Digital Photography
Tips & tricks
Kodak still king
Surprisingly, Kodak is still the leader of digital camera manufacturers. The sales of these cameras is not maintaining the high 49% growth of previous years, it has recently dropped down to a mere 36%! IDC states that more and more of these are now being sold into households that already own a digital camera, implying we are now into the replacement phase. They state that many users are satisfied with 3 megapixels, and the move to higher and higher pixel count is meaningless to them.
Kodak 21.3%
Canon 17.7%
Sony 17.7%
Fuji 8.6%
Olympus 7.1%
Hewlett-Packard 6.7%
Others 20.8%
You might notice Nikon is not on the list. Although there is no published data to back this up, we would be surprised if any 6 megapixels or DSLRs were influential in any of these numbers.
All about Actions
Don’t format a Compact Flash and Smart Media cards in your computer. Sometimes the format is not recognized by the camera, and either the card may become unusable or portions of the card will appear to contain data that the camera will not be able to write to, thus reducing the available space for files. Don’t remove the card while the camera is reading or writing, or even remove the batteries with the card in the camera. Although cards are not affected by X-rays or electromagnetic radiation, they are susceptible to sharp knocks and static electricity, so ground yourself before removing a card.
Fine tuning Camera Raw
If you own a Gretag Macbeth 24-Patch chart ($74) then you will find the ACR Calibrator a worthy download. Using an image of the chart, the script will calibrate will greatly enhance the color accuracy of your digital RAW images. It fine-tunes Camera Raw's built-in profiles for your particular camera.
Hand-held rule
A good rule of thumb for hand-held, no-flash exposures is that the shutter speed most be faster or at least equal to the lens length, in mm. If you are using a 100mm lens, shutter speed must be 1/100 or faster (1/125, 1/200, etc.). This also applies to whatever focal length you have a zoom set to. To be on the safe side, if there is enough light, go even one speed up or brace your camera, and/or your self against something solid.
A TIFF is a TIFF is not a TIFF
Files saved in the Nikon TIFF format are not the same as files saved as regular TIFFs. Nikon uses the LAB color space for their TIFFs, and to load these into Photoshop you have to use a plug-in that comes on the same CD as the regular Nikon View software. You can also open them in Nikon View and save them out in regular formats. This plug-in should be installed at the same time as Nikon View, but it will not be included in other regular versions of Photoshop. The plug-in cannot be downloaded on its own, but the whole software bundle can be obtained from the Nikon website.
Anonymous JPEGs
For those times when you don't want metadata attached to a JPEG file, there is a free utility called JpegStripper 1.0.0.3. It's very simple; just drag a file onto the small interface window and the metadata disappears. Nice, in that it does not require opening and resaving, consequently it is lossless.
Nikon battery recall
If you have a recent Nikon camera, you may want to check the battery. If it is a Nikon Model EN-EL3 rechargeable lithium ion battery, they can experience a short circuit causing it to overheat and possibly melt, posing, as Nikon says a “potential hazard.” Although there have only been four such meltdowns, Nikon has a voluntary recall with a free replacement. This battery comes with D100, D70, and D50 cameras, and has been sold separately with Nikon's model number 26265. These batteries have been around since May 2004 and are still sold in stores. To see if your battery may melt (inside your camera, ughh!) check out the battery numbers at: http://1url.org/go/1MeltingBat
10.2 MP Nikon D200
On November 1, Nikon announced the Nikon D200, a 10.2 megapixel camera. This professional level camera has five-frames-per-second continuous shooting of Raw images, or 37 images a second with Fine quality. It has WiFi to communicate with your laptop, and GPS, which will provide data on latitude, longitude, and altitude, and set the clock accurately anywhere in the world. $1849 without lens.
Newest Nikon software
The latest version of Nikon View is 6.2.6, of Nikon Capture it is 4.3.2, for Nikon Scan the current version is 4.0.2. All these updates can be found at http://1url.org/go/1nikonupdat
Neat noise
Neat Image software reduces noise. In either Standard or Advanced modes it's very effective and reduces noise better than most one-step processes that we have seen. In the Standard mode there are controls for Luminance, Chrominance, noise levels, what is termed noise reduction, as well as sharpening. The company has profiles for many cameras, including Canon, Contax, Fujifilm, Kodak, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, and Sony. With a little effort, you can build custom profiles to describe the noise characteristics of your camera/lens combination. Basically, this is done automatically, but you can tweak the settings. Then the software automatically matches profiles to the type of image it opens. Neat Image can use RGB, YCrCb JPEG, or YCrCb Symmetric color spaces to process images. Additionally, there is a smart sharpening filter, which sharpens only important image details without increasing the level of noise. This filter also uses the noise profile to tell noise from details, so applying the noise and sharpening filters together saves time and produces better overall results. It supports 16-bit images and comes as a Photoshop plug-in or a stand-alone product. We think that once you try this software, it will become your standard for noise reduction. Comes in a variety of configurations from free to $74.90.
