to “re-act”. Such as the hand going up pointing to the ship, and the fellow raising his phone - a split second later and those would be gone, and in very little time the ship wouldn’t be where I wanted it to be.

The quick answer is to stop taking “grab shots” and start making photos. It’s not like these are one off shots, you can always do more research and do it better next time.

@mikemyers

All of this may have to be done in a quarter of a second. Only time to “do”, no time to “think”, although I usually trust myself to get what I want - as long as I do NOT have to fiddle with camera settings.

In which case, since you only seem interested in producing snaps to send to friends, forget anything with settings and get yourself an iPhone Pro - just as many megapixels and you don’t have to think.

@mikemyers

Even Ansel Adams - for his most famous photo, he only had seconds to capture it

That is a myth. It is simply impossible to stop the car, unpack an 8x10 camera, set it up and make the image. We know because Helen had exactly the same kind of situation trying to make an LF image of a lighthouse at sunset. There were three of us in the car and it took us just over 5 minutes including metering it because, unlike Ansel, Helen had a spotmeter and the moon wasn’t available to assume EV14.

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@mikemyers

my biggest concern might be the “color” of the flash not matching the scene being photographed

Read the manual there is a mention of colour correction.

[Joanna (Joanna Carter)]

@mikemyers

The D780 has so many menus and settings that I continually forget things

What on earth are you doing messing with menus on a regular, or even irregular basis?

You can set things up near enough once and for all.

The only thing we change from time to time is the image format, otherwise, it’s just the shutter speed, aperture, ISO and focus.

You really are still making life far too difficult for yourself.

[platypus (Canon & Mac (Intel and M1))]

@mikemyers

How can something simultaneously look right, and feel wrong? …and were that to happen to me, I would take the photo anyway,

I’m talking about “making” the photo, not “taking” it. Taking a photo (image) involves the camera. Making a picture involves PhotoLab (in this here context)

Even a “grab shot” can be worthwhile, it might be meaningless after a few days … or material for trying to “make” something out of it. Photography as a means to squish reality onto two dimensions is what I’d call reproduction - and there is a place for it too. Photography could be a means to much more, e.g. to convey emotion instead of information - to name one.

[mikemyers]

@Joanna

What on earth are you doing messing with menus on a regular, or even irregular basis?

I’m not (usually) messing with them - I want to make sure to remember what each one is for, as I don’t remember. Out of sight, out of mind.

(But when all the Aravind photographers get together, everyone wants to use my camera, and they set it their way. Fortunately, this is only once a year.)

I also made an SD memory card with all my settings, and I have the U1 and U2 controls set the way we discussed here - same for both, but one is auto-ISO and the other isn’t.

I used to remember jun… er, stuff like that. Like I wrote, out of sight, out of mind. If I don’t go through the settings every so often, all the settings, I forget what the obscure ones are for, and what they do.

Memory issues. Er, what’s your name again?

Yes, after our recent discussions, everything was set properly, and I saved the settings on the memory card and the two “U” settings - I don’t think your D850 has U1 and U2 ?

Yes, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and focus. But for me also auto-ISO. Do you leave white balance the same no matter where you are photographing? If so, why?

@Joanna

You really are still making life far too difficult for yourself.

I change other things depending on what I’m doing, and I like to “reset” my camera back to the defaults we have discussed. Now there will also be settings for fill flash. No complaints, I feel comfortable with all of this now, after you explained the things that I found so confusing. The camera is almost always in M mode, as long as too many things aren’t changing constantly. Auto-ISO makes lift easier, but part of me feels that is “cheating”.

[mikemyers]

@platypus

I’m talking about “making” the photo, not “taking” it. Taking a photo (image) involves the camera. Making a picture involves PhotoLab (in this here context)

I rarely think about how I will be processing the image in PhotoLab until I open the image on my computer. I already know the “end result” of what I want, and it comes down to whether or not I understand PhotoLab well enough to accomplish that.

Taking/Making the photo is complete for me when the shutter fires… but only complete for that single instant in time. There is always an option to do better.

What to do with the image once I’m seeing it on my computer screen (to me) is a separate process. Quite often, I don’t know or remember how to do something, so I need to look it up.

Besides, since I often take several shots of the same thing, I need to evaluate each of them and decide which is the best one for editing.

Example: This is the image I intended to take of the cruise ship, but as I kept shooting things happened that made me choose what I thought was a “better” image instead. I’m only one factor in getting a good image - everything going on around me affects what my final choice will be:

(My mind is not “fixed” - it is wide open to newer and better images.)

Since the elements that I think @Joanna considered “distracting”, maybe to her this is the better image. But to me, the other image has more “life”, and more “action”.

I dunno. Maybe I should have stuck to my original plan.

[Joanna (Joanna Carter)]

@mikemyers

(But when all the Aravind photographers get together, everyone wants to use my camera, and they set it their way

WHAT???

You actually let other people touch your camera menus? Since when did totally lose your mind? Even Helen and I never touch each other’s menus.

If you really want to continue this madness, take you Df and let them mess that up. But never your D780.

@mikemyers

But for me also auto-ISO

I still can’t see why you feel you need this. I have never, ever, used it.

@mikemyers

Do you leave white balance the same no matter where you are photographing? If so, why?

Always, at 5600ºK. That means I can tell the quality of lighting related to daylight.

@mikemyers

I change other things depending on what I’m doing

Why, oh why, are you messing around with menu settings? It’s simply not necessary. It’s a camera, just like any film camera and you never needed to change any menus on them. You are making your life far too complicated. Once you have set the menus, there really is no difference between a digital camera and a film camera.

@mikemyers

and I like to “reset” my camera back to the defaults we have discussed

This is a totally pointless exercise, you should never have changed them in the first place.

@mikemyers

Now there will also be settings for fill flash

These are done on the flash. The only relevant (non-menu) settings are shutter speed and aperture.

[mikemyers]

@Joanna

I’d have found a low level location, with uninterrupted view of the ship, possibly a small boat. If I wanted people for scale, I would have placed them far enough away to reduce their apparent size.

I know just where to go, and I will be at water level, looking up. Weather permitting, I’ll do that next Saturday. I didn’t want people for scale - the people have been coming out to see this brand new ship. In a small boat? Absolutely No way!!! For so many reasons.

What you are suggesting was the first location I went to yesterday, but I decided to walk a mile or so to what I hoped would be a better location. I was on my way walking back to the original location, when the ship appeared to the left of me, and I needed to find a spot to photograph from. The rocks and spray from the wake of the ship were great.

This image from yesterday is probably close to what I will get, shooting as you suggest:

I’ll be about six feet lower, but all the “excitement” seems lost, as I see it.

I certainly won’t use a 20mm lens - more likely a 35 or 50mm, so the image will suggest the extreme length of the ship. The 20mm distorts the image too much at this angle. But I picked it because I wanted to include “the crowd”.

If I’m lucky, it will be a cloudy day. I hate shooting into the sun, as I did yesterday.

Within limits, I’ll try anything you suggest - but NOT going out in a small boat. I’d probably get swamped if I did…

[Stenis (Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))]

@mikemyers

I’ll leave the conclusions to all of you. As for me, I was very wrong. ISO 25000 and RAW worked just fine, much better than I expected.

As I wrote earlier. This is exactly what I wrote about Ken Rockwells test images on high ISO. You won´t experience any severe noise problems even at ISO 25 000 if there is enough with light.

Test like yours is not pushing it far enough to experience any severe problems. So if it is high ISO noise you are testing this test is pretty useless.

[Joanna (Joanna Carter)]

@mikemyers

I certainly won’t use a 20mm lens - more likely a 35 or 50mm, so the image will suggest the extreme length of the ship

Well, here’s what took me two minutes to do in PL…

But you do need to allow room around the ship to allow for the perspective change. Here’s the crop that I apply. possibly using the 35mm lens would have filled the original frame better, so the crop wouldn’t have lost so many pixels.

Here is the crop tool in action after the perspective change…

The only way to do this kind of extreme manipulation in camera would be to use a field camera with movements.

[Stenis (Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))]

If you really want to take images of boats it is good to have your own boat

[Joanna (Joanna Carter)]

Have you heard of Beken of Cowes? Situated on the Isle of Wight, on the Solent, south coast of England.

Here is a link to their archives…

Picture Gallery: Yachting | Beken of Cowes | Marine Photography

They used to use large format wooden cameras, hand held from their boats.

[mikemyers]

@Stenis

Test like yours is not pushing it far enough to experience any severe problems. So if it is high ISO noise you are testing this test is pretty useless.

I don’t consider it “useless”, as it confirmed my ability to do things I never would have considered before. ISO 25,000. When I was growing up, just 800 was unacceptable.

One more (last) photo I’m going to post. This photo makes me think this new monster ship is just plain ugly. The photo was taken from a spot as low as I’m going to be able to find, but (again, to me) the ship just doesn’t look worthy of a good photograph. I’ll take next week’s photo anyway if I can, and post it here, and then forget about it.

I have always thought of ocean liners as beautiful, and full of character. Oh well, enough of this. I got all excited about this new ship, but I’m rapidly losing interest - and you’re all probably bored from all these images.

Ken Rockwell - I tend to agree with him about most things he writes, tests, evaluations, and general photo information, but his “Vibrance” switch is constantly set “off the scale”. Photos are pretty, but I still prefer more subtle colors.

[Stenis (Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))]

@mikemyers

Auto-ISO makes life easier, but part of me feels that is “cheating”.

With a stance like that there is a lot in modern cameras and RAW-converters "that can be considered as “cheating”. What about camera profiles in Photolab and other converters that adjusts all sorts of problems like vignetting, key stoning and lens corrections and the use of standard preset and styles in cameras? What about modern autofocus where the cameras nowadays make a lot of decisions automatically … and burst shooting in up to hundreds of images per second?

All these functions have been added in order to help photographers increase the number of “keepers” by improving their timing. I guess most photographers today, whether they are professionals or not likes to capture the images they want to capture and are using all the means their cameras and converters can offer to help them in order to achieve what they want. I have just finished a Norwegian TV-series where a “Photo-farmer” have specialized in setting up conditions for really spectacular eagle images by feeding them in a spectacular environment.

I´m not especially surprised discussions like these are landing in a dichotomy like this where some and probably most of us are using whatever we have of means to get the images we want. Platypus illustration above also include the software that we use to polish the image we have taken in order to print it or process it for screens. Photographers like that tends to see even the computer software as part of this “system”.

On the other extreme (and I don´t see you as one of these really) there are especially purist nature photographers that claims they always strive to make the whole process in the camera. I know some that of this reason claim they never use RAW-converters and always let the camera generate their JPEG-files. It might also be the case that some of them are so scared to get accused to have manipulated their images so they play it safe by saying they never use RAW. (We have had several scandals like that with Swedish photographers where one was caught manipulating an elephant that won an international contest and the other caught with cutting and pasting very rare animals into his images (Images of Lynx cats that are extremely shy).

So "Auto-ISO makes life easier, but part of me feels that is “cheating”, can also be seen as an expression of purism. The question today boils down whether some body really cares or not. Isn´t the main result of the imposing of such restrictions on oneself, that we just get more limited than necessary? How did you end up in that corner?

I have done the absolute opposite turn when I now have migrated to Capture One. The main reason for me to do that is that it gives me far better and more detail control in a much more efficient work flow than either my cameras or Photolab can provide. In the long run, it will give me significantly better results. I am very convinced that making it all in the camera is by far the most limiting approach. Photolab is mostly totally sufficient but there are tools that just aren´t there now when I need them.

[Stenis (Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))]

Thank you Joanna! It was really a lovely site to visit.