Dave Spencer: Blog https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog en-us (C) Dave Spencer [email protected] (Dave Spencer) Mon, 16 Mar 2020 06:31:00 GMT Mon, 16 Mar 2020 06:31:00 GMT https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/img/s/v-12/u220984267-o309117779-50.jpg Dave Spencer: Blog https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog 120 120 New Camera!! https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/12/new-camera Ever since the Nikon D600 and Canon 6D were announced I've been really excited because finally there was a full frame offering that was about the same weight and size as my current APS-C camera.  And these cameras were positioned as "Entry level full frame cameras" with a price considerably below the traditional cost to get into a full frame camera.  The Nikon D600 (24MP) and its big brother, the D800 (36 MP), were released first.  DxOLabs, which is a respected independent lab that tests and scores cameras and lenses, gave the D800 the highest overall score they had ever given and the D600 was ranked 2nd!  That's above some mega-dollar medium format cameras, and ALL of the Nikon and Canon pro cameras.  The D600 scored a 94 while the Canon 5D Mark III scored an 81, and the Nikon D4 scored an 89.  The D600 scored especially well in dynamic range and color depth, specs very important to a landscape photographer. This was going to be my next camera!

 

What followed was a ton of research about what lens(es) to buy.  I settled on the Nikon 24-120 f/4G ED VR which seemed to be the best "walkabout" lens available for this camera.  In most tests about the only weakness was vignetting and distortion at wide angles.  But, both of these issues are easily handled in post processing.  Another lens that really looked attractive was the Nikon 16-35 f/4G ED VR which is a more specialized WIDE angle lens with incredible quality.  I sorted all the pictures from my recent trips by focal length and found that well over 50% were taken in the 24 - 35 range.  This lens was going to be a tough call because it doesn't have enough range to be my only lens, and I sure hate carrying a 2nd lens, but on the other hand the quality of this thing looked amazing and it fit my style of photography very well.

 

So I waited till the Black Friday weekend, hoping to snag some deals and I ended up buying the D600 and both lenses.  And then there's all the other stuff that goes with switching camera brands and formats.  So here's all the stuff I ended up getting:

  • Nikon D600 Body

  • Nikon 24-120 f/4G ED VR lens

  • Nikon 16-35 f/4G ED VR lens

  • Nikon SB-700 AF Speedlight Flash

  • (2) Hoya 77 mm UV Haze HD (High Density) digital filters

  • (1) Hoya 77 mm NXT Polarizing Slim Frame Glass filter

  • (1) Hoya 77 mm Neutral Density (NDx8) 0.9 Filter

  • (3) Sandisk 32GB SDXC Extreme Pro 95 MB/s SD cards

  • (2) Nikon EN-EL 15 Lithium-Ion batteries

  • Nikon ML-L3 Wire Remote Control (Infrared)

  • Cotton Carrier Carry-Lite camera holster system

  • Lowepro S&F Lens exchange case 100 AW

  • Epson Stylus Pro 3880 17" printer

Yikes!!  That's a hit on the bank account!  But, as I've said before, photography has become an integral part of the travel experience for me. No compromises here.  Gonna have to tighten the belt somewhere else, I guess.  I will try to post impressions of the new equipment as I get a chance to try it out.

 

Merry Christmas to me!!

 

P.S.  Anyone interested in a really good deal on a nice Canon 50D with an EOS 15-85 lens,  and lots of extras?  It's the outfit that took all of the photos on the recent trips.  EMail me for details, if interested

]]> [email protected] (Dave Spencer) https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/12/new-camera Sun, 09 Dec 2012 16:33:22 GMT Thoughts on selecting pictures to post https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/6/thoughts-on-selecting-pictures-to-post As you might guess, when I travel I take way more photos than what you see on this website. For instance I took about 2600 photos on the Myanmar trip and I posted 278. So I thought I'd talk a little about how I rationalize what get's posted and what doesn't. But first, understand that I typically don't attempt to "document" a trip. And by that I mean, I seldom take photos just to provide continuity, or a "diary" of each thing I did or place I visited. I am usually looking for photos that will stand alone without any context. I will often take pictures of signs and landmarks for my benefit so that I can remember the context of where I am, but these seldom make it onto the web site. And I do occasionally take pictures of sights, events, or people that I want to remember about the trip but these pictures are not likely to make it on the website if they would only be significant to me.

If I'm taking pictures where the lighting is tricky, I will often set my camera to do auto-bracketing in high-speed mode. So I fire off 3 shots at 6 frames per second of the same target and one is at the metered exposure, one is a little darker, and one is a little lighter. I use these sets of pictures in two ways. Obviously it gives me 3 choices of the same image and I can select the one with the best exposure. If the scene is very contrasty, I can sometimes combine these three images to create an HDR image with more tonal range than any single shot can capture. So, 2 out of 3 of these never make it on this website.

Due to impatience and some immaturity in my photography skills I often find that I will fire off a picture of a "wow" sight when I first see it, and then I take subsequent better shots after I've had a chance to really evaluate the best perspective for that shot. So, often that first picture or two gets sorted out.

Especially for landscapes, it is usually very important to me that the entire picture be in sharp focus. For landscapes I almost always shoot in aperture priority mode with the aperture at f/8 or f/11 if the lighting is good. This usually give me enough depth of field to keep everything in the frame reasonably sharp. So, if any significant part of the picture is not nice and sharp, it won't make the cut.

Many pictures get thrown out simply because I don't like the composition or "balance" of the image. I generally try to follow the "rule of thirds" when I compose a shot. Basically the rule of thirds says imagine a tic-tac-toe grid on the frame and position the significant element of the picture near one of the 4 points where the lines would cross. If possible, I also like to balance that with something else with some "weight" at the opposite intersection. Some other compositional tricks that I employ where possible is to look for elements to frame the picture, like maybe trees on both sides that bow towards the center.

A very important compositional technique that I and most landscape photographers use is to be sure and include something in the foreground. This gives the picture more depth, scale, and often, some needed detail. On trips like the John Muir hike where there are beautiful views all around, finding a great view is the easy part. As a photographer, what I'm looking for is a good foreground for that great view. Something with some color, especially reds and oranges seems to work really well. I also like to shoot from very low to the ground. This works very well like where you can shoot across a rocky stream or a lake with a nice reflection. The rocks and water make a great foreground but sometimes you literally have to lay on your belly to get the desired effect. Of course when you are taking a picture of a far away landscape such as mountains with a bush or rocks very near the lens, you really need a lot of depth of field to keep everything sharp. If that foreground is not sharp, it is very noticeable and gets scrapped.

Sometimes I will have a number of good shots of the same scene and in those cases I usually narrow it down to no more than 1 or 2 pictures of the same basic scene. I've found that when you do a slide show that includes several pictures in a row that are similar the "wow" factor sort of gets lost. So you really want as much variety in the images as possible. On many occasions I've gone through a slideshow of ALL of my images and frankly I will often be a little disappointed. The repetition of the same scene seems to negate the impact of those photos. Once I've sorted out all the repeats and bad shots the slide show has so much more impact.

And probably the most important reason to sort out so many pictures, is that nobody enjoys wading through hundreds of pictures, especially if there are obvious repeats and poor quality pictures. I know I have too many photos on some of these galleries but I just couldn't stand to cut any more.  But then, first and foremost, this website is for me to enjoy, so I guess I get the final say ;-)

]]> [email protected] (Dave Spencer) https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/6/thoughts-on-selecting-pictures-to-post Sat, 30 Jun 2012 16:44:50 GMT Posted new pictures from the 2001 West Trip https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/6/posted-new-pictures-from-the-2001-west-trip I traveled out there to do the Top of Utah Marathon in northern Utah on 9/22/01.  I went out a few days early so that I could enjoy some light hiking in the Yellowstone / Tetons area before the run.  These pictures were all shot on film and were scanned as part of my recent scanning frenzy, so the quality is certainly not up to digital standards.  To be honest I can't remember specifically where most of these pictures were taken.  Yellowstone falls, is obvious and I know I also did a hike that included Wraith Falls in Yellowstone.  Some were probably just taken off the side of the road.  Will have to do some research to figure out where the rest were taken.  I think I also crossed Jenny Lake and hiked up into the Tetons a little ways.  I remember I was resisting the urge to do any big hikes because I wanted to save my energy for the run.  If you recognize where any of these pictures were taken, I would appreciate an EMail, so I can put a caption on some of the pictures.

FWIW, I finished the marathon in 3:34.  Not a great time for me considering the first half of the race was a beautiful very slight downhill slope that wound its way down from up in the mountains.  It was very cool, almost cold, at the start and I went out way too fast, lured by the gorgeous scenery and easy downhill terrain, but by the time I got out on the flats it was REALLY hot and I slowed way down.  In the spring of that same year I ran the Boston Marathon for which I had a qualifying time of 3:24.

]]> [email protected] (Dave Spencer) Marathon Top of Utah https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/6/posted-new-pictures-from-the-2001-west-trip Sat, 30 Jun 2012 13:50:25 GMT Posted pictures from New Zealand https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/6/posted-pictures-from-new-zealand These are pictures taken on film during a trip to the southern tip of New Zealand.  I've posted the pictures from hikes on the Routeburn Track and the Milford Track.  Still getting used to the new Lightroom 4 and Nik Software Color Efex 4.  I feel like I probably got a little carried away with the power of Color Efex on many of these.  The new Tonal Contrast and Detail Extractor can really make a picture pop, but it's so easy to get carried away.  I won't be surprised if I later decide to tone some of these down a little.  But, boy they look cool when you first apply these effects.  Still frustrating working with film scans though.  There is just so little detail in these negatives compared to digital and most of the effects just exaggerate the grain.

Really starting to develop a workflow with Lightroom though and I'm really liking what I see so far.  Milford Track, for instance had over 600 negatives to sort through.  And, as raw scans, the color balance and exposure is seldom right, or even close for that matter.  But in grid view I adjust the exposure for a single negative using simple +/- exposure buttons and then when I get it right, apply that same adjustment to all the other negatives on that roll that are probably off about the same amount.  Same for the color balance.  For color balance I look for a negative on the roll with some gray, or skin, or anything that would make it easier to judge the color balance and I fix that one first.  Then I copy those settings to all the other negatives for that roll of film that were shot under similar conditions.  At this point I'm not looking for perfect exposure or color balance.  I just need them good enough to make judgements about whether they are a "keeper" or not.

Once I have the exposure and color balance in the ball park, I can start sorting out the candidates for further processing (and identify the junk ones).  Lightroom has a number of ways to grade or categorize photos including a color code, stars, and flags.  I've been using the flag approach which has 3 states, pick, reject, and just flagged.  Photos with the "pick" flag are candidates for further processing, and the "reject" flag is for photos that I don't intend to process further, and I treat the other state is undecided.  When I view the negatives on Lightroom I can use the flags to limit which pictures I see.  For instance, I may not want to see the rejects, or only the picks, etc.  I typically go through and reject the obvious ones (by selecting the photo and hitting 'X'), and because I set my filter to not show rejects they immediately disappear from the grid.  I "pick" (highlight and hit 'P') for the obvious keepers.  Then I'm often down to a lot of groups of similar shots that were taken from slightly different vantage points or shutter speed, or just plain shot multiple times.  Typically, I will only want to process one of these.  The task is to narrow this set of similar pictures down to the best one.

In Lightroom, I can select the group of candidates and it will present them 2 at a time, side by side for comparison.  I can zoom in on any point in one and it will automatically zoom in on the same spot on the other and I can compare for focus, blur, etc.  Then I can "reject" the worst of the 2 and it disappears and it pops up the next candidate in the group to compare to the current "winner".  You can do this till you've narrowed it down to one, and that becomes my "pick".  Pretty intuitive way to narrow down the list.

Well, I haven't decided which event I will tackle next.  Stay tuned . . .

]]> [email protected] (Dave Spencer) Lightroom https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/6/posted-pictures-from-new-zealand Sun, 17 Jun 2012 13:49:04 GMT Posted more pictures from Lijiang, China https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/6/posted-more-pictures-from-lijiang-china I finally stopped scanning long enough to prepare some photos for the website.  So far I have scanned about 6000 negatives and at about 135MB each, I've used up about 800GB of hard disk space on my server.  And I still have another 30 - 40 rolls of negatives left to scan.  And then there's all the slides...

Anyway, with all this new raw material to work with, I decided to change my approach to processing.  I've been using Photoshop 5 and an older version of Nik Softwares suite of plugins to process the photos one at a time.  Since I have so many negatives I decided to try Lightroom 4 and the latest version of the Nik software suite for Lightroom.  Like Photoshop, Lightroom has a pretty steep learning curve but so far I'm really impressed with the way it manages large numbers of files.  Although I did most of the photo processing in Nik software's Color Efex plugin.  The latest version has some awesome filters.

The first batch of scans that I've prepared for this website is the 2003 Lijiang, China trip.  I uploaded the photos early this morning so take a look.  I still have to add captions and titles to the pictures.

]]> [email protected] (Dave Spencer) https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/6/posted-more-pictures-from-lijiang-china Wed, 06 Jun 2012 02:20:24 GMT Still scanning negatives . . . https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/5/still-scanning-negatives In my last post, I hoped to start posting some of the images I had scanned from some of my older trips (pre-DSLR).  Well, I'm afraid I still don't have any ready to post but I have made a LOT of progress as far as scanning goes.  Through lots of trial and error, research, and a book I bought for my iPad about using VueScan I have refined the scanning process and I'm really excited about the results I'm seeing.  I keep expanding the scope of this project and if my patience doesn't wear out I suspect I will end of scanning ALL the negatives I have from my travels, and maybe even the family stuff.  It's amazing what you can do with a photo with Photoshop or Lightroom if I have a good sharp raw scan at 4000 dpi and 14 bits of color depth to work with.  So photos that looked only so-so on the 4x6 prints from Kodak have a whole new life after a little editing.  I pretty much just have to keep feeding the scanner every 10 or 15 minutes with a little extra work to lock in the color balance and exposure at the beginning of each roll.  Looks like there's a lot of good stuff in there so hopefully it will be worth the effort when I start post processing some of them.  So far I've scanned almost 3000 negatives and created about 400GB of new data!

]]> [email protected] (Dave Spencer) https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/5/still-scanning-negatives Sun, 13 May 2012 02:17:43 GMT Scanning negatives https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/4/scanning-negatives Well, I've started scanning negatives myself from some of my older trips. I'm using a Nikon Coolscan V ED film scanner and VueScan software.  I'm scanning at 4000 dpi and 14bit color depth.  The results are pretty good considering these are negatives.  I used to process all my own prints in a color darkroom that I had setup and I knew all about the graininess of negatives, but it's really apparent when you scan it at high resolution and see it enlarged on a big monitor.  Most of my film was developed by Kodak (thankfully) and the negatives are in strips of 4 frames.  With the Vuescan software I can feed a whole strip into the scanner and it will scan all 4 frames and write the files to disk using a filename template such as Roll 01 Frame 01+.  It will auto-increment the 01 part as it writes each file.  At this resolution and color depth as a .dng file (digital negative format) the file size is about 120MB each! and it takes about 12 minutes to scan each strip.  Then it automatically ejects the film strip and beeps a couple of times to let me know it's complete.  Needless to say it's a slow process but with a stack of negatives at my side I can work on other things while it's running.

I just completed scanning over 450 photos that I took on a trip to China in 2003.  I visited an incredibly picturesque little canal town named Lijiang over in the Yunnan province and hiked the length of the 11,000 foot deep Tiger Leaping Gorge.  There's going to be some pretty good pictures come out of that trip.  But I still have to post-process each of the raw scans first.  But rather than jump right in and start processing the Lijiang photos I've decided to keep scanning while I'm on a roll.  I'm now scanning film from a trip to the south of New Zealand that I did with my mother.  This trip includes hiking the Milford Trek and the Routeburn Trek.  They had just finished filming parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy when we were there.  There are about 30 rolls of film for this one.  Not sure how soon I'll have either of these trips posted on this site so check back now and then.  Hopefully within a couple of weeks or so.

]]> [email protected] (Dave Spencer) https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/4/scanning-negatives Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:56:01 GMT Scanning old photos https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/4/scanning-old-travel-photos I have thousands of pre-digital photos from dozens of trips before about 2005 on negative, slides, and prints.  I'm in the process of trying to get all of those converted to digital and hope to post the best ones on this site.  I bought a couple of Groupon deals to scan prints to digital so I just shipped off about 1000 travel and misc family photos to ScanMyPhotos.com to see how well they do.  At least I'll have a digital record to scan through, and archive, even if the quality is not so great (as I expect).

]]> [email protected] (Dave Spencer) https://davespencer.zenfolio.com/blog/2012/4/scanning-old-travel-photos Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:03:48 GMT