Nikon User Thread

infokill said:
Whats the best way to white balance?
the dvx had that one button, but all i can see here are the presets.
and anyone know of any flash photography tutorial sites?
I was taught to not use flash, but i want to buy one eventually. right now im using the camera flash.
Oh and for all you photoshopers, how do you apply a vignette to your photo?
Thanks.
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Anyone?...............anyone?
ThaNKS
 
i just use the auto wb on the d50. i suck at flash so ???? vignette in photoshop can be done like this.

create a new layer.
fill layer with black.
create layer mask.
fill mask area with white.
then with mask area still selected, use the paintbrush with black or the gradient tool to create your vignette.
this way you can customize the vignette to mask certain parts of the image and leave others more visible.

here's a psd file demonstrating this technique. i used the gradient tool to make the vignette.

http://www.fisherfilmworks.com/vignette.psd
 
The d50 is excellent at proper white balance. If you really care about nailing your white balance (and other details) exactly then you should get comfortable shooting and working in RAW so that all parameters of the photo can be manipulated without diminishing quality.

Nikon Capture can change white balance completely when you import your pics as RAW... and it will be doing it as if it was all done in camera. Obviously you could do it through other means in PS to get the same end result... I'm just sayin'... this is the route I'm taking.
 
MattinSTL said:
The d50 is excellent at proper white balance. If you really care about nailing your white balance (and other details) exactly then you should get comfortable shooting and working in RAW so that all parameters of the photo can be manipulated without diminishing quality.

Nikon Capture can change white balance completely when you import your pics as RAW... and it will be doing it as if it was all done in camera. Obviously you could do it through other means in PS to get the same end result... I'm just sayin'... this is the route I'm taking.
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What he said.


But, you can always take a photo of a white board and you can use that photo in camera to set your white balance. under the white balance menu is "Image", or something close. It sets your camera to whatever file/photo you have on the memory card.
 
Do you have to do that for each new lighting setup or location? Or are you saying that it will compare that image with the lighting of the current location.... wherever that location may be?

Sorry to ask a stupid question... but if it were the ladder then I'd probably have heard about it because the cam would be performing technological miracles... so please elaborate on how this works.

I assume you mean that you get to a location... put out a white board where it catches the same light as the subject will have... take that pic... then use that to set the white balance as needed throughout the day? Like if the cam is turned off or something and you need to get white balance back?

Otherwise I guess the cam would have a built-in white balance file and auto white-balance would be perfect... but I'm trying to wrap my mind around the technique you describe and if it would actually save any time if lighting conditions were changing at all...

Otherwise can't you just manual white balance just like you would on the DVX? What would be the advantage of getting that white board image stored in there?
 
MattinSTL said:
Do you have to do that for each new lighting setup or location? Or are you saying that it will compare that image with the lighting of the current location.... wherever that location may be?
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Yes you do.

But, unlike the DVX, since you can have a crapton of different files in there, you could have 50 presets, or really as many as you would want.
 
i shoot raw and on the rare occasion that the white bal is off on a particular shot, i can correct it when converting from raw into photoshop. however, the auto wb in the d50 does me right most of the time.....
 
Cheez... yes good auto whibal is one of the several feathers in the hat of the d50... and one of the reasons I went that way the first time around.

Rapier... That's actually a really interesting idea... since white balance doesn't recognize shades of gray and black you could probably take a white card and write "garage" on it or whatever... and still get an accurate WB off of it... then you could have as many setups as needed ready to go.

But I think I'm just going to keep shooting RAW unless it's family snappy time.
 
I shoot raw also, but photoshop doesnt open my raw .nef file. I have to open it in preview (mac) and convert it to a png file then open that in PS. Is there an easier way?

And on another note here is my photo blog.
www.peepgame.blogspot.com

this is the day i got the camera, right out the box without reading anything lol.
i've gotten much better since then.
 
I bought Capture... haven't even got to use it yet, but I'll report back once I have. The reason I bought Nikon Capture is because at this time I don't know of any other software out there that will let you load in custom curves (into the camera).

But before I actually open the box I'm tempted to go with one of the alternative programs that will NOT let you load in custom curves, because there are some good workarounds as long as you shoot in RAW.

One of them is RAW Magick Lite

The other one that looks interesting is Bibble Pro

These programs will work in your RAW format and do the conversion, and in some cases you may not even need to take the image over to PS, but I do think that most people still do use PS in conjunction with these...

The question I'm trying to answer is if RAW Magick will do everything that Nikon Capture does, minus the loading in of color curves... because if it does then it's a lot cheaper then Capture and it allows endless curve manipulation of the images AFTER the NEF is in your computer. So far it's the only program I know of that will actually imbed a new color curve to the NEF (RAW) file... looks pretty interesting to me! So rather then concern yourself with loading curves to the camera you can do all your curve experimentation back at the computer.

You may want to check this stuff out... it's for Mac also.
 
infokill said:
I shoot raw also, but photoshop doesnt open my raw .nef file. I have to open it in preview (mac) and convert it to a png file then open that in PS. Is there an easier way?
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Infokill, Photoshop can handle Raw NEF files directly, you just need to install the Camera Raw update.

Go here to find the latest update for your version of Photoshop and follow the installation directions.

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/

Works for Mac and PC.
 
the only thing that sucks is you can't preview your nef's before you open them. i use bridge to go through thumbnails of my pics so i know what to open. the workaround is to download the adobe dng converter. it's free on the adobe site. this converts your nef's to dng's that you can preview with bridge or browse. also, photoshop cs1 won't open nef's at all so if you use cs1 you must convert to dng first.
 
I don't shoot anything in RAW because the files are too large and the JPEGs out of the D50 look identical to my eyes. I just don't see a purpose in shooting RAW at this point.

Then again, I don't understand a lot of thing.

-Jeremy
 
one advantage is that you can correct things during the raw conversion as if the picture was taken that way. i don't know if this really offers any better quality but i know it is the best way to correct white bal problems with no side effects. also, it is not compressed like the jpg so you have less chance of artifacts showing up if you are doing any extreme burning or contrast, etc. i really can't say 100% that raw is the only way to go but since i have the storage for it, i shoot it. it is the best possible quality out of the camera.
 
CS1 does handle NEF files. Just need to get the Camera Raw update installed. And you can preview your Raw files in both Photoshop CS1 and CS2, just go to File --- Browse. CS2 utilizes Adobe Bridge to preview. CS is slightly different, but previewing is still easy.
 
I tried to bring RAW files into PS7 and the color was all off. I brought them into Picture Project and then exported JPEGs. I still think the the compression of JPEG when printed isn't that significant and that printed JPEGs look identical to the RAW files, at least from my testing.

I do need to get CS2 at some point.

-Jeremy
 
TheYankee said:
I tried to bring RAW files into PS7 and the color was all off. I brought them into Picture Project and then exported JPEGs. I still think the the compression of JPEG when printed isn't that significant and that printed JPEGs look identical to the RAW files, at least from my testing.

I do need to get CS2 at some point.

-Jeremy
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if your color settings in photoshop aren't set up right, when you bring in documents with a diferent color profile, they will look off.
 
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