Bokeh Rainbow

Bokeh Rainbow (1/500 f/1.4 ISO 100)

At the Sandton Photographic Society meeting this coming Wednesday next week there is a “Fuji Creative Award” instead of a set subject. Being new to the club, I had to ask at the last meeting what I should bring and was told “something creative”. When I submitted my pics last night I realised I didn’t really have anything that fitted the bill. So this morning I had a quick photo session to see whether I could use Bokeh for additive colour mixing. I took three of my daughter’s plastic balls – one red, one green, and one blue – laid them out the ground on a black T-shirt, and shot with my 50mm f/1.4 wide open and intentionally mis-focussed to blur the image. Colour mixing gives the yellow and purple where the Bokeh from the balls overlaps.

Inner City

Inner City

This afternoon while my wife was at a baby shower with the kids, I went out to take a photo of Nelson Mandela Bridge in central Johannesburg. Sandton Photographic Society has “set subject” competitions form time to time, and the next set subject is bridges. The closest bridge that I thought had some potential was the fairly recent Nelson Mandela Bridge in the city centre, so that’s where I headed. After driving up and down and around the bridge several times, I finally settled on this image, taken from an elevated portion of a freeway some distance away. The weather was overcast, giving nice saturated colours. This is my first attempt at a cityscape. I like the juxtaposition of the run-down building in the foreground with the new bridge in the middle ground and the city skyline behind it. I hope you do too!

Nikon D60, AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G, 1/50″ f/16 ISO 100. As the image suggests the location was not the most salubrious so although I had my tripod in the boot I decided not to draw any unnecessary attention to myself and rather shot a few handheld at 1/100″ and 1/50″. This was the best.

AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G

“Kodachrome“, 50mm, f/1.4, 1/3200, ISO 100

I finally caved in and bought Nikon’s new 50mm prime. I had to buy the AF-S f/1.4G as the older and cheaper f/1.4D won’t autofocus on the D60. I love this lens. It gives me a nice bright viewfinder image even under marginal lighting conditions, is superb for indoor photography using available light, and gives great depth of field control with (to my uneducated eyes) very pleasing Bokeh. It feels much better made than either my 18-55mm kit lens or my Sigma 70-300mm, although it’s still made largely of plastic. Autofocus is reasonably fast and it does not hunt. It is small enough to be an unobtrusive “walkabout” lens which goes nicely with the small (for an SLR) D60. It’s an almost perfect lens for photographing people – long enough to take head and shoulders portraits without having to be right in the face of the subject (with the perspective distortion that entails), and short enough to take full-length portraits or small groups from a reasonable distance. Most of all, it makes me strive to take better pictures!

This one was taken when I went to the Montecasino bird park with my just-turned-4 daughter so she could try out her brand new Kodak KV250. I used f/1.4 to isolate her from the background, although given the relatively plain and hence non-distracting background I should perhaps have stopped down to f/2.8 to improve the depth of field of the subject.

Of course Nikon has just announced the considerably cheaper AF-S DX 35mm f/1.8G lens. My two cents? I prefer the 50mm because (a) I mostly use it to take people, where a 35mm lens would require that I get a bit too close to my subject; (b) it’s 0.7 stops faster; and (c) it will still work when I upgrade to a full-frame (FX) camera in a few years time when the price of a used D700 drops to about what I paid for the D60. Actually, other than the kit lens, I’m trying to collect only lenses that will work on 35mm full-frame cameras.

Nikon D60 Review

This is a brief review of the Nikon D60 digital SLR by someone who is new to digital photography!

Build Qualtiy – good for an entry-level DSLR

The D60 seems well built, better than its direct Canon and Sony competitors.

Responsiveness – excellent

One of the biggest improvements of the D60 over my wife’s Powershot A80 is that when you press the shutter release, the photograph is taken virtually immediately. This makes it much easier to capture a fleeting moment than with many compact cameras, where there is a noticable lag between pressing the shutter release and the photograph being taken. In general the D60 feels very responsive. I have set the sensor cleaning so that it only happens when you turn the camera off (the default is both when yuo turn it on and whaen you turn it off) so I can turn the camera on and press the shutter release in a single almost fluid motion.

Auto ISO – great

Auto ISO allows the user to set a minimum (slowest) shutter speed. When the camera is controlling the shutter speed (for example, in programmed-auto or apperture-priority modes), if the default ISO setting would result in the shutter speed becoming slower than the pre-set minimum, then the camera will increase the ISO as required to get the shutter speed back to the minimum. The user is able to set the slowest shutter speed, and the maximum ISO that the camera will use. I set the minimum shutter speed to 1/60th second and the maximum ISO to 1600. Ths is function is great as it allows you to take a reasonably exposed shot in almost any light condition without having to adjust the controls (provided the camera is set to an automatic exposure mode). Of course there are times when the camera does not make the same exposure choices that I would have – but in these situations, you can use one of the semi-automatic exposure settings. I leave the camera set to programmed auto with auto-ISO and auto white balance enabled so that I can get a “fair” shot under almost any lighting conditions. Then if the situation allows, I manually set the shutter speed or apperture if I want to.

Internal flash – great for fill-in but not as the main light source

The built-in flash is great for fill-in use (reducing the contrast of a subject when for example their face is in shade). Simply pop the flash out, and the camera’s iTTL (intelligent through the lens) flash metering calculates the flash setting and adjusts the exposure automatically with generally good results.Of course you can also adjust it manually if you wish to, but I haven’t had reason to do this yet. For taking photographs in dark locations, I recommend an external flash such as the SB400 which can be bounce since like all camera-mounted direct flashes the D60’s internal flash results in very “flat” protographs. The main suject is usually correctly exposed though.

Auto focus – good within its limitations

The auto focus works well in AF single area mode, which is what I usually use (a hang-over from older film cameras which only offered this mode). Due to the limited number of AF points (3) , I wouldn’t trust it in “closest subject” mode since the closest subject may not be under one of the AF sensor areas. The number of AF sensors is one of the main differences between the D60 and the more expensive Nikon DLSRs, so if you plan to do much action shooting then I suggest a D90 which has 11 autofocus points.

Lens Limitations – a bit of a pain

The dpreview.com review of the D60 says that being restricted to AF-S and AF-I lenses probably won’t matter to most users. Well it does to me! The reason is simply that this means you can’t use cheaper second-hand or new lenses with the camera, but have to buy brand new, recently released AF-S lenses at a substantial price premium. I’m wanting a fast 50mm prime for indoor portraits, but befause the D60 does not have an internal auto-focus motor, the only Nikon prime that will auto-focus on this camera is the brand new AF-S 50mm F/1.4G lens. This sells for aboutu 50% more than the AF 50mm F/1.4D lens, which would also be perfect for what I want; and about twice the price of the AF  50mm F/1.8D, which would also be great! And this is new prices – I’m sure I could get either of the non-AF-S alternatives a good deal cheaper on the used market. Oh well…

Exposure Metering – matrix mode not great

The matrix metering often clips highlights. Not good. For hig-contrast scenes either dial in some negative exposure compensation (about -0.7 is about average but it does vary according to the lighting) or spot-meter the highlights on +2 EV. Don’t get me wrong, the matrix metering works OK for casual shots, with the principal subject usually properly exposed. If you shoot to JPG without any post-processing, it may suit you since the alternatives I’m proposing require some post-processing to restore the shadow detail (“expose for the highlights, post-process for the shadow detail”).

AF-Assist Illuinator – a welcome feature

The D60 is the only entry-level DSLR I am aware of that has a dedicated auto-focust assist illuminator lamp on the camera body. Other entry-level DSLRs use the flash to auto-focus in low light. However since I greatly prefer natural light to flash (especially the flat images from on-camera flashes), this is a very welcome feature!

Active D-Lighting

I don’t use this since it relies on in-camera post-processing or Capture NX2 to complete the effect. I use Bibble Light for raw conversion and post-processing, since it costs only about a third  of what Capture NX2 or Lightroom 2 cost. However I did shoot a couple of JPGs of a high-contrast scene with active D-Lighting, and it still clipped the highlights!

Welcome

Welcome to my photography blog. I’m new to digital photography, having purchased my first DSLR, a Nikon D60, in October 2008. Many years ago I did some 35mm photography, but that was then and this is now. I have no pretensions of being a “serious” amateur photographer – only to take photographs (mostly of my family) that are technically good, occasionally have some artistic merit, and – most importantly – that my family and I enjoy having. Since most of my photographs are of my family, you probably won’t find many of them on my blog!

My basic photo setup is a Nikon D60 with the 18-55mm kit lens (non-VR version), a Sigma 70-300mm zoom lens, and a Manfrotto 728B tripod. My “wish list” has only one item at present: the recently released Nikon 50mm AF-S F/1.4G, which would be perfect for photographing our soon to arrive second child!

My favourite photography sties are bythomm.com, kenrockwell.com and dpreview.co.uk. (Yes I know that Ken Rockwell and DP Review don’t see eye to eye, but both have made a significant contribution to amatur photography and I value diversity of opinion!).

Setting Nikon D60 exposure

While I love my Nikon D60, I have found that the matrix metering often clips the highlights of high-contrast scenes. Here is a short article I wrote about setting Nikon D60 exposure for high-contrast scenes.