Streetlight Serenity, originally uploaded by ianjofriel.

I’ve found that making time recently, and more to the point, trying to make time in reasonable weather, to go and take some photos has been really difficult.

Nikon D60 RGB Histogram

It’s commonly noted that the D60 dropped the RGB histogram as per the D80 due to it’s intended audience, being deemed more confusing than helpful and voila, the combined histogram… which is pretty useless to determine clipping in each colour…

As a slow workaround… go into the Retouch Menu and choose the Filter Effects, choose “Color Balance”, choose your picture, and hey presto, an RGB histogram…

It may be slower than a few clicks on the navi key, but it’s there anyway!!

Keep an eye out for a selection of some photos taken around glasgow by night, showing the bright coloured reflections on the wet ground..

Eyes, originally uploaded by ianjofriel.

Accidentally left my SB900 on Manual at full power rather than balanced TTL and fired off a shot, completely washed her out except her features, and there has been absolutely minimal editing on this pic – I love it !

Arduino Nikon Trigger

I’m not 100% on the use of this yet…. but in the simplest possible way, I can fire the D60 via Ethernet. Whilst playing about with the Arduino, Ethernet Shield and an IR LED, I’ve managed to slap together some code that fires the D60 ( and anything else that the ML-L3 remote can trigger ) in response to a network ping…

Additionally, this could be changed to… fire when a beam is broken, loud enough noise is detected, or in response to bright light… a cheap mans lightening trigger, or it could be set up for timelapse photography, i.e. a intervalometer, without having to tether it to a laptop.

Although the full Freeduino and Ethernet shield really is quite bulky, long with the 9v battery to be of any portable use, the arduino mini is smaller than the ML-L3 remote, and with some smaller batteries, i’m sure something more the size of a ‘clip on’ device could be achieved (without the RJ45 )  that could realistically be left attached to the camera grip whilst it was on a tripod etc.

I’ve not made any measurements as to the range of the diode, as it was only a quick mess around.. just thought i’d share it with anyone who cares !!

F401s ( N4004s )

Got the F401s ( also called the N4004 in the states, N series = american, F Series = elsewhere, but the model numbers don’t correlate to each other ), and after cleaning it up a bit, even although it was in good nick when it arrived, I still cleaned out the mirror both, focus screen and surface of the shutter curtains, it proved itself…

I tapped the shutter, despite having no film in it, and it tried to advance to frame 1, a good sign, could see the mirror moving, etc, so stuck a lens on it, the kit lens from my D60, a 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 DX VR AF-S. Although the F401s is an AF camera, and the lens is an AF lens, it’s “AF-S”, so it focuses via command from the body, as opposed to focusing via the pin on the body, so AF + AF-S = MF, not to worry.

The viewfinder is clear and sharp, has a flash symbol to indicate that it’s needed, or the scene will underexpose, and three icons, + – and o, indicating the exposure for the scene from the metering, what I didn’t expect though, is the focus indicator, to fire up to indicate clear focus on the AF-S lens in MF.

So, regardless of having a relatively new lens ( it’s a VR lens, so still new-ish ), and a 1980’s body, it can still meter, determine TTL flash levels, and determine focus, i’m impressed that these two ‘distant’ family members work so well together, i’m trying to get hold of some old E-Series lenses to test the opposite, see how well the metering, focus and rangefinder work on the D60 with an old lens…

On another note, got a roll of ilford HP5 Plus400 film in it just now, can’t wait to see the results, got some kodak max 200 and ultra 400 to go next…

http://www.640pixels.com/articles/free-adobe-lightroom-presets.aspx - 3 Good B&W plus 4 split tones for each…

http://digitalfreak.net/2008/12/22/lightroom-600-free-presets-to-download/ - over 600 presets – never be stuck again… you’ll no doubt find a large portion of these to be not your taste, but you can remove what you don’t need !

http://inside-lightroom.com/ - another compilation

http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/archives/presets/ - and another

Lightroom

Found my first major annoyance with Lightroom / Adobe Camera Raw.

If I shoot raw ( .nef ) with my D60, it incorporates all the settings from the camera, such as saturation, sharpness etc, which it would apply if you are shooting JPEG or RAW+JPEG ( it also uses them to create the embedded jpeg preview ).

When I use CaptureNX to convert my images, it can interpret these values, and applies them, giving me the same vivid colors, etc as I would acheive shooting JPEG, but also allowing me to modify the values if I need to, such as white balance, etc… the beauty of RAW

When, however, I dump the images into Lightroom, ACR reads them in a generic form, and does not process them via the same routines as CaptureNX ( which, effectively is how the camera does it as well ), and results in a really flat, blasé, image.

Obviously there is a workaround, of doing the conversion in CaptureNX and importing the result into Lightroom. This leaves me no further forward, I use lightroom to organise everything, and I keep the images in .nef format, exporting them when I need them after modification. If I start keeping the JPEGs in Lightroom, I either sacrifice space by keeping the NEF’s seperate, or I sacrafice them, and hope the JPEG is good enough.

I think I’m going to have to try and find a happy medium, and get some form of preset defined that can mimic the output of CaptureNX ?

At the end of the day, it’s not make or break for me using Lightroom, it’s an awesome app, CaptureNX really is TOO slow to use seriously, and it’s always there if I need it, but it would be nice, that when Adobe decide that camera x, y and z are supported in Lightroom, the raw files are actually supported fully, and not just that it can read the basics from the file, to add to the stats of how many cameras ACR supports…