Nikon today released 4 firmware updates for its upper and top level camera bodies.
64GB compact flash cards are now supported and each update brings bug fixes and new features (the D3 seeing the most updates).
Here are the links:
PC:
Nikon D3 v2.02
Nikon D3X v1.01
Nikon D700 v1.02
Nikon D300S v1.01
Mac:
Nikon D3 v2.02
Nikon D3X v1.01
Nikon D700 v1.02
Nikon D300S v1.01
I went out today to try to shoot some outdoor infrared photographs. To be completely honest, I haven’t had much of a chance to shoot much IR with the D3. I don’t recall any IR photographs from the D3 as being spectacular. When I offloaded my card and worked on an image or two, I was rather unhappy with the results. Here is one selection:
Nikon D3 Infrared Photograph
This got me to thinking about the actual nature of digital IR photography and how and why it works. DSLRs try very hard to keep infrared light out of your camera’s sensor with a filter that stands directly in front of the sensor itself. It only makes sense that the more expensive the camera, the more successful it will be at keeping IR out. Does that prove true? In this case… YES.
After I got home, I decided to make a very quick and impromptu comparison between the Nikon D3 and an older Nikon D60. Each image was shot in RAW, and processed in Lightroom for white balance only. Click each for a larger version.
Nikon D60 Infrared Test
Nikon D3 Infrared Test
With equal processing on both images, you can instantly see some pretty clear differences. First, the red cast from the Hoya R72 filter is much less apparent in the D60 than the D3. The D60 provides a much more manageable color environment to work in. This is not to say that the D3 image could not be massaged into the same image that the D60 produced almost out of the camera, but it would take some significant work. This is relevant if you want to use the natural color of the IR, but if you convert to grayscale, I found that you get almost an indentical image:
IR grayscale Comparison of Nikon D60 and D3. Click to enlarge.
The only real difference, without close inspection is that the D60 produced a slightly more contrasty image. Now, what about actual image quality and detail? Below you will find two 100% crops from the images above.
Comparing sharpness between the D60 and D3
Now the differences are more subtle. Both images lack true sharpness but if one or the other has to be crowned the winner, I would say that hands down it is the D60. The D3 just does not seem to be able to hold edge detail near areas of contrasting tones. Instead, it just makes things a blurry mess. This could be partly due to the fact that there is so much more red in the D3 and therefore less information available when translating to grayscale (depending on how you do it).
So I know that I probably could provide more examples to back my findings up, but I’m a little strapped for time at this exact moment. I will try to get some additional samples up ASAP. My conslusion is that while the D3 is a capable infrared photography device, it’s IR filter is too efficient at blocking out those much needed invisible light waves and yields a less than spectacular result. My recommendation, if you want to get truly great IR shots, go find an older cheaper body like a D70 or D50.
After my disaster with my Inovatronix ExplorerXT I decided to go with the AlienBees Vagabond II. All I can say is that it performed FLAWLESSLY! I have nothing bad to say about it. The recycle times were impressive (less than 1 second with 3 AlienBees B800 units at about 1/8 power). It’s nice to be back in action in the mobile power department.
Rena did great and she is a long-time friend. We sneaked into and shot in the old sub-level of Old Sacramento. It was a fun shoot and I really enjoyed working with her!
Had another outdoor shoot with Veronika. Typical AlienBees 2x B800 setup. This location was more remote and there was no power available. I used my Innovatronix ExplorerXT and it worked great for about 5 minutes then it went DEAD. I finally realized that after owning the unit for about a year, the unit was deffective and it has never charged correctly. I always thought it was wierd that the charging LED never stayed lit for more than about 30 seconds but I thought it was still charging because it had always worked fine. After this shoot, I now finally understand that I have just slowly been depleating the charge of the batter over a year long period and that it has never really been charged since I have owned it. I now have a completely useless, dead external power pack that is out of warranty and no longer a winner in my opinion. Even better, I can’t get a hold of Innovatronix for support or anything. I’ve emailed and called with no luck. I guess you get what you pay for.
I purchased a Paul C Buff external power source today. I have a feeling it will perform much better.
Congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Ellenberger. They were married in Berkeley, CA on June 26th 2009. The ceremony was held in an amazing redwood forest in the Berkeley botanical gardens.
People here in the valley were treated to an awesome electrical storm that spanned from the Sierra Nevadas to the Bay Area and lasted several hours. Of course, I was out in the middle of it getting some shots. This is something we won’t see again for quite some time and just wanted to share.
I saw a program on The Discovery Channel recently about photographing water droplets using high speed video cameras. I thought I’d give it a shot using a traditional digital SLR. This setup is incredibly basic and went something like this:
Setup:
Baking pan for water
C-Stand with grip arm to hold zip-lock bag filled with water over baking pan
Tripod
Camera (In this case, a Nikon D3 with a Micro Nikkor 60mm AF lens)
PW’d AlienBees B800 with 10 degree honeycomb grid
Sample book of Roscolux gels. (The free book of small gells that you can get from lighting stores, has about 500 free gels in them)
Reflective material behind the baking pan to reflect light down onto the water. I used anything from a water color painting made by a friend of mine to a white piece of poster board.
I shot in manual, about 1/250th sec @ f 16 with the strobe at full power pointing at the background material. I had to shoot A LOT of frame (about 300) to get these few keepers. Its a very inexact science. Mostly trial and error. In a perfect world, I would have liked to have shot at a faster shutter speed, but my D3 syncs at 1/250, so I was somewhat limited. A fix for this would have been to use a SB-800 or SB-900 with high speed sync enabled, but I just didn’t get around to it. Stopping down a little more would have also helped with some focus issues I was clearly experiencing.
Enjoy!
Here are some sample shots I made with a pair of AlienBees monolights. Overall, I feel like they performed very well. In fact, I had no problem what-so-ever. I can not say enough good things about my Innovatronix Explorer XT portable power unit. The lights functioned just as if they were plugged into a regular wall outlet with identical recycle times and performance. Obviously, you can’t use the modeling lights with a portable power pack, but I liberally used them for a couple seconds at a time and saw no impact on the charge of the unit.
The setup on these shots is fairly straight forward. The key light is a PW’d AlienBees B1600 at about 1/4 power with a 47″ octobox setup on a C-Stand with grip arm. The octobox is about 3 feet above and to the side of the subject pointing down at her.
The second light is another PW’d AlienBees B800 with a 10 degree honeycomb grid firing at about 3/4 power toward the subjects feet to light up the ground a little. On some shots, I moved the B800 directly behind the subject to act as a hair/rim light. Same settings.
All images taken on a Nikon D3, with a Nikkor 28-70mm f2.8 @ ISO 200 and roughly 1 – 1/2 second @ f6.
Not much going on lately… I found this guy in my front yard after some heavy rain.
Equipment: Nikon D3, Nikkor 60mm Micro, Nikon SB-600 (controlled by SU-800), Generic Shoot-thru Umbrella
I just thought I would post some test images that I shot the other night at a junior BMX race course. All images are ISO 6400 shot on a D3 with a Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 G AF-S VR lens. I am fairly happy with the noise performance. All images were run through Lightroom 2.0 and given minimal luminance and color noise reduction.
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