Tag Archive for: D700

A day at the races

Yesterday was made up of a lot of firsts for us.  It was the first time Sian and I were going to the races down at the Garisson, it was the first time I would be shooting solely in RAW, and it was the first time that I had decided I was going to process my shots in Adobe Lightroom.

Here we all are at the races, Sian, Caragh and Jonathan.

We decided to go to the races because Caragh is here, and Caragh loooooves horses.  She worked as a stable girl in Bexley a few years back, and by the end of her time there she was taking classes and teaching little’uns (including our amazing nephew Ryan) how to ride.  Caragh is more into point to point racing back in the UK, and Mick, my father in law, just loves anything with four legs.  I know that he reads the blog, so Mick – I hope you enjoy this and that the shots do the sport justice. 😉

Both Caragh and Mick are incredibly fastidious when it comes to the form and which horse to back. I, on the other hand am utterly pants.  I’m quite handy at the dogs, being that we have been many many more times, and that I have had best part of half a dozen as pets.  But the horses are completely beyond me.  I had no idea what to look for when they came out, no idea how the jockeys (who are heroes, by the way) affected a horse, and absolutely no idea how important ALL that information is about each runner.

Sian and I quickly agreed that we would bet $10bds on each race (about 3 pounds) and would take turns…in the mean time, I would take photos.

At least I know something about that.

As I mentioned before, I planned to shoot everything in Raw on this shoot.  RAW basically means that your camera records the information that it sees pixel for pixel.  There is no compression as there is in JPEG format, and no in-camera correction such as sharpness, hue or saturation is recorded in the file.

What this ultimately means is that the files are much, MUCH larger, and I have always avoided RAW because I have found that using Adobe Bridge and Photoshop to process these files is a painstakingly laborious and long-winded process.  But James has been getting into Lightroom lately which is much better for RAW files, and kindly took the time to show me a few things.  He is already annoyingly good with his camera and is getting better everyday, so the thought of falling behind on software as well is not something that my stubborn nature would allow.

Essentially, RAW gives you a lot more control over the files when it comes to processing, because the files are nothing but pixel information and have had no editing whatsoever when you drag them into your computer.  When shooting JPEG, the camera has a host of inbuilt processes and algorithms to help ‘improve’ your photos in camera.  This is great for speed; as a lot of the files out of my D700 don’t need any alteration.  But you are giving up a considerable amount of creative control, because your colours and everything else are essentially being decided by an engineer in Japan 5 years ago, rather than by me, at that moment.

Despite shooting in RAW, however, I still approached the day as I always do – I knew what I wanted: to get a good mixture of frozen action and motion blur, and  I knew that I was going to achieve this by varying my shutter speed.  My first snap was at the finish line of race number one.  I focused on the jockeys as they approached the finishing line, and tracked them running from right to left.  Shot at a 50th of a second, I got that wonderful movement on the horses’ legs and background blurring, but the jockey is still tack sharp:

I really like this shot.

I then ramped my shutter to about 1250th, to get these frozen action shots:

I love the frozen action too – particularly the last one where you can see the turf flying up under the horses’ hooves.  It really is an amazing experience as the pack thunders by, and I like to think the last shoot gives an inkling of the power that these amazing animals have.

After a few races, we headed off to get some lunch, where we were treated to a winning horse getting showered down.

It is (obviously!) very hot in Barbados, and the poor horses were running at half one – the hottest time of day!  This guy was very thirsty as well as very hot, and he kept poking his tongue out to get a cheeky drink during his shower:

It was wonderful to see the horse and handlers playing with each other – and when the shower was over, I was lucky enough to capture this moment between them:

After lunch, we headed back into the stands to win a few more bucks (Sian had backed a winner, and I had somehow, picked a horse that placed) and watch the last few races.  Race 6 was made up of a lot of inexperienced horses – none of them had run more than four races, and were yet to place in any of their track days.  Needless to say, this made betting almost impossible, and the end result was very surprising – the winner was a country mile ahead of the pack.

I just love the Jockey’s smile in this shot – just before he looked back to see where everyone else was…he is clearly already celebrating here.

We watched the last few races as the sun came down, and got ready to head home.

So, as always, another great day out on a glorious weekend in Barbados.  I really enjoyed the races, both shooting and watching.  The betting was fun and the day (amazingly) ran pretty much on time.  We headed back home to the hotel to have some BBQ and beer, and are now looking forward to a day out on the beach before we have to go back to work tomorrow…

Thanks for reading guys, and keep on snapping

Ferg x


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Caterpillar Capers

Due to various members being sick over the weekend, Sian, James and myself were roped into a last minute day’s work on Saturday.  I am currently suffering from a cold, and therefore believe that the world is ending (who can blame me – I’m a man after all) and in my grumpy state I walked to  the lab to fire up the Fuji and start getting on with printing.

On my way in, I couldn’t help but enjoy the beautiful blue sky that Barbados was treating us to…it was fantastic…so much so that I rang Sian and told her to leave whatever she was doing to get outside and admire the cobalt blue we were being blessed with.  As I wandered down through the resort, grumpy and with my neck cocked back to admire the stratosphere, I couldn’t help but notice that our Frangipani tree on the golf course was looking a little under the weather.  It normally has bright green leaves and lovely white, four petaled flowers…but in this beautiful, post hurricane system sky, it looked dowdy and almost dead.

On closer inspection, it was not actually the tree’s fault, nor the weather’s.  It was being set upon by the only animal I have encountered that makes my old man look like a calorie counter.   It was teaming with Frangipani Caterpillars.

There were about twenty we could spot in total.  They are awesome.  the biggest ones were about 12cm long, and 2 cm wide, and they just chow down mercilessly on the leaves.  I was mesmerised by them.

Having seen the tree teaming with life, I ran to the lab and got things going, pinched the work camera (D7000 for those that care) and came to grab some snaps.

In the short time I was there, the bigger guys at the bottom of the tree quickly polished off a leaf each in the morning sun.  They were very wary of me though, and whenever I got too close, they would wag their heads angrily.  From what I have read, they will nip you if in a pinch, but they are completely harmless otherwise.  Their bright colouring is a warning to birds and other predators that they are poisonous….this is somewhat of a ruse – they themselves have no poison or venom, but the sap of the Frangipani tree is poisonous to predators without the digestive system of the caterpillars, and so their food provides them with all the protection they need from our feathered friends here on the island.

We use the D7000 at work solely for its incredible video performance, and I am training the guys how to get the most from it…needless to say, I felt obliged to film a little of what was going on, and thought I would bring the D700 and the tripod along later on in the day for some more time-lapse action.

Needless to say, all just a bit of fun, and many apologies about the camera shake, I didn’t have time to grab the tripod and longer lenses – I was covering people calling in sick after all.

At the end of the time lapse shoot (trust me to pick the one caterpillar that couldn’t polish off an entire leaf) the sun had come around beautifully, and just hit the caterpillars with that golden light.  These were taken with no flash, if you’ll believe it 😉

Overall I was pretty pleased with the shots…but I got increasingly frustrated with not being able to focus closer (Cue the wide eyed: “Baaaaa – bbbbyyyy, we need to get  a Nikon 105mm macro lens”)….but that’s for another day…

And yet again, my camera has led me to learn a bit more about the wildlife of this alien island…not too sure how often the Frangipani Caterpillars will come up in the local pub quiz, but every tid-bit we gleam, every fact we learn, makes being here feel a little less alien, and a little more like home.

Thanks for reading, and keep on snapping.

Ferg x

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Everybody in the house make some noise…

As you may have gathered from my previous posts, Sian very kindly agreed for me to buy ‘us’ a new camera  (despite her best efforts she is yet to have a proper go with it…I’m afraid I’m not the best at sharing).  Anyway, the camera we opted for after much deliberation and discussions, was this beast:

This is not my photo - it's pinched - sorry! It's 11 pm and I need to go to bed 😉

It’s a Nikon D700.   And I love it.

It’s not, by any means, a new camera – it came out waaaay back in 2008, when Sian and I bought our tried and true Nikon D80s.  We still use the D80s every now and then, and they are lovely, lovely little cameras – but the 700 is just a new world.

So what makes it so good?  Well, the first thing I am sure a lot of you will assume, is that it has a million mega pixels, full HD video, touch screen interface and the ability to create beautiful panoramic photos by simply waving it vaguely towards the horizon.  Wrong.  It has none of these perks.  Image size is relatively small with a mere 12.1 megapixel sensor, and video was but a weird experiment (introduced by Nikon, but far surpassed by Canon now) that they toyed with their D90 around the same time the D700 was released. There is certainly no touch screen and the panoramic gimic of some of the new Sony point and shoots – although an excellent application for the holiday snapper, is definitely not there.

“So why spend nearly 2 grand on a camera that’s so dump Ferg?!” I hear you cry. And the answer is very simple.  Noise.  And no, I don’t mean the wonderful mechanic clank of the mirror locking up with each exposure – I mean image noise.

This bad boy is amazing.  The 700 has what’s called an ‘FX’ sensor – so it is physically 33% bigger than the weedy chip in our D80s.  Even though it is delivering a very similar megapixel count to the D80, the bigger surface area and quality of the chip makes it much more sensitive to light, and therefore, your ISO range can be increased significantly.

If you know what ISO is – please skip down to the pretty pictures below, but if not, please allow for a quick explanation in as un-patronising way as I possibly can.  ISO was introduced to film makers back in the day, to help photographers know how to expose their photos.  The ISO (which simply represents the International Standards of Organisation) rating of a film refers to how quickly it reacts to light.  The higher the ISO, the faster it reacts, but at the cost of clarity (remember all those grainy photos in the rain from back in the day? High ISO film).  The ISO rating was put in place to ensure that whichever brand film you bought,  the film sensitivity would be the same throughout, thus making your metering and exposure correct.  If, for example, you bought an Agfa 800 – it would be exactly the same exposure (nothing to do with colour, vibrancy etc) as if you got a roll of ISO 800 for free when you developed your negs.  You would tell your camera which ISO film you had loaded, and it would expose accordingly for you.

The easiest way I can think of explaining it is if you imagine you have a blank canvas and a paint brush.  A lower ISO allows you to paint the canvas methodically from left to right, allowing for an even and polished finish – but it takes time.  A higher ISO means you have to achieve the same goal – painting the entire canvas, but you do so in a fraction of the time – so you just chuck the tin of paint at the canvas and hope for the best.  When chucking the paint, you may well get a similar result, you have, after all, painted the canvas – but it is very likely to be blotchy and spotty, when opposed to the methodical and slow approach of a lower ISO.

So what’s the point?

Well, with our spangly new camera,  I can ramp the ISO to about 5000 and still get beautiful, crisp images that I can use.  With the D80, if I crept the ISO up to even 1600 – I would invariably get what is known as noise in the image.  To demonstrate, I setup a (dump) still life with a few of my favourite things…beer in the form of dominos – a wonderful gift from Jenny and Tom, my nephew Ryan, a bed complete with comedy colonial throw and a camera. I tried my best to take the same photo, one with the old D80, one with the D700, and layer them on top of each other to to give you an idea of the better quality in low light.  Both images were shot at 3200 ISO (The equivelant on the D80 anyway) at f6.3, shutter of 6oth second.

As you can see, I hope, the D700 has the same exposure as the D80 – but the image is much, much clearer.  This means I can effectively turn up the ISO on my camera, and still use fast shutter speeds in low light conditions – great for when I go to a grotty, dimly lit boxing match like this:

“But what about flash? Everyone has a flash on their camera these days – get with the program Ferg, you don’t need ‘High ISO’, just a beefy few kilojoules burst into your subject’s eyes to light them up real nice.”

Anyone that has worked with me will know that I have a pathological dislike of flash.  And truth be told, this is because I have little if no idea how to use it properly…and I just love ambient light. There’s nothing better than magic hour, where the sun is low and your subject is bathed in that soft golden glow… Having said that, I love my studio strobes, and I love using my flash gun with a ramped shutter for awesome forced sunset shots – like this:

A shot I took up on the Studio Facebook page - come and like us - you know you want to! Colorbox Studio on Facebook 🙂

But I have not spent nearly enough time with my flash to call myself proficient with it.  There is a wonderful movement gathering momentum called strobism, which I had my first proper stab at a few days back -I shall blog my findings and results soon, but in the mean time, I’ll stick to my high ISO and ambient light…because I love it when I take pictures like the ones I took at the Mount Gay rum factory we visited the other day.

So, in all honesty, is the camera worth it?

“Well of course it is, yes” says the professional in me – the new camera is simply amazing, and when it’s dark and dingy, we can get amazing, usable/sellable shots without blinding people with dazzling flashes or having to setup tripods for long exposures – and there are a million other things that I have not even touched on in this blog that make the camera so much better than our previous models – the depth of field, the weight and feel, the 51 point AF system (essential, believe me) and all round awesomeness of our new camera is just mind boggling…

But as I tell all of my guys – the best camera you have is the one one you have with you. The D700 is massive, heavy, and boy oh boy not cheap.  I can safely say that I carry it proudly to weddings, studio shoots and everything in between, but despite its amazingness – I would never have got a shot like this with it:

because it would not cross my mind to bring it along for the trip.

And so let that be the lesson of the day, despite all of it’s electronic gimmickery – all of the control and poise expected of a pro body,  the ridiculously good low light performance, the sheer comfort of the thing, the high frame rate, true 35mm depth of field, obscene battery performance, live view and assignable buttons to mention just a few of the inexplicably good features of our spangly new camera,  our 80 quid waterproof Fuji Finepix was much better the day we went on a catamaran, because that was the one we took with us.

Keep on snapping 🙂

Ferg

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