Before I get all moist and unstable about post-processing, I'd like to bring up Tammy, my lens. I just couldn't resist testing for focusing problems. (Front focus/Back focus). Although I wasn't being super technical (no tripod for example), I found that at wide open apertures there is a slight tendancy to focus a little in front of the intended target. (shooting text for instance.) Although minimal, imagine the implications when photog-ing a person's face where the eyes are generally the most important thing to focus on. With a very shallow depth of field, you may find the eyes blurry but their eyebrows tack sharp. But I don't feel it's too much of an issue, if it does turn into one, I'll send it in to Tamron for re-calibration - not likely until I get another lens to keep attached on Niki.
So, that's another thing going for the 17-55mm Nikkor version - damn I wish I had that kind of money ($1300). But as nice as that lens is, Canon offers a lens with the same focal range/maximum aperture and even includes IS, aka VR, aka Image Stabilization, aka Vibration Reduction. And the Canon version is roughly 300 less than the Nikkor. (It's still roughly 400 more than Tammy though.) One knock against the Canon version is that it's not built to the same Tank-like qualities as the Nikkor. Simply put, if you have the money for first-party lenses I'd say it's always the safer bet. But for a lot less money, my Tammy performs almost as well and I'm more than happy with it - shit, we can't all date supermodels.Well I'm pretty set at the wide settings, anything more would really be a novelty that I truly can't afford. But aside from other accessories (a dedicated flash or two, extra batteries and a vertical grip, I'm spying some potential zoom telephotos. No, I don't want to peak into my neighbors house...hrmm...when photog-ing people a longer focal range generally gives more pleasing proportions. For example, most wedding photographers use a 70-200mm zoom since majority of their photos are of people. Obviously not for group photos, but next time you see a wedding photog with a giant lens, you can almost always bet it's a 70-200mm.
Nikon's telephoto zoom is simply kick-ass. Talk about serious arm and neck fatigue, this bad-boy spends a shitload of time in the gym. It also has VR to help compensate at the longer focal lengths. But of course this guy doesn't come cheap. Weighing in at $1500, this lens costs more than my camera. Another drawback, for those of you who think the $1500 price tag isn't enough, you need approximately 5ft of distance in order to focus. That's good if you want to keep your distance but if something gets close you can forget about it. One last drawback is it's conversion rate - Niki converts all focal lengths by a factor of 1.5 (meaning a 35mm film negative is about 1.5x larger than her sensor). So 70-200 turns into 105-300! This could be a positive if you're into jungle safaris, or taking photos of someone really far away, but at the closest focusing distance of 5ft you're probably won't even be able to fit their face in frame.Gez, all this bad mouthing, why is it so expensive? Well aside from the near-silent, superfast autofocusing, which can be manually overridden at any time (this is more important than you think it might be), and it's tank exterior, this lens is capable of producing some of the sharpest images your camera can make. Not to mention the out of focus areas (bokeh) looks phenomenal. In short, it's the shit man!
But there has to be an alternative, your thinking. Well there is, sadly it's a third party company with the same third party drawbacks. It is much better built than most third party lenses, and features a similar HSM autofocus system (read: AFS for Nikkors and USM for Canon), but it's main drawback comes down to quality control and lack of VR. Which is a shame really, certain third party lenses compare favorably with their Nikon/Canon counterparts, but the quality control just isn't there. Sigma's 50-150mm covers the more traditional 70-200mm focal length on Niki's smaller sensor. It's lighter and smaller too! Although I like the "bigness" of the Nikkors, long days with these lenses can potentially be a real pain. Even it's focusing distance is significantly shorter, at a little over 3 feet. Yet reviewers once again agree that it all comes down to your luck when getting one - much like Tammy. On a plus note, the Sigma is only about $679, that's less than half of the Nikkor's asking price.
And even with the Sigma's HSM near-silent af system, all-time manual override, lighter, smaller frame, and better price - why the hesitation? Quality control...*sigh. Hell I could look past the lack of VR, but spending nearly $700 and getting faulty lens would be infuriating. Maybe by the time I have enough for this lens, all the quirks will be worked out? Here's to hoping...
SOFTWARE
Well that rant on lenses lasted a lot longer than I expected. First things first...
1. Niki's exposure readings tend to look a bit underexposed. I first began adjusting the readings by +0.3 or +.07, but I soon realized there was a method to Niki's madness. If you shoot a scene and blow out the highlights (bright light sources/white areas in the photo), you can not recover them very well. So it is better to shoot what looks like underexposure and edit to taste later. That's not to say that certain scenes won't need adjustment (snow, beach, bright windows, severely backlit subjects) but for the most part, Niki's Matrix metering is dead on. I've reshot several scenes with varying degrees of compensation and Niki is never off by more than a third of a stop. In short, I am relearning what a proper exposure looks like. In film it's a little bit of the opposite, since darkening a photo later was was somewhat easier.
(*note: photos tend to have a gray cast over them as well, but I've realized this is due to the to my use of "-" parameters in the respective tone and saturation settings. Why use "-" parameters? Well it lends itself much better to post processing - i.e. levels and curves. Try it and you'll see.)
2. When I first got the camera I shot RAW + JPEG. But I've switched to strictly RAW files, since I'm not shooting hundreds of photos, and they provide the highest amount of room when editting. Not to mention, it is forcing me to get better at using Capture NX and Lightroom. But due to my computer's age, I will further experiment with JPEG settings in-camera to produce reasonably good photos straight from Niki. The RAW files are massive and working with a small number of them, less than 20, causes considerable slowdown on my Powerbook. But my beef with the lack of in-depth custom image parameters takes
over and it is simply impossible to get the same quality in camera versus post-processing. I guess it's much like to getting prints from Walgreens back in the day. They weren't bad, but when I fucked around with them in the dark room at school, or got them printed by a dedicated photolab, the images were significantly better. This is one nod I have to give to the Canon DSLRs, at least the 30D, I don't know much about the Rebels, but the 30D has up to +- 9 per setting. Don't tell Niki okay? I don't want her getting a complex. But eventually I'd like to upgrade my computer and purchase a larger memory card. (You'd think 2gb would be enough...)
Okay, let's begin. I figure the easiest way to do this is to break it down by software.
Adobe Lightroom
1. As far as looks go, this is one sexy application. The only other thing sexier is Apple's own Aperture. But my comptuer is simply not man enough for that thing. On a side note, I've been reading less than stellar comments about it's RAW conversion engine...? Anyways, Lightroom is very well organized. Click here to get to Lightroom's web page and check out their video titled "Feature Tour".
2. Organization, importing, and selecting keepers versus rejects are all done very well. With less than 20 photos at a time it can be manageable to do it yourself, but I recall a friend of mine's birthday (Jenna! which is coming up soon!) and I shot over 300 images on my Sony V3. Yea, organizing that shit was futile. It does take some time before Lightroom becomes workable though. It has to create previews of each RAW file, but once it does that it ran much faster than I thought it would on my Powerbook.
3. Post-processing is pretty well done. For those of you who are familiar with Photoshop many of the tools will familiar, albeit more streamlined. I'm sure PS veterans will be able to turn out photos to their liking. Lightroom does a much better job at reducing Chromatic Aberrations (weird color shifts found on the edges of high contrast areas in a photo, ie. branches and the sky). One of Lightroom's pitfalls is the inability to apply sharpening or any effects really to an isolated part of an image. It can however adjust particular color tones, which I found to be very useful when I wanted to up the saturation of certain colors without affecting others. (Kind of like making the image look like it was shot on Velvia or Portra.) But for the most part, Lightroom is definitely geared towards the batch-processing division, prepping photos for more serious PS work if necessary. The photos actually don't look bad at all, I'd be more than happy with them if I didn't see Capture NX's output.
4. Saving/converting files. Saving the RAW file once you're finished editting is real easy. You don't have to click save or anything. Lightroom creates sets of instructions tagged to the RAW file, so when they open up again, Lightroom just reads the instructions and shows you the image as you last editted it. Another plus is, you can always revert back to the original, all the while never losing an image information - RAW's main benefit. Conversion to PSD, JPEG, and TIFF take a couple seconds to 1-2 minutes. They look good. Nothing more I can say about that. But I do have a question printing...which I'll address at the end.
5. Verdict: Great app! If I were better at Photoshop, this would be the perfect lead in to that application. Photoshop is really overkill in terms of converting properly exposed photos. Lightroom takes the tools most photogs would ever use and combines them into an easy and manageable package. Even it's monochrome conversions are downright sexy. But if you want more fine-tuning, layers, and selective editting than you're still going to need Photoshop. The new CS3 version is looking mighty fine though...I might have to try that shiz out.
Nikon Capture NX
1. It's no sleek, sexy beast like lightroom. But it's simple, and minimalistic. Pretty blah in this department. In fact I might go so far as saying it's ugly. Sorry Nikon...but it is effective, and while not much of a looker, all the controls and options are in fairly convenient locations.
2. Organization...certianly isn't one of it's strong points. The built in browser shows teeny thumbnails where no real evaluation of quality could be made. It really is more of an editor, not an organization+editor tool like Lightroom. It also takes a bit longer opening up one file and working with it.
3. Post-processing...finally something Capture NX does better than Lightroom - with one exception. The colors really do pop out at you with this software. Or you can have them toned down, whatever you want. While lightroom's sliders are somewhat a little more complex, Capture NX's get the job done with less fuss and admirably at that. Nikon has been touting "U-Point" technology as the heart and sould of NX, and they should be. Awesome doesn't do it justice. Think about the power of layers in photoshop, only simplified and easier to apply. You can even paint the desired effect on or off a subject. After watching a few of Nikon's how-to videos, I was rockin' and rollin' with NX. Speaking of painting, you can brush on sharpness selectively, something sorely missing in Lightroom. What about that oone exception though? Well the chromatic aberration control doesn't really work. I mean it minimizes shit, but not nearly as good as Lightroom. But it's forgiveable in terms of overall image quality NX wins. But perhaps exporting as a TIFF and editting further in Photoshop wouldn't be a bad idea if chromatic aberration is bothering you. As far as monochromatic conversions, NX and Lightroom play a little role reversal. I think Lightroom's slight edge on complexity with their sliders edges out here.
4. Saving/converting files. NX differs from Lightroom in this respect. Saving RAW files takes some time (same as the JPEG export times, not a real biggy). I don't really get why, but it does. JPEG conversions were phenomenal, no qualms about that. But it didn't have many options compared to Lightroom. Lightroom allows you to set the dpi of the JPEG, which can come in handy when printing, NX strangely enough just gives you a scale of 1-100 in terms of quality. Maybe it's hidden somewhere and I just haven't found it yet.
5. Verdict...Even though NX loses majority of it's battles with Lightroom, I still feel it is necessary if you want the most out of your images. NX simply gives the best Nikon RAW conversion possible, with the least amount of fussing. This has been an issue for Nikon DSLRs for quite some time. Nikon has made it difficult for third party RAW converters to read their RAW files, the thinking, I'm assuming, will force you to use their software when if you want the best possible conversion.
There were two main questions I asked when first embarking on this ridiculously time consuming endeavor. Which one is better? and Do either one replace Photoshop?
Sadly, the answer is almost as frustrating as the learning curve. Neither of the two really tops one another. Image quality is great with NX, but their browser is a joke. Reviewing a massive amount of images would quickly turn into a chore. Lightroom is really a good balance for all around use. But it's RAW processing, at least for Nikons, just doesn't compare. And even worse, neither of these applications replace Photoshop. Adobe's big dog still stands as king of the hill, now I just wish I was better at using it. That aside, both Lightroom and NX offer acceptable to excellent conversions, I'm going to continue using both. Lightroom to help organize and pick the ones for further editting, and NX to do the editting.
The two images of Daniel were editted in Lightroom (left) and Capture NX respectively (right). Notice how NX has a lil more oomph, but Lightroom effectively cleared the purple fringing on the lower right hand side of Daniel while still providing pleasing, yet slightly more muted tones. Click on either pick for a larger version. Sorry for the awkward layout, I suck at html.
But I am curious about other programs, Bibble Pro and RAW Developer come to mind. I hear they are fast and offer quality conversions...maybe after finals I'll tackle those.
And what about printing? hell i don't know. From what I've been reading, you really need to calibrate your monitor to get the most accurate transition from screen to print. If any of you have any insight, lemme know. For instance, what format would you print out of? Particularly if you go through internet printing labs. I know they don't generally accept RAW files, but what about TIFF vs JPEGS...oh crap, the battle rages on. What is the proper dpi (dots per inch) setting? Color profiles? Printer profiles? AHHHHH WHERE THE FUCK IS MY FILM!?
No comments:
Post a Comment