OT - camera problems

My father was a great believer in Murphy's Law (whatever can go wrong, will go wrong). I can't count the times I heard him say, in response to some problem, "That's ole Murphy at work!"

We recently returned from a month-long trip to Australia and New Zealand. It was our first foray south of the equator. Needless to say, a lot of preparation was involved. I practiced with both lenses I planned to take, packed and repacked my gear, and agonized over what else to carry or leave behind.

Taking the Nikon D750 was never in doubt. It's my only camera (besides the iPhone 5s), and a big reason for travelling to that part of the world was to capture some of the incredible landscapes. Imagine my surprise and consternation when, two days before we left, Nikon sent me an email saying my D750 might be prone to a shutter problem discovered in July 2015 (here's the technical advisory). Just send it back and we'll fix it and return it in two weeks or so, says Nikon. Murphy at work again.

I hadn't seen any evidence of the shutter problem (shading of a portion of images) and I didn't have time to rent another camera, so I crossed my fingers and set off with the D750. Back home, none of the images I've reviewed so far show any shutter issues, so it seems I dodged that bullet.

But Murphy wasn't done yet. During the trip the D750 locked up three or four times. An "Err" message appeared in the control panel and none of the controls worked. I had to remove the battery for 30 seconds or so, then put it back, to restore operation. And of course Murphy made sure it happened at least once while I was trying to shoot in a hurry and therefore made me miss some shots.

I've had camera problems before but, really, very few. My brand-new Pentax K-5 had obvious optical problems right out of the box; Pentax swapped it for another that I used for years with no problems. My venerable Canon Rebel never had a problem so far as I can remember. It's disappointing, then, to have the rather expensive D750 throw one actual and one potential problem at me in the space of a month. It's now on its way to Nikon. Let's hope they can fix it, and declare a long-lasting truce with Murphy.

[Update: I got the D750 back and all seems OK. The only glitch, which took a few days to discover, is that the time and date had been reset to sometime in 2014. That confused me and my Lightroom catalog until I figured it out. If you've sent a camera in for service, you might want to check that before you do a lot of shooting.]

Weekly Challenge: Landscape Zoomed In

I'm cheating on the weekly challenge already, and it's not even March. Instead of taking each weekly challenge topic in order, as an assignment, I took an image and scanned the topics to find one that fits it.

The Week 14 challenge from Dogwood Photography is "Landscape: Zoomed in--Most landscapes are wide sweeping images. Try an alternative and zoom in instead." Perfect for today's shot.

A spell of nice-ish weather arrived. It was a beautiful morning for a stroll in the park. I was also roused by a video at Luminous Landscape featuring photographer and instructor Katrin Eismann. She said that she tells her students to get out and shoot every day. Eismann does too, because how would it look if she didn't? So in part my shame drove me outdoors.

I took the Nikkor 70-200mm zoom because it tends to stay in the bag while the Tamron 24-70mm zoom gets lots of exercise (and, truth be told, I wish the Nikkor was a bit longer). But we have a trip coming up and I didn't want to feel stale with either lens so I took the 70-200 for a walk.

Our little stream caught my eye, as it often does. The low sun sent ripple images through the clear water onto the stream bed. The zoom's image quality is always good. 

Stream Bed

The image doesn't follow any composition rules. There's no foreground-midfield-background that most landscapes have. The rule of thirds certainly ain't there. But the textures and the movement speak to me. It looks really good as my desktop background, too; it will probably replace this.

The details: Nikon D750 handheld 1/200 sec. f/11, ISO 800 (70mm AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm 1:4G ED)

Weekly Challenge: Landscape, Black and White

This week's challenge from Dogwood Photography is "Landscape: Black and White--Look for a scene with great contrast that will make a great black and white."

Last week's enormous snow storm provided lots of high-contrast material. This morning I took a walk in our local park and tried to think in b&w. I took a lot of shots in the woods, where long shadows were falling on snow and branches stuck up everywhere. There were some nice woodpiles emerging from the snow too. Sucker that I am for textures, I shot plenty of those:

Woodpile

But my favorite is this image of geese on the partially frozen surface of the pond. I fooled around with Lightroom's B&W Presets: they are a quick way to look at variations on your image, and you can start with one and then tweak it further. I ended up using my own settings but they are pretty similar to the LR B&W Look 2 preset.

Geese on Ice

Other observations: I haven't figured out how to keep my hands warm in cold weather. Mittens and gloves don't allow working the camera, so I end up sticking my hands in my pockets and blowing on them. The Nikon D750 seems not to mind the cold at all. 

Weekly Challenge: Artistic, Red

This week's challenge from Dogwood Photography is "Artistic: Red--Shoot whatever inspires you. Red should be the focus of the image. Don't be afraid to be creative."

I used this artistic license to colorize an image in Photoshop. There's almost nothing you can't do in Photoshop, and there are thousands of tutorials out there. I used one from Phlearn about selecting and replacing colors. It was a chance to review the eyedropper tool and get more familiar with the hue/saturation adjustment layer.

The original image was of frost on a window. To me it suggested something a bit cosmological.

Red Cosmos

My wife had excitedly showed me a cut red pepper with a graceful structure within. I couldn't resist it either, so I'm including it in this weekly challenge. Maybe I'll get extra credit.

Red Pepper

Weekly Challenge: Traditional Landscape

This week, the challenge from Dogwood Photography is "Landscape: Traditional--Shoot a beautiful landscape and share it with the world. Find a nice foreground and don't forget the sky."

The problem with shooting landscapes on a schedule is weather, of course. It wasn't until yesterday that my free time coincided with some pretty weather. I know, I know: you can shoot in all weather, or at least all the weather you can tolerate. But when both foreground and sky are part of the assignment, you need a certain amount of visibility.

Some incidental lessons from this assignment: Check your battery charge or (better) carry a charged spare. I always do, and sure enough one of them began to conk out while I was shooting. Wear boots. It's always muddy where you want to set up. I took my new infrared remote for the Nikon and used it for some tripod shots before the sun came up, together with the remote mirror-up mode on the D750 (press once, the mirror goes up; press again and the shutter trips. Nice.) At $20 the ML-L3 may be the cheapest Nikon gear I ever buy. Speaking of cheap, my wife kindly lent me a shower cap for a camera cover in case of rain. They're cheap or free and work pretty well.

A more important lesson, I think, is that I'm rushing when I'm out shooting. I had no time constraints, yet I hurried through some scenes. It's a bad habit. When I get back and start processing images it's a sure bet I'll wish I could do some over again: stuff in the frame that shouldn't be there, bad angles, poor composition, wrong exposure. I need to slow down.

Here's my landscape. It's on the Maryland shore of the Potomac River, where
Seneca Creek enters. The bridge once carried the C&O Canal over the creek. Does the bridge count as foreground? Hope so.

Seneca Creek at Potomac River

Weekly Challenge: Self Portrait

It turns out that retirement does not cure procrastination, so I've decided to inject a little discipline into my photography this year. The 52 Week Photography Challenge, courtesy of Dogwood Photography, is an approach that seems useful as well as fun. There are three categories: Portrait, Landscape, and Artistic Impression. Each week presents a variation on one of the categories. Week One is "Portrait: Self Portrait - Start things off right with a 'selfie'! Explore the self-timer setting on your camera."

I've dabbled in this before (see this posting) but I certainly don't feel proficient. Today I set up next to the window for some indirect light and started shooting. I learned a lot.

First lesson: it's very hard to focus when you don't have a subject. Using a 105mm focal length makes for very shallow depth of field. At six feet and f/8, it's 4 inches (per the easy-to-use, free depth-of-field calculator at the Apple App store called TrueDoF-Intro). And I couldn't figure out how to use autofocus without a finger on the shutter release. So it was shoot, look at the image, adjust the focus, shoot again...pretty tedious.

Try to Stay Focused

It occurred to me that a cable release would help. Alas, my old cable release with the mini-phono plug doesn't fit my Nikon, which naturally has it's OWN connector. So I ordered a fairly cheap wireless remote that works on infrared. Did me no good in this session, though.

Next lesson: It's easy to forget basic details like background. And unruly hair, and blemishes, and so on. You can fix some of them in post, but it's better to get it right the first time.

Watch Background to Avoid Funny Hats

I liked the side lighting from the window, but without flash the shutter speeds are very slow even at ISO 1600. I needed to add a lot of noise reduction in post. If I were a serious portraitist I would have flashes. Waiting for the self-timer to trigger also leads to blinking.

Tired of Waiting for Self Timer

Speaking of exposure, I thought (looking at the camera display) that the lit side of my face was much too hot, so I adjusted the exposure down about 2.7 EV. But in post-processing it was clear that I overcompensated. Lesson: don't trust the camera monitor for exposure decisions. Some folks use histograms and little blinking tools to alert them to over/under exposure.  I guess I should join them. 

In the end I had two candidate images. They differ in aperture, f/10 versus f/8. I prefer the f/8 because it blurs the background a bit more and the light is a little better. Okay, one week down and 51 to go.

F/8, softer background

F/10, slightly sharper background

A walk in the woods

I returned to Great Falls recently for a morning walk in the woods. It's one of my favorite locations. A frost still clung to the trees as I walked up the Gold Mine trail. This time of year the sun is low, the shadows long, and the trees mostly bare. In spite of the temperature and the season the woods were inviting.

The image has no people, no evergreens, no snow. But I like it anyway and made it into our seasonal card for this year. I wish all of you a warm wonderful holiday and a peaceful, healthy and prosperous new year.

Gold Mine Trail