More Nikon D850 Minutia

Comments / Notes - updated 12/1/2018

I decided I needed a place to post things I've found about the D850 that I want to point out for one reason or another. A lot of these items are likely to be differences between the D610 and D850 - comparing my previous body experiences. These are not listed in any order of importance.

12/1/2018 - Formatting the memory card deletes the settings file

I have been curious about this so tried it out. If you save your settings to the memory card in the D850 (Setup Menu > Save/Load settings), it creates a NCSETUPM.BIN file at the root of the card. If you then choose to reformat your card (), it deletes your settings file! 

When I import files from the memory card I try to also make a backup of the NCSETUPM.BIN file. Another thing to try to do is to save your settings again after formatting the memory card.

I have only tried this with the XQD card.

The Unboxing

Everyone does unboxing videos of their Nikon D850. Well, perhaps not everyone but there are a lot of unboxing videos on YouTube. As I opened my D850, I took a few snaps with my D610, but hadn't shot photos for about a year and a half and I had the aperture opened up too wide to get good depth of field and being hand held, they aren't in focus. So, here's the extent to which I'll share my D850 unboxing:

My Nikon D850 - unboxed, 11/06/2018

In one of the unboxing videos I watched, the guy (I don't think I've seen one unboxing with a woman owner - hmmm) threw his manual back in the box unwrapped (it comes wrapped in plastic). I wish I hadn't opened mine either - I won't read the paper copy. Like him, I had already downloaded the D850 User Manual from Nikon's site (~400 pages) along with the separate Menu Guide (~200 pages). I have it on my iPhone and iPad and that's where I've read it.

Likewise I won't use the D850 camera strap although I sure wouldn't be ashamed to! I am tickled with this camera and glad I got it. And that's without having even gotten out much with it. It's just satisfying knowing that I have what a lot of folks consider the top DSLR of it's time. Now if only I had the skills to go with it!

What about my Nikon D610?

My Nikon D610

I don't know what to do with my Nikon D610. My wife wants me to keep it but I don't see much sense in that. I'm not a pro, and I'm not shooting events where I must get the shot. In other words, I don't need a backup camera. Even if I did, I still have my little Nikon D3200 still.

The downside of selling them is that neither one of the other bodies are worth much. If I sold it to B&H or Adorama, they might give me $300 or so for it. The reason I've kept the D3200 is because it isn't worth much either, and neither are the DX format lenses.

I could get more selling it myself online but I hate messing with that stuff. It's a conundrum.

I'm also surprised that I could let the D610 go so easily, but I don't really have a connection to it like I do my dogs or other material things I sold in the past (like my Yamaha MO6 keyboard). I don't know why that is but I have 2 thoughts: 1) the actual camera body wasn't the focus of my experiences or memories from being out shooting, or 2) I've grown emotionally this year. Either way, I truly enjoyed what the D610 did for me and hope to continue down the same path with the D850.

Nikon D850 - Focusing

Like learning how to focus for the first time - almost

Encanto Park, Phoenix AZ
Nikon D850, Nikkor 16-35mm f/4 @ 16mm

I went out to shoot with my new Nikon D850 last weekend and wasn't terribly happy with my results.

I was hoping, okay, expecting, to be blown away with the detail and sharpness of the better sensor. I forgot to account for the ability of the photographer!

The image at right was probably the best result I got. I was using my Nikkor 16-35mm f/4/G lens at 16 mm and f/4.5. I used the autofocus in live view, focusing on the fountain on the left of the little island. I used the self timer mode with a 4 second delay on the shutter release. None of this image seems terribly sharp to me.

On Thom Hogan's site, I had read about which lenses are recommended for the D850 and this lens is semi-recommended (the exception being that an LED used in the vibration reduction circuitry can cause "fogging" of an image). I was aware that there is some discussion about the performance of lenses with the higher resolution sensor so I was worried - was I going to have to replace all of my lenses? I hoped not.

After pondering the issue over the last week, I decided to try some additional settings.

Today I enabled the electronic front curtain shutter (Custom Setting d5). I also used the full Mup release mode. In addition, I manually focused in live view with focus peaking enabled while zoomed in at 100%. Between all of those settings, this new image looks pretty good to me.

Neighbor's Palm Tree, Phoenix AZ
Nikon D850, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D @ f/1.8

This was taken with my lowly Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens, which is NOT on the recommended list for the D850 and it still looks better than any of the shots I did the prior weekend. Woo hoo! This crop does have some sharpening applied in Lightroom, but now I can see what the rig can do even with a less than stellar lens.

Here are the full size jpegs of the above images for reference:

More reflections

Wireless Remote for the D850

One thing I always did with my D610 was to use an infrared (IR) remote shutter release to trigger the shutter. The D850 doesn't have that functionality built in. The IR remote doesn't work with the D850. I've been looking for solutions and am torn about how to address the issue. For now I'll just use the Mup mode with a release delay. I really don't like having to use an attachment with a cord, and am considering the Vello FreeWave Micro Wireless Remote Shutter Release - it has a receiver that plugs in to the 10 pin connecter and doesn't need a cable flopping around.

XQD Memory Card

I have been using a new Sony XQD G series 64G memory card. It's fine and should hold around 589 images at 14 bit lossless compressed (~45 Mb per file for the files I've taken so far). The burst rate of the camera at 7 frames per secong (FPS) is pretty cool and impressed my friend Jon.

However, during my photography hiatus, SanDisk and others have come out with some new UHS-3 SD cards that are impressive for that format - they have write speeds around 250-300MB/s! They're somewhat cheaper than the XQD cards too.

However, since most of what I have shot is landscape, I really don't need to use burst mode to try and freeze a mountain or valley or tree. Consequently, my 95MB/s SD cards work just fine. Getting the XQD was not really necessary, and it also required me to get an XQD card reader. 

I Got Everything

I recently got the new B & H catalog. I recently perused through the YouTube suggestions (based on my viewing history). I recently cleaned all of my gear before going to Bryce Canyon National Park. In all cases it made me think about my gear, and even more importantly, that there's nothing I can think of that I need to add! That must mean that I've arrived!

I wrote and recorded a song 5 years ago called "I Got Everything" that comes to mind although that song is more depressing than this issue about photography gear (if you go to the page, http://www.poppavein.com/RRhythmia.aspx#IGotEverything, you can  click on the ">" image left of the song title to stream the song.

My D610 with an old Nikkor 70-210mm F4-5.6D
and my Opteka GPS unit

I can look through the B & H catalog with only mild interest because there's just nothing that I want to get. Oh, if funds were unlimited I might buy a big format printer, perhaps a Nikon D5, or even some faster Nikon lenses. But frankly, at my age of a certain age (or at least approaching a certain age), I am trying to get rid of possessions (such as my music gear!).

This last summer I toyed with the idea of getting a Nikon D810 when I found them online (at B & H or Adorama or somewhere) for about $2,000. I believe they were re-furbished but I'm okay with that - my Nikon D610 is refurbished. I've had it for 2-1/2 years and the only problem I've had with it is due to letting a co-worker handle it and he twisted the mode switch without pushing in the lock and wore it down.

Nikkor 20mm f/1.8G ED Lens

After thinking about it and reading more reviews, the D610 is considered to have better low-light image quality and since I prefer shooting low light images over other images, it just didn't make sense to pick it up. Instead I added the Nikkor 20mm f/1.8G ED lens. That saved me about $1,200 and gave me a wide angle f/1.8 lens!

On the one hand, my lack of desire for additional gear means I don't have to spend money. On the other hand, I kind of miss the excitement I had when I first started this hobby - finding new pieces of equipment I thought I had to have, researching which equipment to buy, ordering it, unpacking it, and finally, using it!

If you're just starting to get involved in photography, I'm jealous! Enjoy and savor your adventure.

Nikkor 200-500mm f/4E Image Quality, continued

Testing the Lens

Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6E

I went outside to my back yard a couple of weekends ago, at mid-day, and shot some sample images from my 200-500mm lens at different apertures and focal lengths. I had two goals:

1. Try to be more scientific about knowing my lens – which apertures provide the sharpest images at which focal lengths. 
2. Try to mark the lens for focus at infinity at a known f-stop so I could photograph the upcoming Hunters Moon that night. (http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-hunters-moon).

I don’t have much that I can see or shoot a photograph of from my back yard that is very far away. I settled on a power transmission tower that is about 1,000 feet away. I’m not convinced that it is enough of a distance to make much of a determination from so I’ll have to re-do my tests with a better subject.

Considerations for Depth of Field

According to my DOF calculator, using 500mm at f/5.6, the far end of the focal range is 1,290 feet; I want to go to infinity for the distant sky photography. Even at f/8 the far end is only 1,450. I need something at about 3,300 feet to get the far end of the range out to infinity using f/5.6.

But, what I did shoot may tell me something about the lens performance at this shorter range… Okay, it really didn’t. When I pulled the images in to Lightroom I honestly couldn’t see much difference between any of the shots as far as sharpness is concerned. That means that either my eyes aren’t very good or all of the shots were equally crappy. I think it’s more of the latter.

I noticed that while I was zoomed out to 500mm that the tower was really jiggling in the viewfinder. I had my camera on my tripod sitting on my patio. I don’t get where the vibration was coming from. I took some of the shots at 1/500 second and some with 1/800. I didn’t notice what looked like motion blur in any of the images but they also didn’t look terribly sharp.

Adding weight to the rig

I tried some of the images after suspending a gallon of water from the tripod to see if that helped (a gallon of water weighs about 8 pounds). It didn’t make any improvement that I could detect.
Another thing I noticed is that there was atmospheric distortion. Without looking through the viewfinder I could see heat waves between my location and the tower. I could see that in some of the images too, where the arms of the tower were distorted.

The bottom line for my experiment is that none of my images looked terribly sharp. I hope to try again soon with a more distant subject in a colder location like Flagstaff, Arizona. I also want to try getting some sort of bean bag or something to place on the lens to try to dampen vibrations.

In the meantime, I've uploaded some of the images here. You can click on them to see the full size. These were exported from Lightroom with White Balance set to Daylight, Tone Curve set to Medium Contrast, Lightroom sharpening set to 50, Detail @ 50, and Masking @ 50. Lens corrections were enabled. Camera Calibration was using Camera Neutral v2. All other settings were zero, default, or off.

These images are at 480mm and 300mm, avoiding the limits at either end of the lens. They are at apertures of f/5.6, f/8, f/11, and f/16.

Focal Length at 480mm

Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm at 480mm, f/5.6, 1/800s, ISO 100

Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm at 480mm, f/8, 1/800s, ISO 100

Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm at 480mm, f/11, 1/800s, ISO 100

Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm at 480mm, f/16, 1/800s, ISO 100

Focal Length at 300mm

Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm at 300mm, f/5.6, 1/500s, ISO 100

Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm at 300mm, f/8, 1/500s, ISO 100

Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm at 300mm, f/11, 1/500s, ISO 100

Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm at 300mm, f/16, 1/500s, ISO 100

Cleaning my Nikon D610 Sensor

Just to be clear, this is NOT a blog about how to clean a sensor yourself. This is what I do to get my sensor cleaned...

This last weekend I got out and shot some photographs. During post processing I saw a number of spots on the images that I had to spot correct. I've been seeing them for a while and have been ready to get my sensor cleaned. I had it cleaned about a year ago at Tempe Camera in Tempe, Arizona.

Apparently I've used the camera enough that it needs to be cleaned again. I haven't actually been shooting a lot this year (since December 2015) due to health reasons so I'm guessing that if I had shot more I may have been at this point a few months ago. I may need the sensor cleaned every 9 months before I pass my tolerance level.

Dirty Sensor
Nikon D610 + 20mm lens, 20mm, f/10, 1/250s, ISO 100

This weekend I noticed that there were a couple of really bad, dark spots near the center of the images. There were a lot of less severe spots in the upper left corner. Note that spots show up more with a smaller aperture (I shot some at f/8 or f/10, not even at f/22).

The spots can easily be fixed in Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. That isn't the issue for me. What I don't like is when there are a lot of spots it can take a while. Yes, you can copy and paste them in Lightroom, and I have done that, but you still should look at all of them to see if they were necessary or if the area that was used as the source works in the images where the spot corrections were pasted. Due to that, I typically don't copy and paste the spot correction because they really should be handled from scratch in each image.

The second, and more important issue to me, is that when you do a spot correction, data is being copied from one area of the image to another. For skies and clouds, I don't mind it as long as the correction blends nicely and doesn't look like an obvious patch.

However, if the correction is on more significant details such as a mountain side, or perhaps a building, the correction means that you are loosing actual data in the image. And depending on where the spots are, you could be loosing critical information such as someones head, text on a sign, or the middle of a waterfall.

Since I'm getting close to going to Yosemite National Park, I wanted to get my sensor cleaned so that I won't have spots in the middle of Bridal Veil falls.

I have read about cleaning sensors but haven't brought myself to try it. For $60 each year I don't have to worry about screwing up my sensor. Instead, I can drop my body off with a fully charged battery, no memory cards, body cap, per their instructions. Their biggest concern is having a fully charged battery since the mirror up won't happen if the battery level is at 50% or less.

Last year the results were great - I had it done before visiting Oregon and Washington and barely had any spot removals required when I processed the images. I'm hoping for the same thing this year when I visit Yosemite!

First photos with my new AF-S NIKKOR 20mm f/1.8G ED

I got my new AF-S NIKKOR 20mm f/1.8G ED lens yesterday in time to try to shoot the Perseid meteor shower with it. I went out last night to a spot east of Apache Junction, Arizona, with the Arizona Night Photography group from meetup.com. There were quite a few people there; on the website 77 people said they'd be there.

Arizona Night Photography group
Perseid Meteor Shower 2016

The spot had pretty good levels of light pollution even that close to Phoenix. Unfortunately the moon didn't set until about 1AM. Not that it mattered, we didn't really see much of a concentration of meteors. I was there from about 6:30 PM to about 2:30 AM and probably only saw about 20 meteors or shooting stars. A couple were pretty bright but for the most part it was the same as my previous meteor shower outings - pretty underwhelming. I was bummed because this was being touted as the best event of 2016.

This outing worked like my others (I've tried to shoot Perseid and Geminid showers in the past). I'd see a meteor to my left so I'd point the camera that direction and take a number of shots. While doing that I'd see a meteor to my right so I'd recompose. A gal I met last night likened shooting meteors to shooting whales. You never really know where they're going to show until they're already gone. 

If there was truly a concentrated emanation point it might be different. But I haven't experienced that myself.

I still tried to get some shots with my new lens, even if they weren't including any meteors. I really wanted to see how it worked.

The bottom line is that I think the lens works great, at least compared to my AF-S NIKKOR 16-35mm f/4G ED VR. But I still had the same problems using it.

Moon Glow
20mm - f/2.0 - 2.0 sec - ISO 400

I shot 70 images but only got a few that were in focus. I really have a hard time focusing in the dark. The best subject was the moon but that was only good for the distant subjects such as stars. I was able to do that okay and I think the focus is pretty good. I like that I could use a lot shorter exposure time due to the faster (larger diameter) aperture. 

The image at right was shot with my Nikon D610 and the Nikkor 20mm at f/2.0 and ISO 400. I did crop it because the rest of the foreground at the bottom was out of focus.

The larger aperture diameter also reduces depth of field and it really came in to play. I was hoping that the larger aperture would allow me to focus easier since I thought I'd be able to view the subject better, either through the view finder or in live view. It didn't seem to make much improvement over the 16-35mm for me, however. I still struggled to focus.

I tried auto focus too but it was worse than manual focus. 

Focal Plane Example
20mm - f/1.8 - 8.0 sec - ISO 500

I shot this capture of a cactus but you can clearly see that the focus plane runs somewhere through the middle of the cactus. Some of the needles in the upper "crotch"  of the cactus are in focus as are some of the "blooms" on the ground. This image doesn't have any post processing done to it so you can also see the other artifacts.

So even though I shot a few pics, I don't have much to show for it due to my focus problems. I just couldn't focus on close objects. (The problem was not due to auto focus changing the focus when I shot the photograph - I had the auto focus turned off OR I used back button focus - focus doesn't change unless I want it to.)

If I hadn't been with the group of people trying to shoot night photographs I would have lit up the subjects with a flashlight while focusing.

Beyond that problem, which is with my technique or abilities and not that of the lens (since a few images were in focus), I had heard that the coma was really good in this lens. I know I've had issues with coma in my 16-35mm but this lens is a lot better behaved, probably due to the aspherical elements is my guess. And because this is a prime instead of a zoom.

Here's a pic with a bit of exposure adjustment but you can see the coma in a number of places in the corners. It's not bad. I haven't done it myself but I recently watched a YouTube of a photog who edits the stars that have bad coma, I think it was in Photoshop, and he'd just apply a round mask to the offending stars and get rid of the coma shapes.

Coma Example
20mm - f/1.8 - 8.0 sec - ISO 1000

I'm pleased with the lens so far and can't wait to put it through some more paces.

As for the outing, when I left the appointed location I travelled over to the Superstition Mountains to see if it was any better. It was sort of on the way home and allowed me to wait until a bit later. I got there around 3 AM. I got out of my Explorer, waited maybe 15 minutes but didn't see another meteor so headed home. 

I haven't been out much this year due to my health issues and this little shoot was very pleasant. The air temperature cooled after about 11 PM, maybe to 85 degrees F or so. Just sitting out under the sky, seeing part of the Milky Way with my own eyes, was simply wonderful. I got to meet a couple of gals who are knowledgeable about photography (both shooting full frame Sony A7 and A7R) and was able to talk to them for hours about camera gear and post processing. I don't care if I didn't get any good meteor images - I got a lot of pleasure!

AF-S NIKKOR 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR Review - Part 2

Well, I finally got out and shot a few frames with my new AF-S NIKKOR 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR lens today! As promised, I'll post a bit of a review with some of my thoughts and experiences using it...

Note that in all of the photographs below I had the VR (Vibration Reduction) off since I was shooting from a tripod.

Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6E

The Physical World

If you've read anything about the lens you've probably heard it's heavy and big. I certainly don't have anything else like it.

It's weird mounting the camera to it. The lens is heavier than the Nikon D610 (I haven't tried it on my Nikon D3200 yet). I had the lens sitting face down in the bag I'm using to carry it (an Amazon Basics Camera Backpack, which it about fills up). I mate the D610 to the lens and rotate the camera.

I carry the system by either the lens or the tripod mount on the lens.

When I get the lens mounted in my Manfrotto 468MGRC5 Hydrostatic Ball Head sitting on top of my Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod, it is solid. This ball head is paying off now! It's weight capacity of 26 pounds (12 kg) is really not being stressed and the ball head holds the system. The lens (~ 5 pounds) plus D610 (~ 1.6 pounds) is less than 7 pounds total (even with 2 SD cards!).

I did increase the "Friction" setting of the ball head to reduce the amount of play in the head when I loosened it - with that amount of weight the lens does tend to want to sag more. But when the "Friction" is set right, I find that the camera and lens are pretty well balanced. I had no problems at all. I did need to crank on the main knob more than with my other lenses to prevent the lens from drooping after letting go but once you realize that it was no big deal. I don't see a lot of love for this ball head but I sure like it.

Dolly Steamboat on Canyon Lake
Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm - ISO 100 ■ 500mm ■ f/7.1 ■ 1/160s

Increase the Shutter Release Delay

I didn't get out my IR remote shutter release and instead just used the delay on the manual shutter release button. I noticed by looking through the view finder, however, that when I pressed the shutter release, the camera wobbled more than with my other lenses. I changed the delay from 2 seconds to 5 seconds to compensate - letting the camera settle down before releasing the shutter. I didn't notice the issue in my photographs so maybe it was actually still within the 2 seconds but since I was shooting a lake and desert hills, I felt the extra 3 seconds before the shutter release wouldn't hurt.

Using the wireless remote would probably work fine, unless it's windy. There was some breeze at the lake (Canyon Lake near Apache Junction, AZ), but not enough to visibly affect the camera. I didn't try cranking down harder on the ball head either - that's a chore for next time I guess.

Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6E
ISO 100 ■ 500mm ■ f/7.1 ■ 1/125s

Auto Focus

As I mentioned in a recent post, I use back button focus. I didn't have any issues using that with the shots I took. It didn't hunt around at all. It acquired focus with no questions asked and it appears to be pretty good. Granted it was a sunny, 97 degree Fahrenheit day in Arizona. I used an aperture of f/7.1 just to get off of the f/5.6 and to get a bit more depth of field.

How's the Focal Length?

I didn't get a chance to shoot any wildlife so I can't comment on that directly. What I can say is that from the Acacia picnic area I wanted to shoot the opening across the lake where the Salt River continues down stream. I couldn't get it all in the frame at 200mm. It made me wonder if the Sigma or Tamron with that extra 50mm at the short end would have allowed me to get the shot.

Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6E
ISO 100 ■ 200mm ■ f/7.1 ■ 1/160s

Instead, I was able to compose the shot with the sheer wall on the right which is interesting.

In the photograph to the left I've purposefully left the full frame even though the water line isn't horizontal. I wanted to show the difference between the 200mm and 500mm focal length. This is the full image (okay, reduced to a max of 2040px wide for the web).

I did use some post processing in Lightroom, and did increase clarity as well as sharpening - just using Lightroom.

Here's a shot of those mountain peaks at 500mm, from the same location (I didn't move the tripod, just zoomed in to the 500mm focal length).

Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6E
ISO 100 ■ 500mm ■ f/7.1 ■ 1/200s

I know these aren't great pictures; no one is likely to hang these on their living room wall. That's not the point. I wanted to see how the lens performed and how that 500mm could come in handy. I think I see opportunity here. I've shot landscapes in the past where I wish I could fill up more of the frame with a mountain, for example (like Humphreys Peak near Flagstaff, Arizona). This worked pretty good!

Basically, with a 200-500mm zoom, you should be able to increase the size of the subject by 2.5 times.

Lesson Learned - Update your Camera

One thing I figured out was that I needed to update my camera firmware. When I opened my files in Lightroom it didn't find the lens profile (well, I found out I also had to update Lightroom CC - it wasn't using the latest version of Adobe Camera Raw).

When I looked at the properties of the NEF files the lens information was missing.

I remembered that I'd seen updates to the camera firmware but hadn't bothered with them because I my lenses were already supported. This Nikkor 200-500mm only came out less than a year ago, though, and my cameras didn't know about it. I updated the Distortion Control software on my D610 but on the D3200 I had to do the Firmware and the Distortion Control software.

Now things are cookin'!

The Bottom Line

I'm happy so far with the lens - I think I'll keep it. I really wanted to try it to see if I liked it or whether I should send it back to Adorama but it looks like it's part of my bag now. I just wish it fit in the bag!

Another set of 200mm and 500mm shots for you to ponder. These don't have much processing at all and they both have the same processing. I just think it's interesting to see the difference in composition at both ends of the lens.

Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6E
ISO 100 ■ 200mm ■ f/7.1 ■ 1/200s

Nikon D610 + Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6E
ISO 100 ■ 500mm ■ f/7.1 ■ 1/250s

A short post about Back Button Focus

I am mainly a landscape photographer. My subjects don't often move around much. Consequently, for some time now, when I use auto focus, I've been using "Back Button Focus" on my Nikon D610. I think I've been using it since shortly after getting the D610. I like it.

Hey - why use Back Button Focus?

Most DSLRs (Digital Single Lens Reflex), as far as I know, allow you to press the shutter release half-way down so that the camera can focus on whatever is in it's cross hairs. Note that different cameras and different modes can cause the camera to focus at different areas of the image. I typically use a single focus and metering point so that's what I'll assume here.

When you press the shutter release half-way down and the camera locks in on the focus, you can then move the camera while still holding the shutter release half-way down in order to recompose your shot. For example you might focus on your significant other in the center of the shot and then pan a bit to get more of the Grand Canyon. Once you have the composition you like, you can press the shutter release the rest of the way to take the photograph.

That is pretty convenient, allowing the camera to focus on one thing and then to re-compose the shot after the camera has gained it's focus.

One problem with that technique, however, is that you have to keep the shutter release depressed half way in order to preserve that focus setting. If your finger slips off of the button you have to start all over. So what if you've panned a bit and then someone else steps into your shot? If you want to wait for them to leave, you've got to keep that button held down. 

In landscape photography I often want to focus on something, say a cactus in the foreground, and then re-compose. I may want to try 20 different compositions. And, I use a tripod for almost every shot I take (at least if I want them to turn out I do). Using the "normal" half-pressed shutter release can be a pain in the rear end (so can sitting on cactus).

Another issue with the "normal" focus is if you want to avoid camera shake due to the shutter release, for example if you use a remote release. If you have to hold the shutter release down part way and then trigger the shutter release it can cause unwanted vibration or motion into the camera.

This is where back button focus can help out...

What is Back Button Focus?

Back Button Focus allows you to configure a button on the back of the camera to use as a focus lock. It basically takes the place of the half-press action of the main shutter release button. You move your focus point(s) onto the subject as normal but instead of pressing the main shutter release button half-way to engage the auto-focus, you press the button on the back of the camera. Then, you can let go of that button - the focus will still be locked in. It won't change again until you press that back button again.

The cool thing about this is that you don't have to keep your finger on the button. The camera can even go to "sleep" - the focus of the lens won't be changed.

You can focus on your subject and take multiple images with different compositions and you won't need to focus on the subject again unless it moves. This is great for landscape photography where you can focus on a foreground object and as long as your camera doesn't move much (less than the depth of field) you can recompose without focusing for each shot. There is less time between each shot.

I use manual focus a lot too, but I still often will start with a press of the back button to get the lens either right where I want it or at least close and then I may focus slightly different for one reason or another.

Nikon D610 Back (Official Nikon Image)

How can I set up Back Button Focus?

Most DSLR cameras, at some level above the basic level, have a way to program one of the BUTTONs on the BACK of the camera to work as a FOCUS button. In the case of my D610, I use the "AE-L/AF-L" button, to the left of the rear thumb wheel.

You can usually find out how to set it up by doing a search on the web if your camera instruction manual doesn't outline it (or if you can't figure it out from your camera manual). Here's an example for the Nikon D610 Back Button Focus setup. 

Anything more you can tell me about this?

Luna the Barn Owl - most of him anyway

This subject is on my mind because of my outing at Arizona's Raptor Experience last weekend. I shot a number of images like this one - see anything wrong with it? When I got home I found a number of shots where the feet were cut off.

The problem was, I realized and figured out after shooting 400 pictures of raptors, was that I was setting my focus point on the bird's eye, using the back button focus, and not re-composing or even noticing that I was cutting off the toes of these fine feathered friends. 

I'll admit, it was a little nerve wracking at the shoot. I suppose the more you do it the better you get. But I was paying $190 for the trip to shoot the birds and that added some pressure. I rarely shoot animals successfully and that added more pressure. And the pressure prevented me from getting great shots. 

At one point, when we had some time with a flying hawk, I had to figure out how to get out of back button focus and to let the camera do it's job. Those photos turned out ever worse. I got zero usable shots of the hawk in flight.

My tip would be that, if you start using back button focus, it still is a good idea to practise the other auto focus modes of your camera if you have a chance. Especially if you know you're likely to be needing it at some point in the future.

First Milky Way Photo of the Year (for me)

No, it's not an award, it was the first photograph I shot of the Milky Way this year. 

After dealing with some minor health issues until mid-April this year, I've finally started getting out again. This weekend I had arranged an exclusive photographer access to the Tonto Natural Bridge State Park near Payson, Arizona, but decided to cancel it due to predicted inclement weather. Instead, I headed to the Chiricahua National Monument in southeast Arizona, which was predicted to have cool but dry, cloud free weather.

Some Planning

I was hoping to get a Milky Way and/or other star shots. By checking out the Photographer's Ephemeris, I found that the moon was also cooperative, being a waxing crescent one day after the new moon, and with a moon set at about 8:30PM. That means no bright moonlight to contend with. If you haven't used the Photographer's Ephemeris, it's available online (and as a download). Here's a screenshot of the information available from Massai Point for 5/7/2016. Note that the pin can be moved by dragging and dropping to any location. It shows not only the sun and moon rise and set times, but the angle for the actions:

Photographer's Ephemeris

Using the Stellarium application, I found that the Milky Way should be pretty visible by 1:30AM on Saturday morning, through until a bit before sunrise, approximately 4:30 AM. If you haven't used Stellarium, it's a free app that shows you space objects at selected date and times. It's free and available for multiple operating systems. I use it on my Windows 7 desktop and my Kindle Fire. Here's a shot using the Massai Point location at about 2:30 AM on 5/7/2016, clearly showing the orientation of the Milky Way:

Stellarium

Wilcox, Arizona

Friday night, 5/6/2016, I packed my Exploder, got my dog, and headed to Massai Point. We left home in Phoenix, AZ at about 11PM. We drove straight through to Wilcox, AZ, arriving at about 1:30 AM. I wasn't sure if I was going to spend the entire day and following night there so when I fueled up at the Circle K, I picked up some jerky, Doritos, and another gallon of water (I already had a couple of gallons of water with me). I tried to go through the McDonald's drive through but they were closed (no 24 hour service there if you're passing through and relying on them to be open!). 

I ended up stopping at the Shell station in Wilcox to get some coffee. The station was attended by a man who was hosing down the parking and fueling lot. I asked him if he had some coffee and he said he did. He had to unlock the door for me to enter, and I bought a large coffee. I was skeptical about how it was going to be - it didn't look like he'd been brewing coffee recently and the streets of Wilcox were pretty much empty. It turned out to be okay; I'd had worse in the Navy at 1:30 AM!

It's about 36 miles from Wilcox to the Chiricahua National Monument, and then about another 12 miles or so to Massai Point, or almost 50 miles beyond Wilcox. I drove a tad slow along the way because there were a lot of mice, desert rats, and cotton tail rabbits running across the highway and I didn't want to ruin their morning. 

There's also a bit of that road that has some alarming hills, at least to me. There are blind hills that have curves right after the summit and I've been surprised by them in the past when I drove faster (the speed limit varies from 45 to 65 MPH along the highway). When I got to the park gate there was a fox crossing the road near the cemetery.

The road up to Massai Point only recently opened up to traffic. It had been closed for road work. There were a number of places where the pavement has not been replaced as the culverts had been repaired or upgraded. I even had to dodge a tree that apparently had just fallen down that night and was jutting out into the road, blocking the east bound lane! I believe it had just fallen that night because in the morning, when I went back down from Massai Point, it had been removed.

Massai Point

I arrived at Massai Point at about 2:40 AM. It was dark! When I shut off the Exploder's lights, I was engulfed in darkness. There were some city lights on the horizon in spots, but the parking lot was pretty dark. (Here's a link to the aerial view of Massai Point in Microsoft Bing Maps - better than I could get from Google for some reason.)

Massai Point is at the end of Bonita Canyon road in the park. It's a bit over 6,000 feet in elevation. The parking lot area is oriented sort of south west to north east. It overlooks the wonderful hoodoos but I couldn't see them at all in the basically moonless night. I did find a couple of trees that I could place in the foreground of my shot of the Milky Way that was obvious to the naked eye and stretched from horizon to horizon. 

I took in the view a bit before worrying about the photograph. I'm getting close to 60 years old and it's only been since taking up photography in the last few years that I've even had a desire to notice the Milky Way. However, I spent time camping in my youth in remote places and I would have thought I'd have noticed it before. But apparently I didn't nor was it pointed out to me. Perhaps it was never visible because my youth years were spent mainly in Washington and Oregon and it may not be very visible there. I think that's sad and amazing at the same time, but I'm thankful now that I live in a place where there are some remote areas such as the Chiricahua's and near Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument that it is very visible.

After letting my dog Elmer do his business, I put him back in the Exploder with the windows rolled down. I set up the Nikon D610 with my wide angle Nikkor 16-35mm f/4 on my Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod. 

Shooting the Milky Way

I had a hard time focusing for some reason. Normally I use live view to focus night shots but it took me a while to get it configured. I guess it was just too out of focus. 

I had the camera pretty low to the ground since I wanted to include the trees in the shot and they weren't that tall. That meant sitting on the pavement in the middle of the parking lot. That's okay at that time of day - no one else was up there and since they'd have to have their headlights on to drive up the side of the mountain, I'd see anyone approaching. But in the dark I got startled a few times when I turned my head and saw a dark patch on the pavement. This is rattlesnake, mountain lion, and bear country and the park has many warnings about that to remind you (and make you nervous if you're alone in the dark).

I really wanted to take some shots and get back in my vehicle!

I zoomed in with the live view, found Saturn which was very bright, and focused on the planet. I still had a hard time seeing the trees on the LCD so eventually I took shots and re-composed as necessary to get the trees in the shot.

I also used a number of shots to adjust my exposure. The shot below ended up at 16mm focal length, f/4, 25 seconds at ISO 1600. I wish I'd used more of a 17mm focal length; the images are generally a bit sharper if you don't have the lens into either stop. I also wish I'd tried bumping up the ISO another stop and shortened the shutter speed. The stars have some elongation and I really wanted more of a pin-point star shot. But it's still pretty cool and after being in the pitch black for an hour or so, I had enough of tempting fate.

The shots remind me of one of my photography books recommendations - you really need to get to know your camera so you can adjust it in the dark. Turning on a flashlight really makes you loose your night vision (and if you're with someone else, it can ruin theirs or their shots!). While I can adjust my camera in the dark, I couldn't get the text on the LCD to be dim enough. And how do you adjust that? By using the camera menu which was also brighter than heck. It points out to me that if you're going night shooting, if you can, it makes sense to make any adjustments during the daylight before you start the night shots so that you can hopefully avoid using the menu or other bright lights.

Here's the best of the shots I got, processed in Adobe Photoshop. This time I used some processing tips from a YouTube video from Kenneth Brandon. The bright orange/yellow object on the right edge is Saturn.

Milky Way from Massai Point, Chiricahua National Monument, 5/7/2016
Nikon D610 with Nikkor 16-35mm @ 16mm, f/4, 25.0 seconds, ISO 1600

DJI Phantom 3 Advanced - Initial Impressions - Part 4

I had been dealing with a sinus infection that won't go away but I had a work holiday on January 18, 2016 to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. I didn't feel great but forced myself to take the drone out to try to take some photographs and try out some of its more advanced functionality. I had charged the batteries up after flying in the back yard the day before, and I charged my phone up as well.

I travelled to the Gillespie Dam Bridge area where I knew there was some rarely visited space that was fairly free of obstacles. The Gillespie Dam Bridge is a bit west of Phoenix. Heading west on Interstate 10 out of Phoenix, you take the State Route 85, exit of of it on the Patterson Road exit just south of the state prison. Continue to you reach Old U.S. Highway 80 and turn right heading north. You'll come to the bridge and you can't miss the rusty old steel bridge - there aren't many like it in Arizona!

The spot I went to is on the west end of the bridge. There's rarely anyone there and its pretty open. I thought I might be able to fly along the side of the bridge and also fly around the open area.

Per somebodies suggestion I had taken a piece of particle board to use as a take off and landing pad. If nothing else it would give me a place without rocks to land.

I parked and got everything set up. I had the DJI Phantom 3 in its box and the second box for my other battery. You have to have the propellers off when the unit is in the box. I assembled the drone, hooked my phone to the controller, placed the Phantom on my landing pad, turned on the DJI Go application on the iPhone, turned on the controller, and turned on the Phantom. I was excited and ready for my first real flight!

Here's video of my first excursion. This is a reduced size video - not the full HD size.

 

 

As you can see, I didn't have the White Balance set properly. I had it set to Incandescent from the little clips I did in my house and didn't change it when I got outdoors. I had set the DJI Go app to only allow the drone to go out 200 meters which is where I got to alongside the bridge when I stop and turn it around.

I'll admit that I was a bit nervous seeing the Phantom out that far. That's a big part of the $1,000 toy way off in the distance and the YouTube videos of "fly aways" had gotten to me! My old eyeballs could still make out where the drone was but not its orientation. When you push the "pitch" stick (right control) forward to make the drone move forward, it moves forward in the direction of the front of the drone. You can change which direction the front of the drone is facing with the "yaw" stick (left control). The problem is that after a few yaw adjustments it is difficult to tell from a distance which is the front of the aircraft.

And that is a great reason for the "Return to Home" button. The drone figures out on its own which direction to turn and then drives itself right back to you! I tried that out a number of times and frankly it would be hard to get along without it I think. Once you see the drone heading back to you it allows you to take control again if you want and then you can continue to pilot it to where you want it to go next.

I spent time just getting used to the flight controls. I also tried out the "follow me" functionality by having the drone chase me while I walked around. I started trying out the "waypoint" feature but ran out of battery life before I got that done.

Gillespie Dam Bridge from abut 36 feet elevation
Taken with the DJI Phantom 3 Advanced

On a photographic note, I did take a couple of photographs of the bridge and the dam. I saved them in the DNG RAW format. The histogram looked pretty good. The sky was partly cloudy or partly sunny - not a cloudless sky but also not completely overcast. I thought the daylight was pretty good. I had the ISO set at 100.

Gillespie Dam
Taken with the DJI Phantom 3 Advanced

When I got home to process the images I was underwhelmed. There was quite a bit of noise in the hills on the right side of the image. I processed them in Adobe Lightroom and it did pretty good but the original just wasn't the same as my Nikon D610. The drone MIGHT be about the same as the Nikon D3200 - which I also don't like any more and rarely shoot with it because of the noise.

I am holding my final judgement on the picture quality of the DJI Phantom 3 Advanced because I've seen decent photographs online taken with it. I want to shoot some more with it and hopefully I'll figure out how to get better images with respect to digital noise. But if they don't clear up I'll be wishing I'd got that Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 lens instead! I'm already questioning my decision. I didn't want to get involved with video and I don't think I'll become a big quad copter fan, at least not of this big bulky type of  'copter. The FPV Racing Quads might be a different story!