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eBook

Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Coolpix Series including CP950, CP990, CP995 and CP775


a high resolution eBook in PDF format to be viewed with Adobe Acrobat on Macintosh and Windows Computers

By Peter iNova
photographs made with CP950, CP990, CP995, and CP775 by the author

Combined images from CP995, Getty Center, and CP 950, cloudy sky.

www.digitalsecrets.net PHOTOeBOOKS.com

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iNova, Peter, 1944


Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras By Peter iNova Includes CD with software programs for image manipulation, demonstration, and eBook display for both Macintosh and Windows computer platforms.

Text editors Marian Inova, Robert Jeantet, Joan Kunter, Anita Dorich Contributing Gallery photographers Ruth Happel, Taki Bibelas, Tom Deagle, Mitchell Silver, Rex Stayskal, Furrukh Khan

ISBN 1-882383-15-6
Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras. Version 3.0
Copyright 2001 by Peter iNova. All rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, file duplication, or by other electronic, logical, or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the author and Graphics Management Press, except for brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Graphics Management, Inc. P.O. Box 241811 Los Angeles, CA 90024 (310) 475-2988 E-Mail: gm@graphics-management.com
The author and publisher assume neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any direct or indirect loss or damage caused, or alleged to be caused, by the information, data, software, or computer files contained herein, or for errors, omissions, inaccuracies, or any other inconsistency within these documents, pages, programs, or files, or for unintentional slights against people or organizations.

Book design, layout, and CD preparation by Peter iNova All photographs, diagrams, and artwork within the text by Peter iNova unless noted otherwise. Additional photographs in the Gallery by the photographers cited. Copyrights belong to the participating photographers. Published in the USA

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Foreword/Forward
Why this eBook?
When I started this project in 1999 it was because I wanted someone else to produce it and make it available to me. But the world wasnt doing that. So I guess that meant Id have to do it myself. With a bell that cat mind-set and my trusty Nikon Coolpix 950 in hand, I set out to dig into its secrets and find out how to unravel them. I knew that the camera was capable of some fairly amazing things, and a book would be a nice addition. Add my own experiences with the digital tools of media production and special effects, and this quickly-produced book could be the result of a marriage made in Hollywood, if not in Heaven. That was June, 1999. By September, 1999, I had contacted no fewer than nine publishers, all of which had shown interest in the topic of digital photography. Some bailed out upon hearing that the book was targeted at a single product and others jumped ship when they realized the difficulty of drilling into the photographic market which, they perceived, was very different from their other digital pursuits. A few remained. Three showed various degrees of curiosity, but only one wanted to see some chapters right now. It was getting late in the year. The book had been conceived from the start as part text, part CD, and part Internet. I Fedexed the manuscript to the publisher so their crack team of reviewers could dive in on it immediately. Immediately, I was to learn, has different meanings to different people in different fields: Immediately in Internet terms is, Excuse me, Ill get back to you with... ah, here it is. Immediately in the world of special effects production usually means, As Soon As Possible! Immediately, it turned out, in the world of book publishing meant, Sometime next summer. By November, 1999, I knew the 950 book was not going to happen in the twentieth century. The software for the CD was nearly finished, the text had been through several drafts, and I had figured the publisher just didnt like what they had seen, or else they would have gotten back to me. Sigh. I bought a book on self-publishing and started talking to printers. Lesson number two: Publishing costs an arm and a leg. Especially for a 200+ page full-color book. Double sigh. One publisher called in December with an offer to bring the book out in September. My attitude was, September!? The 950 would be Very Old News by then! Fugeddaboudit. (New author. Thinks he knows something. Hah. I should have listened better, perhaps.) Besides, the next models would be introduced at the Photo Marketing Association show in Las Vegas in January of 2000. Certainly the new model would become a topic of the book, right? I put the project on hold and held my breath. ~o~ ! ~o~ As soon as the new Coolpix 990 appeared, I started back into the project again. A large new chapter for the new camera would be needed, and the form of the book changed to accommodate the larger print potential of the newer camera. I wanted the book to unambiguously display the big, sharp images from the 990 in a form that could be immediately appreciated. In July, with the revised manuscript nearly finished, the publisher from the autumn of 1999 e-mailed back. The reviewers are ecstatic. Lets talk! We talked. In one of the most enlightening, if not frustrating, conversations of my life, I witnessed a publisher of books confronting a writer of immediate, topical material while they teeter-tottered on the pivot of the Internet over the realities of life and how it is practiced. The publishers were prepared to announce the publication of a first run of 2,500 black and white, manual-sized books next March (2001) if I would simply accept the realities of the publishing business on their terms. Never mind that the book, from the beginning, had been composed using full-color images, graphics, and examples throughout. And never mind about their own reviewers positive comments which included the books marketing plan, Internet connection, and overall vision. The publishers executive committee, it seems, knew in its heart-of-hearts that a book of this type is the size of a software manual, black ink only, and probably wont find an audience, so spending money on it was not something theyd wish to invest in heavily. Certainly, they had a point. But so do I. (And if I brush my hair just right, it doesnt show.) The options of this Internet Age are larger than pages made of paper. This is the i-age, the e-age. The year of the eBook. Sure, most of them are simply text, but that isnt the end of the chain of possibilities, now, is it? eBook, eh? Well, if Stephen King can do it, why not me? Yeah, thats the spirit! Who needs those big publishers, anyhow? What did they ever do for me except waste my time? Humph, humph! (New author, remember.) But seriously, how do I really feel about it? So this eBook concept was formed. It isnt paper pages with four-color printing, but it has features no paper book could contain. Interactivity. Immediate access to the CD full of software, demos, and examples. And a feature I had not anticipated earlier; big, sharp, clear color photos that are probably much sharper than anything you have seen from an electronic publication. It is also coming to you from a more progressive publishing source, Graphics Management Press, who have embraced new technologies where the larger publishers fear to tread. (Their design and production of the 1991 book, Witness to War: Images of the Persian Gulf War, garnered a Pulitzer Prize for their client, The Los Angles Times.) The PDF files you are reading in Adobe Acrobat can be zoomed-in to 300% without passing the pixel-level of the reproduced images. Thats like sticking your face WAY into a page in a printed book to see the detail. But here, the images arent broken up with printing dots. Its rather like having pages that were photographically printed. The software has evolved, too. In a marathon session of filter writing, tweaking, and perfecting, the number of Photoshop action filters that are included has passed the 300 mark. A huge chapter on camera operation has appeared with sections on the 950 and 990 models. Its not a manual, exactly, but you still need to know what secrets lie behind each feature. Other books exist to give you the improved manual experience. If Ive done my job here, youll be taking better pictures, and you will know why they are better. Youll be printing, correcting, improving, and finessing your shots through a greater experience base, and you will be enjoying Photoshop instead of thinking its just too hard to learn. That camera in your hand is a fabulous instrument that beckons you to take pictures. It has a lot to teach you and you have a lot to teach it. Let the exposures begin. -Peter iNova, November, 2000

Addendum for Version 3.0


The eBook has proven to be a success. It is perhaps the most complex eBook on the market. Nikon digital photographers all over the world are enjoying its text and software. With two new cameras, the Coolpix 995 and 775, the number of camera operation chapters has grown to four. Photoshop has progressed to V6.01, and Test Strip is now in its third generation. Both are included on the CD in tryout versions. The iNovaFX filters have grown into new areas. One set takes 4 different images, lays them out for immediate printing on either US letter or A4 paper. Another performs extreme image rescue. New ideas are sprinkled throughout the text, and InfoBites have reached new levels of proliferation. Bon aperture... -Peter iNova, September, 2001

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Getting the Most from this eBook


This eBook is a text, a number of computer elements on CD, and an extended experience on the Internet.
Acrobat Viewing

As you read these pages in Adobe Acrobat, the page is taller than your screen, most likely, and the distance from your eyes to the screen is greater than your normal book-reading distance. In order to adjust for that, the page image will likely feel best to you at 125% or 150% scale, as set by Acrobat in the lower left corner of the display. With the page at 140% magnification, it works well on a 14- or 15-inch screen such as is found on many portable computers. You can have Acrobat show you one page at a time, pages laid out like an open book, or as one following the other in a continuous scroll.
Thumbnail Browsing

The thumbnails running down the left side of the page work well as a single column of images. They give you a chance to browse the chapter or lower-resolution entire eBook pages fairly quickly. Any page you can see is accessible by simply clicking on it. Immediately the new page will appear. The header bar has a control to turn the thumbnail images on and off.
Interactivity

You will find a certain level of Acrobat interactivity in some places. Generally, clicking the title of a topic can take you to a parallel or expanded topic if an interactive link is in place. This exists in the high resolution chapters only. Click on a chapter in the Table of Contents and the chapter will immediately appear. In the text, a citing of another chapters information on the subject will also link to it. Note that the Acrobat reader behaves much like an Internet browser and the solid arrow triangles in the header will navigate forward and backward through a string of interactive jumps.
Zooming In

The images in this book are usually made from full-size files from the CP950, CP990, CP995, and CP775. In general, you can zoom into them with as much as a 300% magnification without seeing pixels. Some images can be viewed even closer in the high resolution chapter files. The lower-resolution file is faster to move through, but its images are best viewed at 150% magnification. If you are inspecting images closely, the selection box on the thumbnail image will show you the portion of the page you are currently viewing. Clicking the cursor on any other image in the stream of thumbnails will jump to it instantly while maintaining the current magnification. This makes it easy to compare similar-sized images and peer into their details unusually quickly. Without printing dots to break up the pixel structure, the details stay more photographic.
Printing Out

You can print out ranges of pages from this book in black and white, as with a laser printer, or in color, as with an inkjet printer, any time you wish for reference. Some files are included in the Appendix for that purpose expressly. The color charts and test images are there for easy access.
iNovaFX filters

Included on the CD are the Photoshop action filters under the iNovaFX brand. These are 100% original procedures, manipulations, and helpful orchestrations of Photoshops myriad features, all of whitch are specifically designed to achieve three things: 1. Correction, perfection, and performance enhancement of Nikon Coolpix images. 2. Demonstration of, and experience with, the Photoshop Menu of Plug-ins. 3. Artistic, impressionistic, and graphic interpretation of your photographs in original ways. Included in the first group are the iBC barrel distortion filters, the iCrAb chromatic aberration reduction filters, the iCF color-repair filters, the B&W filmlook filters, the JPEG artifact-supressing filter, the ISO-boosting filters, the iFF denoise filters, and several others. Theyre all created to work particularly well with the images from these Nikon cameras. Some, like the iBC and iCF filters are tuned so specifically to these particular cameras and their individual optical systems, that using the filters on the images from other cameras will almost never give ideal results. New filters have joined the collection with this eBook version. Some last-minute instructions may be found in the ReadMe documents.
Internet Updates

It is inevitable. Data in a timely document like this may give way to new information, become obsolete, or acquire new meanings as technology progresses. After reading through this eBook you may wish to visit our special site holding updated information, links, special offers, new techniques, and the latest information about these cameras.

www.digitalsecrets.net

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Contents
Chapter 1 Nikon Digital Photography....... ....................................... 1-1 Chapter 2 Digital Color and the Photoshop Connection.............. 2-1 Chapter 3A Camera Operation Coolpix 950 ................................3A-1 Chapter 3B Camera Operation Coolpix 990................................. 3B-1 Chapter 3C Camera Operation Coolpix 995............................... 3C-1 Chapter 3D Camera Operation Coolpix 995 ................................3D-1 Chapter 4 How Do I? .......................................................................... 4-1 Chapter 5 Learning Digital Photography......................................... 5-1 Chapter 6 Printing Digital Photographs............................................ 6-1 Chapter 7 Special Effects .................................................................. 7-1 Chapter 8 Vexing FAQs ...................................................................... 8-1 Chapter 9 iNovaFX Filter Operation.................................................. 9-1 Appendix .............................................................................................A-1 Index ...................................................................................................... I-1 Digital Visions: A Gallery of Coolpix Photography ....... Bonus Volume Shooting for Effect .......................................................................Booklet

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A Note to Film Photographers


Darn it. Just about the time you got real comfortable with Velvia and Plus-X, somebody came along and connected a battery to the film! What were they thinking? Not to worry, film isnt dead. But it may be time for you to start thinking about digital image capture and these recent-generation cameras from Nikon may be just the thing for you to use to get your digital feet wet. A growing number of your contemporaries, and probably even you, too, have embraced a large part of the digital photographic revolution. Slide and negative scanners, ink-jet printers, Photoshop manipulation, CD-R storagethese have all become natural parts of the contemporary film photographers world. Its gotten so digitally thick these days, that customers and clients are beginning to feel cheated if there isnt that D-word associated with the current project. How much of a jump could it be to digital acquisition? Well, in the case of the cameras about which this eBook is concerned, the price of admission starts under a thousand dollars, US. The price of accessories will add half-again as much to the bottom line, but by starting with a Nikon 9xx you will have bought into a multi-lens, unusually configured, highly versatile system that brings new opportunities and experiences. Yes, the film is free, but when did the cost of film ever stop you? The big deal here is Time. Instant results. Not Polaroids minute or films hour: Now! And with a TV hooked to your Nikon, the whole agency can watch the shot coming together on the big screen (and wont that be fun). But seriously, you can use a Coolpix as the worlds most sophisticated light meter, if you calibrate it to the film you are using. With controls in these cameras that let you adjust contrast, color temperature, ISO, and all the normal numbers of shutter speed and f-stop, you can have a light meter that tells you how to set other equipment or shows you unambiguously how your lighting is performing. A light meter that takes pictures, now thats a new one. In this eBook, you will see images that are obviously studio shots and many that are captured in the field with existing lighting or little extra lighting. That little speedlight on the camera is a good flash-fill for outdoor images, but thats about it. The twist-design of these cameras will seem odd at first, but will grow on you. It has saved my fanny hundreds of times but has never prevented me from getting a shot. Youre going to love the fact that the film cartridge holds not just a few more than the 36 exposures youve been usingit holds HUNDREDS of shots, if you let it. In all, the jump into digital is a personal journey that will provoke a whole lot of questions. Questions that you can answer yourself by playing with the camera and trying new ideas. As has happened to more than one film photographer, the experience could be a turning point in your career. Good shooting.

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Acknowledgements
An eBook like this is the product of many hands, many hours, many re-thoughts, and many mistakes. I speak with typographical errors, sometimes, so it came as no great surprise to me that I write that way. Robert Jeantet, Ph.D., deserves a particularly emphatic kudo for pointing my grammar in the right direction and for sending me a years supply of commas and hyphens. Among the many hands are the ones of the models and actors who participated in the photos throughout these pages. Thanks go to actors Molly Kiley (right), Austin Vulich, Ellen Heuer, and models Lisa Dennis, Tim Wilder, and the people of California, New York, Japan, and Oz who appear in many of my images. Gday. Thanks, too, to my friends who have suffered enough hearing about this project, appearing in images, and yet, were encouraging throughout. Then there is a special thanks to Marian iNova who helped by serving as fresh eyes and valued editor while my rants took shape. Thanks, babe. Mmm-mm-m. Will Guest, you know how much you helped this thing be born, and so do I. Heres to more sushi lunches! Lori Bender, you not only posed for shots but helped make the final eBooks. How stunningly versatile! As noted in the Foreword, the path to this eBook was Gordian: The shortest distance between two points, it was knot. A particular badge of courage should be extended to William Dorich, the publisher who took a deep breath, rolled his eyes, and decided to embrace this new publishing medium with an open mind. Your counsel and fearlessness are appreciated.

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Meet the Cameras


Eyepiece diopter adjustment Flash sync cover & socket Flash sensor Indicator lamp / Anti red-eye light Flash tube Optical viewfinder port Zoom lens 28mm rigid accessory ring LCD data screen EV +/ button (in combination with Command Dial) & Trash selector (in Play mode) Exposure regime button: Program / Aperture priority / Shutter priority (in combination with Command Dial) Optical viewfinder Flash & Focus ready lights Quality / Image Size button High-tech plastic tripod socket CF door

Nikon CoolPix 950 (mfg 1999-2000)


Millennium Edition shown
Camera swivel External power & Video out sockets & cover Command Dial Shutter release: 2-stage Mode switch: Off-Auto RecManual Rec-Playback Flash function button & ISO selector (in combination with Command Dial) Focus mode button: Infinity / Macro / Self-timer / Manual focus (in combination with Command Dial) Data I/O socket & cover Monitor On-Off button Menu On-Select-Off button Zoom control Live monitor Serial number Neck or wrist strap loop Battery door & latch

Nikon CoolPix 990 (mfg 2000-2001)


Eyepiece diopter adjustment Flash sync cover & socket Flash sensor Indicator lamp / Anti-red-eye light Flash tube Optical viewfinder port Zoom lens 28mm rigid accessory ring LCD data screen Focus mode button: InfinityMacro-Self-timer-Manual focus (in combination with Command Dial) Flash mode button: Auto-Antired-eye-Forced Flash-SLOW flash-Off Optical viewfinder Flash & Focus ready lights Quality / Image-size button Metal tripod socket

Western Hemisphere Version shown

Camera swivel Shutter release: 2-stage Mode switch: Off-Auto-ManualPlayback External power socket & cover Function 1 button (exposure regime selector) Function 2 button (EV +/) Data I/O & Video out sockets & cover Command Dial Monitor On-Off Menu On-Select-Off Zoom control Selector button Live monitor Neck or wrist strap loop CF door Serial number Battery door & latch

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Nikon CoolPix 995 (mfg 20012002 )


LCD data display External power socket Magnesium shell Robber grip surface Color inset (dark lavender for US) Battery compartment (under) Metal tripod socket (under) Swivel lock switch (under) Quick Review button Menu button Monitor button Molded plastic shell Camera monitor Focus / Self-timer / Trash button ISO/Flash mode button Qual / Image Size button

US Market Version shown

Pop-up flash Flash sensor Flash latch Optical viewfinder Anti red-eye & signal lamp Optical viewfinder diopter adjustment (under) Flash sync socket (under) 28 mm threaded accessory ring 8.2 ~ 31 mm lens (4:1 coverage)

Two-stage shutter release Rotary Auto record-Manual record-Playback-Off switch Func1 and Func2 buttons Command dial Zoom / magnify buttons Neck or wrist strap loop 1 CF card / data socket door Multi-selector Neck or wrist strap loop 2

Nikon CoolPix 775 (mfg 2001-2002)


Power On-Off switch (around shutter release) Finger grip Anti red-eye & signal lamp Battery compartment door Battery compartment lock High-tech plastic tripod socket Serial number Shutter Release (center) Wrist strap socket Flash ready LED Optical viewfinder eye port Focus lock / standby LED 1.5-inch color monitor Focus range / delete button Flash select: Auto-Auto anti redeye-Force flash- Night portrait flash-Off / review thumbs button Menu On-Off button Quick review / magnify button Scene-Auto-Play selector CompactFlash card door Scroll up / go back / monitor On-Off button Multi-selector 4-way switch Zoom tele / scroll right button External power in socket Scroll down / go ahead button Zoom wide / scroll left button Transfer/select images button Flash tube Optical viewfinder port Extending Zoom lens 3:1 Internal lens cap (when closed) Video out and computer data socket

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Chapter 1

Heres Nikon Digital Photography

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CHAPTER 1 HERES NIKON DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY


AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM PHOTOGRAPHY WAS IN PROFOUND EVOLUTION. DIGITAL SENSORS AND COMPUTER MEMORY TOOK THE PLACE OF FILM. COMPUTER PROGRAMS TOOK THE PLACE OF SPRINGS, SPROCKETS, MOTORS, AND MECHANISM. IF YOU WERE A RECHARGEABLE BATTERY, LIFE WAS GOOD.

hen Nikon introduced its first digital, million-plus-pixel camera in the spring of 1998, they had a few things in mind that other digital camera makers missed. The camera included the normal features of advanced digital cameras of the day, zoom lens, live viewing monitor, removable storage, and battery power. But the Coolpix 900 was marked by a novel basic feature seen only in a The Nikon Coolpix 900 was few other cameras. The split-body, swivel design. Nikons first megapixel camera. 1,228,800 sensors Here was a camera that isolated the lens, optical viewfinder, and imaging chip from added together to make a the computer, monitor, storage media, and batteries. Connecting the two modules was a picture. Life is harsh for rapidly evolving technologies. The rotating pivot. A few cameras had played with this notion in the preceding months, but 900 is already a museum none of them included an optical viewfinder with the camera part of the design. piece. The Nikon could be used in two basic ways. You could frame the scene through an optical viewfinder or watch through the lens on the color monitor. The camera looked like it was housed in a slab of extruded aluminum. Unfortunately, this digital camera design left much to be desired. For every good feature, there seemed to be issues which were not addressed. Power consumption was so great that alkaline batteries were more costly than film for a similar number of exposures. Power-up took a leisurely 15 seconds and by that time, the emu would have e-moved. After power was established, the photographer had a 30-second window of opportunity to get the shot or push some button to extend the time, otherwise a shut-down would occur, and startup would be another 15-second wait. Its good features included the live monitor viewing, the ability to shoot quite nice pictures capable of being printed at 6 x 8 inches while looking very non-digital, and the ability to shoot extreme close ups without extra attachments. With 1280 x 960 pixels it found adventurous photo enthusiasts all over the world as early adopters, but other cameras seemed to have prettier designs, faster ergonomics, higher pixel counts, and better images. Six months after its introduction, a Coolpix 900S (also called the 910 in some countries) was introduced in time for the Christmas holiday market, and it featured slightly faster operation and longer battery life, but it was too little, too late. Besides, Nikon had other things in mind...

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

ENTER THE DRAGON


In early 1999, the rumors began to fly. A prototype was privately demonstrated at the Photo Marketing Association convention that winter. Nikon had a new model camera up their sleeve. By mid-February, the rumors had teeth. In April 1999, the Nikon 950 came to market and was an immediate hit. Here was what photographers needed all along, an entry-level professional digital camera. The image chip shot a picture 1600 x 1200 pixels in size, 25% dimensionally larger than the previous model but with 56% more pixels. Wide-angle, telephoto, and fisheye lenses fleshed out the system. The Nikon add-on lenses have proved to be superior to anything previously made in the form of converter optics. The 950 was small. Smaller than a 35mm SLR body. When you think about all the history of hand held cameras, this one is closer to the form of the first pocket-sized Leica 35mm cameras from the 1920s. At seventeen ounces, the 950 didnt sit well inside a typical pocket, but it could be concealed The full frame of the CP950 creates prints up to there, if needed. I have occasionally concealed it in the inner pocket 8 x 10 that are easily confused with 35mm film images. The 990 and 995 make even larger images. of a tuxedo jacket without looking like I was packing heat. (Actress Molly Kiley.) The 950 could fit comfortably in a pocket of a photographers vest. Balancing the vest on the other side, the accessories, batteries, and lenses made it a wearable camera bag. Unlike hand-held film cameras, digital cameras have little monitor screens on them that show you what the camera is seeing and what the image you shot looks like. The 950s screen looked like a moving video monitor. Color was realistic and motion was quite fluid. Since these screens must glow to give you an image, glowing bright enough to be seen in daylight is the challenge. The 950s monitor couldnt be seen in direct sunlight (9 to 5 in summer light), but in shade and indoors it worked quite well. For many kinds of shots, the built-in optical viewfinder was all you needed, although that little TV on the back of the camera begged you to watch it. Viewing hoods and focusing magnifiers were often used for outdoor viewfinding.

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Heres Nikon Digital Photography

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The 950s lens was fully enclosed in one part of its magnesium body. It zoomed from 38 to 115 millimeters, 35mm camera equivalent*, giving a modest wideangle to modest telephoto effect. The front optical element was only about 9/16-inch (18mm) across. Accessory lenses and filters attached through a 28mm threaded mounting ring that was rigidly fixed to the camera body. The entire camera hung quite securely from this ring on microscopes and telescopes. The 28mm mount was new with the CoolPix cameras, and if you mount optics or filters made for other cameras you need to acquire a 28 > 37mm step-up The Nikon Coolpix 950 broke new ground with nearly 2 million sensors and became the ring. (See Chapter 8 for sources of most popular digital camera in the crossover prosumer market. accessories.) The design was a complete surprise. The body was striking. A black smooth-textured finish flowed over a contoured, molded magnesium shell. The boxy, aluminum-slab appearance of the 900 was gone. The swivel was stronger than the one on the previous camera. A red finger-grip panel accented the front of the body. Now we all knew how cool the Coolpix could look. How would it perform? Ergonomic features were everywhere. Startup took only three seconds, and three metering types were available. Many features could be quickly selected with the edge of a finger wheel buried in the front of the camera. The camera could be set to increase or decrease exposure and contrast. Autofocus could be set to continuous or per-exposure operation. A feature never before seen on any camera appeared, BSS, the Best Shot Selector. With BSS, the sharpest of a series of images would be saved while the others The cameras zoom lens easily adapted to accessory optics that provided wide angle, were discarded.
telephoto, and even fisheye lenses.

*It is common to use focal length terminology based on 35mm camera equivalent numbers in digital photography.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Nikon specifies that the Coolpix 950 will focus down to under 20mm, and the cameras do. In fact, they focus down to about 15mm.

The pixel count of the imager insured that photo-realistic printers would make very nice 8 x 10 prints. Nikon showed prints that were blown up to 9 x 12-inch size, and some photographers achieved full-page magazine results with this pocket-sized wonder. It used memory cards that are in the CompactFlash (CF) format. These are 1/8-inch flat chips of plastic and memory that are only 1 3/8- by 1 3/16-inch square, smaller than some postage stamps Ive seen. Hundreds of thousands of Nikon 950 cameras were sold worldwide over the course of the next twelve months, and firmware upgrades were issued over the World Wide Web allowing every camera in the field to become a better instrument by injecting updated computer code into its brain. A special variation was distributed as the Millennium Edition in November 1999, and its satin-silver finish, special accessories, and serial-numbered edition of only 2000 cameras made it a cult hit. Still, owners of the CP950 perceived a few issues as inconvenient, Type I CompactFlash cards hold up to 256 non-ergonomic, or disruptive. The CompactFlash storage media loaded megabytes of digital memory. Larger capacities through the bottom of the camera, unhandy when the camera was on a are currently on the drawing board. tripod. Worse, the door that closed over the card was perceived as flimsy, and some wouldnt stay closed. The monitor screen didnt work well in full sunlight, and owners had to invent ways of shading the screen or enclosing the monitor in a small viewing box in order to make the camera usable with accessories in the daylight. Viewfinder brightness and CF door problems were partially fixed with minor mechanical design refinements and upgrade firmware features, but a large body of owners began to speculate about the next model. Certainly the image chip would have more sensors, but what else might it have?

The 2000 Millennium Coolpix came with a special body finish of satin magnesium plus a complete array of coordinated accessories.

Image courtesy of Nikon

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Heres Nikon Digital Photography

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Nearly the same size as its predecessor, the Coolpix 990 appeared with an exotic dark metallic finish and violettinted finger grip. In some countries, the same camera is wrapped in black finish with a red finger grip panel, the way the 950 was originally styled.

EVOLUTION HAPPENS

At the Photo Marketing 2000 show, Nikon upped the bar. The Nikon 990 was announced, and people began rubbing their eyes all over again. Slightly thicker than its predecessors, the contoured body of the 990 is a dark metallic tech-gray housing surrounding a large number of ergonomic, monitor, CF media storage, menu, feature, and operation improvements. A clear evolution over the previous cameras, this one retained the basic design principles of the original Coolpix 900 while adding a Sony imaging sensor capable of larger, 2048 x 1536-pixel images; over 63% more than the Coolpix 950. Over two and a half times the sensor population of the Coolpix 900! The CompactFlash card now loaded from the right side of the camera, a finger-pad allowed quick selection from menu items, the Command Dial was more conveniently positioned, the tripod socket, sturdier, and the entire menu system was rewritten. Two movie modes joined the still image options. One shot up to 40 seconds of half TV-size motion at 15 frames per second for Web movies. Another shot at 30 frames per second for up to 80 frames. The camera now had uses for time and motion analysis. Larger images could be captured at speeds up to two per second. Autofocus options jumped forward by giant leaps. A five-zone autofocus selector targets which part of the image the camera will focus on. This model showed a series of evolutionary steps, verifying a trend toward the day when compact digital cameras will replace the niche that compact 35mm cameras have enjoyed for over 50 years.

SUDDEN FAME
Time Magazine announced in December 2000 their annual selections for Best of the Year. George W. Bush became Man of the Year for his success in the final election tally. The Nikon 990 became Machine of the Year and the icon for the maturing new field of digital photography. Warehouses began to empty of 990s at an unprecedented rate. Suddenly, this was the most desirable digital camera of them all.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

EVOLUTION HAPPENS AGAIN

In the autumn of 2000 rumors began to circulate about the next generation imaging chips from Sony. New designs were supposed to be in the works with 4 and 5 megapixels. Little was known about them and the timing was odd. A year before, the idea of a coming next-generation chip had been in September. Now the rumors themselves were months late. If designers were to have larger chips in hand in time to design cameras for introduction at the coming PMA show, they would have to be producing the new camera designs at super human speed. Alas, the rumors were flawed. No 4 or 5 megapixel cameras were announced at PMA 2001. Nikon showed a secret prototype to a very few but it was obviously nowhere near as complete as the 990 had been the year before. And it was not a camera with a larger image chip. The usual April introduction of the next 9xx model camera was not going to happen. What was Nikon up to? Slowly the vision began to coalesce. It would be an evolutionarynot revolutionarycamera with a longer zoom, a pop-up flash, and a new power source. Perhaps mid-summer. Reaction was divided. What? Give up my AA batteries? A plastic shell around the camera part? No monster megapixel chip? Good Lord, what is the world coming to? Before anybody had held one, camps of grumblers had formed to decry thiswhat did you say its name was?

Nearly the same coat-pocket size, both the Nikon CP990 and CP950 brought serious digital photographic capabilities into the hands of their users

MORE THAN HALF FULL


The new model was to be called the Coolpix 995. A half-step of a camera. Just a few improvements on the 990 design. Then people started totalling up the components of this new model and it turned out to be more than a half-step over its predecessors. Lighter, rechargeable Li-Ion battery powered, 4:1 zoom, refined image qualities, reworked menu system, long exposure noise reduction, cleaner color, higher ISO, more robust auto focus, less red-eye, and all the features from the 990not a small amount of improvement at all. Throughout April and May, 2001, it seemed like you couldnt find a 990 for sale. The cupboards were bare. Prices inched upwardthe opposite of previous models experience. Nikon moved the introduction up as much as they could. It hit the shelves in late June and the pent-up demand pounced.

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This book will focus on the Coolpix 950, 990, and 995. All are high performance instruments. All have found use in professional hands, and all are affordable by people who wish to increase their photographic awareness and experience. So many of the capabilities of all three cameras run parallel courses that, wherever possible, techniques, secrets, tips, and InfoBites that apply to each will be presented. The more recent Coolpix 880 & 885 are similar to the 990 & 995. Where the 995, 990, and 950 differ, separate instructions for achieving results are provided. A chapter featuring the Coolpix 775 is included for perspective on the simplest of the Nikon compact digitals. It is ergonomic in the extreme and has taken over much of my own point and shoot photography. Many features are common to all three of the 9xx cameras, and any of these can teach the newcomer a lot about photography. If you have film experience, you will need to unlearn some concepts and add some new ones to your repertoire. If you are new to photography and have been fortunate enough to start learning with one of these models, congratulations, you have entered into a fascinating and rewarding endeavor, made only more pleasing by the features unique to these particular cameras.

PHOTOGRAPHIC SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT


There are two basic schools of thought in photographic thinking. One school is the inside-the-camera university, the other the in-front-of-the-camera school. In front of the camera, people and objects pose for a moment to have their picture taken. Often they wont know it, but thats okay, too. In the first school, you still direct people, moving them into the best position for a picture, but here you develop an appreciation for how light paints your subjects and makes photography possible. Inside the camera a bunch of science classes are in collision. Timings, data handling, optics, color analysis, storage, sequences of events, decisionsall are progressing automatically without direct intervention. Things that impact the collision of technologies inside the camera are the first tier of things photographers must place in their awareness. Things that happen in front of the camera run a parallel course. Knowing how both of these completely different subjects, the technical and the composed, impact each other is essential to getting the most out of a given picture, shooting session, or personal photographic style. We will break the inner technologies to you gently. By function first, often followed by principle, and then by how they can be manipulated for greater use and expression. Soon, the cause and effect relationships inherent in each feature and special procedure will become second nature. The camera will become less opaque in your hands, as easy to approach as any well-understood tool. Like a figure skater who uses the entire rink for a performance, you will be using the full range of these cameras to achieve your images without crashing into the walls at the edge of the ice. The goal is to get out of school completely with a masters degree. To graduate and get past the camera to the photograph.

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BACKGROUND: DIGITS OR FILM?


Digital photography is vastly different from film photography in almost every way except that both use lenses, and both make pictures. Film is a strip of plastic coated with layers of chemical gel that responds to light. Digital imagers are computer-like chips with microscopic solid-state, transistorized light sensors arrayed over their surface. Color film has layers sensitive to different colors, and upon being developed, color dyes are chemically attached to areas of the film where color images were exposed. Every square millimeter of the surface is just as capable of forming an image as any other. Compared to the imaging surface of a 35mm film frame, the photosensitive surface of the imaging chip is tiny. About 18% of the diagonal measurement of a 35mm slide. Less than 6% of the 35mm surface area. But the individual light sensors are so small that you would need a research grade microscope to see them. Digital image sensors are identical, so there are color filters above each separate sensor which establish the Dust, fingerprints, and scratches. Things you will never color that sensor responds to. see on a digital image, unless you put them there on purpose. If each of the sensors in a Nikon 880/990/995 were an inch on a side vertically arrayed on the end of a building, the chip would be 128 feet wide by about 17 stories high (40.64 x 30.48 meters), and its diagonal measurement would be over two thirds of a football field, 213 feet (50.8 meters) long. In reality the pixels are so small that the actual diagonal measurement of the image sensing part of the chip is just about 8.6mm. Each sensor is around 0.000157 of an inch square. (This equates to under 0.004mm, far finer than the resolving power of color film.) In the Nikon 950, the chip is about 11% smaller in each physical dimension, and the sensors are each about 15% larger than the ones in the 880/990/995. The sensor The pattern of cyan, magenta, yellow, and green in the 775 is 20% smaller than the one in the 990, even though it has filters causes a full color image from one image the same pixel count. sensing chip. Electronic processing derives red, green, and blue signals from the array. The sensors are covered with color filters in an equal mix of cyan, magenta, yellow, and green. A circuit on each sensor observes how big the crowd of photons is, and these reports transfer electronically off the chip through a circuit as soon as the exposure is made. There, each sensors population is eventually given a rank from zero to 255*. From here on, everything is digital. Once in that computer, a huge amount of mathematical image processing takes place. Since it is all happening in custom silicon chips designed to expedite the process, it happens in the blink of an eye. Supercomputers that cost millions of dollars apiece during the 1980s were loafing in comparison to what a Nikon digital camera is accomplishing with every exposure. * Technically, this assumes an analog to digital conversion of 8 bits.
Higher bit counts are becoming available. The higher the bit count, the wider the potential dynamic range of the imaging system.

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Colors are redistributed, interpolated, balanced, amplified, compared with each other, and defined according to choices the photographer has made. Edges of color areas are examined, sharpened, contrasted, and mathematically analyzed and restructured in ways NASA imaging scientists find fascinating because much of the original algorithms were theirs. When it is all over, a picture is saved to another digital memory chip in the Nikons CompactFlash card. At full-speed, this can be happening up to 30 times a second in the Coolpix 990/995/775 for a reduced QVGA image, and the Coolpix 950 can take 100 TV-resolution pictures in 70 seconds.

The first thing people wonder about when they hear that this is a digital camera is image quality. These cameras make good 8 x 10 prints. Good enough for certain high quality magazine and advertising photography. Plenty good enough for you to use in your life and business.

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THE F-STOPS HERE


Cameras portray shutter speed and lens opening in powers of 2. Shutter speeds progress from 1/4 to 1/8 to 1/15 to 1/30 to 1/60 sec, and so on. Iris numbers on lenses typically progress from f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, and so on. Both of these measures are often termed stops although strictly speaking, only iris changes are f-stops, and any other doubling of light is an f-stop equivalent. When a photographer wants to give an exposure two more stops of light, there is no constraint that says this must be done strictly with the iris opening. So when you refer to doubling or halving the light, you call it stops in verbal shorthand which can mean iris or shutter adjustment or even a doubling of the sensitivity of the imager.

DYNAMIC ARRANGEMENT
Film records a deep range of tonal values from the brightest to darkest parts of an image. The dynamic range of an image is the measure of these extremes. Color negative film has a greater dynamic range than transparency film, and the Nikon digital cameras have less dynamic range. But one is forced to print color negatives in order to see what the camera gathered. As soon as a print is made, the dynamic range is compromised. Some of it is wasted, never to be seen. The lightest and darkest areas of a print are only about 200:1 in contrast. In the Nikon cameras every bit of the dynamic range is available to the print. What may have been the color negatives dynamic range of 11 stops ends up on paper as about 8 stops representing a lower printed dynamic range. In strictly practical terms, although the color negative has acquired an image covering a brightness range of perhaps 2000:1, the paper print or magazine reproduction can only portray a range of around 200:1. The blackest part of that image is only black in your sensation of it. If it were 200 times lighter, youd call it white. A supreme example of this exists in every sighting of Earths Moon. The actual color of the soil on the Moon is about as dark as the blackest ink on your morning newspaper. As one NASA researcher told me, Like fresh asphalt. (Hold your newspaper in the bright sun, and write over its headline with a black pen to understand how this rule of thumb works.) One of the photographic problems lunar astronauts encountered on the moon came from their own suits. White suits were used for thermal reasons. They didnt want to get overheated in the fierce direct sunlight, but the white suits are much brighter than the lunar soil. The reason video from the moon looked so dynamically poor was not because NASA sent poor cameras. When they shot an image of the moonscape at an exposure that revealed lunar detail, the figure of an astronaut in the frame was glaring white and overexposed. Transparency film is limited to the dynamic range between its densest black and the brightness of light passing through completely clear film. Even with the widest-range transparency film this is under 300:1. Images are stored in 24-bit format, meaning 256 levels each of red, green and blue. The image chip does gather a wider dynamic range than the 256 levels of storage accounts for and this wider range is compressed into the 8-bit per channel storage format. That digital image fits well within the printable range from blackest ink to whitest paper. Your digital Nikon is optimized to use its dynamic range to capture the best image that can be formed out of the middle approximately 450:1 brightness range of everyday subjects. When limits like that are encountered, this eBook will help you understand what to do next.
A perfect photo would make an image that duplicated reality (the gold diagonal). Film rolls off in the shadows and highlights, but digital images have even less room. This makes accurate exposure vital.

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ISO AND EV
As it turns out, an image on video, film, or digital occupies a particular zone of best performance in terms of relative luminance in compared to image results out. This zone of best performance is given a sensitivity number called its ISO Index. International Standards Organization numbers equate closely to what used to be the ASA index of film sensitivity several decades ago. One talks of film speed the same way one talks of digital camera sensitivity. The Nikon 950 cameras have a default ISO sensitivity index of 80 in full Auto mode. Additional ISO sensitivities of 100, 160, and 320 in the 950 (100, 200, and 400 in the 990/880 and an extreme ISO 800 in the 995) can be selected to increase camera sensitivity. The good reason to use low ISO values is image quality. EV stands for Exposure Value and is also expressed in f-stops. An easy method is provided to adjust the cameras automatic metered exposure up or down by 2 EV numbers making the image brighter or darker. When you put in an EV number of +1.0, you have just told the camera to constantly let in twice as much light as the meter thought it needed for the shot in question. This is not the same as adjusting the ISO sensitivity. When you adjust the ISO sensitivity upward, an image will have the same brightness but be exposed with a smaller iris opening in the lens, a shorter shutter speed, or both. More sensitivity needs less exposure. Since the total number of photons allowed in is fewer, the adjusted sensitivity compensates by amplifying the picture electronically, and usually the image picks up more random noise, which looks like grain.

IRIS: THE GRAND OPENING


The iris opening in the center of the lens is another adjustment that works on the powers of two principle. This opening is the heart of what an f-stop actually is. The number associated with the iris is a description of the size of the hole relative to the focal length of the lens. A 50mm lens with an iris opening 12.5mm across is exactly f/4. The progression from f/4 to f/2.8 is the closest round number representing an exact doubling of the previous amount of light entering the lens. F/2.8 is really f/2.828428... Notice that the multiplier from one iris number to the next all progress at a rate of 1.414... x each time; that number being the square root of 2. When a circle enlarges by 1.414... x, its area exactly doubles. A hole with twice the area of another hole will let in twice as many photons. End of the math lesson. Originally, lenses had sliding plates with different-sized holes in them that stopped at a detent when centered just behind the glass. Hence, stops. End of history lesson.

EXPOSE YOURSELF
With a coordinated orchestration of camera sensitivity (ISO), shutter speed, and iris opening, one can achieve the correct exposure for a given lighting situation. An old rule of thumb says that in full noon daylight, the appropriate shutter speed for an exposure equals f/16 @ 1/ISO number. Thus, using the Nikon 995/990/950 default ISO, the appropriate full daylight exposure would be f/16 at 1/80 sec. Thats fine, except for one thing. None of these cameras has an iris setting of f/16. The smallest f-stop opening on these cameras is only f/11. How is the exposure correctly achieved? The only things one might adjust are the ISO sensitivity or the shutter speed. The sensitivity is at minimum so shutter speed is the only option. Thus, the camera should make a good image using f/11 @ 1/160 of a second. Raise one quality by one stop, while lowering one or both of the others by a cumulative one stop, and the resulting exposure remains the same. The light is always different for each subject in each situation. Accurate metering is needed for good exposures. Since these digital cameras are attempting to achieve a good image for each shot, they have some of the most sophisticated light meters ever built into a camerathe image chip itself.

Each circle is 1.414 times the size of the one below it. Each is twice the area of the next smaller circle. F-stops, shutter speeds, and EV adjustments are all based on powers of 2.

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METER MADE
Three different types of exposure meter are in the Nikon 880/885/995/990/950 cameras. Matrix, Center Weight, and Spot are the names they go by, and while Center Weight and Spot meters may be intuitively understood, what is a Matrix meter? The Matrix meter in all of the Nikon compact cameras is a very smart metering system. It looks at the image chips live picture, divides the scene into 256 rectangular areas, observes what the average light intensity is in each area, runs those numbers through a computer, compares the results to a list of possibilities, and decides the most likely exposure. It can be fooled, but most of the time, it knows what its doing better than you do. If you are shooting an indoor scene and a small window in the back of the shot is showing a bright exterior, the Matrix meter will consider the larger interior part of the shot to be the thing you wanted to expose correctly. If the window occupies a significant contiguous portion of the whole image, the Matrix meter will assume that the contents of this bright area is the most important and will expose for that, If you were to take spot readings of brightness values from forcing the interior part of the shot to be darker. When the Matrix several zones of an image, you could make a much more meter detects a scattering of bright areas, it assumes that they may educated determination of the exposure. be lights or random details, not important enough to bring into better exposure. When the Matrix sees an ambiguous cluster of light and dark zones, it will average them and factor them differently. A famous photographer, Minor White, working closely with Ansel Adams, developed an exposure system back in the 1950s called the Zone System. What made the concept viable was the development of the spot meter. In the Zone System, spot readings were gathered by the photographer of various highlight, midtone, and shadow areas, and through a mathematical calculation, an appropriate exposure and development strategy could be previsualized. The Matrix meter does much of this automatically. In the Nikon CP880, CP885, CP990 and CP995 the images contrast can be allowed to adjust itself dynamically using the Matrix meters findings, producing a more systematically adjusted exposure and dynamic range.

An image in front of the camera is comprised of millions of details. Which are best to judge exposure? Which can be ignored? When the image is viewed as 256 light-averaged areas, a fast, accurate metering calculation can be performed.

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HERE SPOT
The Nikon 880/885/995/990/950 have Spot meters built into them. When the Spot meter is selected from Menu Page 1, a small rectangle in the center of the monitor screen comes on and shows the area that the meter is considering. The rest of the image is completely ignored. Only subjects inside the bright line are being regarded for exposure. If you have positioned someone against a picture window open to the sunlit vista beyond and want to expose for the person, not the scene, turn on the Spot meter and put the spot on the person. Now when you half-press the shutter button, the exposure is computed only for the person and the bright background is ignored. Back-lit situations like this are the most common use for this meter, but some like to keep it as their preferred meter after they learn to take advantage of it. Note that extremely front-lit subjects, like the picture above, benefit from spot metering.

The spot meter in the Nikon cameras is sophisticated. It reads only the light inside the small rectangle on the monitor. The five-point follow-focus spot meter on the 880/990/995 adds extra capability.

CENTER WEIGHT GAIN


The Center Weight meter is like the meters on most point and shoot cameras. It reads the scene and exposes for the average of brightness in the center of the shot. In a way, its like the spot meter, only the spot is large and fuzzy instead of being a well-defined small area. For many things such as portraits and outdoor scenes that are well lit, this meter can be your friend. When you are faced with a scene of even illumination, as is found in many office areas, urban vistas, and low contrast settings, try the Center Weight meter. For many situations, the Matrix and Center Weight meters will give virtually identical results. A white wall will read the same with all three. Their chief difference is the amount of image they sample and how they divide up the reading. It is worth your time to shoot a number of images just to feel how each meter works with the sort of photography you encounter.

The center weighted meter gives greater emphasis to the middle of the shot with about 80% of the reading happening in a circular area in the middle of the frame.

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RULES OF THUMB
If ever there were a place for rules of thumb, photography would be it. Perhaps the first rule of thumb would be to never get your thumb in the picture. Here are some old chestnuts and their exceptions. If you shoot exposures that are 1/30 sec or longer, you will need a tripod. When you shoot indoors, you need a flash. Keep both hands on the camera for steadiness. Photographic talent is something you are born with. The best images have the sun at the photographers back. When shooting outdoors, you dont need a flash. The best shutter speed for flash is 1/60 sec. Combined with these are the superstitions about photography. The way to get the best image is to tell everybody, say cheese. Put your subjects nose in the center of the shot. Digital cameras are poorer at taking pictures than film cameras. Everything looks worse in black and white. If the image isnt perfect in the camera, it never will be. Shadows have no color of their own. Rules are made to be broken, right? And we all know where superstitions belong. While each of these may contain a kernel of truth, they are far from the whole story. Lets take a look at how they may be transcended.

IF YOU SHOOT EXPOSURES THAT ARE 1/30 SEC OR LONGER, YOU WILL NEED A TRIPOD.
Mostly right. The subtle movement of your hand will probably spoil shots that are taken at 1/15, 1/8, and 1/4 sec or longer. Help exists in the unique Nikon feature called BSS. BSS stands for Best Shot Selector, and here is how you use it. On Menu Page 1 of any of these cameras you can turn on the BSS feature. Immediately, the camera flash is disabled and the camera enters into a new method of taking pictures. When the shutter is pressed, the camera takes a sequence of four or more shots in rapid succession. When the shutter button is released, or the internal memory of the camera is filled, the camera examines each image for indicators of sharpness. As an image is compressed, sharp edges take up more memory than soft edges. The computer routines that compress images simply work that way, getting hung-up on the details. Sharper images take up more space in memory than nearly identical, but softer images. The BSS program inside the camera finds the one most-recent image that takes up more space than the others and saves only that picture. The others are discarded. BSS has found the best shot, selected it, and trashed the losers.

BSS takes a string of images and holds them temporarily in memory. The picture with the sharpest image is saved. Even at very slow shutter speeds, one image may have enough accidental steadiness to be worth keeping.

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WHEN YOU SHOOT INDOORS, YOU NEED A FLASH.


It is nice to have a flash for most indoor shots, but the Nikon cameras have options. The 950s film sensitivity can be boosted to ISO 320 (ISO 400 in the 880/990 and ISO 800 in the 995). Underexposed images even made at this elevated ISO can be manipulated after the image is brought into a computer. Here one can recover relatively decent tonal values in some cases. Switching to B&W can cover some artifacts and cause very interesting images to be captured in night and low light conditions. The BSS feature, while not an image stabilization feature, can help one get better available darkness shots in a jam. But BSS cant capture the decisive moment the way a flash can. The use of flash may cause red eye effects on people in dark areas. Off-camera flash units such as the Nikon SB50, used with the Nikon SK-E900 flash bracket, permit better control of electronic flash exposures and lighting techniques. A number of third-party flash units work well with these cameras, and many permit bounce flash. Some take extra attachments to diffuse or change the color of Indoor images can be made without flash under normal room lighting with elevated ISO, achieving a more candid look. This image is an extreme the light, making the color of the flash match to indoor, example because it was shot at ISO 1600+. The inset shows the dark incandescent lighting.
original. Software on the CD helps you recover images like this.

KEEP BOTH HANDS ON THE CAMERA FOR STEADINESS.


The number of hands on the camera is not the thing that determines steadiness. The stability of the camera is all that counts. The most important thing is to have a secure hold of the camera body. The Grip. With your right hand firmly grasping the right half of the camera, a number of options become available. To give your right hand the greatest leverage, try to consciously press the camera into your right palm from time to time as you shoot, and re-wrap your fingers, freshening your grip. Holding the camera in both hands out in front of your face while using the monitor to frame the shot is usually less steady than holding the camera against your face while using the optical viewfinder. Your head is usually a very steady platform. After all, its the only thing stabilizing your own biological cameras. Often, the most stable grip on the camera is with a single hand touching the camera and with the other hand stabilizing the wrist of the camera hand. Your body is the most stable thing you can lock the camera to, other than a solid object. A wall, post, fence, railing, table, pole, knee, chair, window, fender, door, or tree can become an impromptu brace for your camera The goal is to steady the camera. Sometimes two hands arent as good as one steadier hand. Once the camera hand.
is firmly in your right hand, your left hand can stabilize the camera body, or your right arm or wrist.

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PHOTOGRAPHIC TALENT IS SOMETHING YOU ARE BORN WITH.


While some people can have an innate sense of artistic expression close to the surface of their consciousness, there is no photographer gene in our DNA that allows some people to be good at it while precluding others from being photographically aware. Photography is not more complex than speech. We all learned that. Like many things that appear to be dauntingly complex, the elements of photography are a number of things that can be learned, practiced, observed, critiqued, and transcended. You can learn composition by rote at first, then by habit, then by conscious awareness, then by creative invention. Thats how we learn to speak. Word play begins with our mothers naming things for us, correcting our misconceptions. We add verbs, adjectives, and inflection, we play with new combinations, create new sentences, and end up composing emails, poetry, jokes, slogans, grocery lists, novels, and love letters. Doing all that is far more complex than learning how If you can learn to speak, you have already achieved something far more complex than learning photography. to aim a camera at interesting things, zoom to compose the image, move to position the subject matter better in the frame, hold the camera appropriately, and trip the shutter.

THE BEST IMAGES HAVE THE SUN AT THE PHOTOGRAPHERS BACK.


Not necessarily. While an image is a record of the objects in front of the camera, it isnt the object you are capturing at all. Only photons* of light bounce off the object and make it into your eye or camera. When the sun is at your back it is on your subjects front. It often looks better if it is coming from slightly to one side. You can hold your hand in front of your face and see how the sun looks on flesh. Make a fist and you will see a complex of surfaces, highlight, and shadow areas. Fill light and bounced light are all present in the image of your hand in front of your face. You can begin to predict how the angle of the sunlight on your subject might work to paint the subject for a more effective photograph. Later in the book you will find instruction on basic lighting and how you can manipulate inexpensive flash units to give very professional lighting results. *Photons are the smallest units of light. Over four quadrillion of them arrive on every square millimeter of our cheek every second from the sun during the day. Numbers like that are so impossibly large we have no intuitive concept of what they imply. Try this: If you were to count all the photons during a 1/125 sec exposure that bounce off a square millimeter of your subjects nose, at one per second, it would take you over a million years.

Threat or promise? Neither; its a lighting test. Hold your fist in the same light that is falling on your subject to estimate both lighting conditions and potential remedies for problems.

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WHEN SHOOTING OUTDOORS, YOU DONT NEED A FLASH.


Much of the time this is true. Some of the time you will need to fire your flash into the scene adding a little extra fill to the picture. Not all images need sunlight to touch your subject in the face directly. With camera flash added to a close-up portrait posed with the sun behind your subject, the shadow side can be brightened while sunlight becomes a strong back light. Using the camera speedlight, Nikons term for the built-in flash, permits you to fill shadow areas of close objects very effectively. Learn how to make this idea work for you by experimenting liberally with it in the sun. You can force the camera to trigger the flash by selecting the forceflash icon (the lightning bolt arrow) with the flash mode selector.

THE BEST SHUTTER SPEED FOR FLASH IS 1/60 SEC.


There is no best shutter speed for flash. Since most flash shots are made in places with some existing light, it is often more natural to have some of that light in the shot. For this reason, a 1/30 or 1/60 sec exposure may be a good compromise. For tighter control of existing light, you can set the cameras shutter to very fast speeds. Film cameras often have a shutter that only synchroWith the sun at a high angle behind your subject, nizes at certain low speeds. With the Nikon digital cameras, the entire an on-camera flash wont look the way it does in indoor shots. Here it adds just a little fill light to the moment of exposure is closely controlled by very precise computer front of your subject reducing the contrast that strong actions that synchronize to the flash trigger. backlight produces. The 9xx cameras let you enter Shutter priority mode and set to maximum shutter speed and still sync. In the 950 this means 1/500 sec, in the 990 the camera allows 1/1000 sec synchronization. The 995 carries this all the way to 1/2000 sec!

TO GET THE BEST IMAGE, TELL EVERYBODY, SAY CHEESE.


What you really want to do is have people smile, look pleasant and unnatural, right? Oops, that wasnt what we wanted. You will have greater success with English speaking subjects if you ask them to say the word, Nice instead. Now they dont look like over-smiling loons, but have a natural pleasant look to their mouths and eyes. Part of the effect comes from the subject encountering some other thing to say than the standard cheesy line. Some of it comes from the psychology of being asked to say something nice, even if it is only that word. As subjects, we have a hard time saying nice while harboring grim thoughts, and it shows on our faces as the shutter clicks.

The Nikon cameras will synchronize flash at every shutter speed. By using Shutter priority you can have your flash and fast shutter speed, too.

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PUT YOUR SUBJECTS NOSE IN THE CENTER OF THE SHOT.


Nobody really says this, but from the look of things, too many people believe it. In composition class, as the eBook unfolds, we will discover a lot of different ways to shoot a face, a person on vacation, a family group, a kid at play, and a straight-on portrait. Some of these will actually have the nose in the middle of the shot, but not because of this old chestnut. The only reason a nose will end up in the middle of the shot is because thats where it happens to land while some other, deeper sense of composition was being exercised.

DIGITAL CAMERAS ARE POORER AT TAKING PICTURES THAN FILM CAMERAS.


Some believe that film is superior because of the numbers. Lines per millimeter. Dynamic range in f-stops. That sort of thing. Film still wins with numbers like that, but these Nikon digital cameras make extraordinarily good images without film and processing costs. They let you review the images right away, throw the bad ones out right now, and see what the shot is going to look like on a TV screen as you are working. Film cameras dont do that. Center the nose? Sometimes yes, All of the Nikon 775/880/885/995/990/950 cameras shoot images clear enough to sometimes no. Eyes are a more imporuse undetected in motion picture special-effects shots. As photographic tools, they are tant detail to emphasize. capable of things even 35mm and medium-format cameras cant achieve. As you begin to expand the types of images you shoot, you will find that the most of the Coolpix cameras will go places no film camera can, simply by the design of their physical layout. At a whirlwind shoot in the offices and work spaces of Hallmark, I was able to take photos of artists at work at their drawing boards in very limited spaces, often holding the camera in the corner of a shelf to get the shot. Any camera Today black and white photography is considered a that forces you to look through its back surface to frame the shot is special effect. (Actor Austin Vulich.) designed along traditional principles (read: obsolete). These cameras are better than film in some ways, and film is better in others. These cameras wouldnt be your first choice to shoot the team group shot, but that 6 x 7 Mamiya isnt your first choice to shoot the party that follows.

EVERYTHING LOOKS WORSE IN BLACK AND WHITE.


Paul Simon wrote that line in the song, Kodachrome, in 1969. He was kidding, but the sad thing is that many people still believe it. Later in the book you will find exercises that force you to see and shoot in black and white in order to train your eye and thought processes. Black and white is a different art form. Not all images are best seen in natural colors, and techniques will be given that let you turn color pictures into black and white images. Knowing when to shoot in black and white is something you can become sensitive to. The Nikon cameras all allow you see the black and white images on the monitor as monochrome images directly. No film camera can do that. With every film camera, one must think in black and white while watching the scene in color.

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Heres Nikon Digital Photography

1-19

IF THE IMAGE ISNT PERFECT IN THE CAMERA, IT NEVER WILL BE.


There never has been a camera that got the shot perfect in the camera every time. Its always something. The tonalities arent optimum, the color is a tad too cool, the background has a distraction in it, the exposure was too bright or dark, the shadows and the highlights were too far apart, a fly landed on the models ear just as the shutter clicked. And these are the things that have gone wrong with film and digital images since day one. How are issues like this handled in film? Scan the film into the digital realm, then fix it. With the Nikon cameras, your image starts digitally so fixing it is a lot more immediate. The next chapter deals with the most common things you can fix with the preferred software, Photoshop.

Every film image gets individual treatment in the lab from one-hour finishers to custom printers. Digital images benefit from custom treatment in your computer. The digital before/after manipulation here has cut through 12,000 feet of atmospheric haze. The iNovaFX Photoshop Action filter that does this is on this eBooks CD.

SHADOWS HAVE NO COLOR.

Interrupting a beam of light with an opaque object produces no color, but it opens up the possibility for other stray light to affect the shadow. Light that was there all along. The reason shadows arent jet-black is because they are illuminated with light bouncing off everything else. Along with sunlight comes blue sky, for instance. Where the suns rays cant reach, the sky often can. If it is intense blue, the shadows can fill up with light that includes a large component of blue sky light. Photographers call this blue spill. Your eyes often wont see it this way, since their sensors are a combination of luminance and broadsensitivity color receptor cells. Your brain needs to see the color of the object in spite of the color of the light illuminating it. Photography, both film and digital, must deal Golden rays of sunset meet the blue of the sky in this with absolute mixtures of primary colors, so dyes, inks, pigments,and unretouched image from a CP950. Under conditions glowing phosphors can portray a reasonable approximation of reality. like this, the shadow on the wall could be directly observed to contain obvious blue spill. Film is manufactured with its color sensitivity locked-in at the molecular level. Shoot with the wrong light, and the photographs will be filled with unwanted color. Yet the daylight streaming in through a window into a room lit with incandescent light looks fine to our eyes. Obviously seeing and believing are not in the same camp. Its no wonder that eyes cant see the blue sky light filling in the shadows in direct sun. Knowing this, you can train your eyes to see where blue from the sky is, or is not, creating interesting blue shadow opportunities.

CHAPTER 2 DIGITAL COLOR AND THE PHOTOSHOP CONNECTION


NIKON COMPACT DIGITAL CAMERAS ARE SO DEEP AND FEATURE RICH THEY NEED DEEP AND FEATURE RICH SUPPORT AFTER THE SHUTTER BEEP IS A DISTANT MEMORY. TOO BAD PHOTOSHOP IS SO HARD TO LEARN. OR IS IT?
COLOR BASICS
Color photography of all types deals with two different ways of forming an image. The camera and the display. Cameras must acquire the scene and somehow break it down into colors for storage. Nikon Coolpix cameras form red, green, and blue (RGB) output channels derived from their cyan, magenta, yellow, and green sensors. Computer CRT monitors have red, green and blue phosphors that glow when hit with electrons. This is no coincidence. Additive color images are formed when proportions of these pure colors As far as the camera or your pile on top of each other in our eyes. With the right mix, we see white and all the colors eye is concerned, the world of the rainbow. is glowing at it. A computer display glows and mixes colors Yellow is made when red and green in your eye from red, green, light mix on your retina. Magenta and blue segments only. The inset shows what the image is arises from blue and red light mixing perceived to be. and cyan light is what we see when blue and green are mixed. The information for each of these color channels is a black and white image its just a range of tones from darkest to brightest. Glowing red, green, and blue images piled on top of each other all at once, or when put onto a piece of film in a triple exposure, will form a full-color picture. When you cause a picture to happen from tiny glowing spots, the colors blend together in your eye. When you shine a light through an image or off a piece of Pull white light apart, and you paper, it has to absorb some of the white and only let the color picture pass through get the spectrum we see in a rainbow. Add red, green, and or bounce back. blue elements together and In prints and slides, materials are used that absorb light. Here cyan, magenta, our eyes see the result as white, even though some parts of the and yellow (CMY) inks or dyes overlay each other and let only the light they spectrum may be missing. dont absorb pass through. Why these colors? Each ink Ultraviolet Infrared actually lets 2/3 of the color spectrum pass or bounce off Visible Spectrum (human color vision) the page, so it takes two different inks or dyes to cause any given primary color like 400 500 600 700 red, green, or blue to shine Wavelength in Nanometers (billionths of a meter) through.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Red is one part magenta and one part yellow, and when magenta and yellow are mixed on the page, only red light, common to both, survives to bounce off and reach our eyes. The bluish component of magenta is neutralized by the yellow which absorbs blue. Cyan and magenta only have blue in common, and when they mix on top of each other, only blue light bounces back from that part of the picture. Yellow and cyan let only green bounce up. Each dye subtracts (absorbs) the noncommon part of the other dye (color). Pile all of them on top of each other, and they subtract it all, and if the dyes are pure enough, no color escapes and that part of the image looks black. This sort of subtractive color is used in film transparencies, photographic prints, and the inks that print full-color pages in inkjet printers and on large presses for magazines and books. Many printing inks or dyes need a little extra help in order to make good-looking dark blacks. Black ink is added on certain inkjet printers, such as the Epson models, and in mass printing processes, to boost the contrast and produce deeper blacks (as with the circle of black at the center of the figure above). Some photographic desktop printers seem to have such pure color inks that they can produce photographic results from just three colors of ink, the DeskJet Printers from HP and Bubble Jet Printers from Canon.

THE COMPUTER CONNECTION


When you wear a fabulously well-tailored suit, you dont want cheap shoes. Software in your computer will finish what the camera starts, so you would be ill-advised to stop learning digital photography as soon as the exposure is finished. You didnt get this high quality camera just so you could ignore the rest of the process and stop making the picture at the sound of the beep. To create custom prints, reduce images to Web size, maximize the impact of your images, and for all forays into the loftier realms of photography as a creative medium, you have to touch the image to bring it to a higher place. Much of this is done with lighting, framing, and exposure in the camera, and later sections of this book will give you plenty to do in these areas. On rare occasions the image from the camera will be perfect when it slides out of Daunting or easy to use? Experiyour printer unmanipulated. For the other 99.9% of the time, you will need to augment ence it for an hour or two, and your efforts in the camera with adjustments, creative opportunities, crops, size changes, youll realize that it isnt difficult and tweaks from a software program in your computer. The software you use is as to learn the basics, and you can keep learning it for years. important as the camera you have acquired. Software came with your camera that lets you do basic digital manipulations and even a range of special effects. NikonView software lets you open folders full of images and see the shots as large icons arranged as if they were a bunch of slides on a light table. This is very helpful for first determining what your shots are like. Basic judgements can be made about brightness and color at this size, and you can click on the images to open them as larger images for closer inspection. Photoshop is an element in the mastery of digital image manipulation as constant and omnipresent as Kodak is in film. It isnt everything, but its way ahead of whatever is in second place. Thats why the Photoshop Tryout is included on this eBooks CD. Its the right program to finish your shots with mastery. Other image manipulation programs are available, and all have their strong points and weak points. For many, Photoshop Elements will do a lot. Too bad it doesnt read my iNovaFX Photoshop Action filters. Still it will be your second-best choice. For the greatest benefit to your digital images, you will want to upgrade to the full strength version of Photoshop with all of its bells and whistles.

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Digital Color and the Photoshop Connection

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THE DIGITAL DARKROOM


Darkrooms arent dark any more. Think of it as a dimroom, a place without glare on the computer screen. In the chemical era, the darkroom was the only place you could efficiently organize all the enlargers, trays, developing hardware, chemical fluids, and wash systems, and it had to be absolutely lighttight to do color work. In black and white darkrooms, a deep red light was the only light you could work under because the papers were only sensitive to bluish light. Color materials had to be handled blind. Today, a computer, printer, and software cost about as much as a fully equipped color darkroom, but the flexibility and depth of achievement has skyrocketed. No chemical darkroom could ever surf the Internet. Fully equipped, the digital darkroom is the custom finishing center, the storage library, and the distribution nexus for your images. No wonder the most common form of darkroom these days, even for film originals, is the same one your Nikon feeds directlythe digital darkroom. Scans of negatives and transparencies are now the common starting place for film work. The finishing tools are the same ones your Nikon Coolpix needs. An editing program, HotBox, included with the 950, gives you the opportunity to re-size, color change, sharpen, and add some special effects to your digital images. As image manipulation programs go, it is basic and will allow you to play with some of the concepts of the digital darkroom. If you purchased a Nikon 880, 885, 990, 995, or 950 and want to finish your images with a program that is a direct match to the values of your camera, Photoshop is the answer. It is the program others are compared to and to which they aspire. Its not cheap, but then neither was your camera, nor are your images.

You have choices. A few printers can make prints from the cameras CF Card directly, and the cameras can hook up to computers for direct downloading of images, editing, and distribution on the Internet. Alternatively, the computer can download images from a CF Card Reader and become the center of a complete digital darkroom. Here images can be distributed to deep storage (represented by the CD R recorder), the Internet, and into Photoshop for the most advanced editing and printing to a wide variety of printers. One can start with the simple system and add a CF Card Reader, CD R storage, and Photoshop over time.

Cameras are portable; the rest of your production process can also be as portable. Laptops with high quality color displays, of at least 1024 x 768 pixel resolution, make it possible to do professional dimroom work anywhere in the world.

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THE FAST TRACK TO PHOTOSHOP


You can learn 80% of Photoshop in seven quick steps. Most of these steps work with Photoshop Elements, too. Many people have said that they see Photoshop as a daunting learning curve of effort and frustration. From the viewpoint of Photoshop users, this simply isnt the case. In fact, you can learn Photoshop one trick at a time and get immediate satisfaction from it with a little basic guidance. If I were looking over your shoulder while you were trying the program out for the first time, I would guide your attention to things in this order: Learn to open an image and save it under a new name, so the original wont

accidentally be replaced by future saves. (The Save As function) Learn to open an image and save it as a different form like PICT, TIFF, JPEG, and Photoshops native PS format. (The Format option in the Save As function) Learn how to change an images lightest, darkest, and middle values with the Levels control. Learn how to change an images brightness values with the Curves control. Learn how to use the gray eyedropper in the Levels or Curves control window to instantly fix color balance issues. Learn to add and subtract chroma, the amount of color, to an image with the Hue/Saturation control. Learn how to apply the Unsharp Mask filter from the filter menu. Learn how to use the Burn and Dodge tools to darken and lighten local areas of your image.

This would have taken about an hour of your time. These basic manipulations are the ones you will use 97.2% of the time. The other 2.8% of your time will be consumed in filters (easy), masks (tougher), special effects (fun), and exotic manipulations (which can be so involved that these are probably why people think Photoshop is hard to work). For many of those last items, this eBooks other files provide solutions. Since opening and saving files is such a basic function, Ill assume you already know how to do that. What follows are the other steps that will help you learn the basics of Photoshop right this hour. (Note that many Photoshop tools are selected with key shortcuts. The Command key is used in Macintosh computers and Windows computers use the Control key, Ctrl, plus individual letter keys to select some tool and windowed controls.)

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DIGITAL PHOTOSHOP DARKROOM TECHNIQUES


IN SEVEN EASY LESSONS.

PART ONE. TONAL BALANCE.


Tonal balance refers to the brightness dynamics of the image. Some programs, including Photoshop, have controls labeled Brightness and Contrast. Try to avoid these controls because they almost always cause information to be lost as they do their job. Other controls achieve the same results but let you see what you are doing. Think of it this way, a digital image is made up of not numbers but spots of brighter and brighter gray until the top one is white. This happens in each channel of the three colors necessary to build up a color picture. Red, green, and blue, RGB, each have 254 levels of gray between black, level #0, and white, level #255. For many changes in your image, you dont want to change the color, just the brightness of the image in certain central ranges. Here are tools that do exactly that.

1. LEVELS
(COMMAND OR CTRLL)

The Levels control lets you adjust the top, bottom, and middle values of the image separately. Sliding the middle control, the gamma adjustment, is a surprise to someone doing it for the first time. Wow, look at that, the whole picture got brighter. In a technical sense, just parts of it change, but the middle values are adjusted up or down with this control, giving that impression. For many images this may be all you have to do. Supporting your adjustments is a histogram of the brightness values in your shot. Its that mountain range-like graphic. As long as the range doesnt extend off the sides of its frame, you can pull the shadow point indicator in from the left and the highlight indicator in from the right and cause the mountain range to spread out over a wider space. A Contrast control would achieve the same thing, but here you can see exactly what you are doing and more importantly, when to stop. If you move the control into the space occupied by the histogram, you are defining the cutoff value for the top or bottom of your shot. Anything outside the shadow and highlight indicators will be lost into the white or black of the resulting image. The center gamma control lets you pull the middle tone of the image up or down. The effect is very much like adjusting the exposure, but the shadow and highlight extremes of the image dont change. In effect, you are changing only the center of the exposure. Play with this control a lot to see how your image behaves. You dont have to accept changes you make with it, and the next control may be more to your taste.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

2. CURVES
(COMMAND OR CTRL M) (NOT AVAILABLE IN PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS)

The Photoshop Curves control is much like the Levels control, except it can do more in a different way. When you open the control, it is a chart with a 45 slanted line across it. This line stands for the tonal value in compared to the tonal value out. You can choose to have the bright part of the image in the lower left or upper right with a click on the brightness bar under the graph. Since the image starts with its beginning values, the line is a neutral diagonal, and even though it is straight, it is called a curve. If you click anywhere on the graph, a midpoint is instantly created, and the curve immediately flows through it. The first click defines a gamma-like adjustment similar to the gamma adjustment in the Levels control. You can move this point anywhere on the surface of the graph and achieve all sorts of results on the image, both good and bad. Experience here will be its own best teacher. With a second click, a new point is created along the line. Now you have a control that is much more sophisticated than a simple gamma adjustment. With care, you can gently reshape the highlight area AND the shadow area while letting the curve flow through the middle of the graph unchanged. This gentle S curve (top image) can go a long way towards softening up a contrasty original, making it look much more like a film image. If you like the look of a particular curve, you can save it to a folder in your computer, and bring it back later, in order to apply it to other images. A folder full of curves is found on the CD, ready for you to play with, learn from, and modify to your hearts content. With more points added to the line, you can shape it into some very strange twists and make special effects. Digital solarization can be produced as soon as any portion of the line travels downward instead of steadily upward, as in the bottom image. The end points are movable, too. You can use this to cause the line to flatten out at a certain value. We will reveal a number of other uses for this control later in the book.

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PART TWO. COLOR ADJUSTMENTS.


The next group of controls adjusts the color qualities of the image. Photoshop often has several ways of achieving results, and color adjustments are made in several ways. You may prefer some to others, but it is nice to know several methods that approach the idea in a different way. This first technique is unique in that it is so very quick, easy, and accurate.

2A. CURVES OR LEVELS AGAIN


(COMMAND OR CTRL -M, -L)

The Curves and Levels controls have a special feature useful in color control of your image. Three eyedropper controls with black, gray, and white fluid in them are used to sample the images brightest, darkest, and most neutrally colored places for fast adjustment. The middle eyedropper is the one with the greatest color correction use. The default setting is for middle gray. Double click on it to see where it is set on your computer. Not gray? Easy to fix. See those boxes labeled H:, S:, B:? B = Brightness. Enter H: 0, S: 0%, B: 50% and the rest of this idea will work for you. Now touch this Gray Eyedropper cursor on any object in your scene that would naturally be close to neutral gray. It doesnt matter whether the gray part is light or dark, just so long as it is supposed to be without other color. The white trim of a house in slight shadow, a whitewall tire or the dark gray of the tire itself, a gray patch of pavement, a gray foggy sky, a colorless rock, lettering on a sign, a silver car, a white shirt all of these will work if you find the right place to click. As soon as you click on your reference object, the entire scene adjusts to re-color balance to that sample. The control adjusts the Red, Green and Blue channels in a way that turns the pixel you sampled into a neutral gray hue. The brightness of the sample isnt changed, just its hue and saturation. Play with this control a lot. Its surprising to see how dramatically it works. After a while, you will become quite adept at improving the color of images shot in shade, indoor light, office light, and in errors caused by outright mistakes. Shade often tends to look cool, due to contamination from the blue sky. Indoor light can be recorded too warm, due to incandescent bulbs on dimmers. In office light, which is often greenish due to fluorescent lights, the color is dependent on the exact formula of the bulbs and no one fluorescent setting will get all of them perfect. Then there are the mistakes. Some will be due to your forgetting to put the white balance on the right setting; some will come from mixed light situations that simply cant be correctly guessed by the Auto White Balance feature of the camera. When any of these show up on your computer screen, hit that center eyedropper in the Curves window, and start looking for a likely gray object in the shot. The image above was exposed with the camera set to the wrong white balance. Fortunately, the strip of cement (arrow) was neutral in color, and simply clicking on it with the neutrality eyedropper created the vivid, realistic result.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

3. HUE/SATURATION
(COMMAND OR CTRL -U)

Photoshops Hue/Saturation control is rather like the control on your TV that pumps up the color and steers magenta faces back to pink. The Hue part should be used sparingly, since it moves all the colors in the image equally except under certain conditions that we will get into later in the book. The Saturation slider is the Kodachrome control. Here you can push the color up as much as you can stand. You can also use this control to drain all color out of an image and turn the picture into black and white. A special control on the page is called Colorize. Check this box, and the image becomes monochrome with an almost maroon, reddish look. Changing the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness sliders lets you turn your image into a wide range of tinted variations. With this control you can simulate cold and warm monochrome print techniques and duotones, and a very convincing warm sepia effect.

COLOR FINESSES
Two controls allow you to really tweak the color of your image with very fine degrees of perfection. Although both look completely dissimilar, note in particular how each control lets you adjust shadow, highlight, and midtones of an image separately

4. COLOR BALANCE
(COMMAND OR CTRL B) (NOT AVAILABLE IN PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS)

This control will help you finesse image color in a different way. Images shot in cool shade can be tweaked here with good results. When the pointer is moved, numeric indicators change at the top of the control window. You can move the pointer or enter numbers directly. A setting of +20, 0, -20 will pull a subtle blue tint out of shadow areas, for instance. A sub box of controls invites you to work on the Shadows, Midtones and Highlights separately. Like the other controls in Photoshop, these beckon you to play with them. Play here is creative play. You are learning the tools and techniques of digital photography in a fast responding darkroom that isnt dark and which doesnt have stinky chemicals.

5. VARIATIONS
(IMAGE > ADJUST > VARIATIONS)

This control is sort of the easy way to make your picture better. It isnt the fastest to work with, but for intuitive results, it cant be beat. With your picture selected, you open the control, and a large window opens on your screen with 12 miniature versions of your image on it. A group of seven shows your current pick plus six color changes, three more show density changes, and two show the original and the current pick versions of your shot side by side. Controls in the upper right let you adjust the strength of color change for highlights, midtones, and shadows, plus a check box that limits the changes to color saturation. Beyond these basic color adjustments are two finessing adjustments to make your images look sharper, both on the computer screen and in printouts, and a special tool that almost exactly mirrors a darkroom technique for locally improving the exposure in different areas of an image.

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PART THREE. FINISHING TOUCHES.


Digital images can be manipulated by space-age image processing techniques. This is one of them. Edges that were marginally well defined are now very well defined. Hair suddenly looks super sharp. The photographers dream of focusing the image after the exposure is beginning to come true.

6. THE UNSHARP MASK


(FILTER > SHARPENING > UNSHARP MASK)

Who would think that the best control to sharpen an image in a computer would begin with the word, unsharp? But it does. The Unsharp Mask control is a filter in Photoshop in the group of controls labeled Sharpening. Choose the Unsharp Mask, and a window appears with several choices and a small preview window. If the box labeled Preview is checked, the filter is already being applied to your shot. With images the size of the Nikon 990/995/885 and 950/775 shots, you should be able to leave this checked, providing your computer is of reasonably fast speed. The top slider shows the amount of sharpening the control is generating. Under that you have a window that asks for a number. This is the radius, in pixels, of the influence of the filter. It works fractionally as well. This is important. By being able to influence only about third of a pixel with an entry of 0.3, you are keeping the effect very tightly bound to the contours in your image. A 1.0 pixel radius will extend the influence of the sharpening effect a full pixel in every direction from the one being worked on. How it works is interesting. It heightens the contrast between pixels of different values. A dark pixel against a light pixel will become a darker pixel against a lighter pixel. Since the original values are slightly exaggerated, the boundary from one to the other is exaggerated, and looks sharper to the eye. Locally, the contrast between the two original features is increased, but it is our vision system that interprets this as being a sharpness improvement. It is real easy to overdo Unsharp Mask. Try numbers like these to experience how they work:

RADIUS

AMOUNT

0.2 100 - 500 0.3 80 - 300 0.5 50 - 170 1.0 20 - 90 2.0 10 - 50 Large number entries in the Radius box have a different sort of influence on the picture. Try putting in a number like 60~200 and moving the Amount slider around. Notice how areas of the picture adjust their relatively local contrast into looking more vivid? Watch out for bright areas, though, they can easily become too bright and lose detail. Often a conservative use of this technique will simply add a bit of snap to the image. Try a Radius of 80 and an Amount of 15. This control is capable of achieving several effects and is worth playing with for a while, just to get a sense of how its various settings interact.

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HANDS ON
In a chemical darkroom, burning and dodging techniques are extremely important. Almost no negatives yield perfect custom prints without a little help. Good prints dont reveal that they have areas which are burned or dodged, and this is the goal; to concentrate some areas by burning, and hold back other areas by dodging, but not so much that people notice the result on the final image.

7. DODGING AND BURNING


(THE O KEY)

Although from the names of these tools you might think they had something to do with a game of laser tag, the two terms come from techniques used in the exposure process in chemical darkrooms. Enlargers are low-brightness projectors pointing downward onto a piece of photographic paper. Usually, they project the image of a negative. Where the negative cast light, the developed paper turned dark. Under the enlarger, a photographer would often move a disk of opaque black paper mounted on a wire handle, into the beam of light as it exposed a sheet of photographic paper. The exposures for a print are often ten seconds or more, and by stopping down the enlarger lens, the photographer could easily extend that to around thirty seconds, which would provide a lot of time to manipulate the light. By holding this dodging paddle in the beam for a while over areas that were getting a lot of exposure, the photographer could hold back the light, thus lessening the exposure and making that part of the image slightly lighter. This brought out shadow detail. The blurred paddle shadow was moved during the exposure, so no shadow of its presence was perceived in the final image. The opposite technique is called burning. Some areas, where the negative in the enlarger was particularly dark, might need a bit of extra exposure to be delivered to the photo paper in order to bring detail into a very bright area of the print. When burning, the photographer would hold one hand in the beam, arranging fingers to let only a small ray of light reach the paper in the area needing extra exposure. Two hands were often used, sort of like a soft focus shadow puppet. The two icons found with the keyboard O key in Photoshop are shaped like a dodging paddle, the black lollipop icon, and a hand forming an opening with the thumb, the common method of quickly burning-in an area. These are two distinct tools but they do the same things to a digital print that the originals did for enlarger prints. Plus a whole lot more. Use the shift key with the O key to select among the options of burn hand, dodge paddle, and saturation sponge. Notice how the last brush used with each option sticks to it, changing back to where you last left things.

The top image is what the camera recorded, a table in the corner of an artists living room. Wouldnt it be nice to re-light the scene, bringing out shadow detail, and suppressing some of the brighter highlights? Burning the highlights and dodging the shadows produced the bottom result.

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DODGING
To see the shape and limits of any brush as you work, open the Photoshop Preferences window and select Display and Cursors > Painting Cursors > Brush Size. Select the dodging tool, and also select a large soft brush from the brushes window. The Options window shows two things. One is a choice among highlights, midtones, and shadows, and the other is for the strength of exposure. Set the Exposure to about 25, and select Highlights from the list. Move the tool over a fairly dark shadow area, click, and drag. Notice that the shadow area lightens, but anything very dark or black doesnt. Only tones above black are lifted proportionally. The brighter they were originally, the more they are lightened. Try changing the option to read Midtones and try it on another area. The behavior difference is subtle, but you can see how it more aggressively lifts middle densities than darker detail. Changing it to read Shadows causes the darkest parts of the image to lift but not highlights. This is a big improvement over the darkroom version, which changed everything in all tonal ranges at the same time. The smaller the Exposure numbers, the less the influence of the tool on the image. With small numbers, you can go over an area several times to build up the effect you want.

BURNING
Using the Burn tool is very much the opposite of using the Dodge tool. Here you are darkening the areas you are working on. If a highlight is too bright and indistinct, the Burn tool may help. As with the Dodge tool, a large soft brush is usually your best choice. Here, too, smaller numbers and multiple passes will build up the density you want. With Burn, the Exposure option that works best is usually Shadows. Now, only pixels that are lower than pure white will be affected proportionally. The brighter the original, the less they will be influenced. After playing with these options for a while, you will begin to develop an intuitive sense of how they work. Now you will be able to look at an image and start thinking about fixing the shadows, highlights, and local areas of brightness in new ways. You will no longer need to accept the limitations of the lighting in the original image. Play with it enough to see how far you can take the technique. In fact, it is a good idea to take it too far on a few shots, just so you can see what too much of a good thing looks like. As a general rule, if you look at a shot and can immediately see where it was burned and dodged, youve gone too far.

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SATURATION/DESATURATION
Since we are already here, a third tool appears with the burn and dodge tools: the Sponge. It can saturate or desaturate colors locally in the same way the other tools operate, on a small or large area, and the Options window adjusts its effect. No equivalent tool exists in a chemical darkroom, so that sponge icon has no direct equivalent. Here it behaves more like a sponge soaking up paint from a watercolor, or washing on dye in an exotic coloring technique. The digital darkroom borrows its metaphors freely from all the graphic processes.

CONGRADUATIONS*
That wasnt so hard, was it? These seven techniques are the key to digital manipulation for tonal scale and color adjustment in Photoshop. Moreover, you have touched the Tools, Control Windows, Filters, Preferences, and Save systems of Photoshop along the way. Each was easy to access and operate. Your fear of them is hereby declared obsolete. You deserve a diploma. Nearly all of your future explorations in Photoshop will be variations on these familiar procedures. As you use these tools more and more, you may begin to realize that one of these controls has much more influence and capability than the others: the Curves control. Except for color saturation, the Curves control can achieve most of what the other controls do for tone and color. As your experience with it grows, so will the quality of your creativity in this digital dimroom. One more post-graduate lesson: While the Unsharp Mask tool can perk up the effects of low or no in-camera sharpening, the camera has the image in memory before compressing and storing it, so the very sharpest images with the fewest artifacts will probably result from appropriate in-camera sharpening. With the 950, this is moot, since the camera has no control over in-camera sharpening, and does fine as is. But with the 775, 880, 990 and 995, the Image Sharpening control may be set to its Normal or Automatic Sharpening setting without fear. Experiment with shots made using Low in-camera sharpening followed by judicious Unsharp Mask tweaking. If you are preparing images for use on the Internet, it is doubtful that you will need to display images larger than 1024 pixels wide. Photoshops scaling tool, Image > Image Size > Resample Image: Bicubic, produces the cleanest results. Specify a dimension in pixels in the upper windows and the rest of the window will calculate itself automatically. For the best results apply any sharpening after re-scaling your shot.
*Congratulations on graduating.

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CHAPTER 3 CAMERA OPERATION


GET PAST THE CAMERA TO THE PHOTOGRAPHY. A CAMERA ANY CAMERA IS ONLY A PATH TO THE IMAGE. MASTER THE CAMERA AND THE PATH WILL STRAIGHTEN.
You read the manual that came with your camera, but it often didnt give you some of the reasons behind things. Here are a lot of the things the manual didnt say; the implications beyond the buttons. i You will benefit greatly by having the camera in your hands as you go through these topics. When you find something interesting, try it out immediatelyteach your fingers how to find the operation and play with it. The infobite symbol tracks tips and factoids that are useful but are easy to miss. This entire eBook is meant to be approached non-linearly. Some of the material is redundant, so you wont have to depend on ideas mentioned many pages earlier or later. The 950, 990, 995, and 775 sections are separate. Note the model in the page header. So, if you have the 950, you start here. i If you have the 990, jump to page 3B-1 and start there. i If you have the 995, jump to page 3C-1 and start there. i If you have the 775, jump to page 3D-1 and start there. Images, at any pixel count over 200 pixels per inch, are essentially magazine quality, and in the first year of the 950s introduction, its images appeared in fashion magazines and countless artistic and informal shots by professional photographers and advanced enthusiast photographers all over the globe. Its really a computer with an imaging chip, buttons, and a TV monitor. Consider the design challenges: Create a camera with a single-chip imaging device that is close to the resolution of a 35mm movie camera or HDTV camera. Pack in the computer to make digital images, the storage system to record them, the power supply to furnish the volts, and, oh, by the way, a zoom lens that has to work at HDTV quality over a 3:1 zoom range. Be sure to include an auto focus system with a 4000+ step range, a white balance system that goes from Mt. Everest at noon through fireside chats, and a color video monitor.

i=

InfoBite

CAMERA OPERATION: COOLPIX 950

COMPRESSION AND SIZE

What size film do you want today? Big? Medium? Small? How clear should it be? Real clear? Moderately clear? Fairly clear? What sensitivity should it anticipate? Bright sun? Bright interiors? Very low light? The Nikon Coolpix 950 will do it all. But, you must tell it specifically what you want. The size of the shot is determined by you. The largest image is 1600 x 1200 pixels and is the cameras default setting. Just hold down the button labeled QUAL below the monitor screen, and rotate the Command Dial. On the monitor, you will step through the size and quality (compression depth) options available. Full resolution 1600 x 1200, XGA 1024 x 768, and VGA 640 x 480 are your size options in pixels. VGA is the resolution of a video picture, and XGA is the size of a full screen image on many computer monitors and laptops. As you scroll through the sizes of the shot, you are given the choice for Fine, Normal and Basic compression. At the largest sizes, you also have the option of choosing Hi, which permits capturing images in a TIFF format that does not compress the shot at all.

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WARNING: images shot in Hi mode will take an inordinately long period of time to transfer to the CompactFlash card. If you accidentally put the camera in Hi and start shooting, you may think the camera is suddenly broken. There is essentially no significant quality difference between Hi and Fine images, and unless you have an exotic need to capture TIFF images directly, my advice is to avoid this setting.

Size, number of images, and compression all work together. Compression shows more unwanted The Nikon 950 creates images in four sizes from the largest 1600 x 1200 to the intermedieffects artifactsthe smaller it makes the file ate XGA 1024 x 768 to VGA 640 x 480 and the for storage. specialized 400 x 300 . The number of shots isnt fixed, because the amount of storage space is dependent on image content. Low-contrast areas of an image compress much more easily than lots of fine detail. Sharp edges are given more attention by the compression algorithms and eat up more storage space. i When printed, Normal images almost never reveal that they are only about half the storage size of Fine shots. Artifacts are very well controlled in Nikons JPEG formula. i If you know that the only use for an image is going to be in a low quality application, such as 5 x 7 or 4 x 6 prints, Basic offers an enormous advantage; even more shots per CompactFlash card. Artifacts in Basic are visible at full-size on your computer monitor, and may show a bit on large prints. i When you shrink a Basic compressed, full-size image to half-size, the artifacts politely disappear! Actually they merge and average out. Now you have an image that is 800 x 600 pixels with seemingly SIZE
Large

COMPRESSION
Hi Fine Normal Basic Fine Normal Basic Fine Normal Basic

ARTIFACT PRESENCE
As good as it gets Virtually perfect Extremely good Quite goodsome artifacts visible at full screen size Pixel-perfect Extremely good Goodsome visible at full computer screen size Pixel-perfect TV size Very good on TV screen Good on TV screen

SHOTS ON 64 MEG CARD


11 66 - 128* 133 - 180* 265 - 360 158 - 300 323 - 600 647 - 1300 415 - 820 829 - 1600 1659 - 3300

MAX PRINT SIZE INCHES /MM


8 x 10 + 8 x 10 + 8 x 10 6x8 6x8 5x7 4x6 3x4 3x4 2.4 x 3.2 200 x 250 + 200 x 250 + 200 x 250 150 x 200 150 x 200 127 x 178 100 x 150 75 x 100 75 x 100 61 x 81

XGA

VGA

* Actually achieved in tests of low-detail subjects. Extrapolated low-detail, low-contrast subject image potential.

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no artifacts and tremendously improved detail caused by the effects of down-sampling. When the destiny of your images includes 8 x 10 prints, shoot in Fine compression at full-size. If you need only about 6.75 x 9 prints, Normal is perfectly adequate to the task, and nobody will look at your prints and complain about the compression. They simply wont see its effects. As you make shots for the Internet and prints no larger than 5 x 7 inches, Basic will let you shoot a lot more images per megabyte of storage space. XGA images are only 1024 x 758 pixels in size and take up This is a small detail from a full-size, Basic-com41% of the storage space that full-size images consume. pressed original now bicubically scaled to halfAs you shoot at XGA size, images are captured at full-size in the camera size and displayed at only 100 pixels per inch. The original showed visible compression artion the image chip, then instantly reduced to less than 2/3 size before compresfacts in the cartoon hair detail. But because it sion and storage. The CP950 does a nearly perfect job of this, and the resultwas reduced after compression, it now looks ing image is extraordinarily good. Looking at an image made this way on virtually artifact-free. your computer screen, youd swear it is as good as a scan of a film original. Every six-pixel group of the original image has been reduced down to less than four pixels of the stored image by a sophisticated computer algorithm in the camera. There is no evidence of cutting mathematical corners. Down-sampling causes The exact formula is a carefully guarded Nikon secret, but Photoshop has a similar many original pixels to merge high-quality scaling algorithm called Bicubic Interpolation. into the remaining ones. i In the Photoshop version, a tiny bit of softness appears in the shrunken image, When done intelligently by but it can be easily recovered with a smidgen of Unsharp Mask filtering. Perhaps the the camera or computer, the Nikon algorithm includes a bit of each. resulting single pixel is a perVGA-size images are down-sampled the same way as XGA images, but they have fect computation of the origionly 640 x 480 pixels. nal several, which defined a The down-sampling causes them to be pixel-perfect, TV-size shots, and they only specific part of the image. take up about 39% of the space of the XGA images. As you view them on a TV The effect is dramatic on screen, you probably wont see the compression artifacts, even when you shoot them your computer screen. in Basic compression. Often the down-sampled i TV monitors are less precise than computer image is as sharp as the dismonitors, and their more forgiving nature makes it play could ever be expected possible to shoot over 2000 VGA Basic images on to create. that 64 megabyte CompactFlash card, if you intend A pixel-perfect image is the to see them on a TV screen. instant result. The only size prints from these shots that you are likely to appreciate are those made as 3 x 4-inch prints or smaller. i They will work as two-column images for newsletters and excellent single column head shots, but thats about it.

VGA image at Basic compression. It works at one newspaper column width but looks very soft and very digital at 6 x 8 inches (80 ppi detail).

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Automatic Mode

The first of the two fundamental modes of camera operation is Auto. The camera is ready to go with a number of choices already in place. You still need to inform the camera what size and quality setting it is using, but shutter speed, f/number, meter type, and focus will be determined automatically. Now the camera has Default ISOthe camera sensitivity index Matrix metera 256 element intelligent light meter system Automatic white balancea system that gets the color right Programmed auto exposureso you dont have to worry about it Auto focus that is constantly adjusting itself to the scene You still have control over Self-timer Close focusing Infinity focus EV+/- exposure compensation Flash options These settings are a well-considered mix of qualities that make the camera operate quickly with a minimum of missed or imperfect images. Default ISO is 80, good enough for work in bright environments from brightly lit offices to full daylight. White balance is tracking the view from the lens and is constantly adjusting to what the camera thinks is correct. Light is constantly being sampled by the matrix meter. Focus is on the center-most sampling area of the image chip, and the only thing missing at this point is the instruction from your right index finger to shoot the picture. i Shutter lag is minimal. The camera already knows if it has enough light, and it is already in focus. The time delay from half shutter press to exposure is under 0.2 seconds, very responsive indeed.

AUTO MODE FLASH

Flash choice is made with the top button closest to the shutter release. Confirmation can be from the monitor screen and/or the LCD window on top of the camera. Your choices are, in this order, Auto Flash, No Flash at all, Red-eye Reduction, Forced Flash, and Slow Flash. Auto Flash (Default. No icon.) The flash will fire only if there is not enough light to get an image without it. As soon as the exposure computer sees that you are shooting at 1/30 sec or longer, it locks the shutter at 1/30 sec and turns on the flash. No Flash. The camera knows that it will have no flash support, so the shot may be made at any shutter speed up to 1 second. An external flash attached to the camera will also not fire. Red-eye Reduction. It attempts to reduce red-eye effects from the camera flash by blinking a bright white light next to the lens for a second, just before the flash goes off. i It works okay on brown-eyed people less than eight feet from the camera, but it doesnt stop red-eye effects from light-eye color people from about five feet onward. Eye response varies from person to person and changes with the ambient light. i Several concepts for fixing the red-eye effect, or avoiding it, are included in the How Do I section. Forced Flash. It fires the flash no matter what light the camera sees. It assumes you know what you are asking it to do, and it pops the flash in sync with any shutter speed the camera is using from 1/30 to 1/750 sec. i Very useful outdoors as a fill-flash effect for subjects that may be back lit, it tends to add just enough light into nearby subjects to avoid featureless shadow areas.

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Slow Flash. Only fires the flash at shutter speeds longer than 1/30th of a second. People against nearly dark, post-sunset skies will be exposed both for the long exposure and with the flash. If they move during the long exposure, their ghost silhouette will blur across the frame, but the flash will capture a moment of perfect frozen time. i Playing with this feature is a lot of fun, and promotes a highly collaborative effort between subject and photographer.

EV EXPOSURE COMPENSATION

EV stands for Exposure Value, and it is also measured in stops, or powers of 2. Thus, +1.0 EV suggests an exposure of one stop over what the meter says is right. This setting lets in exactly twice as much light as EV 0.0 does, and 1.0 EV lets in only half as much. EV adjustments from 2.0 to +2.0 can be achieved in 1/3-stop increments. Such small increments will allow even the most demanding photographer to acquire perfect exposures. i These numbers remain visible on the monitor only when they are not zero. EV -1.0 EV 0.0 EV +1.0

DISTANCE AND SELF-TIMER OPTIONS

The rear button on top of the camera allows you to select normal operation, infinity focus, close focus and self-timer functions. Pressing the button repeatedly loops through these choices. Infinity Focus (twin mountain peaks icon). This forces the lens to focus at infinity come what may. Notice that it also shuts off the camera flash, too. Telephoto subjects from 20 feet to infinity will be perfectly sharp using this setting under all conditions. Wide angle zoom shots will be sharp as long as objects in the frame are from eight feet away from the camera to infinity. When smaller than wide open apertures are used, nearby objects get sharper. Smaller iris openings create greater depth of field, but remember that larger f-numbers stand for smaller diameter openings that let in less light. i Images shot in full sunlight will be sharp from about ten feet away to infinity, even at the most telephoto setting of the zoom lens, and from four feet to the horizon in the wide zoom position. Macro Focus. When the camera is in close focus mode the auto-focus range is extended closer than usual. Usual is from about 10 inches to infinity. Now the autofocus will search for sharp objects closer to the camera. i At telephoto zoom, the closest object can be about four inches (100 millimeters) from the lens. Now you can focus inside an area smaller than a 35mm slide, or fill the frame with a quarter. The Nikon CP950 does not stop there, and you can get much closer. By zooming the lens to its mid-zoom position, you can see the flower icon change color. When it changes from white to greenish-yellow, you have placed the lens at its closest focusing zoom position. Now you can get the camera to focus as close as 0.62 inches (15mm) from an object. A single bee may be too large for the frame. Tiny ants can become giants.

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Self-timer. This mode has two settings. Exposure will be ten seconds or three seconds after the shutter button is pressed. Next to the lens, the white light blinks once a second for nine seconds then stays on for the last full second so you will know that the exposure is imminent. Pressing the shutter button a second time, before the sequence is finished, changes the entire count down to three seconds. Just long enough to let the camera settle down if it is in an unstable position. To abort the count down, you must switch the camera to another mode.

AUTO MODE MENU SETTINGS

By pressing the Menu button above the monitor screen, the Auto mode menu appears. It lists these items: Folders LCD Brightness Shutter Sound Auto Off CF Card Format Seq. Xfer Date Selection of these topics is made with the zoom controls W and T buttons. Folders. All exposures are placed immediately in a folder. One default folder is always present. It has the name NIKON, and you can create seven more, each with a five-character alphanumeric name. Spaces count as characters, so the lables you create can be short. LCD Brightness. Three simple icons under the picture, o +, let you set the monitor screen slightly dimmer, normal, and a bit brighter than normal. Shutter Sound. Its the control which turns on the beep that signals when a shot was made. If it is off, the camera is so quiet that you wont know it shot the picture. i Not even the very quietest film camera can compete with the almost perfectly silent operation of the CP950 in stealth mode. Auto Off. Sets how long the camera stays awake before dozing off to save batteries. Choices are 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes and 30 minutes. i Since the camera will power up with all your choices intact in just three seconds, you may wish to keep the setting at 30 seconds. Seq Xfer. It stands for Sequence Transfer, and gives you the choice of having frames start numbering themselves from 0001, or to continue numbering from the last number the camera remembers from the previous string of exposures. i The camera wont add a smaller shot number to a memory card than its current folders lowest. i If you want to have unique numbers for each of your shots, keep the sequence on. Like a car odometer it gives you a sense of history. Soon you will see how very many images you have gathered. Card Format. This is the control that erases all previous image data.

card. Only do this if you are sure that you have downloaded every image you want to keep. The best practice is to completely off-load the card, then format it.

! WARNING: formatting the CompactFlash card obliterates any images stored on the

Date. Its really time and date. Here you set the cameras internal clock and calendar. This information is stored with every shot you make. When you examine images in Play mode, described later, you can see exactly when each shot was made.

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THINGS YOU CANT DO IN AUTO MODE

While Auto mode is quick and simplified, many of the things the Nikon 950 will do simply arent available through it. You cant manually focus. You cant set the white balance to specific sources. You cant change the sensitivity of the camera by adjusting the ISO. You cant shoot in Aperture or Shutter priority modes. You cant change the type of light meter you are working with. All these things must be done in Manual mode.

Manual Mode
EXPOSURE ELEMENTS
In Manual mode you have control over much more than you do in Auto recording mode. The exposure triumvirate of aperture, shutter, and ISO are each available for modification. Priorities can be achieved, so the shutter speed you want stays fixed, and only the aperture varies in the light, and vice versa. You can even lock the exposure at a specific white balance, shutter speed, iris size, and shoot a bunch of exposures with all those controls frozen from shot to shot.

ISO HAPPY

The sensitivity of the image chip is expressed as its ISO number. The International Standards Organization established criteria for photographic sensitivity, and the Nikon 950 operates at four ISO numbers. Manual mode allows you to choose ISO 80, 100, 160, or 320. The top forward, small button nearest the shutter release must be pressed and held while the Command Dial on the front face of the camera is rotated. On both the color monitor and camera top LCD data panel, the ISO information will be displayed for easy reference. It only shows on the data panel while it is being set. The display shows dEF, 100, +1, and +2 for brevity. ISO 80 (dEF) is the choice you would most often use for outdoor, close flash, and general shooting. The camera has enough exposure control to cover all normal brightness levels you are going to encounter at any zoom setting on the planet earth. At 1/30 @ f/2.6, the widest aperture the lens can achieve in wide zoom, the amount of light is similar to a brightly lit office in which a ceiling full of fluorescent fixtures is providing a bright work area. ISO 100 is so close to ISO 80 that the two are virtually interchangeable. ISO 160 (+1) lets you work with half as much light. Pumping up the sensitivity causes the internal circuitry of the camera to amplify the image from the chip by 2x. This also causes a little noise to creep into the image. ISO 160 shows only a modest grain increase. ISO 320 (+2) permits you to work in 1/4 of the light. The image gets still noisier, and this gives the shot more of that grainy look. Now the grain has become noticeable. i Color grain is increased to the point that you may see a pattern in flesh tones and areas of mid to light pastels. Shooting in black and white at this sensitivity doesnt show this artifact.

PROGRAM

Program exposure mode is the easiest to use. Holding the Mode button down while rotating the Command Dial selects the P making it your choice. The camera now makes intelligent assumptions about which shutter speed and which aperture are best for the lighting conditions it gathers from the light metering system. It even adjusts a little ISO value while coordinating its exposure computation.

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APERTURE

The lens on the Nikon 950 has three-step iris that starts at f/2.6 in wide angle evolving to f/4 in telephoto zoom setting at its widest opening. By allowing the effective f/stop to evolve throughout the zoom, the lens design was kept to its compact physical form. The intermediate opening starts at f/4.4 and develops to f/6.8 through the zoom range. The smallest aperture starts as f/7.4 and becomes f/11.4 as the zoom progresses. Fortunately, the exposure computer is very well aware of the way this works, so it tracks and accounts for any changes brought about by zoom position. Aperture Priority. This is a special mode that lets you control the size of the iris in the lens, forcing the camera to achieve the proper exposure by changing shutter speed. If you want to have great depth of field for a tabletop flower picture, for instance, you might wish to force a small iris opening, even though that would cause the shutter speed to run longer. It is achieved by holding down the Mode button while turning the Command Dial, stopping when the A is showing. Now release the Mode button. But, wait, theres more... i For the next eight seconds, the Command Dial remembers that you were involved in aperture adjustment, and any further spinning of the dial will cause the f/number to change. After this brief window of time is up, you will have to momentarily re-push the Mode button to reactivate the Command Dial.

SHUTTER SPEED

Shutter speed on the Nikon 950 ranges from 8 seconds to 1/750 sec according to the spec sheet. i Nikon lied. You actually can shoot at up to 1/793 sec in Aperture Priority and Program modes because the camera specification is conservative. In practice, most pictures happen from 1/15 to 1/250. You have complete control over the shutter speed you wish to shoot with by selecting Shutter Priority exposure mode. i Long shutter speeds allow you to capture motion blurs and streaks. Fast shutter speeds freeze the action. In Program or Aperture Priority modes, shutter speed is fractional. It may show up later to be 1/48th, 1/35th, 1/233rd, or a similarly unusual number. In Shutter Priority it will only lock to the number on the monitor. Shutter Priority mode is selected by holding the Mode button down while turning the Command Dial to S. i On release, the Mode button remains active for eight seconds while you decide to change the shutter speed by turning the dial. After this window of time expires, you will have to momentarily push the Mode button to reactivate the Command Dial in orderto change the shutter speed again. i To achieve the incremental targets of exposure, since both shutter and aperture are inflexible, the ISO is automatically changed slightly as lighting conditions change.

MANUAL FLASH MODE

The choices for flash in Manual mode are identical to the choices of flash for Auto mode. EV compensation in Manual mode works identically to the way it works in Auto Exposure mode.

EV EXPOSURE COMPENSATION

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MANUAL FOCUS

The Nikon CP950 has a manual focus system, as well as the auto focus system. You can manually set the focus from four inches to infinity in 10 steps. The focus settings work at any zoom position. Manual focus numbers can be read in decimal feet or meters. The closest setting, 0.33 feet (100mm), is only four inches from the lens. To perform manual focus, hold down the top rear button near the shutter release while turning the Command Dial. If you dont turn the Command Dial, the camera will assume you are setting the Infinity > Close Focus > Self-timer function, and upon releasing the button, the camera will advance one of these modes. Just remember that when you are manually focusing, you must make both gestures, or you will confuse the camera. Other choices that affect manual focus are in the Settings menu on Menu Page 2, discussed later.

Menu System

From this point forward into the complexities of the Nikon 950, the menu system is the key to accessing features and choices. To open the menu system, press the Menu button. The live image is replaced with the first page of the menu, and combinations of the W and T (Wide and Tele) buttons now work in combination with the Command Dial and shutter release to steer you through the many choices. It can be confusing at first, but after a while, your fingers will learn exactly which control does what. As a general rule, you are scrolling down to the topic you want with the W and T buttons, selecting the topic with the shutter release. Next, you scroll through the contents of a detail page of options for that topic with the W and T buttons, and confirm your choice again with the shutter release. In some topics, the Command Dial will roll through an options icons next to the name of the topic. A quick confirming half-press of the shutter release will bring up the detail page if there is one. Your choice is highlighted, and you can confirm your choice with one more half-press of the shutter. Some features, like BSS, are either on or off, so they can be changed with the Command Dial, and a check mark will indicate your selection. It gets to be a rhythm in your fingers. Buried in the menu pages on Menu Page 2 > Set Up > Controls is one of those settings that will drive you nuts if you dont know about it from the beginning. It is on a green page of options, and its labeled MENU DIR. Its only function is to change the direction of the W and T buttons for scrolling through the menus. i It seems to make a lot more sense to have this choice checked off, thus causing the W button to move backwards through a list and the T to move forward through a list of choices.

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Menu Page 1
The first page of menus appears as soon as you press the MENU button once. It gives you most of your high priority features in one quick listing. Clustered here are all the choices you must make to shoot. Other menu pages deal with more esoteric issues. Menu Page 2 has controls for shooting that you will access less frequently, and a Set Up page has things you usually set once in a long while, like the internal clock. On Page 1 you will find White Balance Metering Continuous mode BSS Image Adjustment B&W Click down to the subject you wish to select, press the shutter button to open its detail window, click down to the detail you desire, and press the shutter button again to lock it in. Any decision you ratify, by pressing that last shutter button, will now become valid and in force. i To cancel the decision process, press the Menu button once and the choice last highlighted will be ignored.

WHITE BALANCE

White Balance is the first topic on Menu Page 1 and a frequently accessed consideration. While you may get good results in Auto White Balance mode, it is not a masterful choice. The world in front of your eyes looks normal in daylight, fluorescent light, candle light, and incandescent light without your having to think about it. Imaging systems arent so lucky. i This camera will shoot in any color of light from gold candle light to the blue-white sunlight at the top of Mount Everest at noon. It achieves this astonishing range by adjusting its Red, Green, and Blue sensors in three different ways, automatically, algorithmically by factory settings, or by being told by you what the light looks like. The choices are Auto, White Preset (the one you tell it to set to), Sunny, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Incandescent and Flash. Auto White Balance is achieved by the camera in a roundabout way. The camera is looking at the world through a series of assumptions. It can only assume that the world in front of it is normal, composed of normal colors that presumably add up to neutral gray. It estimates the right color temperature of the scene by supplying its best guess at the moment of exposure. If you shoot a scene with mixed daylight and incandescent, for instance, it will make its color balance choice based on how much blue and gold is in the specific framing of the shot. Change the framing just a little, and you can cause a big difference in the color rendition of the final image. Auto White Balance is the most convenient setting, and will be your choice when there isnt enough time, or need, to get more critical. White Preset is the most accurate type of white balance, but it takes extra effort on your part to achieve that precision. With this option you get to show the camera exactly what the light looks like, and the camera will faithfully follow your instructions shooting all subsequent images exactly to that standard.

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Have a piece of white paper handy. Put it in the light you wish to set for. Press the Menu button to open Menu Page 1. Select White Preset. Press the shutter button to open the sensor window. A small square of image appears in the middle of the screen. You now see two choices, Cancel or Measure. Point the camera at the white piece of paper. Sometimes you have to hold the paper up near the lens to make sure the camera sees only it. Thats okay; for this process, focus is irrelevant. Choose Measure, and press the shutter button to confirm. The camera beeps and clicks, then returns to its normal operation: White balance has been achieved. i Images on the monitor screen may look different from the way they did before you performed the white balance, but there is no guarantee that they will look perfect. To gain confidence that the white balance is correct, shoot a test shot that includes the white paper. The image on the monitor screen should look quite good now. The paper should look white on-screen. Sunny white balance is for daylight. A sun icon confirms your choice. This setting was created at the factory to give the best results in direct sun. It is a very good choice for any full-sun shooting or for shooting things you wish to record the way they would on daylight film. i Sunsets look particularly good with Sunny white balance chosen. The warmth and richness of the color are augmented by this setting. When you move into shady areas, however, the cool blue color of the sky or back-lit clouds can cause the image to look too blue at this setting, just as it would on daylight film. i Even though you are shooting on a sunny day, shooting in shaded areas is best accomplished with White Preset. Incandescent white balance is tuned to bright quartz lamp color temperature of 3200 K. Most home lighting is warmer at c. 2900 K and gives a redder or more golden look to shots made with this setting. i When you are indoors and you want accurate color, the White Preset selection will give it to you no matter what the source, but if you want a room to look very much the way it does to your eyes, the Incandescent setting will bring it into the shot. Fluorescent white balance is guessing that your fluorescent bulbs are of the cool white variety, most often used in offices, stores, and shopping centers. If you find it works well for your lights, then use it. Fluorescent lighting has a spectral distribution that is incomplete. There are holesgapsin the spectrum of nearly all fluorescent light formulas, and not all fluorescent lights look good at this setting. i It doesnt work well with your lights? Use White Preset. Cloudy white balance is a good one for overcast days. Because your eyes adapt to color balance situations almost instantly, you wont see how much bluer the world is under cloudy skies. The camera would, if it were set to Sunny white balance. Set it on Cloudy and colors will appear to be much more natural. i When you are shooting around the corner from sunlit areas, the color in the shade is often much cooler and bluer than you would wish. Cloudy is a good first choice. Still too cool? Use White Preset. Speedlight or Flash white balance is the right setting for electronic flash pictures. Plan to use the camera flash? Set to this white balance choice, and the pictures will look natural. External flash units are best served by this setting as well.

i Here is how you teach the camera what the light is:

18% gray

will find a gray card file called 18% Gray. Print this on a black and white laser printer or on a color printer set to black ink only, and do it at several different scales. It is a dot-based approximation of an 18% gray card. Include one of these at small-size in the corner of a test shot at the start of a series of images shot under the same lighting. You dont actually want to see the printed dots as fine detail. You want the camera to see them as a patch of gray. Photoshops Curves and Levels color neutrality samplers will be able to steer the image back,very close to the original color.

i One thing will help you conquer perfect, natural color as you shoot. A reference shot. On the CD you

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

METER SELECTION

The second item down Menu Page 1 is the Metering selector. Three choices immediately appear, Matrix, Center-Weighted, and Spot. Matrix metering is the sophisticated, multi-element meter that samples 256 parts of the picture. It intelligently analyzes the shot for highlights vs. bright areas, shadows vs. dark objects, contiguous coverage vs. statistical sampling, and arrives at an educated guess better than a lighting director could in five minutes of spot meter sampling and paper computation. i This meter is far and away the best single meter in the camera, but it isnt the one you want for every shot. Just most of them. Center-Weighted metering gives results similar to those of a hand-held meter. It sees the center of the image but is less influenced less by subjects near the corners. Try it for portraits where the facial tones are concentrated in the center of the shot. It works well as a general purpose meter, too, and shooting the same picture with both Matrix and CenterWeighted meters will show you how similar and different they cause images to appear. Spot metering is like a very narrow focus version of the Center-Weighted meter. When this meter type is chosen, a small square appears in the middle of the monitor screen. Anything inside this square is sampled; anything immediately outside it is ignored. When your subject stands in front of a window, this meter would be your best choice, unless you want the person to look like a silhouette. By using the spot meter, you can press the shutter release halfway while holding the square over the persons face or body, and lock-in the exposure. Then you can reframe the shot the way you wish, and press the shutter the rest of the way to make the exposure. The image behind your subject may be overexposed, but your subject will be well exposed and details will be normally bright.

CONTINUOUS IMAGES, THE DIGITAL MOTOR DRIVE

Continuous mode is the third choice on Menu Page 1. Your choices here are to shoot Single, Continuous full frame, Multi-Shot 16, and VGA Sequence. Single image mode is the traditional still camera equivalent. Here is where the 950 behaves like a film camera, shooting one picture per click. Follow-up shots can be taken right away, even if the camera is not finished working on the first shot. The camera lag from shot to shot is only about 1.5 seconds. i If you create the habit of shooting, then immediately half-pressing the shutter button in anticipation of a follow-up shot, you will prepare the camera for fastest response and regain the live image on the monitor. Continuous mode is similar to the effect of having a still camera with a motor drive. As you hold down the shutter button, the camera takes a string of images as fast as it can until the internal memory of the camera is filled up, whereupon, it enters a contemplative mode for a number of seconds while it digests the shots. i With full-sized pictures, you can keep this up for a string of at least four shots spaced about one second apart. In Normal compression mode, you get twice as many. In informal tests, we were able to acquire this many images at each setting in continuous mode:

Images captured in a single string in Continuous mode SIZE OF IMAGE/COMPRESSION


Full XGA VGA 1600 x 1200 1024 x 768 640 x 480

FINE
4-7 10 - 14 28 - 33

NORMAL
8 - 13 20 - 27 50 - 60

BASIC
16 - 20 45 - 50 95 - 102

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Multi-Shot 16 mode is an interesting way of making a picture for printing that is more like a movie/still-photo hybrid. A single 1600 x 1200 image is made up of 16 images shot in sequence over eight seconds at two shots per second. Its not fast enough to analyze a golf swing, but it is an interesting sequence-capture method. One shutter press starts the sequence. Each individual frame is 400 x 300 pixels in size. i If you use an external flash, it must be capable of firing every half second! VGA Sequence mode is very similar to shooting with Continuous mode at VGA size, except that it makes extra choices for you quickly. It shoots in Normal compression and achieves a maximum of about 50 frames at two frames per second. i Since each frame is numbered sequentially, they can be used for TV resolution (NTSC) special effects with programs like Adobe AfterEffects or QuickTime Pro, which expect sequences of frames. The fourth item down the list on Menu Page 1 is an interesting group of options that affect the way the image looks. Standard, Brightness +, Brightness -, Contrast +, and Contrast - settings are accessed here. Standard image adjustment is the default. The icon looks like a simple circle. Contrast + and Contrast - are two choices that affect the overall contrast of the image. Your choice can be one of the four contrast or brightness options only. With Contrast + and Contrast -, you are manipulating the range from brightest to darkest areas of the picture by adjusting its dynamic range. The final image will still consist of 256 levels of tonality in each color channel, but with Contrast + invoked, the camera will compress highlights and shadows at the same time opening up more range for the middle tones. This feature gives low-contrast scenes a tiny bit of extra snap. The effect is subtle, at best. With Contrast , the opposite is happening. Now the dynamic range of brightness in the scene is stretched somewhat, and noticeably more detail in highlight portions of the picture is included in the final image. i Shots will look a bit darker and have lower contrast on your computer monitor because the middle tones have also been moved downward, but you can compensate for this while shooting by giving an EV boost of +0.3 or +0.7 to the exposure. By combining both of these adjustments, Contrast and EV boost, you are effectively shooting a slightly wider dynamic range. i Shots made in this mode will also yield more film-like highlight dynamics when manipulated in Photoshop using Curves or Levels controls, because the highlights will tend to not bleach out. Brightness + and Brightness - are two choices that give your photograph a brighter or darker look. Any adjustment here will not affect exposure time or f-stop in any way.

TONE COMPENSATION

BSS

What if you had a camera that worked hard to only give you clear, sharp pictures? That is the premise behind the BSS feature, the fifth choice on Menu Page 1. BSS, Best Shot Selector. As you shoot, you capture several pictures in the same way you would for Continuous shots, but the camera looks at each image for clues about its sharpness, selects the most recent one that seems to be the best, and throws away the others. Exactly how it does this is a guarded secret known only to the Nikon engineers, but the best minds outside of Nikon pointed to an easy way to find sharpness in a string of similar shots: file size. Blurry images are generally smaller than well-focused, stable images, because camera or subject motion will compromise areas of contrast in the shot. Less contrast = softer edges = smaller files. i Night images with high contrast areas can fool BSS. Large camera movements turn small contrasty detail into streaks that have more edge area which BSS can mistake for valid edge contours.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

DIGITAL ZOOM

Digital Tele is also commonly called digital zoom and digizoom these days. Hold down the zoom control to the full telephoto position. The image on the monitor pauses for a second then continues to zoom by jumps, but only if the digital zoom is active. No optical zooming is happening, but the center of the shot is growing larger. The cameras computer is zooming into the shot by enlarging fewer and fewer of the pixels in the center of the image with each jump. The range extends from 1.25 to 2.5-power. At 2.5-power, you are now looking at an image which is just the center 640 pixels across by 480 pixels high! It may look good on your monitor screen, but when you get it in your computer, you will be amazed to see a huge image file made out of only 16% of the sensors of your camera. This low resolution image wouldnt even make a good small print. The digital zoom is less useful as an image magnifier for final images, but it has very useful applications while you set up the shot. i If you are shooting through a telescope or microscope, you can use digital zoom to focus the instrument before shooting with the camera. First, you set the camera to infinityto remove the cameras auto-focus from the equation, so you can see the instruments native focus. Zoom the camera to full digital zoom and focus. Now small adjustments of the instruments focus will become very obvious on the camera monitor. Zoom back to the framing you want for the shot and take the picture. For action shots, switch the cameras auto-focus back on. Auto-focus works through added optics as well. When you shoot at XGA or VGA size, the effect of digital zoom is applied before the camera shrinks the image to the smaller frame. At XGA, a 1.6-power zoom is effectively nullified, so the image captured is exactly like an XGA-sized crop from a full frame. If you shoot an XGA image at 1.25-power digital zoom, the resulting picture is quite clear, having benefited from the down-sampling, since the original had more detail than the final image. Here, the digital zoom has worked for you, not against you. Similarly, you can use digital zoom up to 2.0-power for shots made at VGA size and still have VGA results with beneficial down-sampling. At 2.5-power digizoom, a VGA image is the same quality as a crop from a full-size frame. The only saving here is file size per exposure.

MONOCHROME

Black and white photography used to be the only affordable home darkroom printing format a few decades ago. Now it is a switch. Select B&W and the monitor screen becomes monochrome so you are seeing the scene the way it will look in a print. i Since the image is now comprised of shapes and forms, you will experience it in a different way. Playing with this mode is something that should be done often, for the fun and experience of abstract visualization it brings to your eye.

Black and white images are seen in monochrome on the camera monitor. Composition can be seen directly.

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The Shooting Choices: Menu Page 2


Controls that you set less frequently are found on Menu Page 2. The easiest way to get here is to press the menu button twice. Controls and settings include Folders Menu Lens Settings AE Lock User Settings Card Format Reset All Set Up

FOLDERS

Folders menu operates exactly the same way it does for Automatic mode.

LENS CONVERTER SELECTION

The second selection on Menu Page 2 allows you to select settings that make choices for you when you use the lens converters. Selections are for Normal, Wide, Telephoto, Fisheye 1, and Fisheye 2. A lens icon appears on the monitor screen to signal you that a Lens setting is in force. i All converter settings disable the camera and external flash. If you wish to use a converter with flash, you must use the Normal setting and zoom manually. Any external flash unit that uses the camera sensor will not function correctly, since the lens converter will block the sensor. Use the sensor on the flash unit. Wide Adapter Lens selection sets the camera up in the most logical way to facilitate the use of the WC-E24 wide angle adapter. The camera will awaken in the widest zoom position. Camera zoom controls will operate as usual. Telephoto Lens selection sets the camera up for the 2X tele adapter, the TC-E2. The camera will awaken at the full-tele zoom position. The zoom controls will only zoom back about 2:1. This setting prevents you from zooming back farther than the coverage of the TC-E2. Fisheye 1 lens selection sets the camera up for the full circular fisheye image. The zoom lens moves to its widest setting. The meter switches to Center-Weighted. The zoom controls are frozen. If you wish to zoom while using the fisheye adapter, you will have to do so without using this setting. An alternative choice would be to use the Wide Adapter setting, and set the meter type to Center Weighted manually.
WC-E24, TC-E2 and FC-E8 lenses.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Fisheye 2 lens selection sets the camera up for a frame filling fisheye image. The zoom lens now moves to a specific spot in the zoom range that allows the circular fisheye image to fill the frame all the way out to the corners. The zoom controls are frozen. Metering is anything you set separately. i The zoom setting here almost perfectly coincides with the best zoom position for macro close-ups. i As you become more experienced with these Lens settings, you will become aware that they are not requirements, just handy sets of choices that facilitate using converter optics. i Advanced photographers use them the least, preferring to achieve the same zoom and meter settings manually

Fisheye 2 setting attempts to deliver perspectives like this, but this shot needed more. The zoom here was adjusted manually to achieve this effect.

AE SYSTEM LOCK

AE Lock causes the camera to shoot all images at the exact same exposure and white balance. Its ideal with images for panoramic stitching. Tones and colors of frames that are to be blended into each other must be identical, and this control gives you that power. The menu lets you turn the feature Off, On, or Reset. Once you select On, the very next shot you shoot locks its exposure information into the camera for as long as you keep shooting, until you disable it.

As often happens, you might wish to start a new series of images with the same exposure, just not the exposure you had previously selected. For that purpose, highlight Reset, and the next exposure will once again be the elected master. Just remember to turn it off after the panoramic scene has been shot, or you may get strange looking follow-up images.

USER SETTINGS

With these selections you can effectively set up three different cameras. Nikon thinks of this as having three different users, as if the camera were being passed among three different photographers, each of whom had his or her own favorite settings. Make one of the three settings the one you use all the time, changing settings, options, and anything for any reason, as needed. The other two settings can include things that could instantly turn your camera into a spot metered, fluorescent light savvy, VGA sequence, brightness elevated, BSS ready, digital zoom disabled, Fisheye 1 set, White Balance and Auto Exposure locked camera, for instance. i Your preferences for these settings will be strictly personal.

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CARD FORMAT

Card format is the option that completely and irrevocably erases all the information on the CompactFlash card. There is no undo. This resets every byte of storage on the card to zero. Once you do this, there is no going back. i Card format is what you do only when the card has been completely drained of every shot you ever wanted to save off it. A few button pushes and the card is like new. On the card will be the default NIKON folder, a thumbnail viewer file, and nothing else.

RESET ALL

! Keep your fingers away from this control. If you accidentally reset the camera, every one of dozens of choices you have made will disappear. i Of course, if you get hopelessly lost while setting up the camera, this is a good way to return it to its original factory settings.

Set Up Page
Under Set Up, your further choices are LCD Brightness Sound LCD On/Off Controls (a gateway to the least accessed choices) Auto Off Seq. Xfer (Sequence Transfer) Date Language

LCD BRIGHTNESS

The color monitor screen can be set for any one of three brightness levels. This control is duplicated in Auto, Manual, and Play modes. Only the most recent choice is assigned.

SHUTTER SOUND

Shutter Sound simply lets you turn the camera exposure beep on or off.

LCD On/Off opens up a new page with five choices of how you wish the monitor to behave as you shoot. On&C-AF means the monitor is always on, and it continuously auto focuses. Since no added focus happens as part of the exposure sequence, this mode shoots the fastest, but it is the auto-focus mode that can be most easily fooled. If an object fills the frame it has no problem achieving good focus. i If you train the camera on a nearby subject, the continuous focus may have decided that its just fine sticking with the focus it has on the background. On&S-AF means the monitor is always on, but it focuses one single time when the shutter button is half-pressed. i The camera searches through its focus range and usually settles on the nearest object that is closest to the center of the frame. Fast Review means the monitor is always on but doesnt stop to show you the picture after the shot has been taken. i In truth its a no review mode. The monitor doesnt review the most recent exposure. I think that what is meant is that you quickly review the live image, so you can quickly reframe for the next shot. i This mode is the quickest for follow-up shots.

LCD ON/OFF

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Review Only keeps the monitor off until a shot is taken. Then the monitor comes on, so you can review the shot for a few seconds. During the time the shot is showing on the monitor, you have the option of pausing the display, so you can think about it for several more seconds. You do this by pressing the center button under the monitor. You can also press the left-most button under the monitor to delete the image. If you start the delete process, you must confirm that choice by pressing the T button to select YES from the menu that shows up, then press the shutter button to confirm your choice. i The sequence of moves and presses isnt intuitive; you will have to train your fingers to do this through practice. Its designed to keep you from accidentally erasing an image. LCD Off turns off the LCD and causes the manual mode to focus once, each time the shutter button is pressed. i This mode requires you to use the Optical Viewfinder. The camera needs almost no power to function continuously with the monitor off. In this mode a freshly charged set of NiMH batteries will last through hundreds of shots.

CONTROLS MENU

Controls opens up another page of deeper menus. Here, your choices are Flash Save Distance Save Mode Save EV Adjust Save Internal Flash Disable Menu Direction Distance in Feet If you select an item, a check mark appears next to the title of the topic, and that item will be preserved after power off. The alternative is that upon power off, every one of these choices can selectively revert to its original state, as if you had wished only to use it just the onc time. As you are shooting, things may come up that you dont want to become part of the permanent setup of the camera. EV adjustments, for instance, are dialed in for the particular shot at hand and probably wouldnt be the sort of thing you would want to carry over to the next use of the camera. By leaving the EV Adjust Save (+/- Save) off, the EV adjustment would go back to zero the next time you shut the camera down or switch to Auto Mode. If the camera merely went to sleep, or you switched over to Play Mode, the EV adjustment would stay where you last left it. The Flash Disable switch only turns off the cameras own flash, without affecting external flash functions. Auto Off sets the time-out function of the camera. Choices for staying awake are 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, or 30 minutes. Seq. Xfer sets the frame numbering scheme. Each freshly formatted CompactFlash card can start from 0001, or will continue where you left off with the very last exposure, depending on your choice. By setting this to Sequence Transfer (Seq. Xfer), the continuity of frame numbers continues from card to card. If a card with a higher frame number is inserted, the camera increments from that number, upward. Date sets both the time of day and day of the year. Language sets the entire menu system and all the type on the displays in Deutsch, English, Franais, or Japanese.

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Play Mode
REVIEWING AND EDITING
The third mode accessed with the master switch that circles the shutter button is Play. This is the mode that lets you review and edit your work. A number of tools are available here to facilitate viewing and editing. Above the monitor, the W and T (Wide and Tele) buttons now select backwards and forwards through the files of captured images. The Command Dial scrolls through the data overlay screens, and the buttons under the monitor assume new functions for deleting, protecting, group viewing, and magnifying the images that have been captured. Delete button is below and to the left side of the monitor screen. Press it once, and the current image is overlaid by a small garbage can icon and the question Delete one image? If you select Yes and press the shutter release half way, the image is immediately deleted from memory. i Be careful. Unlike a computer, there is no undo key. Multi-Review is created with the center button under the monitor. Press it once, and nine small thumbnails appear. You can use the zoom keys to scroll in any direction, up or down the stream of shots. If you press the shutter button, the currently highlighted thumbnail will become a full screen image. Magnify the current image is done with the lower right button under the monitor. Press it once, and the image enlarges to twice as large. The center half of the shot now fills the screen. The Command Dial will allow you to move to any of nine spots on the image to view it more closely. Press the Magnify button again, and you are now seeing a 3 power blow up of the center of the image. Image Data can be seen by turning the Command Dial. Three screens of information appear in a loop. The first page gives basic information like frame number, time and date of the shot, the name of the folder it resides in, its size and compression, and which shot, out of all of them, is in the camera right now. The next two pages to the right give the EXIF information with these data:
Camera model number Firmware version Metering choice Shutter speed Exposure f-stop Exposure Compensation in EV Focal Length in actual millimeters Focus type (AF or Manual feet or meters) Speed Light On or Off

Image Adjustment Sensitivity in ISO White Balance setting Digital Tele setting Lens Converter choice File Size in kilobytes

The monitor button above the monitor screen turns the data overlay on and off. The menu button to its right brings up the menu page for play mode.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Play Mode Menu SelectionsScreen 1


When the first Play menu screen is presented you have access to deeper Play Mode features. Immediate listings are Delete Folders Slide Show Protect Hide Image Print Set Delete leads to a sub-menu including Selected Images, All Images, Erase Folder, and Print Set i Knowing how these work for you is important, because a mistake here can accidentally throw away shots you might want to keep. Selected Images Delete is the most common choice. A shutter press instantly shows six small thumbnails, and the zoom keys move you forward and backward through the recorded exposures. If you press the delete key at the lower left of the monitor, a red trash icon appears over the highlighted frame, nominating it as a candidate for deletion. i It isnt gone yet, and if you change your mind, you can highlight the frame and press the trash button once more, causing the icon to disappear. Any number of frames can be tagged for deletion. When you are through marking images, a single press of the shutter button will bring up a window saying Delete X images? Yes? No? Choosing Yes does the job. Choosing No cancels the whole operation, and all your choices are lost. i Take an extra pause when this screen appears, as a matter of habit. You dont want to lose your work by accidentally telling the camera No. All Images Delete will cause all the images in all folders to be deleted. Only hidden or protected images will be spared. Erase Folder will cause the current folders contents, and the folder itself, to be deleted utterly. This is where you throw the whole thing away. Print Set Delete throws away only images that were designated as Print Set images by the selector described at the bottom of this list of settings. The idea here is that you have tagged certain images for printing, and that after printing, you only need to throw those shots away because, having printed them, you will never need to see them again. The selection makes no judgement as to whether or not you have already saved images or where they are in any folder. If you have only printed the Print Set tagged images in the current folder, you might wish to wait to use this control until you are SURE all other folders dont have Print Set images in them that have not been printed yet. Folders brings up the same Folders sub-menu that appears in Auto and Manual camera modes. Slide Show brings up choices for you to use the camera as an automatic slide show display server. Images from the show are routed out the video cable. Only the images in the current folder that are not tagged Hidden will be shown. You can select a frame rate of 2 seconds, 3 seconds, 5 seconds, or 10 seconds per shot. The images show for the time allotted, then blink to black and change to the next shot. If you press the shutter release, the show pauses and a frame comes on screen that allows you resume, start over, or change the interval between images.

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3A-21

take, you can assist the camera in making a better presentation with this simple trick. Shoot a black frame before and after the photo session. Do it in Auto mode with the lens cap on. The flash will fire, but the image of the black frame will be noise-free. The Hide Images feature (described below) will help you weed out the shots you dont want to show this time. You cant change the order of shots, but you can hide the clinkers. i For more complex presentations, you will need to put the images into the computer and use a program like QuickTime Pro or PowerPoint to arrange and display your images. Protect Images works in a way that is similar to the Delete Images sub-menu, except the icon here is a yellow key activated with the QUAL button, and all it does for the nominated images is keep them from being deleted easily. Any image with a key icon over it wont be erased using the Delete All Images option or the Delete Print Set option. Additionally, any folder with a Protected image in it will not erase using the Delete Folder option. i If you cant delete a folder for some strange reason, check inside for a picture tagged Protected. Hide Images also works similarly to the Delete and Protect sub-menus. The QUAL button marks the image with a dotted outline frame. i Hidden images wont show up in a slide show or in the Delete, Print, and Protect displays, but it is possible to Protect and Hide the same image all at the same time. Print Set works similarly to the Delete, Protect, and Hide images menus, and the QUAL button must be used to mark the images that are candidates for printing. Each image also has the option to print the date with the picture and permit you to automatically order up to nine prints of that frame. If you have a printer that uses the DPOF protocol (Digital Print Order Format) and it accepts CompactFlash cards, you can take the card from your camera and print directly from it. All tagged images on the card will be printed, and the card will come back to you exactly the way it was before printing.

i When you know that you are going to be showing a string of images from the shots you are about to

i COMPLEXITY VS. USEFULNESS

For all the complexity and control the Slide Show, Protect, Hide, and Print functions represent, these are very seldom used features for most photographers using the Nikon 950. Most people shoot, download to the computer, and continue from there without trying to make the camera into a filing system and electronic slide projector.

SET UP MENU

The second page in the Play Mode Menus repeats a number of choices that appear in the Setup Screens in both Auto and Manual camera modes. The items operate identically except for the Auto Off function. LCD Bright lets you adjust brightness of the camera monitor. Shutter Sound turns the camera beep on or off. Controls leads to the single control of menu direction. Auto Off sets the time the camera stays awake after the last button push. i This number is separate from the number used in camera Record mode. You can have the camera stay on for only 30 seconds and have the Play Mode to stay on for 30 minutes, if you wish. CF Card Format erases the entire contents of the CompactFlash Card and all folders and images are completely deleted. As noted before, be aware as you do this. Date sets the time and date the camera keeps with each shots file. Language selects Deutsch, English, Franais, or Japanese as the cameras menu language.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Chapter 3B

Camera Operation 990

3B-1

Camera Operation
Nikon Coolpix 990
Take a Coolpix 950, add a bigger image chip, speed up the internal operations, solve some ergonomic issues, rewrite the menu system, and what do you have? The Coolpix 990. Its the year 2000 version of the Nikon Coolpix compact digital camera, and menu and control ergonomics are more advanced over the 950. Inside, a Sony Super HAD imaging chip, making a 2048 x 1536 pixel image, sits behind an improved zoom lens. Its pictures are quite large enough for reproduction quality, and full-page magazine covers, advertisements, and even Times Square billboards have appeared featuring 990 images. Like its predecessor, the 990 fully qualifies as a technical wonder. Its sculpted exterior houses computer, power supply, zoom lens, imaging chip, optical viewfinder, memory media, controls, color monitor, data display, flash system, stable tripod socket, input and output ports, and a signal light. Almost nothing protrudes from the case except a few millimeters of lens ring and ergonomically placed buttons. Operation of the 990 is quite similar to the Coolpix 950, with notable improvements to menu choices, quicker functional access, and a wider selection of features. i As you run through the following descriptions, have the camera handy so you can try each idea while you teach your fingers how to perceive each item. The instructions here are designed with an emphasis on the tips, techniques, and implications underlying each choice.

i=

InfoBite

SIZE AND COMPRESSION

A film photographer always must choose image format, film type, and film speed before any photography can begin. The Nikon Coolpix 990 does all these things and more. Still, only you can tell it specifically what you want. You decide the size of the shot. The largest image is 2048 x 1536 pixels and is the cameras default setting. Just hold down the button labeled QUAL below the monitor screen while rotating the Command Dial with your right thumb. On the monitor, you will step through the four size options. Sizes are given in pixels. Full resolution: 2048 x 1536. When the camera is set to shoot in this size, no size indicator is supplied in the third line of text on the monitor screen, right above the QUAL button. XGA: 1024 x 768. This option presents the letters XGA appear on the size line of the monitor. VGA: 640 x 480. The letters VGA appear on the size line. 3:2: 2048 x 1364 (a slide aspect ratio option). Now the size line shows simply 3:2. Aspect ratio is always a consideration when prints are being made. The 990 makes images that are 4:3 horizontal, except for that last setting of 3:2, which trims off 86 pixels from each of the long sides of the image and consumes only 89% of the storage space, while delivering an image that creates a perfect 4 x 6 inch print.

3:2

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

CMPRSN

After setting the size with the Command Dial, repeated momentary pressing on the QUAL button selects Fine, Normal, and Basic compression. The greater the compression, the smaller the file size, but the more complex the image, the larger the file size. Detail in the picture itself, at any compressed size, causes the compression engine to use more memory space. Only at the full-size, or 3:2 size, do you have the option of choosing Hi which captures images in the TIFF format without any compression. i If Continuous or BSS shooting modes (well get to them later) are in force, no amount of button pushing will access Hi. If Hi doesnt appear for you, something in another mode is preventing access to this special mode. ! WARNING: images shot in Hi will take an inordinately long period of time to transfer to the CompactFlash card. If you accidentally put the camera in Hi and start shooting, you may think the camera is somehow suddenly broken, or has encountered a software glitch. In Play mode, a Hi shot will also take about 30 seconds just to completely display the TIFF image. If your 990 has firmware 1.0, every time you scroll past it in Play, the camera will hang for half a minute!
(firmware 1.1 fixed this)

i Clearly this is not a capture mode for everyday use. There is essentially no practical quality difference in Hi and Fine images, and unless you have an exotic need to capture TIFF images directly, the best advice is to avoid this setting, except for experimentation and familiarization. Image size, compression, and number of images are all directly interrelated. Add to that the effect of compression artifacts on the appearance of prints made with each selection, and the behavior of the camera creates these general options:
SIZE
Large 2048 x 1536

COMPRESSION
Hi (TIFF) Fine Normal Basic

ARTIFACT EFFECT
As good as it gets Virtually perfect Extremely good Quite good mild artifacts visible at full screen size

SHOTS / 64 MEG CF*


6 42 + 83 + 164 +

MAX PRINT SIZE IN /MM


11 x 14 9 x 12 + 8 x 10 6x8 275 x 355 228 x 305 203 x 254 152 x 203

3:2 2048 x 1364

Hi (TIFF) Fine Normal Basic

The very best Virtually perfect Extremely good Very good some artifacts visible at full screen Pixel-perfect Extremely good Good, but visible on screen Pixel-perfect TV size Very good on TV screen Good on TV screen

7 47 + 94 + 185 +

9.75 x 14 8 x 12 + 6.75 x 10 6x9

248 x 355 203 x 305 171 x 254 152 x 228

XGA 1024 x 768 VGA 640 x 480

Fine Normal Basic Fine Normal Basic

164 + 320 + 608 + 404 + 756 + 1342 +

6x8 5x7 4x6 3x4 3x4 2.4 x 3.2

152 x 203 127 x 178 102 x 135 76 x 102 76 x 102 61 x 81

* The Hi setting numbers are absolute. The others represent a guaranteed minimum and may be as much as 40% low!

Chapter 3B

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Fine images will consume a file space of just over one megabyte of storage space each, at full-size. Normal images on the 990 are remarkably good. When printed, Normal images do not give away the fact that they are only about half the storage size of Fine shots. Basic images on the 990 will show compression artifacts if you know where to look for them. High contrast edges reveal them the most. i For 5 x 7 or 4 x 6 prints, full-size Basic images create nearly perfect prints i Artifacts in Basic are visible only at full-size on your computer monitor. When you shrink a Basic compressed, full-size image to half-size, the artifacts politely disappear! Now you have an image that is 1024 x 768 pixels (XGA size), with no artifacts and tremendously improved detail, caused by the beneficial side effect of down-sampling. The effect is dramatic on your computer screen. A down-sampled image is as sharp as the computer could ever be expected to create. A pixel-perfect XGA image is the instant result. XGA images are exactly half the dimensions of the largest full-size shot and consume only 25% of the size of the full image. By shooting at XGA size, you are creating images that are captured full-size by the cameras image chip, then instantly reduced to half-size before being compressed and stored. The CP990 does a near flawless job of this, and the resulting image is pixel-perfect. After being reduced in size, the image is compressed and then stored on the CompactFlash card. This is the first moment in the process that any compression effects can creep into the perfected image. Fine will show no compression effects, Normal will show only the mildest of effects, and Basic will begin to show compression effects only if you view the image at a 1:1 display ratio on your computer monitor. VGA images are treated the same way as XGA images, but they have only 640 x 480 pixels. Down-sampling causes them to be pixel-perfect TV-size shots, and they only take up about 39% of the space of the XGA images and 10% of the full-size images. i View them on a TV screen, and you probably wont see the compression artifacts, even when using Basic compression. i Prints from a VGA original barely hold up at 3 x 4 inches (75 x 100mm) or smaller. They make excellent single-column head shots and fair two-column images, but thats about it.

Automatic Mode
The first of the two fundamental modes of camera operation is Auto. From Off, one click of the master switch brings the camera up in full Auto mode. The camera awakens with Default ISO the camera sensitivity index Matrix meter a 256-element, intelligent light meter system Automatic white balance a system that gets the color right Programmed auto exposure so you dont have to worry about it Auto focus that is constantly adjusting itself and sensing the focus target in the center of the frame You have control over Image size Image compression Self-timer Close focusing Infinity focus EV exposure compensation Flash options The Auto settings are a well considered mix of qualities that make the camera operate quickly with a minimum of missed or imperfect images.

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The default ISO is 80 under the brightest of conditions. Sensitivity changes in response to changing light, if the flash is disabled. The letters, ISO, show on the monitor and LCD data display when elevated sensitivity is present. White balance automatically adjusts to what the camera thinks is correct at the moment of exposure. The matrix meter is constantly sampling the view and determining what the most likely exposure should be. The auto focus system is trying to stay in focus on the center-most sampling area of the image chip, and the only thing missing at this point is the instruction from your right index finger to shoot the picture. i Shutter lag is minimal since the camera already knows if it has enough light, and it is already in focus. As with most modern cameras, a half-press of the shutter locks in the shot. Then, the delay from the time your finger clicks the switch to the image being exposed is about 0.1 second; very responsive indeed. By default, the flash is enabled in red-eye prevention mode on power-up, but this is no guarantee the flash will fire. If it detects enough light to get a good picture without the flash, it wont flash. When the light drops below the level needed for a 1/60 sec exposure, it will enter into its basic flash mode. Here the shutter speed rises to 1/125 for steadiness, and the flash becomes enabled.

i Auto is a good mode for work using the optical viewfinder.

AUTO MODE FLASH

Choices are, in this order, Auto Flash No Flash at all Red-eye Reduction Forced Flash Slow Flash Auto flash (no icon) is a good general purpose flash setting. The flash will fire only if there is not enough light to get an image without it. As soon as the exposure computer sees that you are shooting longer than 1/30 sec, it locks the shutter at either 1/60 or 1/125 (longer zoom positions get the shorter shutter speed), and turns on the flash. i If an external flash unit is connected to the camera, the flash system senses it and fires only that flash unit. No Flash is simply that. The camera knows that it will have no flash support, so the shot may be made at any shutter speed up to one second even if it must elevate the ISO. An external flash attached to the camera will also not fire. Red-eye Reduction attempts to reduce red-eye effects from the camera flash by blinking a bright white light next to the lens for one second before the flash goes off. If an external flash is connected, only it will flash, while the camera speedlight remains dark. It works okay on brown-eyed people less than eight feet from the camera, but it doesnt stop red-eye effects from light-colored eyes from about five feet onward. Eye response varies from person to person and changes with the ambient light. i On this camera, the flash unit is more of an accommodation than a tool. Its there if you need it for snapshots or fill, but it isnt a universal remedy for low light. Forced Flash fires the camera or attached flash no matter what light the camera sees. It assumes you know what you are asking it to do, and it pops the flash in-sync with any shutter speed the camera is using, from 1/125 to 1/1000 sec. i Very useful outdoors as a fill-flash effect for subjects that may be back lit, it tends to add just enough light into shadow areas on nearby subjects to bring out shaded detail.

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Slow Flash only fires the flash at shutter speeds at, or longer than, 1/60 of a second. People against nearly dark, post-sunset skies will be exposed both for their long exposure plus the added flash. If they, or the camera, move during the long exposure their ghost will blur across the frame, but the flash will capture a moment of perfect frozen time. i Note that Slow Flash wont fire unless the appropriate exposure drops below 1/60 of a second. If the sky behind your subject is too bright, for example, the flash will not fire at all.

EV EXPOSURE COMPENSATION

EV compansation overrides the cameras meter in small increments allowing you to adjust the exposure brighter or darker. EV means Exposure Value, and it is measured in stops, or powers of 2. So EV +1.0 lets in exactly twice as much light as EV 0.0 does, and 1.0 EV lets in only half as much. By pressing the EV button on top of the camera while turning the Command Dial, EV adjustments from 2.0 to +2.0 can be achieved in 1/3-stop increments. These small increments will allow even the most demanding photographer to acquire perfect exposures. Numbers appear on the monitor only when they are not zero. EV numbers show on the LCD data window as they are being changed but dont appear unless the +/- button is depressed. i EV adjustments here are not linked to the flash sensor, so changes made with this control wont affect the brightness of the cameras built-in flash unit. i If the Func 2 buttons operation is changed in the Settings > Controls > Func 2 page of the menu system, the EV adjustment cant be made with this button since its operation has been redefined.

DISTANCE AND SELF-TIMER OPTIONS

The bottom left button under the monitor screen allows you to select normal operation, infinity focus, close focus, and self-timer functions. Pressing the button repeatedly loops through these choices. Infinity focus forces the lens to focus at infinity, come what may. It is very useful for shooting distant vistas and landscapes. Zoom setting also affects DOF (depth of field). Wider images have more, telephoto have less. With the Infinity setting, a wide zoom setting, and a small iris in bright light, your images can be sharp from four feet (0.7m) to the horizon. You can expect images in full sunlight to be sharp from about 25 feet away to infinity, even at the most telephoto setting of the zoom lens and the maximum aperture. Macro focus extends the auto-focus range nearer than usual. Usual is from about 10 inches to infinity. Now the auto-focus will search for objects closer to the camera. i At telephoto zoom, the closest object can be about 7.25 inches (185mm) from the lens. The Nikon CP990 does not stop there, and you can get much closer. By zooming the lens to its mid-zoom position, you can see the bright flower icon change color. When it changes from white to yellow, you have placed the lens at its closest focusing zoom position. Now you can get the camera to focus as close as 0.06 feet (11/16ths of an inch or 18mm) from an object. Coincidentally, the width and distance at this setting are about equal. A single bee may be too large for the frame. Tiny ants can become giants. Self-timer mode has two settings. The camera will focus and fire either ten seconds or three seconds after the shutter button is pressed. It includes the close focus selection so it will work at any focus distance. The cameras white light blinks once a second for nine seconds, and numbers count down on the monitor screen near the self-timer icon. At one second to go, the lamp stays on, so your subjects will know that the exposure is imminent. If you press the shutter button a second time at any time before the sequence is finished, the entire count down becomes a three-second count down. Three seconds is long enough to let the camera settle down if it is in an unstable position. i You can keep pressing the button as many times as you wish, and it will jump back to the three-second mark, but only if you catch it in the first two of those three seconds.

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abort the count down, you must switch the camera to another mode. If you are inside that last one second, watch out, the camera will fire even if you switched it off.

i Note that once the camera enters that last one second, all bets are off. It is committed to the shot. To

AUTO MODE MENU SETTINGS

By pressing the Menu button above the monitor screen the Auto mode menu appears. It lists these items: Folders Monitor Options Shutter Sound Auto Off Seq. Numbers CF Card Format Date The Multi-Selector (the black disc at the upper right of the monitor screen) is rather like a flat joystick. This single button will click in any of four directions, and it makes running through the menu choices very fast. Each menu item will have several choices, and a click to the right with the Multi-Selector will often bring up sub-menus with new choices. Once a choice has been made, one more click to the right or left will validate your selection, and the menu will return to its initial or previous state. If you wish NOT to approve the current highlighted choice, you must make another choice before leaving the current list, OR leave the menu system completely by pressing the Menu button. Folders brings up a page in which file folders that can be selected, created, deleted, or renamed. One folder is always present. It has the name NIKON, and you can create many more, each with an up-to-five-character alphanumeric name. Choose Options to see the next menus; New, Rename, and Delete. New lets you create a new folder and scroll to spell out its five-letter name. Rename modifies the name of any folder except the NIKON folder. Delete lets you eliminate a folder and all its contents. Monitor Options leads to a sub-menu with controls for brightness and hue adjustment of the color LCD monitor. Brightness may be increased or decreased by two steps in each direction. The Hue control is adjustable upwards and downward by five steps each. Upwards makes the monitor look more magenta. Downwards adjusts towards more green. i The center setting seems to be quite fine, right from the factory. Shutter Sound is the control which turns on the beep that signals when a shot is made. If this is off, the camera is so quiet that you wont know it shot the picture. Neither will your subject. Auto Off opens a sub-menu with choices for how long the camera stays awake before shutting itself off to save batteries. The choices are 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, and 30 minutes. Power up from sleep mode will preserve all your choices and will happen in just two seconds, so you may wish to keep the setting on 30 seconds or 1 minute. As you carry the camera in your hand, learn to touch the shutter button the instant you see anything interesting that might become photo material. Before you can position the camera to your eye, it will be ready.

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Seq. Numbers sets the frame numbering scheme with each freshly formatted CompactFlash card to start from 0001 or to continue where you left off. By setting this to Seq. Numbers On, the continuity of frame numbers continues from card to card and from folder to folder. It tracks your shots like the odometer in a car. With it Off, the numbers in each new folder start from 0001. Reset can be used in any folder to start the number sequence from the lowest numbered exposure available in any folder anywhere on the card. Note: If you should pull a card out and put in a partly filled card, the camera will dutifully keep the numbers increasing on that card starting with the next frame number that it remembers shooting, not the next in the cards existing sequence unless the cards preexisting number is higher. The camera will never start numbering images on a card lower than the highest shot number it detects already on the card. But you can have large jumps in the numbers on a given card if you swap them in and out of the camera while the Seq. Numbers mode is on. Card Format is the control that erases all previous image data. Click right, click down, click right again, and formatting begins. Instantly the card is refreshed for a full load of new images.

! WARNING: Formatting the CompactFlash card obliterates any images stored on the card. Only do this if you are sure that you have downloaded every image you want into your computer.
Date is really time and date. Here you set the cameras internal clock and calendar. This information is stored with every shot you make. When you examine images in Play mode, described later, you can see exactly when each shot was made, right down to the minute. i The clock is quite accurate. If you set it every month it may drift by only a fraction of a minute between settings.

THINGS YOU CANT DO IN AUTO MODE.

While AUTO mode is quick and simplified, many of the things the Nikon 990 will do just arent available through it.
You cant manually focus. You cant automatically bracket exposures. You cant set the white balance to specific sources or manually white balance the image. You cant change the light meter type. You cant adjust the speedlight brightness. You cant change the ISO sensitivity of the camera. You cant use special features like BSS or Image Adjustment You cant set the exposure manually.

For things like this, you must use MANUAL MODE.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Manual Mode
EXPOSURE ELEMENTS
In Manual mode, you have control over everything. The exposure triumvirate of aperture, shutter, and ISO are each available for modification. You can set the camera up to prioritize shutter or iris, or you can handle everything manually. You can freeze the exposure for panoramic shooting and even lock the iris setting, so you can zoom while using external flash and have the exact same exposure at any zoom setting. The two Func buttons can become shortcuts to other functions.

ISO HAPPY

In Manual mode, after youve determined the size and compression of the image, one more exposure variable remains: Sensitivity. The sensitivity of the image chip is expressed as its ISO number, and manual mode allows you to selectISO 100, 200, or 400. To change, ISO hold down the center button under the monitor and rotate the Command Dial. On both the color monitor and camera top LCD data panel, the ISO information will be displayed for easy reference, although it disappears from the LCD when you let go of the button. When lighting is no problem, ISO ISO 100 is the choice you would most like for outdoor, close flash, and general bright 100 is the best choice. environment shooting. Its useful at 1/30 @ f/2.5, the largest aperture the zoom lens can achieve in its widest setting. i A brightly lit office area with a ceiling full of fluorescent fixtures provides about this much illumination. Anything darker than this will need some sensitivity helper. ISO 200 lets you work with half as much light. Use this if you need just a little extra sensitivity, to avoid longer shutter speeds, or to add to camera stability. ISO 200 causes the internal circuitry of the camera to amplify the image from the chip by double. A little noise creeps into the image and looks like minor film grain. ISO 400 permits you to work in 1/4 of the light of ISO 100. Images are noisier, and this gives the shot more of a grainy look. It isnt truly bad, but it isnt the best. i B&W images made at ISO 400 begin to take on a documentary edginess feeling. ISO 400 for indoor shots and highspeed B&W film style images. (Extra The grain is higher, but the effect is appealing. grain added for effect.) Auto ISO adjusts the sensitivity of the camera without consulting you. Whatever it feels is right for the conditions at hand, it will serve up in sensitivity. The only disadvantage is that you will not know what the noise level is. i ISO 800, ISO 1600, and ISO 2000 + images can be captured with the 990 with some compromises and restrictions. The images will not look correct in the camera and will need to be revived in Photoshop. Shooting at ISO 400 with an EV 1.0 compensation gives you ISO 800 equivalent exposure. Similarly, you could shoot at EV 1.3 and acheive ISO 1000, etc. At EV 2.0 the exposure is equivalent to ISO 1600. At EV 2.3 ~ 2.6, achieved in full manual exposure (discussed later) you are Before and after. This image was making exposures appropriate to ISO 2000 ~ 2600. exposed at ISO 2000. A Photoshop Lighten Image has the effect of capturing a lighter gamma image without chang- iNovaFX filter brought it back to life. ing the ISO/shutter speed/f-stop combination. It doesnt help with the shutter time, but it will capture a more useful image in darker situations. While these high ISO images will initially look much too dark to make credible pictures, Photoshop techniques found in the next chapter will permit you to brighten them up to a very effective degree.

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PRIORITY MODES

Exposure is a balance of sensitivity, shutter speed, and aperture. Linking any two, or all three together can produce very accurate exposures. The Nikon 990 does this in three different ways, then gives you the tools to perform the exposure manually as well. To select among them, hold down the Mode button and turn the Command Dial. The large capital letter icon at the lower left corner of both the monitor and LCD windows will change from P (Program) to S (Shutter Priority) to A (Aperture Priority) to M (Manual) and loop back to P. i In the Menu system Setup > Controls > Memorize options, you can inform the camera to power-up with your last priority, or to always start in Program mode.

PROGRAM PRIORITY

Program exposure mode is the easiest to use. Intelligent assumptions are being made about which shutter speed and aperture combination is best for the current lighting conditions. If ISO is set to Auto, then Program mode will manipulate this factor as well. Flexible Program exposure mode adds versatility. It gives you control over the way the balance of shutter speed and aperture relate. To enter this mode, first select Program, then simply rotate the Command Dial. The P icon becomes a P*. As the Command Dial clicks, the shutter and aperture numbers change, signifying that the exposure is being kept constant, but the shutter speed and iris are adjusting in synchronization with each other. i Each click is making a 1/3 f-stop jump and correcting with a 1/3-stop shutter adjustment. Since shutter adjustments dont show number changes this small on the monitor screen, you will have to take it on faith at first. An exposure of 1/2 second at f/5.6 is equal to 1/4 second at f/4.0, for instance, and Flexible Program mode will move between them in 1/3 EV increments. i Effectively, you are crossing interactively from shutter priority to aperture priority as you move from one extreme to the other.

SHUTTER SPEED PRIORITY

Shutter Priority mode is selected by holding the Mode button (Func 1) down while turning the Command Dial to S. After you release the Mode button, shutter speed is changed by turning the Command Dial. Each click takes you one full stop up or down in shutter speed, and the setting shows on the bottom of the monitor screen if the graphic overlay is active. In Shutter Priority mode, the shutter speed is prevented from changing in response to a change of light. Exposure is dependent on aperture alone at the chosen ISO. But if the ISO setting is Auto, a combination of both aperture and ISO sensitivity will adjust for the correct exposure. Shutter speed on the Nikon 990 ranges from 8 seconds to 1/1000 of a second.

APERTURE

The lens on the Nikon 990 has a continuous iris that starts at f/2.5 in wide angle evolving to f/4.0 in telephoto zoom setting. Most zoom lenses these days have this sort of changing-aperture-over-zoom strategy. It allows lens designers to reduce the size of the front element and make the physical qualities of the lens smaller and lighter. Similarly, the smallest iris opening is f/7.0 at wide angle and f/11.1 at the full-zoom tele position. The CP990 allows you to lock in a specific aperture and have automated manipulation of the shutter speed become the variable for an exposure. Aperture Priority is a special mode that lets you specify the size of the iris in the lens, forcing the camera to achieve the proper exposure by changing shutter speed and/or ISO. Access it by holding down the Mode button while turning the Command Dial. Stop when the A is showing. After releasing the Mode button, the Command dial becomes the link to the actual f-stop in 1/3-stop increments.

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MANUAL

The Nikon Coolpix 990 is the first compact digital camera to have a completely manual exposure mode. The good news is that you get to drive everything. The bad news is that you must drive everything. Complete control over ISO, iris, and shutter speed is available, and if you forget a setting your image probably wont survive. Manual exposure mode is achieved by pressing and holding the Mode button down while turning the Command Dial until M shows on the monitor and LCD panels. Immediately a graphic exposure meter appears on the monitor, and flashing numbers appear in the lower right corner of the LCD data screen. The numbers are in the format of 2, -1, 0, +1, +2, and these stand for full f-stops of over- and underexposure to help you estimate the appropriate exposure. The monitor graphic shows a large center box with smaller boxes to the left and right that fill up indicating over- and underexposure in a range of +/- 2 f-stops in 1/3 stop increments. i The camera meter considers correct exposure to be 0, at which point only the middle box is filled. As you select or modify a choice, the graphic and LCD number appear for about eight seconds then politely go away. At this point, the LCD screen flashing number is replaced by a non-flashing indicator of how many shots you have remaining in the CF card. Using manual mode allows one to set fixed criteria and change external factors in pursuit of the shot. Lighting can be adjusted until it looks right. ISO can be adjusted to achieve the best exposure. Over-the-lens filtration can be adjusted to achieve the look you want. Panoramic images can be shot with successive frames made at identical exposures. Tests of lighting and exposure can be made for large format film cameras or cine cameras with precise metrics. i The Nikon 990 is one of the worlds most accurate exposure meters, and, of course, it can keep a record of all it surveys. If an ISO 100, f/8.0, 1/60 sec exposure looks correct from the 990, an equivalent exposure on your 8 x 10 film or movie camera will produce a very comparable shot. i Testing will show advanced photographers how close these cameras match to their film results. i The numbers in the LCD window show you an amazing +/- 9 stop range. By intentionally setting this to 3, you will force the camera to make exposures appropriate to ISO 3200! This is just about the rescue limit for underexposures but may be useful in extreme situations. Setting the iris and shutter speed is similar to setting them in Aperture and Shutter priority modes, except here the Mode button toggles between the two, changing their color a bit. The Command Dial sets the value. i If you have difficulty seeing which one is active, try this work-around: Click the Command Dial back and forth, and look for the number that changed. If no change is obvious, cycle the Mode button and try again. In practice, set ISO and White Balance first, shutter speed next, and f-stop last. Of these, only the f-stop is capable of 1/3 stop accuracy. Bulb exposures last as long as the shutter button is held down. Want to capture a scene lit by starlight alone? This would be the way to do it. First you will need a tripod, and then you will need a way to hold the shutter open for an extended period of time. A number of cable release devices are available, and Nikon has a wired remote electronic release called the MC-EU1. A later section lists more remote release options. i The noise in a long exposure can appear to ruin the shot. When shooting with Bulb, or any exposure longer than 1/2 second, capture a flaw frame at the same time. Youll need it. i A flaw frame is a shot made with the same shutter speed just before or after the long exposure with the lens cap on the camera. It is an image of the noise without the

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Slice of corresponding flaw frame

Fixed image slice

4-second exposure with noise. (detail)

4-second exposure of noise alone. (Flaw frame)

Image repaired using flaw frame.

Sometimes you want low ISO plus long exposures for relatively grain-free night shots. When the exposure is 1/2 sec or longer, capture a flaw frame as you finish your shot. It should be at identical shutter speed with the lens cap in place. A whole stable of iNovaFX filters exists to rescue long exposure shots using their flaw frames.

image added. Using this flaw frame in Photoshop can bring back most of the image from a very noisy shot made in extreme low light. The specific method and CD tools to do this are discussed in the How Do I section in Chapter 4 and in Chapter 9, iNovaFX Filter Operation. i Much of the noise in long exposures is from the warmth of the camera. Letting a camera cool down to air temperature for 20 minutes on a cool evening will greatly reduce the thermal noise. Forcing the temperature change could be harmful, or fog the optics. In other words, dont chill it in a refrigerator.

MANUAL FLASH MODE i The choices for flash in Manual mode are identical to the choices of flash in Auto mode. But Manual

mode requires you to be aware of your white balance when using the camera or external speedlight. When the camera triggers the flash, the color of the light is quite blue, similar to daylight. If your white balance setting is anything except Auto White Balance, the color of the flash may not be what you expect. If the white balance is set to Incandescent, the color of the flash will appear quite blue in your shot.

EV EXPOSURE COMPENSATION

Exposure Value +/- adjusts the meter up and down. Press the EV button on top of the camera, and turn the Command Dial. EV adjustments from 2.0 to +2.0 are achieved in 1/3 stop increments. i Note that EV adjustments here are not linked to the flash sensor, so changes made here wont affect the brightness of the cameras built-in flash unit. Thats done in the flash menu Speedlight Opt. > Variable Power on Menu Page 2. i The EV setting you make here can be memorized in the menu system on the Settings page > Controls > Memorize > +/- item.

MANUAL FOCUS

The Nikon CP990 has an extensive manual focus system as well as the auto focus system. In the manual focus system, you can set the focus from 0.33 feet (4 inches or 0.1m) to infinity in 42 steps, at the widest zoom setting, and for most of the zoom range. To perform manual focus, hold down the left-most button under the monitor screen while turning the Command Dial. i If you dont turn the Command Dial, the camera will assume you are setting the Infinity > Close Focus > Self-timer function, and upon releasing the button, the camera will advance one of these modes. You must make both gestures. i In full-tele zoom, the minimum distance for manual focus rises to 0.63 feet (7.5 inches or 0.19m). If you back off from full telephoto zoom, the lower focus minimum is quickly available. By backing off from full zoom the lens rapidly acquires closer focus. At 22.4mm (out of 23.4mm maximum zoom) the lens will focus to 0.33 ft, capturing a field of view just inside the width of a 35mm slide.

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As long as the 0.33 ft or 0.10m number displays as white, that focus can be achieved. If it shows up in dark red lettering, the distance cannot be achieved. Below 0.33 feet (0.1m) manual focusing continues for 8 more increments down to 0.06 feet (just 5/8 inch or 0.02m; 2cm)! Now the numbers on the monitor appear deep red except when the zoom setting is at the optimum spot for super close focusing at the chosen zoom setting.. At a special region in the middle of the zoom range, the closest focus numbers appear white. This close range extends from 11.8mm to 16mm of the full zoom.

FOCUS AND SELF-TIMER OPTIONS

Infinity lock, macro close focusing, and self-timer functions work in Manual mode exactly the way they do in Auto mode. The lower-left button under the monitor screen selects each function. i If the self-timer is selected, and you wish to use manual focus, hold the Self-Timer button down while rotating the Command Dial. Manual focus numbers will appear without disengaging the self-timer.

MONITOR SETTINGS

The Monitor button on the back of the camera lets you conserve power by turning the monitor on and off. It also turns the graphic overlay on and off so you can shoot while staring at a data-free image, if you wish. The sequence is Data on > Data off > Monitor off. The menu system has options that also control how the monitor behaves, but if you want to change the monitor status while you shoot, this button will override menu choices until the camera is turned off or goes to sleep.

Manual Menus
From this point forward into the complexities of the Nikon 990, the menu system is the key to accessing features and choices. Most of the things here are qualities, behaviors and/or setups that affect your photos but play a subtler role in their creation. To open the menu system, press the menu button. The live image from the lens is overlaid with the first page of the menu, and the flat Multi-Selector becomes the device to steer you through the many choices you will find. Options available are tinted blue. Current selections are highlighted in orange. As a general rule, you are scrolling down to the topic you want, immediately jumping to the right to open the options relating to the topic, scrolling down through these options, selecting one, and scrolling right again. Most of the time this last act makes the selection and steers you back to the menu page list. In some menus the cycle may have one more screen full of choices. Clicks to the left or right will ratify the current highlighted selection and take you back towards your starting place. A few choices are refined by turning the Command Dial. When it is available to create a selection, a Command Dial icon will appear on the page indicating its available use.

picture is coming together in front of you, you can immediately start taking pictures. A half-press of the shutter release will clear the menu away, display the picture and begin the exposure sequence. All currently selected choices will be applied to the image. After the shot, the menu will return to where you left it. New menu choices can be immediately made for the next shot.

i Note: If at any time that you are in the menu system a

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THE SHOOTING MENUS: MENU PAGE 1

The first page gives you most of your high priority features in one quick listing. Clustered here are all the choices you must make to shoot. The other two menu pages deal with more esoteric issues. Menu Page 2 has options for shooting that you will access less frequently, and Menu Page three has settings for things you usually set once in a long while, like the internal clock. On Page 1 you will find White Balance Metering Continuous mode BSS Lens Selector Image Adjustment Sharpness options Click down to the subject you wish to select, click right to open its detail window, click up or down to the detail you desire, and click right to lock it in, or click left to rejoin the subject list so you can make more adjustments. Any highlighted decision you ratify by clicking left or right is added to the cumulative choices youre making. this assures that in a menu detail representing a series of choices, something is unambiguously set. i If the camera goes to sleep while the menu is open, the camera reawakens without the menu in place. The menu will stay on for three full minutes after you press the last key, button, or switch before going to sleep on its own. To get out of Menu mode, press the Menu button again until the screen returns to the shooting graphics. If you are quitting from Page 1, this will take two pokes of the Menu button and can lead to confusion if you only press the button once. i Two fast presses of the Menu button will clear the menu completely without bringing the menu back, and this works from any page. Practice always closing the menu by poking the button twice.

WHITE BALANCE

This is the first topic on Menu Page 1 and a frequently accessed consideration. While you may get good results in Auto White Balance mode, it is not the ultimate choice. This camera will shoot in any color of light from gold candle light to the blue-white sunlight at the top of Mount Everest at noon. It achieves this astonishing range by adjusting its Red, Green, and Blue sensors in three different ways. Automatically, by making an estimate of the light; algorithmically, by named factory settings for different light sources. or by being told by you what the light looks like. The choices are Auto White Balance Preset Fine (meaning sunlight) Incandescent Fluorescent Cloudy Speedlight Auto White Balance is achieved by the camera in a roundabout way. It is looking at the world through a series of assumptions. The camera can only assume that the world in front of it is normal, composed of a normal distribution of colors that presumably add up to neutral gray. It estimates the right color temperature of the scene by implementing a best guess at the moment of exposure. It can be misled. If you are filling the screen with a yellow leaf at that moment, it will assume that the world in front of it is yellow, perhaps incandescent, and it will try to compensate for the perceived yellow.

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While the Auto White Balance can be fooled, it most often gets the picture quite correct. Auto White Balance divides the image into 256 zones, the way the matrix exposure meter system does. With 256 areas of color to consider, it can look for statistically abundant areas that make sense, and contiguous areas that can be dismissed, while estimating the white balance. A number of bright red matrix sensors can be dismissed when the camera notices that the other sensors have no large red component. It is an intelligent system that adapts to many different lighting regimes. The symetrical image, right, shows the color matrix meter on its left. It is only concerned with hue and intensity. (The colors here are exaggerated The color matrix system sees only color (left). to emphasize the matrix effect.) By being independent from luminance (right) it White Balance Preset is the most accurate type of white balance. But it can decide the appropriate automatic white balance more accurately. takes extra effort on your part to achieve that precision. With this option, you get to show the camera exactly what the light looks like, and the camera will faithfully follow your instructions and shoot all subsequent images exactly to that standard. i Here is how you teach the camera what the light looks like: Have a piece of white paper handy. (A white or light gray, colorless business card will do.) Put it in the light you wish to shoot in. Press the Menu button to open Menu Page 1. Select White Balance Preset. One click right opens the sensor window. (A small square of image appears in the middle of the screen.) The zoom lens moves to telephoto. (You can change the zoom setting if you wish.) You now see two choices, Cancel or Measure. Point the camera at the white piece of paper. (Sometimes you have to hold the paper up near the lens to make sure the camera sees only it.) It does not need to be in focus. Choose Measure, and click to the right to confirm. The camera regards the piece of paper for a moment, then returns to its normal operation. It even puts the zoom lens back where it found it. The image on the monitor screen will probably look different from the way it did before you made the white balance, but it might not look perfect. i In live mode, the monitor never looks exactly the way it does in playback. To gain confidence that the white balance is correct, shoot a test shot that includes the white paper, and the resulting image on the monitor will prove how good the white balance has become. Fine (Sunny) white balance is for bright daylight. This setting was created at the factory to give the best results in direct sun. Use it for any full sun or for shots you would make with daylight film. i Sunsets look particularly good with Fine white balance chosen. The warmth and richness of the color are preserved by this setting. When you move into shady areas in midday, the cool blue color of the sky or back-lit clouds can cause the image to look too blue, just as it would on daylight film. Even though you are shooting on a sunny day, shooting in shaded areas may benefit from added warmth.

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Nikon has given this factory setting some extra flexibility. When you choose Fine, the Command Dial icon sits at the right end of the orange highlight line. Turning the Command Dial at this moment lets you warm or cool the factory setting by the numbers. i The three positive clicks make the shot look gradually cooler, and the three negative clicks make it progressively warmer. Incandescent white balance is tuned to bright quartz lamp color temperature, 3,200 Kelvin. Most home lighting is warmer and will give a redder or golder look to shots made with this setting. Thats not a bad thing, after all. If you are indoors and you want accurate color, the White Balance Preset selection will give it to you, but if you want a room to look very much the way it does to your eyes, the Incandescent setting will bring the natural warmth into the shot. If the lighting you are shooting in is almost all incandescent bulbs, (the hot ones with filaments in them) this setting is the best first choice. The Command Dial can warm or cool this factory setting as well. Fluorescent white balance is guessing that your fluorescent bulbs are one of the three most popular fluorescent tube colors. Fluorescent lights have spectral distributions that are incomplete. A manual white balance may give you much better results. Using the Command Dial here allows you to select FL1, FL2, and FL3, the three most common fluorescent balances. Experimentation has shown that FL2 matches to bulbs labled Cool White. Cloudy white balance is a good one for overcast days. Because your eyes adapt to color balance situations almost instantly, you wont see how much bluer the world is under cloudy skies. The camera would if it were set to Sunny white balance. Set it on Cloudy, and colors will appear to be more natural. i When you are shooting near, but not in directly sunlit areas, the color in the shade is often much cooler and bluer than you would wish, and setting the camera on Cloudy is a good choice to quickly add a small extra bit of warmth. The Command Dial will allow warming or cooling of this factory setting, too. Speedlight (Flash) white balance is the right setting for electronic flash pictures. External flash units are best served by this setting as well. Since the color temperature of various flash units can show color differences, it is good to test them by shooting a neutral gray or plain white surface before doing critical work. In general, flash units are cooler (bluer) than direct sun. By using this setting you can give your daylight shots a moderately warm look even when you are not using flash. As with the other factory settings, you may control the relative cool or warm result by simply turning the Command Dial to positive (cooler) or negative (warmer) numbers.

METER SELECTION

The second item down Menu Page 1 is the Metering selector. Four choices immediately appear, Matrix Spot Center-Weighted Spot AF Area Matrix metering is the sophisticated, multi-element meter that samples 256 parts of the picture. In a way, it breaks the image into 256 small metered areas, then intelligently analyzes the shot for highlights vs. bright areas, shadows vs. dark objects, contiguous coverage vs. statistical sampling, and arrives at a very educated guess. i It works better than many lighting directors could in five minutes of spot meter sampling and paper computation. This meter is far and away the best single meter in the camera, but it isnt the one you want for every shot. Just most of them.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Spot metering is a very narrow area meter. When this meter type is chosen, a small rectangle appears in the middle of the shot. Everything inside this box is sampled, anything immediately outside it is completely ignored. When you have a person standing indoors in front of a picture window, a Matrix meter shot might make them look like a silhouette. By using the spot meter, you can press the shutter release half-way while holding the square over the persons face or body, and lock in the exposure. Then, you can reframe the shot the way you wish, and press the shutter the rest of the way to make the exposure. The image behind your subject may be way overexposed, but your subject will be well exposed, and details will be normally bright. Similarly, you can pick the bright part of a subject against a dark environment, and get the exposure right. This is preferred for shooting actors on a theater stage or a flower against a dark shadow background. Center-Weighted metering gives results similar to those of a hand-held meter. It reads its strongest sample from the center half of the image and is influenced by objects less towards the corners. It is very good for portraits where the facial tones are concentrated in the center of the shot. It works well as a general purpose meter, too, and you should take the time to use it to see how you like the way it makes readings. Spot AF Area selection is a special spot meter that follows the spot focus system described on Menu Page 2 under Focus > AF Area Mode. With this selected, both the small area of focus and area of exposure sensitivity use the same five small zones of the image to achieve their functions. This causes the spot meter to exactly correspond to the zone chosen in the Auto Focus Options menu and permits coordinated exposure and focus to occur.

CONTINUOUS IMAGES, THE DIGITAL MOTOR DRIVE

Continuous Mode is the third choice on Menu Page 1. Your choices here are to shoot Single Continuous (full frame) Multi-Shot 16 VGA Sequence Ultra HS Movie Mode As you explore each of these different options, you will quickly realize how well matched the Nikon 990 is to todays imaging needs. With the widespread connection of the Internet to personal computers, the bridge from digital images to world wide distribution has been made. The Nikon 990 makes images that are of far higher quality than the Internet needs, and the two movie modes capture motion images at high frame rates which can be easily exchanged over the Internet. Single image mode is the choice you will probably use most often. The 990 behaves like a still camera, shooting one picture per beep. The shots can be any of the four sizes of Full, VGA, XGA, or 3:2, and the compression you store them with can be any of three levels, from completely undetectable to well compressed. This mode is the traditional still camera equivalent, but the Nikon 990 has much more available. i Unless you are using the camera flash, you can shoot an image every second or two with a series of quick shutter presses. Even when the camera seems to be processing the previous image, dont feel like you need it to clear the monitor screen before the next shot can be taken. The camera keeps taking pictures until its internal memory is temporarily full. As soon as the internal memory has enough room for another image, you can take one. Continuous mode is similar to the effect of having a still camera with a continuous motor drive. As you hold down the shutter button, the camera takes a string of images as fast as it can until the internal memory of the camera fills up. Keeping the shutter button pressed after the internal buffer is full has the effect of encouraging the camera to keep shooting. It will, the instant it has saved an image, collect another. The frame rate drops to about one shot every two seconds, but it keeps shooting.

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Here are the results of actually testing the camera for capacity. The subject was the contents of my writing desk, so your results may vary. I would expect more complex images to eat up more memory space and reduce the numbers shown here.

Number of Continuous mode images held by the internal memory before the camera will slow to transfer them to the CF card.

SIZE OF IMAGE
Full XGA 2048 x 1536 1024 x 768

FINE
3~4 13~17

NORMAL
~6 ~23

BASIC
~9 ~41

VGA

640 x 480

25~31

~54

~72

Multi-Shot 16 mode is an interesting way of making a picture for printing that is more like a movie. Weve all seen sequences of stills that show motion progressing from frame to frame, and the Nikon 990 has this ability built in. The camera creates a single 2048 x 1536 image from 16 exposures that are shot in sequence over eight seconds at two shots per second. VGA Sequence mode is nearly identical to shooting with Continuous mode at VGA size, except that it makes the choices for you quickly. It shoots in Normal compression and achieves a maximum of about 55 frames at two frames per second. Each frame is numbered sequentially and can be used for TV resolution (NTSC) special effects with programs that expect sequences of frames, like Adobe AfterEffects or Apples QuickTime Pro. Ultra High-Speed mode shoots pictures that are half the size of an NTSC video frame in what is called QVGA format, but it does this at 30 frames per second for a maximum of 80 frames. Not quite three seconds. Digital zoom is disabled. The 320 x 240-pixel frames are low-resolution but adequate for some types of motion analysis. Files shot this way take up about 3.5 megabytes. Once you press the shutter, the entire 80-frame shot will be gathered as separate frames and will be stored in a special numbered folder on the CF card. You can review them in the camera one frame at a time, however, but to see them in animation, you must translate them into an animation program as a sequence of frames, and view them on your computer. Not expeditious. i Apple Computers low cost QuickTime Pro utility for both Macintosh and Windows platforms facilitates translating these frames into high fidelity motion results. Image quality is low, and compression artifacts are quite strong. i After capturing a sequence, the camera will take over thirty seconds (excuse me!) to write the data to the CompactFlash card. Any following shot will have to wait until this is finished. This is not a movie camera, just a high-frame-rate movie option. The motion capture is made without audio, and exposure duration is 1/30 sec or faster. QVGA frames are one-quarter i Note: The image that is stored is created from the image that shows on the camera video resolution. monitor. If you have Focus Confirmation on, the enhancing effect will be captured into the movie! Images will appear quite over-enhanced. Scenes will look better if this option is switched off. Movie mode is very much like the Ultra High-Speed motion picture mode, except that it is designed to shoot images for computer and Internet situations. Images from this feature are also QVGA, 320 x 240 pixels, half the height and width of a TV picture, and are sharp and photographic. The big difference in Movie mode is that the frame rate is 15 frames per second, and the recording time is a whopping 40-second maximum per shot, and you can play it back easily, in motion, on your camera.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

A full length scene will consume about 12 megabytes, and it will play immediately in the camera or easily on many computers equipped with QuickTime. The file appears on your computer in the .MOV format which is the standard for QuickTime movies that play on both Macintosh and Windows platforms. One shutter press starts the movie recording; a second press stops it. A counter on the monitor shows how many seconds remain before the movie will stop recording

BSS

What if you had a camera that worked hard to only give you clear, sharp pictures? That is the premise behind the BSS feature, the fourth choice on Menu Page 1. BSS is the Best Shot Selector. As you shoot, hold the shutter button down. The camera will collect up to ten pictures in the same way it would for Continuous shots, but the camera looks at each image for clues about their sharpness, selects one that seems to be the best, and throws away the others. Exactly how it does this is a guarded secret known only to the Nikon Engineers, but the best minds outside of Nikon point to an easy way to find sharpness in a string of similar shots: file size. Compression at any level attempts to reduce the file size of an image. Detail in an image causes the compressed image to stay larger. Blurry images are generally smaller than well focused, stable images because camera or subject motion will compromise areas of contrast in the shot. When faced with the need to capture a picture hand held at 1/4 or 1/8 or 1/15, BSS gives you a chance to achieve a sharper image. Practice with it.

Author Michael Crichton giving a speech at UCLA. Long tele plus BSS captured this gesture ignoring more animated, blurred frames.

LENS CONVERTER SELECTION

The next and fifth selection on Menu Page 1 allows you to select settings that make choices for you when you use the lens converters. Selections are for Normal (no converter) Wide Adapter Telephoto 1 Telephoto 2 Fisheye 1 Fisheye 2. Each one of these puts a special icon identifying your choice on the monitor screen. Normal = 3:1 Zoom? For the record, the lens on the 990 numerically covers the range from 8.2 to 23.4mm. This is what is reported by the camera on its Play mode EXIF data screens. The range is nominally 3:1 but is precisely 2.854:1 if these recorded numbers are accurate. Anything other than Normal imposes limits. i Testing the lens reveals that the 3:1 zoom ratio is justified. The field of view from tele to wide is almost a perfect 3:1 as measured on a straight object like a yardstick placed in the field of view. Flash Disabled. All converter settings disable the internal and external flash units. i If you wish to use any flash unit (a.k.a. speedlight, strobe, built-in, 62-70or electronic flash) with a converter lens, you must manually zoom to the appropriate zoom setting while the converter is on the camera. i Manual Focus distances with all lens converters are no longer the distances presented on the screen. The converter magnifies or shrinks the marked distances as well. Wide Adapter lens selection sets the camera up in the most logical way to facilitate the use of the WC-E24 and WC-E63 wide angle adapters. With this setting selected, the camera will awaken in the widest zoom position, the camera and external flash will be turned off, and camera zoom controls will operate as usual.

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Telephoto 1 lens selection sets the camera up for the 2x tele adapter, the TC-E2. The camera will awaken at the full-tele zoom position with all flashes disabled, and the zoom controls will only zoom back about 2:1. You cant zoom back farther than the coverage angle of the TC-E2. Telephoto 2 lens selection sets the camera up for the 3x tele adapter, the TC-E3ED. The camera will awaken at the full-tele zoom position with all flashes disabled, and the zoom control will only zoom back far enough to stay within the adapters coverage, slightly less than for the TC-E2. The TC-E3ED still covers from about 240 to 345mm compared to a 35mm film camera telephoto lens. Fisheye 1 lens selection sets the camera up for the fullest circular fisheye image. The zoom lens moves to a special extra-wide, 7.7mm (!) setting, the meter switches to Center-Weighted, and the zoom controls are frozen. If you wish to zoom while using the fisheye adapter, you will have to do so without using this setting. i Yes, you can use this mode to get a little bit wider without the fisheye converter on the camera. i In the fisheye modes, the camera is locked at infinity with the flash off, but the self-timer still operates. Infinity+Self Timer are joined. Usually the self-timer function is only available with macro focus mode. Fisheye 2 lens selection sets the camera up for a frame filling fisheye image. The zoom lens now moves to a specific spot in the zoom range (15.3mm) that allows the circular fisheye image to fill the frame all the way out to the corners. The zoom controls are frozen, and metering is anything you set separately. Interestingly, the zoom setting here perfectly coincides with the best zoom position for macro close ups.

LENS SETTINGS AND THEIR ACTUAL IMPLICATIONS

SETTING
Wide

NIKON STATED USE


For WC-E24 & WC-E63 converters 24mm > 72mm equivalent

ACTUAL CHARACTERISTICS
Lens zooms freely over its full range. Starts widest at 8.2mm. All flashes off. Lens zooms freely from 13 > 23.4mm. Starts at full tele. All flashes off. Lens zooms freely from 17.5 > 23.4mm. Starts at full tele. All flashes off. Starts at widest zoom, 7.7mm! All flashes off. Meter changes to Center-Weighted.

Tele 2

For TC-E2 converter 120mm 230mm equivalent

Tele 3

For TC-E3ED converter 240mm > 345mm equivalent

Fisheye 1

For FC-E8 converter

Fisheye 2

For FC-E8 converter

Lens locks at 15.3mm. The macro point. No zoom available. All flashes off.

Other Uses of Lens Settings. What happens when you put a fisheye converter on the camera and use a wide converter setting? You get a zoom fisheye. The camera doesnt need you to set to the converter; its just a convenience. The Tele lens settings can be used with the fisheye, for instance. i Tele 3 zooms to 17.5mm (81mm equivalent), about 2/3 of the zoom range at its widest. At this setting, the fisheye converter is slightly less wide than it is at Fisheye 2, and the corners are sharper. i At Tele 2 setting the zoom is confined to 13mm (60mm equivalent) at the widest, and the fisheye converter will show a very small triangle of converter vignette in the corners of the shot. But, only if you shoot the full frame. When the camera is in 3:2 image size, the fisheye converter now fills the entire frame making a picture with a 180 corner to corner field of view! i Fisheye 2 lens setting is also useful with no adapter at all, when you want to move the lens to a locked intermediate position. The lens comes to rest right at the macro sweet spot, ready for your next ultra close-up. Barrel distortion at this point is virtually zero.

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TONE COMPENSATION

The sixth item down the list on Menu Page 1 is an interesting group of options that affect the way the dynamic range is arranged. Choices are Auto Normal More Contrast Less Contrast Lighten Image Darken Image B&W i You can only choose one of these Tone Compensation controls at a time. Auto image adjustment allows the camera to dynamically change the brightness and contrast qualities of the image based on what the 256-element Matrix Meter sensor thinks of the shot. When the camera thinks the shot is too contrasty or too low in contrast, it will automatically adjust its dynamics. With this control on, the Nikon CP990 is in charge of the image in an extremely positive way. Normal locks the image dynamics at a standard setting and maintains that relationship no matter what the lighting or contrast of the subject. More/Less Contrast are two choices that affect the overall contrast of the image. With More/Less Contrast, you are manipulating the range from brightest to darkest areas of the picture by adjusting its dynamic response. The final image will still consist of 256 levels of tonality in each color channel, but with More Contrast invoked, the camera will stretch highlights upward and shadows downward at the same time. This targets a narrower slice of the middle brightness values in the original scene and stretches them to fill the full range of values in the resulting picture. You use this feature when the scene in front of you is low in contrast and you want to give it some extra snap. With Less Contrast, the opposite is happening. Now the dynamic range of brightness in the mid-tones of the scene is compressed somewhat, and noticeably more tonal detail in highlight portions of the picture is included in the final image. The shot will look a bit darker and lower contrast on your computer monitor because the middle tones have been compressed downward a bit, and you can compensate for this while shooting by giving an EV boost of +0.3 or +0.7 to the exposure. i By combining both of these adjustments, Less Contrast plus EV boost, you are effectively shooting a wider dynamic range. Lighten/Darken Image are two choices that give your photograph a brighter or less bright look. They not the same as an EV adjustment in which more or less total light is allowed to reach the image sensor. Any adjustment here will not affect exposure time or f-stop in any way, since it is a post-exposure interpretation of the image. The Lighten and Darken settings create an image that looks brighter or dimmer by lifting or lowering the middle values of the image only. Now the tonal range is being elevated or dropped enough to change the mood of the shot without stepping on its extremes. This sort of change is one of the first manipulations you would make in Photoshop with a gamma adjustment, but with this control you can apply the improvement in the camera.

Normal

Contrast +

Contrast

Brightness +

Brightness

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Black and white photography used to be the only affordable photography one could print at home. The choice here is as easy as throwing a switch. As soon as this choice is made, the monitor screen becomes black and white, and now you are seeing the scene the way it will look in a print or on the computer screen. i Proficiency in B&W photography helps one see how the graphic forms in an image add up to better compositions. Get me some focusing fluid, was a joke photographers would pull on their new assistants years ago. Here it is an option in the Nikon 990. On this page you have the ability to choose sharpness settings of Auto High Normal Low Off The purpose of this feature is to enhance the sharpness of fine detail and contrast edges of objects in the digital scene. Too much computer sharpness can introduce artifacts into a shot that cant be removed after the picture has been taken. Not enough sharpness and the shot will look soft. i Electronic sharpening is best if the camera doesnt overdo it. Better to shoot with a tiny bit less sharpening in the camera, knowing that you can add more later in your computer. Auto sharpness lets the camera decide how much sharpness to add to the scene. It is very intelligent about this and can be used for general photography without worry. With subjects that contain lots of sharp edged detail, it will reduce sharpness a bit. For shots with broad areas of low contrast, it will bring the camera sharpness up, just enough to accent detail, but not enough to cause extra noise to appear inappropriately. High sharpness causes the maximum enhancement to be applied to the scene and is very useful with subjects that are naturally low in contrast or similar in brightness. It can be used to accent subtle textures you wish to bring forward in a shot. Grain increases modestly. i Used with high ISO settings and B&W mode, this will help the image look like grainy, high speed, behind-the-scenes photojournalism. Normal sharpness is not enough to hurt an image but just enough to make it look well-sharpened. You can use this most of the time as a general setting. Low sharpness is quite mild. The artifacts of sharpening are almost nonexistent, and you probably will want to add some The area inside the hairline was shot with High Sharpness extra sharpening in Photoshop, later. Pictures shot at this setting in the camera. The larger area, right and bottom, was make very good looking prints. Grain is slightly lower than with shot with sharpening disabled. The camera performs a Normal. much better, more sophisticated sharpening than can be recovered in editing, even in Photoshop, because it does Off adds no sharpening at all. This is the virgin image, the it before compressing the image. way the camera held it before sharpening was applied. The image looks soft on your computer screen at full-size, but XGA and VGA shots made this way still look quite sharp because of the sharpness increase from down-sampling. i Since detail eats storage space in compressed images, the diminished camera sharpening represented in the Low setting results in slightly smaller files with a naturally lower artifact depth. You will probably need to add sharpness in Photoshop to these images using the Unsharp Mask filter.

SHARPNESS CONTROL

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Menu Page 2
Controls that you set less frequently are found on Menu Page 2. Here you will access controls and settings that include User Settings Exposure Options Focus Options, Zoom Options Speedlight Options Reset button

USER SETTINGS

With these selections, you can effectively set up three different cameras. Nikon thinks of this as having three different users, as if the camera were being passed among three different photographers, each of which had his or her own favorite settings. i The User Settings include everything from Menu Page 1. Each of the three cameras you set up can have all of these qualities modified to your taste: White Balance Meter Type Motor Drive Mode BSS Lens Type Image Adjustment Sharpening Number one, of the three settings, is the one you use most of the time, changing things as needed. The two other settings can be more targeted.

Interesting setups might include


SETTING
White Balance Meter Type Single / Continuous BSS Lens Type Image Adjustment Sharpening

SET 1
-NASpot AF Area Continuous Off Wide B&W High

SET 2
Fine (sunny) Center Wt Single On Normal Auto Auto

SET 3
Auto Matrix Ultra HS Movie -NAF2 mid-zoom Less Contrast Off

SET 4
FL 3 Spot Single Off Normal More Contrast Normal

A B&W, high-sharpness, continuous image-gathering, focus+spot metering camera for fast available light work. 2. A daylight-balanced, lighter-imaged, center-weighted meter, auto-sharpened, single-shot camera for casual shooting at Golden Hour. 3. An auto-color-balanced, 30-fps movie, matrix-metered, non-sharpened, contrast-reduced movie camera for quick frame-by-frame motion analysis of brief events like a golf swing. 4. A fluorescent FL3 balanced, spot-metered, single-shot, contrast-boosted, normal-sharpened camera for shots around the office. Your preferences for these settings will be strictly personal.

1.

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EXPOSURE OPTIONS

Here you can lock the exposure computer for a string of identical exposures, turn on the Auto Bracketing system, and adjust exposure compensation. AE Lock causes the camera to shoot all images at the exact same exposure and white balance. This is what you need when you shoot images for panoramic stitching, where tones and colors of frames that are blended into each other must be identical. i Remember to turn it off after the panoramic scene has been shot, or you may get strange looking follow-up images. When you turn AE Lock on, the very next shot determines the exposure and white balance for all following shots until you turn the feature off. To start a new string of exposures, you must return to this menu and choose Reset, so the next shot will determine a new exposure and white balance. If the white balance you are working with is a factory setting like Fine, Incandescent, etc., that choice will be part of what AE Lock remembers. If the camera is in Auto White Balance, the first shot will be the one that determines the white balance for all following images. Auto Bracketing makes the Nikon 990 capable of shooting a cluster of five under and over exposures so you can select the best exposure later in your computer. The exposures will be made at EV +0.7, +0.3, 0, -0.3, and -0.7, in that order. i If this is used while the camera is in Single Exposure mode, you will have to press the shutter separately for each of the five exposures. i When the camera is in Continuous mode, the bracket of exposures can be performed in a single shutter press. Simply hold the shutter down until the camera completes the five exposures. A cable release or wired remote may help. Since the camera buffer can fill with as few as three full-sized images at Fine compression, you might be tempted to achieve the string of bracketed shots in two button pushes. You can do this, or you can keep the shutter button down, letting the camera catch up with the last one or two shots. Even if the camera is in XGA or VGA image size, the continuous string of images will only be the five exposures of the bracket. i Auto Bracketing will stay active until you switch the camera off or disable the feature. Playback cycles and sleep cycles wont get rid of it. EXP. +/- can be set under Exposure Options as well. Its range is +/- 2.0 EV. This exactly mirrors the +/- Func 2 button and Command Dial combination but is duplicated here because the Func 2 button can take on other duties as we will see later. i When used in combination with Auto Bracketing the entire bracket is now centered around the EV adjustment made here. For instance, if the EXP. +/- is set to +2.0 EV, the first exposure of a bracket would be made at +2.7 EV and the last at +1.3 EV.

FOCUS OPTIONS

Focus Options include four controls AF Area Mode Auto-Focus Mode Focus Confirmation Distance Units AF Area Mode lets you select from a third menu level with Auto, Manual and Off positions. AF Auto setting permits the auto-focus target be determined by the camera. It generally hunts for the nearest object anywhere in the scene and uses that as a focus target. At half-press of the shutter, a dark red bracket appears over the subject the camera has targeted, to show you what the cameras thinking.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

back to your desired composition, and complete the shot. i This is not the mode to use when very close objects are framing a more distant object. The camera will likely focus on the nearer object. Manual AF uses the unique five-point focus locator system allowing you to specify which one of the five areas in the picture is the focus target. Top, bottom, left, right, and center brackets are superimposed over the shot on the monitor screen. Four appear white, and the active one becomes deep red. Selection is made with the Multi-Selector pad. If you have chosen one of these settings, you can tie them to the operation of the Spot meter using the Spot AF Area selection on Menu Page 1. Off turns off the focus selection process and forces the camera to target only the very center of the image for auto-focus consideration. As you look through the optical viewfinder, the marked bracket in the center of the image coincides with this area. i Focus Considerations. If you need to achieve a string of images that has to be the exact same size, for an animation sequence, for instance, the auto-focus activity might not hit the exact same spot from one shot to the next out of the over 4900 tiny increments of focus it has available. Manual focus alone will reliably index to that specific distance and preserve the exact image size. Auto-Focus Mode allows you to select between two basic modes of auto-focus action, Continuous AF and Single AF. Continuous AF selection makes the auto-focus active all the time. The camera will constantly track objects in its field of view and keep them in focus. Power consumption is low, even though focus does keep shifting and changing as you move the camera around. As you half-press the shutter to lock in the exposure and distance, you are already there, and focus lock is made in just a fraction of a second. From this point to actual exposure, the camera responds very quickly. Less than 0.15 second after pressing the shutter button all the way, the camera has initiated the exposure. Single AF forces the auto-focus to make a new selection with each press of the shutter. If you are shooting in Continuous mode, the camera does not refocus between exposures. Single focus may be more accurate, but it takes longer. Here, the camera will focus from infinity, progressively closer, until it realizes that nothing in the frame is getting any sharper, whereupon it will jump back to the focus increment it found was in best focus and release the exposure. This can take half a second for scenics or up to three seconds for macro close-ups. In macro close-up mode, the camera will assume you knew what you were asking for, and it will continue to focus closer and closer until it either finds something within a few inches from the lens, or gives up and goes back to the nearest object it found. i You can shoot distant objects while in macro close up mode, but it will take the Single AF option longer to settle in. Focus Confirmation makes use of a special graphic technique that enhances the objects on the monitor screen that are in greatest focus. The effect is extreme. If the camera is held close at a shallow angle to a textured surface like a tablecloth or rug, one can see where the focus has centered immediately. A portion of the image will appear severely over-enhanced, indicating the plane of focus. Choices are MF, On, and Off. MF sets the effect up for Manual Focus only. On turns the effect on for Manual and any auto-focus modes. Off eliminates the effect from the view screen. It is important to remember that the effect seen here is only a focus assist and does not appear on the captured image.

i If the camera has it wrong, reframe slightly and try again. Once the camera has it right, you can frame

Chapter 3B

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from the monitor signal. It alone does contain the enhancement effect of Focus Confirmation, and the extreme enhancement will be recorded into the stream of frames, if left on. Distance Units lets you select the displayed numbers for manual focus and EXIF data in the system you are most comfortable with, either feet or meters. i If you get confused you may wish to remember two rules of thumb: 10 centimeters is almost exactly four inches, and ten feet is almost exactly three meters.

i NOTE: When shooting only in Ultra HS, the 30-fps movie format, the image being captured is lifted

ZOOM OPTIONS

The camera lens is an optical lens and digital zoom lens all in the same package. Once full-telephoto has been achieved, you may wish to go further. It is also the place where you can tell the camera how you would like it to remember your zoom preference. Digital Zoom On/Off lets you cancel or activate the digital zoom feature. As you hold down the zoom control and hit the full telephoto position, the image on the monitor pauses for a second, then continues to zoom, but only if the digital zoom is active. No optical zooming is happening, but the center of the shot is growing larger. The cameras computer is enlarging the shot by enlarging fewer and fewer of the pixels in the center of the image. The range extends from 1.1 to 4.0 power. At 4.0 power, you are now looking at an image which is just the center 512 pixels across by 384 pixels high! This low resolution image wouldnt even make a good small print. So, why did Nikon put this feature in your camera? i The digital zoom is not very useful as an image magnifier for final images, but it has very useful applications while you set up the shot. To precisely focus through a telescope, microscope or long lens converter 1. Put the camera into infinity focus mode 2. Zoom to full digital zoom 3. Focus the external telescope, microscope, or converter until the image on the camera monitor seems to be as sharp as it will get 4. Zoom back until digital zoom is off 5. (Optional) Put the camera back to auto-focus 6. Take the shot i Zoom Shrink is a term to describe shooting at a smaller final size, but using the digital zoom to enlarge the subject without losing resolution. By using a half-size, XGA final image, you can digizoom up to 2X without enlarging the original camera pixels. By shooting at VGA size, the digital zoom may be used up to 3.2X without original pixel enlargement. Startup Position controls the zoom position of the lens when the camera is turned on or reawakens from sleep. The choices are obvious from their names; Last Position, Wide, or Tele are your choices. Last Position. When the camera is turned off, the zoom lens parks at an internal zoom position of about 19mm. The lens parks at this position for shock protection and internal indexing. If this were to coincide with your last position before shut down, startup would occur at its fastest. If your last position were somewhere near full wide zoom, the camera would park at the 19mm zoom position, and a little extra time would pass during the next startup cycle while the lens zoomed back to where you left it. Wide causes the camera to zoom fully wide on startup. Tele causes the camera to zoom to full telephoto on startup.

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Fixed Aperture is the option to let you tie the zoom and iris settings together so you can zoom while keeping the f-number at the same place from shot to shot. Since the zoom affects aperture, this relationship only works fully in the middle range of f-stops.

Fixed Aperture Range


ZOOM Wide Mid Tele F/2.5 X F/4.0 X X X F/7.0 X X X F/11.1 X

X = attainable = not available

i It only works in Full Manual or Aperture Priority modes.

SPEEDLIGHT OPTIONS
Variable Power. Shoot a picture with the flash. Is it too bright? Too dim? This option lets you change the brightness of a flash picture in the same way you improve the EV of a shot. The range is even the same, 2.0 EV units. What is happening inside the camera is quite a bit different from the EV adjustment, however. The camera speedlight has its sensor next to the lens, the small dark hole in the face plate. This high-speed light meter watches the reflected light coming back from the object as the flash starts to fire. When the amount of light returning from the subject matches the amount the flash system believes is appropriate, a circuit controlling the current to the flash tube shuts it off. Instantly, the tube stops emitting light, and the unused part of the energy that powers the flash is preserved. i The number you set here in EV units is passed on to the estimation circuit that controls the flash but has no effect on the metered exposure. i With the camera in Forced Flash mode, you might wish to use the camera flash as a low-level fill flash for outdoor subjects. By setting the Flash Adjustment to EV 2.0, the camera flash will be quite subtle in its impact on the picture, but it will add enough to take the edge off of deep shadows on nearby faces. Speedlight Control lets you turn off the camera speedlight, so you can use external flash units alone. With this set to Int and Ext Active, both camera and external flash units will trigger. i Flash units will synchronize at all shutter speeds. It is possible to make shots at 1/1000 sec that include flash and even the light from most slave flash models.

RESET ALL

Keep your fingers away from this control. If you accidentally reset the camera, all the choices you have made on Menu Page 1 and Menu Page 2 will go back to their factory settings. The contents of the User Settings will be reset in the one that is currently active only. Only if you get hopelessly lost while setting up the camera, is this a good way to return it to normal. NORMAL IS:
White Balance: Meter Type: Continuous: BSS: Lens: Img. Adj: Sharpness: User Set: Auto Matrix Single Off Normal Auto Auto N/A

EXPOSURE
AE Lock: Auto Brkt: Exp +/-: Off Off 0 Auto Continuous AF MF N/A

ZOOM
Digi Tele: Start Posn: Fixed Apert: On Last Position Off 0 Int & Ext Active

FOCUS
AF Area AF Mode F. Confirm: Dist. Units:

FLASH
Var. Pwr: Fl. Ctrl:

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The third page in the menu system is the Set-Up Screen full of choices you will rarely access. Here you will find sub-pages for Folders Monitor Options Controls Auto Off Seq.Numbers Card Format LED Shot Confirm Date Video Mode Language Some of these features are useful to only a handful of photographers, so dont feel like you need to master all of them. Take some time to see what they are all about, and elect to keep the ones that matter to you. Folders is an exact duplicate of the Folders feature found in Auto mode. Monitor Options duplicates the Brightness and Hue controls found in Auto mode and adds Display Mode choices. Display Mode allows you to select the way in which the Monitor screen will function. On keeps it on all the time that the camera is awake. Review Only turns the monitor off during shooting. This saves considerable battery power, but you cant see the screen and you must use the optical viewfinder. Preview Only keeps the monitor screen on but doesnt waste time showing you the picture review after it has been taken. Its chief advantage is speed. i This mode is very helpful when you want to shoot as fast as possible without having to wait for the camera to change from review to picture taking modes. Monitor Off keeps the monitor completely off through all picture taking. You can turn it on any time you wish using the Monitor button. i This mode is the very kindest to batteries since the monitor is the main user of power in On and Preview modes. Since the monitor is off, start up times are improved, and the auto-focus only activates when you half-press the shutter button. Continuous auto-focus is abandoned. Controls opens a sub-menu, Memorize, that lets you determine what the camera will remember when it is powered down. i Memorize lists things that are remembered and will survive a change of batteries. i When the camera goes to sleep it remembers where it left off. Sleep is just a way of saving power. Off is a different matter. You can determine what the camera remembers. You may want the camera to remember everything or to become a fresh new instrument ready for the challenges of the next unique shot. The choices are yours. Flash type (red-eye, off, forced, auto, or slow) Distance (infinity, macro, or manual) Mode (Program, Manual, Shutter Priority, or Aperture Priority) EV compensation (+/-; your last setting)

SET-UP SCREEN

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Func 1/2 lets you program the Func 1 and Func 2 buttons on top of the camera. You can set these to any operation on this list: Mode when held down in combination with the Command Dial steps through Program, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, and Manual modes. This is the Default setting for Func 1. Distance (infinity, macro, self-timer, or by holding the button down while operating the Command Dial, manual focus, and manual focus self-timer) Flash type and ISO (off, red-eye, forced flash, slow flash, auto flash, or by holding the button down and operating the Command Dial, changing the ISO) White Balance. By holding the button down and using the Command Dial, you scroll through the choices. The White Balance Preset can be accessed, but it will contain the setting you last made manually. Making a new white balance with this choice isnt what it does. EV +/- in combination with the Command Dial, allows you to quickly set exposure compensation over a range of +/- 2.0 EV. This is the default setting for the Func 2 button on top of the camera. Metering works with the Command Dial to select between Matrix, Spot, Center-Weighted, and AF Zone Spot meter types. Auto Off duplicates the controls found in the Auto mode menu. Choices for staying awake are 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, or 30 minutes. Seq. Numbers duplicates the controls found in the Auto mode menu. Card Format is the control that erases all previous image data. i The easiest place to access it is not here in the Manual mode menu set but in the Auto mode menu since that menu has only one page of settings and CF Card Format is two clicks up. Shutter Sound simply lets you turn the camera exposure beep on or off. If you shoot candid shots in a quiet environment, you might wish to turn it off. i There are other ways of detecting whether or not the shot has been made. The very quiet click of the internal shutter is a clue. The AF light next to the optical viewfinder blinks while the image is being stored indicating that a shot has been fired. The exposure confirmation light on the front of the camera winks after the shot has been made (see next item). The monitor blinks when an exposure has occurred. But, that fairly quiet beep is always helpful if your eyes arent on the camera. Shot Confirm Lamp sets the small light next to the lens to blink once after each shot. With this control off, nothing visible happens from the lens side. With this turned on, the light tells your subjects that the shot is finished. Date sets both the time of day and day of the year. Video Mode sets the TV standard for viewing through the video-out cable. PAL is the European standard with 625 lines of video, of which only 580 carry the image. NTSC is the American standard with 525 lines of video. These are the total scan lines of the video frame, not the total scan lines of the image within the frame. NTSC images, for instance, are only 480 scan lines tall, hence the VGA image size of 480 x 640 pixels. i For studio work that involves a number of people, the video-out from the camera lets lots of people look through the viewfinder at the same time. If you do this, remember to tell onlookers to only judge the picture in playback. The live image from the camera is a viewfinding format, not full-quality, and should be taken with a grain of salt. Language sets the entire menu system and all the type on the displays to Deutsch, English, Franais, or Japanese.

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Play Mode
REVIEWING AND EDITING
The third major camera mode, accessed with the master switch that circles the shutter button, is Play. This is the mode that lets you review and edit your work. Delete button is below and to the left of the monitor screen. Press it once, and the screen changes to a special Delete page. The current image is overlaid by a small garbage can icon, and the question 1 Erase Images Yes or No? appears. If you select Yes and toggle right, the image is immediately deleted from memory. i Be careful. Unlike a computer, there is no undo key. Multi-Review is created with the center button under the monitor. Press it once, and nine icons of the most recent nine images appear on the monitor screen. Press again and four larger thumbnails appear. The same image is highlighted on each screen. You can use the Multi-Selector to scroll in any direction up or down the stream of shots, and if you press the ISO button once or twice, the currently highlighted thumbnail will become a full screen image. i By clicking the Command Dial left or right, you will move one whole page of nine images earlier or later in the stream of pictures. Magnify the current image is executed with the T button of the zoom control. Press it once and the image enlarges slightly. From full-sized image to 400% blow up the enlargement happens in 16 steps. At each stage, you can scroll around the image with the Multi-Selector button, so you can check focus, see small details, and examine the image in detail. Image Data can be seen by turning the Command Dial. Five whole screens of information appear in a loop. The first page is the default page and gives basic information like frame number, time and date of the shot, the name of the folder it resides in, its size and compression, and which shot it is out of all of them in the camera right now. The next two pages to the right give the EXIF information with these data: PAGE TWO
Camera model number, E990 Firmware version E990V11 or higher Metering choice Mode Automatic or Manual Shutter speed Aperture Exposure Compensation in EV Focal Length in actual millimeters Focus type

PAGE THREE
Speed Light On or Off Image Adjustment Sensitivity in ISO White Balance setting Sharpness setting Digital Tele setting Lens Converter choice File Size in kilobytes

The fourth page is a histogram display with some information including frame number, meter type, shutter speed, f-number, EV compensation, and white balance type. Histograms are graphic displays that show the relative population of pixels of each brightness. Photoshops Levels control will display a similar histogram. In the example at the left, most pixels are in the central tonal range with almost none at full white or black. Black is to the left. The last page gives focus information. The upper left displays basic information like shot number and type, actual focal length, shutter speed, f-stop, and focus distance, but the image also has the five-part focus bracket, and the one that is red shows where in the shot the camera was targeting its focus. The monitor button above the monitor screen turns the data overlay on and off, and the menu button to its right brings up the menu page for play mode.

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Mastering the Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

PLAY MODE MENU SELECTIONSSCREEN 1

When the first Play Back Menu screen is presented you have access to the most frequently needed Play Mode features. The immediate listings are Delete Folders Slide Show Protect Hide Image Print Set Delete leads to a sub-menu including Selected Images, All Images, Folder, or Print Set. Knowing how these work for you is important because a mistake here can accidentally throw away shots you might want to keep. Selected Images Delete is the most common choice. Upon being selected, the monitor screen instantly shows six small thumbnails, and the Multi-Selector moves you forward and backward through the recorded exposures. If you press the Multi-Selector in either the up or down direction, a gold trash icon appears over the highlighted frame, nominating it as a candidate for deletion. It isnt gone yet, and if you change your mind, you can highlight the frame and press the button up or down once more, causing the icon to disappear. Any number of frames can be tagged for deletion, and when you are through marking images, a single press of the QUAL button will bring up a window saying 8 (or however many frames you have tagged) Erase Images Yes or No? Choosing Yes does the job. Choosing No cancels the whole operation, and all your choices are irretrievably lost. i It is good to take an extra pause when this screen appears as a matter of habit. If you have just made a bunch of complex choices you dont want to lose your work by accidentally telling the camera No. Erase All Images will cause all the images in all folders to be deleted. Hidden or protected images will be spared. Although such a move would give you an empty card with which you can take more pictures, this is not recommended as the best way of clearing a card, since sectors of the card may become crowded with obsolete filing pointers. Card Format is much more thorough. Erase Folder will cause only a selected folders contents, and the folder itself, to be deleted utterly. This is where you throw a specific folder away. Print Set Delete throws away only images that were designated as Print Set images by the selector tagging system described at the bottom of this list of settings. i The selection makes no judgement as to whether or not you have already saved images, or where they are, in any folder. Folders brings up the same Folders sub-menu that appears in Auto and Manual camera modes. Slide Show brings up choices for you to use the camera as an automatic slide show display device. Images from the show are routed out the video cable, so it is conceivable that the camera could be used for a business presentation, a group review of recent images from the field, or even recorded to video tape. Only the images in the current folder that are not tagged Hidden will be shown. Select a frame rate of 2 seconds, 3 seconds, 5 seconds, or 10 seconds per shot. The images show for the time allotted, then cut cleanly and directly to the next shot. If you press the ISO button under the monitor, the show pauses and a frame comes on screen that lets you resume, start over, or change the interval between images. i The images in a slide show appear without any graphic overlay, except when paused or stopped. The video quality is quite good. To leave slide show, click left from the paused condition. If you click left during the show, the sequence will backup one slide. Protect Images works similar to the Delete Images sub-menu, except the icon here is an orange key, and all it does for the nominated images is keep them from being deleted easily.

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Any image with a key icon over it wont be erased using the Delete All Images option or the Delete Print Set option. i Any folder with a Protected image in it will not erase using the Delete Folder option. If you cant delete a folder for some unknown reason, check inside for a picture tagged Protected. The QUAL button finishes the tagging session. Hide Images also works similarly to the Delete and Protect sub-menus. Hidden images wont show up in the Delete or Protect displays, but it is possible to Protect, Print, and Hide the same image all at the same time. In order to do this you must mark it for Protecting and Printing first, then Hide it. Print Set works similarly to the Delete, Protect, and Hide images menus, and the Multi-Selector must be used to mark the images that are candidates for printing. Each image also has the option to print the date with the picture and permit you to automatically order up to nine prints of that frame. Initial tagging happens with an up-click from the Multi-Selector. Added up-clicks increase the number of prints shown above the print icon. If you have a printer that uses the DPOF protocol (Digital Print Order Format) and it accepts CompactFlash cards, you can take the card from your camera and print directly from it. All selected and numbered images on the card will be printed, and the card will come back to you with all your pictures on it, exactly the way it was before printing.

PLAY MODE MENU CHOICESSETUP PAGE

The second page in the Play Mode Menus repeats a number of choices that appear in the Setup Screens in both Auto and Manual camera modes. The items operate identically, except for the Auto Off function. Auto Off sets the time the camera stays awake after the last button push. i This number is held in memory separately from the number used in camera Record Mode. You can have the camera stay on for only 30 seconds and have the Play Mode stay on for five minutes, if you wish.

Related Ideas
The Nikon Speedlight SB-22 is the ideal match for the Nikon Coolpix 950 or 990. A flexible, tilting, zooming flash unit with automatic exposure features, it produces a flash that is the same color temperature as the camera (as do all the Nikon Speedlights) and produces a dozen times the light output, extending your photographic range three times farther in total darkness. When attached to a 950 or 990, the SB-22 can use the cameras own flash sensor to control its output. With any sort of converter lens on the camera, this wont work correctly. In this case, use the SB-22s own flash sensor to control the light output. Other flash units can be used with the Nikon 950 or 990, but there are a number of flash units in the world that should NOT be used with these cameras, or any other modern camera that uses transistor logic to trigger the external flash. Geek alert: Any flash unit with a hot shoe trigger will fit into the Nikon AS-E900 flash adapter. This device has the special Nikon camera-sync plug at one end and a hot shoe adapter with two more Nikon flash sockets at the other end of an eight-inch heavy duty cable. The hot shoe end also AS-E900 has a female tripod mount, just like a camera, so it can be attached to any bracket with an extra tripod screw position, or anything else with a tripod screw mounting thread.

FLASH TALK

SB-22

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Flash units that can damage the Nikon and other cameras have a characteristic that may be measured with a DC volt meter: very high trigger voltage. An inexpensive DC volt meter can detect if the flash you propose to use measures above Nikons quoted specification of 250 volts DC*. Less is better. Nikons own speedlights use only five volts to trigger the flash, and any lower voltage can only be good for the camera.

WHITE BALANCING ACT

White balance can be an opportunity to manipulate the color of an image in both good and bad ways. Making an image look the way it does to your eye is its first goal, and the reason Nikon provides you with so many choices is to cover the greatest range of situations you will be shooting in. Issues arise from the concept of making it look like it does to your eye. Human vision has about a billion to one dynamic range. Once our eyes are adapted to any bright lighting condition, the practical range drops to only about 30,000:1. Camera exposures from film or digital cameras will have a dynamic range smaller than that by a factor of 30 or more. Your own retina has over 3000% of the dynamic range of the best film, video, movie, or digital camera image. Photography is an approximation of vision, not a true representation of it. Our retinas have two different kinds of sensors. Rods, which measure brightness only, and cones, which measure color differences almost exclusively. Film, video, and digital cameras cant see this way. They use three or more different, unchanging, solid color filters to define relative brightness of sections of the visible spectrum in order to analyze the world of colors and luminance. Color photography must pull the colors of the world apart and reassemble them in a way that computer monitors, printed pages, and transparencies can handle. Printed pages, from the deepest black ink to pure white paper, have a contrast range of only about 200:1. The same holds true for LCD computer displays, photographic prints of every type, and every painting in every museum. With this vastly smaller dynamic range, it is a wonder that we humans find photographs life-like at all. Blues Clues. But we do appreciate photos because our brains are willing to make compromises. These compromises show up in places where photography exaggerates the colors of the world in a photograph. One of the most common places where this happens is in shadows of objects shot under blue skies. Known since the dawn of color photography, the blue spill fills shadows with the blue of the sky. Blue shows up here in proportion to the intensity of the blue sky canopy during a given exposure. It may surprise you to see the tummy of your white dog playing in the sun looking like she has been rolling in a blueberry patch, but a quick scan of a magazine featuring lots of outdoor shots, like National Geographic, will reveal how prevalent this phenomenon is. With practice, you Blue spill? Where? Check the right side of the towers can begin to detect blue spill with your eyes directly, but it is white face. Its around 30% saturation of the same hue as the sky (which is about 55% saturated). That surface difficult to do and will never look to your eyes as obvious as it is matte white showing a mix of all the colors hitting it. does to a camera. Its almost an optical illusion because we dont initially Predawn Light. Shots made in predawn light will look much too perceive it as so blue in contrast to the surrounding sky. blue if you use Sunny/Fine as your white balance. Here is a time of day best served by the Auto white balance setting.
Nikon Product party flash * units withMike Rubin, Seniorin Digital Manager of the compact digital cameras, in answer to the question of using third strobes-with the the Coolpix 990, Photography Review, April 29, 2000. The complete quote: Yes you can use studio

AS-E900 as mentioned below-or with the SK-E900 bracket (which incorporates the AS-E900) plus an AS-15 Hot shoe to PC Sync adapter. Keep in mind that if the trigger voltage is greater than 250Volts, you CANNOT use your studio strobes with the 990 or 950.

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Sunrise and Sunset. These images are unusual and exotic balances of color. By shooting them with a White Balance Preset setting you will get a poorer result than by shooting them with Sunny/Fine or Cloudy or even Flash white balance. Artificial Mixed Light. In conventions, arenas, baseball games, shopping centers, street scenes at night, theatrical settings, and any places where you simply cant control the color of the light, you must let technology help. If you cant make a manual white balance in that light, you will have to rely on Auto white balance to make the best guess for you. You can always adjust it later in Photoshop, and you may have to. Just because these cameras are digital doesnt mean they can predict your perception. A little digital darkrooming will go a long way towards turning marginal color into vibrant, custom results. Indoor/Outdoor Mixed Light. With daylight coming in through a window on a scene balanced for indoor lights, one light source or the other will dominate the image. You can try to white balance off a white card that mixes both sources on its surface. You may Sometimes you just cant predict have to shoot and evaluate the image on the camera monitor several times before achieving the white balance. the result you find most appropriate. Fortunately, its not like shooting film where every exposure (or test Polaroid in the manner of many professional shoots) costs you money. Exotic Light. Mercury vapor lamps, sodium vapor lamps, and theatrical stage lighting are often so far from predictable or normal that you need to find strange solutions for strange lighting. Auto white balance will often give pretty good results, but sometimes you have to force the camera into new realms of consciousness. Airports at night are often bathed in a yellow/gold light from high intensity sodiumvapor lamps. These lights will never look like perfect white lights in your camera because they emit such strange amounts of red, green, and blue. But you can get closer to normallooking pictures. Make a manual white balance by pointing the camera at the light itself, a white airplane, a silver wing, or the gray cement. Or just shoot with Auto white balance, then fix it later with the iNovaFX iSodium filter. Sodium-vapor light is yellow. The The same holds true for many kinds of street lighting. Mercury vapor lamps are very iSodium filters create a more natucold blue street lights, and often there is no white card in your hands when your need it, ral look on the right. or you may be shooting from a place where you are in different light from your subject. Fortunately, most pavement is close to gray. Any gray or white surface will give you the opportunity to manually white balance the camera to the local light. After all, it isnt really a white balance at all, but a means to tell the camera what color neutral light should be. But what could you do if there simply were no gray cement or pavement visible? How would you white balance at a baseball game where the bright green grass, strong colors of the dirt, and everything on the field is non-white? Look to the distant crowd. Its a mixture of colors, but anywhere in the stadium where the lighting from the field is also playing on the crowd, you can use for a white balance measure. The thing you measure off doesnt have to be white or gray after all, as long as it contains a balanced mix of colors.

WHITE BALANCE TRICKS i Forty eight distortion-free color filters that are completely

reflection proof and weigh virtually nothing. The White Balance Preset lets you show the camera what the color of the prevailing light actually is, and this causes the camera to behave as if it had a color correction filter over the lens appropriate to neutralize the color of the light. If you measure a white balance off a colorany colorthe camera will behave as if the opposite color filter were being used over the lens. In the Appendix you will find a page of iNovaFX Printed Camera Filters with numbered color squares arranged for exactly this pur-

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

pose. Forty-eight different color filters are presented with 12 hues in four different strengths. You can print that page in your color printer. The way you use the filters is to hold the page in the light showing on your subject while you white balance off the color patch opposite the color you want the camera filter to become. If you want to warm the image, find the filter that looks one step warmer than your desired color, and there will be a bluish filter attached to it. Use the blue filter for white balancing, and the gold filter effect will be the result. Experience will guide you to predicting results. The filters are placed so you can estimate each colors opposite and choose accordingly. Conveniently, the cover of this eBook has the pattern printed in a nice handy size for easy use. You can often find ways of altering the color of your image using materials at hand. If you are wearing jeans, you can find a faded spot and white balance off that, to produce warmer shots. When the sky is visible, you can white balance off a faded part near the horizon for a little warming, and you can white balance off warm painted walls, brick or even your own hand to force a cooler look to a picture.

ABOUT LENS CONVERTERS

Nikon recognized from the very beginning that they were appealing to more professional photographers and advanced enthusiasts with these top-of-the-line Coolpix camera series. All of these split-body cameras have been able to use the 28mm screw threads at the front of the lens to mount converter lenses. Nikon adapted this lens design philosophy to the Nikon 950, and the 900 before it. These cameras were designed to work with added elements mounted in front of the camera lens. Five different converter optics are available. Each is far and away better than any other optical converter you can mount on the camera, regardless of price or brand. WC-E24/WC-E63 Both of these are the wide converters, making pictures as wide as a 24mm lens on a 35mm film camera. This is wide indeed. The WC-E24 is the least expensive, smallest, and most often used of the Nikon converter optics. With this lens in place, your camera stops being a 38 > 114mm lens (equivalent to 35mm focal lengths) and now is a 24 > 72mm wideangle zoom lens. Although the front of the lens is threaded to accommodate a retaining ring, it is not possible to add photographic filters over this lens without a custom pressure mount that allows large 67mm filters to be used. Optical performance is excellent, and the only drawback to using the lens is a bit of barrel distortion you may notice in architectural images. Fortunately this ceases to be a drawback since the CD that came with this eBook has special Photoshop action filters in it that completely eliminate the issue. The newer WC-E63 is larger, has less barrel distortion, and accepts 72mm filters. An iNovaFX filter is provided for it, too. TC-E2 is the smaller of two tele converters for the 950 or 990, and it magnifies the image by exactly double. Now the 114mm end of the zoom behaves like a 228mm lens. The TC-E2 is designed to work only with the Nikon digital cameras and delivers exceptionally sharp images right out to the edge of the shot, unlike every other tele converter lens on the market. Although it doesnt cover the complete zoom range, it covers enough to give you a 2:1 zoom without vignetting. A 62mm filter threads over its front element, and it is about 50% more expensive than the WC-E24.

Chapter 3B

Camera Operation 990

3B-35

TC-E3ED is the larger of the two tele converters and is just as capable as its smaller brother. It magnifies the view by a factor of three. This lens covers a 1.5:1 zoom setting as well, and the shortest zoom setting will result in the equivalent of a 168mm lens while the longest zoom setting will behave like a 342mm lens on a 35 mm camera. It is quite a bit more expensive than the TC-E2 and is fitted with 72mm filters. FC-E8 is a special lens unique to Nikon. One of the very highest achievements of Nikons optical designers, this is a full 183 fisheye lens. It is more expensive than the other wide converters and will find fewer day-to-day applications, but it is simply one of the coolest, most interesting lenses in all of digital photography. A glass bubble larger than a doorknob, its image is slightly wider than a 180 hemisphere, so computer programs can stitch shots together for 360 spherical virtual reality images. IPIX software on the included CD that comes with your camera is capable of delivering spherical VR images like this to your computer screen. At full wide zoom, the fisheye image is a full circle in the middle of the frame, and if you hand-hold the camera, you should learn to look out for your feet. It is easy to get them in the bottom of the shot. You can zoom into the fisheye image and fill the frame corner to corner. Now you have a super wide-angle lens with a specialeffect curve to the shot. At full zoom, its still considerably wider than the WC-E24. Special software on this eBooks CD can be used, in a pinch (so to speak), to remove the barrel distortion from full-tele images shot through the fisheye lens. The software is another in the series of special Photoshop iNovaFX iBC filters for use exclusively with the Nikon 950 and 990. VGA is the size of a video picture and XGA is the size of a full screen image on many computer monitors and laptops. The option to shoot 3:2 images at 2048 x 1364 is useful if you plan to have shots printed at exactly 4 x 6 or 8 x 12 inches, because this aspect ratio provides a perfect match. When you send images over the Internet for photographic prints, make sure your order accounts for the discrepancies between the aspect ratio of your original and the aspect ratio of standard size prints. Services like Ofoto, which make these prints, allow you to keep the full image or trim the edges and fill the paper. The full-size image from a 990 delivers a 3:4 aspect ratio image, which works for a 9 x 12-inch print, or for many sizes of print you may wish to make on your own printer. Since an 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of paper is larger than the standard 8 x 10 photo print, one can float an image of 6 x 8 or 6.75 x 9 (17 x 23 cm) in the middle of the letter-size page with an attractively proportioned border all around. i A rule of thumb says that images floating in a wide border feel best when slightly elevated from perfect center. Did you notice that relationship in the flower picture? Your subconscious would have if it were exactly vertically centered.

PRINT SIZE AND ASPECT RATIO

3B-36

Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Filtering outside of the box. Kodak makes filters for studio use. Their Wratten gel filters are thin, flexible squares of material typically two or three inches ( 50 or 75mm) on each side. They see a lot of use on large format cameras. Fragile? You bet. One errant fingerprint and goodbye, filter. There is almost no way to clean them, but they are available in a huge number of spectral configurations. Including the full range of infrared filters. For the image above, the very opaque blacklooking #88A formula was used. But you cant put a filter in front of a fisheye lens. Nobody ever said that a filter needs to be in front of a lens to

work. Here, a 24 mm circle of filter material was cut out from the larger Wratten gel. This was carefully sandwiched between the camera lens and the FC-E8 fisheye converter. The thin gel neither added or reduced optical performance, but it certainly made infrared fisheye imaging easy. Since infrared light focuses at a different depth from visible light, the cameras auto-focus is very helpful. Yes, you can use this technique with ANY lens converter without introducing optical distortions. You could even use the gel under a simple UV glass filter. The camera was the more IR-sensitive Coolpix 950.

Chapter 3C

Camera Operation 995

3C-1

Camera Operation
Nikon Coolpix 995
Like its immediate predecessor, the Coolpix 990, the newer 995 has the same imaging chip, swivel body, monitor and lens diameter. Although the two cameras look similar, the 995 has a number of very cool new evolutionary features: The zoom lens is 4:1, 8~32mm, equivalent to a 38~152mm zoom lens on a 35mm camera. It runs quicker in general, now taking up to 2.2 shots per second in Continuous still image modes. The flash is a pop-up unit sitting directly over the lens in landscape mode. The battery is via single use Lithium 2CR5 or rechargeable EN-EL1 Lithium Ion (a.k.a. LiION or Li-ION) batteries (charger included). The CF card slot is large enough to accept CF II (thicker) cards. Image Quick Review is facilitated with its own dedicated button. PIM, Print Image Matching, data is supplied. Auto bracketing is flexible with 3 and 5 shot brackets of up to 1.0 EV deviation per exposure. Color auto-bracketing is available. ISO 800 is available directly. A new Reduce Noise feature cleans up long exposures. Saturation and B&W menu item is now separate from Image Adjustment. A Lens position setting for the Nikon Slide Copier has been added. The Slide Copier lens position includes an inverse (negative) image setting. Review zoom inspection has a 6X blow up on the monitor. UXGA and SXGA image capture sizes are available. Many owners of the 995 were owners of earlier models of Nikon Coolpix cameras. For you, some of these features The 4:1 zoom can get you close to things from which you might wish to maintain your distance. will be directly similar to things you already know. For new camera owners, a lot Stan Winstons live-performance raptor robots from of what is inside the 995 is flat-out amazing. Whether you have come to the 995 the movie, Jurrassic Park III. as a first digital camera or have picked it up as a first Nikon digital camera, it has so many things buried beneath the hood that the thirteen buttons and/or controls on its surface are just the tip of the iceberg. = None of of the 990 have been dropped or InfoBite same spacethe features occupied by a 3:1 is cool indeed. eliminated. Fitting a 4:1 zoom into approximately the previously i Coolpix 995 owners should read Chapter 3B, CP990 Operation, also. A lot of useful data is there, too. A close scrutiny of the 995 reveals things that even the advertising copy doesnt get into. The noise floor of the images is lower. Images shot at ISO 100 are a touch more colorful at the normal saturation setting

995 IN CONTRAST WITH THE 990

3C-2

Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

and large areas of flat color show less grain. The JPEG artifacts are a slight bit less visible than on the 990, perhaps because of the lowered noise. Consistently, images of the exact same objects under the exact same lighting will come out about 1.5% smaller size than images from the 990. Thats not much data storage savings, but its telling. Additionally, the sharpening of the image is slightly more aggressive in the 995, and the native contrast of the image is a tad greater. This gives images a bit more snap, but you may wish to play with the settings bringing the exposure down by EV 0.3 in scenes that have hot highlights. The transition from 990 to 995 is smooth and unruffled. The two cameras are so close in operation that this chapter may seem largely redundant to experienced readers. Still, there is a lot to learn. i Try to get into the habit of reading about these features and controls with the camera at hand. Play with it as you encounter these ideas. You may not remember everything at once, but your fingers will help you remember where ideas are hidden. There are many concepts to master within the Nikon Coolpix 995.

ASSAULT ON BATTERIES

The CP995, CP880, CP885, and CP775 all use Nikons EN-EL1 rechargeable lithium-ion (Li-Ion) cell which was introduced with the 880. Its smaller than two AA cells and delivers a rated 4.875 watt-hours of power per charge. For comparison, four AA NiMH rechargeable batteries of 1400 mAh capacity deliver 6.72 watt-hours of total power. Those power the 990. Obviously the new EN-EL1 stores more energy in a tighter space than the previous AA cells did. Like many, I worried over giving up the familiar AA cells to a new battery. After using it for just a few days, I was no longer concerned. It has a number of advantages, and only one disadvantage. 1. It is smaller. The EN-EL1 is a power source 2. It is lighter. with eleven good features and only one bad one. 3. It comes with a battery charger included in the box with the camera. Different versions ship with the camera in the USA and in other parts of the world. 4. The US charger (MH-51 with EH-51 transformer) charges quickly (two hours). 5. The charger runs on 100 to 240 volts AC (47-63 Hz), so it can adapt to power all over the world. 6. It has no charging memory effect, as do Ni Cad batteries. 7. It does not lose its charge just sitting in your camera bag. AA cells do lose charge slowly. 8. It comes with a cap that keeps the terminals covered in pocket or bag. 9. It is efficient. One EN-EL1 runs the CP995 camera for as many pictures as four AA cells will power a CP990. So the per-charge life is just as long. 10. It is predictable. The camera power icon indicates power remaining more accurately. (AA cells are of so many types and capacities that the battery indicator on a 950/990 was inaccurate.) And if you need another reason, the most important may be: 11. There is only one of them. You dont need to coordinate four separate pieces of stuff out of and into your camera for each refreshment of power. No longer can you drop just one piece off the side of the boatnow you must commit to dropping the whole thing or nothing at all! Its proportionally much easier to drop one of a group of small items held in your hand. Ill eventually drop one of these, but statistically, dropping the only thing in your hand happens about 1% of the time compared to dropping one of four AA batteries in your hand, so I will feel better shooting pictures on boats, over gratings, on horseback, or while parachuting. i The non-US version of charger that comes with the camera is designated as a MH-50 and charges the battery in about six hours. Since a battery will absorb about 80% of a full charge in the first half of the recharging cycle, dont be afraid of using a partly recharged battery after only three hours of charging time.

Chapter 3C

Camera Operation 995

3C-3

2CR5 alternate power source.

Get stuck in the boonies without power? It could happen, and not many drugstores carry the single use 2CR5 batteries ($10 each at Radio Shack) that you can use in place of the EN-EL1s, so maybe you just have to get used to the idea of planning ahead. In truth, the number of times Ive had to resort to Alkaline AA power for my 990 could be counted on my thumbs, so I dont think Im going to miss the drugstore power option. But your mileage may vary. My advice: Get one or two extra EN-EL1s. They charge in a couple of hours and while theyre not cheap ($30-$40 apiece), the charger that came free with the camera may be the last one you will ever need. I now carry three EN-EL1s and a 2CR5 just in case I get busy. The 2CR5 batteries are also Lithium cells but cannot be recharged. Rechargeable cells depend on an internal chemistry that is reversible under electrical pressure. i Think of it like this; molecules change from one pair of chemicals to another pair of chemicals because their electrons have been given an opportunity to flow from one to the other. In the presence of lots of spare electrons during charging, they change back to their original molecules and wait for the opportunity to shovel their extra house guest electrons through the circuit again. It takes very exotic materials and chemistry to achieve this delicate balance. Its much easier to find chemicals that only have to make a one-way trip as they change from one chemical to another, never to return. Thats what one-shot batteries do. All of this is an introduction to the $10 2CR5 (as little as $4 each has been seen on the Internet), which puts out twice as much power as a fully charged EN-EL1, but does it only once and then becomes a Lithium paperweight with environmentally unfriendly chemistry inside. Please dispose of all your dead batteries to a responsible recycling center and dont simply throw them in the trash. Whats the disadvantage? Price. Still, with at least 500 recharges in the EN-EL1s, the cost per charge is microscopic. Only 8 per charge or less over the life of the cell. No pain there. CompactFlash cards are the memory for your camera. The size of a large postage stamp, they contain memory circuits that are energized by the camera to accept a pattern of 1s and 0sthe digital data of an imagequickly and in great numbers. i The best thing about them is that unlike the memory in your computer, you dont need a battery connected to the solid-state chip inside the card for it to keep remembering that digital pattern. In a flash the memory locations on the chip change state and wont drift until they are given the instruction to change again. Cards in your pocket wont lose their pictures unless you get hit by lightning. Theyve been known to go through wash&dry cycles unscathed. Compact Flash cards are available in two sizes. CF I and CF II. The former is 3.3mm thick while the Type II version is 5mm thick. Previous 9xx cameras only took the thinner, Type I cards but the 995 has provided enough room for the thicker ones. The biggest reason for this is to accommodate cards with larger storage capacities, exhibited mainly by the IBM MicroDrive CF II disk drives with their storage of up to 1 gigabyte of memory. The IBM drive is a technical wonder. Its a fully implemented computer hard disk in the tiniest of spaces. Internally, the disk itself is smaller than a US quarter, only 27mm in diameter. As you might imagine, the power requirements for a miniature hard disk drive, its control instructions, and its compatibility with devices it serves, can be a complex issue. Nikon has not officially certified the IBM MicroDrive as being appropriate for the CP995, but many people report that the most recent versions of the drives do indeed work well. i If you must have one, buy yours only from a source that will take it back and return all your money if it doesnt prove completely satisfactory. Avoid all places that charge a restocking fee. CompactFlash Type I high capacity, solid state storage can be seen in the SimpleTech 640 megabyte cards and their Type II 850 megabyte and 1 gigabyte cards. At least one manufacturer, RiTDATA, has announced its own CF II mini hard drive with up to 1.6 GB capacity.

CARD CARRYING STORAGE

CompactFlash card and similar-size IBM Microdrive.

3C-4

Mastering the Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

In-camera review and editing is a powerful feature, but you can see only nine images at one time in play mode. Only six can be seen in edit modes that trash, protect, mark for printing, or hide from slide show playback. It is like having a light table of generous proportions holding 30 x 50 slides on its surface. The table would stretch over 5 by 8 feet and each two-inch square of surface would hold a precious imageshoulder to shoulder with all the othersin neat rows and columns. Yet for this example, suppose that you could only see six of them for editing purposes at any given time. It would drive you nuts. Thats what a gigabyte of 650K (full size Normal compressed) images will do to you in the camera. You cant even scroll through them allat one per secondin less than 25 minutes! i A saner approach might be to acquire several fast 64-megabyte or 128-megabyte CF cards and think of them as huge rolls of film. A 64-megabyte card will hold around a hundred Normal shots and you can review all its contents in a minute or two. i Photographers have been known to lose an entire MircroDrives worth of images by dropping it. Computer hard drives, no matter how small they are, are simply not as rugged as solid state memory.

i One thing to keep in mind as you select a large capacity storage card: It is big enough to get lost in.

PICK UP THE CAMERA

We are now going into the interactive portion of this chapter. Grab the camera and try to have a fresh battery inside. If the battery dies during this play session, put it in its charger while you read ahead for a while. The battery will only collect a partial charge during that few minutes, but it will likely be enough to let you try a few things. It will also give you a visceral appreciation of how much usefulness these batteries can soak up in a limited span of time.

Chapter 3C

Camera Operation 995

3C-5

Automatic Mode

When shooting in Auto Rec mode you still have a lot of extra control over things. You can choose to ignore the extras and just snapsorry, beepaway, collecting images while the auto white balance, auto exposure, and auto focus systems invisibly coordinate their functions, making your images quite good. You still need to determine some things before you begin: What size image will be stored on the memory card? How compressed will it be? Whats the zoom setting? Will flash be used? i Auto Rec is the highly recommended mode for shooting when using the optical viewfinder. The Coolpix 995 has six still image sizes it can capture. Largest is the full-frame 2048 x 1536 pixel image. This 3.146 megapixel image is the same size as the full size image on the Nikon Coolpix 990 and makes delicious page-size prints. Additional sizes include: A 3:2 aspect (35mm frame proportion) image of 2048 x 1360 pixels can be selected. In this size only 86 pixels are removed from each of the long sides of the full frame. In a perfect world, a true 3:2 image would be 1365 pixels tall, but for reasons of easy compression and storage, 1360 is the closest appropriate size. Notice that it, and all the other dimensions the Nikon cameras shoot, are evenly divisible by 16. JPEG compression breaks images into blocks of 8 pixels. All other modes make 4:3 aspect images. UXGA image of 1600 x 1200 pixels. The same size image made by a CP950. SXGA image with 1280 x 960 pixels. The same size image made by a CP900. XGA image of 1024 x 768 pixels. Half of full size. VGA image of 640 x 480 pixels is the smallest still shot. Movie mode captures images in the QVGA size of 320 x 240 pixels. One other image size is created. In Multi-Shot 16 mode, the camera gathers 16 images arranged like a comic strip, 4 x 4 on a full-size, 2048 x 1536 pixel frame. Each of these panels is 512 x 384 pixels in size. In order to retrieve them as isolated images, you would need to crop them out of the frame with an editing program.

SIZE WIZE

CMPRSN

For your sanity and speed of operation, digital camera images are compressed. Only TIFF images avoid JPEG compression, but those are difficult to store, review, and pass around because each image file is so large. Theyre over nine megabytes each! The full-frame 2048 x 1536 pixel images contain 3,145,728 pixels but a TIFF image uses three bytes, one for each of the red, green, and blue color layers, to store each full-color pixel. Now 9,437,184 bytes of data are being retained for each picture. By compressing the image, this storage requirement drops to a chummy 1.2 megabytes. Of course, image content affects compression and texture-filled, highly detailed shots will require more room than say, a bird in a clear blue sky.

3C-6

Mastering the Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Quality settings are HI (for that uncompressed TIFF image) which is available in full frame and 3:2 sizes only, followed by Nikons well-executed Fine (4:1), Normal (8:1), and Basic (16:1) settings. The numbers here are Nikons official compression figures. In practice, you get almost double this efficiency. The Fine setting is virtually identical with HI and does a nearly perfect image capture. Normal is extremely good and does not readily show artifacts even on ink-jet prints up to 8 x 10 inches. Basic will capture images with only a hint of compression artifacts and is quite good for prints up to 5 x 7 inches from full-frame shots.

HOW MUCH IS MUCH?

The included 16-megabyte CF card will capture images at various settings according to the following table. The first number is the cameras predicted estimate, the second (~x) number was actually achieved on a normally complex outdoor image. Numbers following the shot range indicate how many will shoot continuously (1) in a closely spaced burst of images.
IMAGE STORAGE RESULTS
Quality

16MB COMPACTFLASH
3:2
2048 x 1360

COOLPIX 995 [Predicted~actual (continuous)]


SXGA 0 25~34 (7) 48~61 (12) 88~98 (19)
1280 x 960

Full Size

2048 x 1536

UXGA 0

1600 x 1200

XGA 0

1024 x 768

VGA 0

640 x 480

HI Fine Normal Basic

1 (1)- 9.32 megs 9~14 (3) 20~24 (5) 38~42 (8)

1 (1)- 8.27 megs 10~15 (3) 22~26 (5) 43~46 (8)

16~22 (5) 32~40 (8) 60~68 (14)

38~55 (11) 71~93 (18) 124~140 (27)

88~132 (26) 129~143 (29) 234~223* (54)

* Repeated tests confirmed a problem in the handling of VGA Basic images. The file system would overflow into extra folders and consistently captured less than the anticipated number of images. This was observed with Firmware V. 1.6. Note: People wonder about how many shots you can shoot on a charge of the EN-EL1 battery. All of these exposures plus several retests were made on a single charge with the monitor illuminated all the time. That totaled over 1500 exposures and the camera was not yet showing its partly depleted icon. So there.

Clearly HI eats the card for lunch and is only useful for those rareand I do mean rareinstances when experimenting or going for the absolute purest capture the camera can achieve. But what good are those other sizes? It all revolves around the idea of down-conversion. An image captured at full size is somewhat sharpness challenged. Four different hues sof color separation filter, and a lot of hightech image processing is struggling to pull sharpness and color out of the array of sensors. This isnt a Nikon issue, its a digital photography issue. A full-size image is not as sharp as the maximum resolution those pixels could carry in an ideal image. All of these smaller size images start with the capture of the full array of sensors. Then they are down-converted, i.e., scaled down to a smaller size by intelligently mingling the picture information of the full sample and producing better per-pixel detail. When you look at a VGA image that starts this way, it is tremendously more detailed than a freeze frame from a digital video source. A VGA image from the 995 beats frames from the best three-chip NTSC broadcast video cameras. Pixel-perfect and non pixel-perfect detail. i The down-sampling algorithm in the Nikon camThe right image was shot at full tele, then eras is superb. The UXGA and SXGA images hold such a high proportion of the detail reduced to the scale of the left image, gathered at full-size, that they become viable options for storage when megabytes are in short which is cropped from a shot at mid-zoom. supply. One of the UXGA images is just about 78% of the linear dimensions of the full frame, View this at 300% blow-up for the full impact. but it holds over 92% of the detail found in the full frame, and it does this in just 61% of

Chapter 3C

Camera Operation 995

3C-7

Full size (crop) and UXGA images scaled up to the same size.
(UXGA on right)

One is TIFF, the other is JPEG Fine. Can you tell? Both are crops from the center of much larger originals, and there are differences visible even in this reproduction that could clue you in.
(JPEG on right)

the storage space that a full-size image uses. In other words, for giving up 8% of the image quality, you can have nearly 40% more pictures. i Shoot the same subject at all the different camera file scales. A bunch of detailed items on a tabletop shot from a tripod would make a good test subject. Now print each image to the same sizes. One of each, about 8 x 10 inches (254 x 190 mm). [I like printing them at 9 x 6.75 inches (230 x 173 mm) on a letter size page. The generous border of white makes them look particularly good.] Then one each at about 7 x 5.25 inches (178 x 133 mm), and one each at 6 x 4 inches (152 x 114 mm). Immediately you will see that the smallest printed images look terrific with any shot made larger than VGAs small footprint of 640 x 480 pixels. Not surprising, since there are only 106 camera pixels in each inch of print there. (The 7 x 5.25 and 8 x 10 of the VGA can be skipped.) The next size upXGA with its 1024 x 768 pixelsmakes a decent 7 x 5.25 print. There are 146 camera pixels in each inch now, coming from a file that is pixel-perfect to begin with. And the next step up, SXGA, just about defines the top quality for this size print. It delivers 184 pixels per running inch onto the print. The 9 x 6.75 or 8 x 10 will look good from both of the largest size shots. With 2048 x 1536 pixels to print out, a full 8 x 10 will have 204.8 pixels in every inch. But the UXGA image will have those same pixels now down-sampled into a 1600 x 1200 pixel footprint. Very little is actually lost at this point. Compare a full 8 x 10 from both sizes and you may find that the UXGA gives up so little detail that shooting in this format becomes a truly viable choice. i The 995 is unique among the Nikon compacts in its ability to store the intermediate sizes of UXGA and SXGA. When you take into account that the original image capture is not a pixel-perfect process, and combine that with the idea that down-sampling achieves a more pixel-perfect image, you may tumble to the idea that UXGA is a great compromise. About 40% more images per storage megabyte, at a minimum loss of image quality. And you still can print great looking 8 x 10s. If you print the full frame at 300 ppi (pixels per inch), how much sharper is it (per square inch) than the 8 x 10? (If at all.) i No, you will never notice the difference between Fine and Hi in a print. A Fine image and a Hi image are within 1% of each other in the most extreme areas of the shotplaces where compression is taxed into making compromisesusually around the edges of sharply focused, high contrast detail. The greater part of the image will be identical and will contain exactly the same pixel value numbers in either quality setting. i Again, you can prove it to yourself. 1. Use a heavy tripod and shoot an indoor-lit image in both Hi and Fine settings using exposure locked or Manual exposure settings along with manual focus. Any camera movement will destroy this test, so be extremely careful. Shoot several samples. Wide zoom minimizes lens element shifts. 2. Stack both images over each other in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. 3. Invert the top layer and make it exactly 50% opaque. If you did this with duplicates of the same image, the frame would turn exactly 50% gray. If you see an embossed effect from two different images, either the camera moved between exposures, or the lens elements shifted. If the camera and light were steady, your compared sources will be precisely 50% gray. Run the cursor over the image to sample values and show these numbers in the Photoshop Info window. With a 5 x 5-pixel test sample setting, you will be hard-pressed to find a place that shows even a 1% deviation from 50% gray on the HSB Info display. If you examine the pixels close up, you will see very minor changes from one shot to the next. But this small variation will be the case with any two shotseven two successive

3C-8

Mastering the Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

TIFF shots! Its similar to the grain differences that are inevitable in two different film images. By turning the top layer on and off, alternatively revealing the lower image, you will have achieved a blink comparator view of the frames. This will give you a good idea of how much grain shift is normal, and how much arises from compression differences.

ISO LATED

In Auto Rec mode, the camera will select its own sensitivity rating. ISO will float between 100 and 200 depending on how much light is available. The exposure time will maximize at 1 sec even under the dimmest lighting. If the exposure is 1/60 sec or less, the camera will protest by flashing the red ready light near the optical viewfinder when Just because its digital doesnt mean its clone-perfect. the shutter button is half-pressed. Its telling you, I now know the These two blow ups are from consecutive TIFF (uncompressed) images. Arrows point to a few of the more obviexposure and there is a danger of camera movement during the shot. Please wake up and pop open the flash unit! But you dont have to if you ous grain changes from shot to shot. dont want that sort of lighting. i One of the greatest skills you can deliver to your hands is that of cultivating stability for 1/15 sec exposures. Most peoples grip starts to deteriorate at around 1/80 sec although careful camera holding technique will extend that down to the 1/8 sec range. Longer shutter speeds without flash deliver images of the natural light your eyes see in the scene, but the world often does not stand still long enough to be easily captured.

FLASHARAMA

By pressing the center button under the monitor, you can select from among the several flash modes. Normal, Anti Red-eye, Force Flash, and Slow. Flash-free images are only available with the flash unit closed. Without flash, the camera will attempt to get the image anyhow, but shutter speeds could go up to that one-second ceiling. Normal Flash has no icon, but when the flash unit is deployed and TheCoolpix 995 distinctive pop-up flash unit positions the the light is sufficient to capture an exposure of 1/60 or above, the flash flash tube 50% farther from the lens than the flash on the CP990. will not fire. When the ambient light drops below this threshold, the shutter locks at 1/60 sec and the flash does fire. i You can leave the flash unit in the up position all the time so it will be there when you need it. Press the flash unit down to its body-hugging locked position, and the flash will not fire. The camera is now free to shoot at shutter speeds longer than 1/60 sec. i The flash unit is actually safer when closed, since it cant snag on anything. Anti Red-eye. The deployed flash now peeks over converter lenses and is useful up to about 10 or 12 feet away (3-4 meters). It is far enough above the optical path of the camera to avoid most red-eye effects, but even with this physical placement, a small white light near the lens flashes briefly to help close the irises on nearby subjects eyes just before exposure. i Red-eye is a phenomenon of geometry. The more parallel the rays of the flash are to the rays of light the camera gathers, the greater the chances of red-eye. With 950 and 990 Nikons, the flash Pets show their version of redunits center was only about 36mm away from the center of the lens, and light rays returning from eye much easier than humans do. With the 995s greater lens a flash-illuminated subject were very parallel. The 995s pop-up flash moves the flash tube about to flash tube distance, you may 50% farther from optical center to 54mm above the lens. This reduces the likelihood of red-eye have to go to maximum zoom effects on nearby subjects, but once a subject is eight feet or more distant, the parallel geometry of and long camera-to-subject distances to get their eyes to show outgoing and incoming light achieves a narrower relationship, and red-eye can occur. Meaning that up like this. the 995 will work its anti red-eye effect deeper into the shot, but not totally.

Chapter 3C

Camera Operation 995

3C-9

Force Flash. No matter what the lighting iseven if it is full daylightthe flash will fire. This is very good for fill flash outdoorsjust enough light to perk up deep contrasty shadows on nearby subjects. i When you first pop up the flash, it is in Normal mode and no icon shows on the monitor. Force flash is two button presses from there. i If you turn the camera completely off, or switch it to Manual Rec or Play modes, the Force Flash mode will revert to Normal, but if you let the camera go to sleep, it will be available when you next pop open the flash. This is common to all flash modes other than Normal. i At ISO 800 the camera flash can reach over 30 feet (10 meters) into the dark. At long distances like that, red-eye can show more easily. Slow Flash. This mode only works when the natural exposure would be 1/30 sec or longer. The shutter opens for the lengthy exposure that the meter has called for, and at the same time the flash fires. With a moving subject you get a frozen moment in the middle of a movement blur. Images made this way can be quite interesting and dynamic. The flash fires at the beginning of the exposure freezing the image first, then gathers the rest of the light over the shutters time. The camera will automatically find what it believes is the best focus. It is continuously hunting for best focus in the very center of the shot, and it is using a digitally controlled motor with 7,123 (!) fine focus positions to make its decision. In the long tele zoom position, this sort of fine discrimination is needed to accurately control focus. i You can lock focus. Half-pressing the shutter button locks exposure and focus but does not take the shot. You can use this to lock focus on a part of the scene, then immediately re-frame and press the rest of the way for the shot. If flash is involved, its exposure wont be determined until the flash begins, so only ambient light exposure computations are being frozen along with the focus using this technique. With Auto Focus, the camera can make mistakes. It might focus on the background behind a nearer subjecta term I call stealing focuswhen the background has more texture or vertical detail than the nearer target. It takes some practice to avoid the stolen focus phenomenon, but you can rise above it. If you are using the optical viewfinder, make sure that you have given the camera enough time on your target for it to settle there and ignore the background. i When using Continuous autofocus, the default in Auto Rec, zoom into your subject to let the camera unambiguously see what the right distance-to-subject is, then pull back just before pressing the shutter release to lock focus. Then and only then, re frame to your final composition. You have just conditioned the camera into behaving correctly by showing it where it should be in focus, and it will only refocus on another subject if it has a darned good reason to. By limiting its field of view to the right target, you have prevented its mind from wandering. Then you locked out further consideration by half-pressing the shutter release. More than that, youve shown the camera who is master. i In total darkness the camera has nothing to lock onto. Cleverly, it assumes you will be taking a flash picture, and it will park the focus at just the right distance to achieve sharp focus on typical flash-distance subjects. It wont work to set the camera to infinityat that setting the flash is disabled.

AUTOFOCUS

Stolen focus is hard to achieve with the 995.

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Mastering the Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

SO ZOOM ME

The two zoom controls move the lens throughout its range from wide to tele. With a range that covers more than most cameras, the 995 lets you get closer to your subject in telephoto position. Yet it takes accessory optics, adapts to microscopes and telescopes, and doesnt protrude from the camera body. How did they do that? Focus is limited to only 12 inches (0.28 meter) at full tele, but thats enough to fill the screen at tele zoom with a very small object only 2.2 inches (55mm) across. At about mid zoom, between 14.8 and 20.5 real millimeters of zoom, magic happens. In this range the zoom lens is capable of focusing down to an incredible 2/3 of an inch (< 20mm). Now the camera is focused closer than a 35mm camera with a macro lens. In order to get into this realm, the Macro focus mode must be invoked. This is done with the lower left button under the monitor. It switches the lens from Infinity Lock to Macro to Macro-plus-Self-Timer and back to Normal. Infinity Lock. The twin mountain icon shows that the lens has locked at infinity. Very useful if you are using the camera with an optical instrument like a telescope, for instanceand you want to remove the cameras auto focus from the equation. By locking here at infinity, there is no focus lag. Zero. The camera responds fastest in this mode and if you are shooting wideangle images, your zone of sharp focus outdoors in good light often extends from about two feet (0.65 meter) to infinity. With the iris wide open and the lens full wide, that depth of field becomes about four feet to infinity. i In Infinity Lock setting, the camera flash and external flash triggers are disengaged. Macro focus. Small flower icon. This mode allows the camera to auto focus closer. At partial zoom the camera goes into maximum macro and the flower turns yellow. Now you can be in focus well inside the dimensions of a 35mm slide. i At the most zoomed-in portion of this range, your field of view is an astonishing 14.8mm by 11.1mm. A US dime is 18mm in diameter. i If you are shooting a nearby subject, you can press the focus regime button twice to put it into Macro mode and cause the camera to search closer. Now the lens will lock onto the closest thing it can find. If it doesnt find the nearby object quickly, re frame to show the camera what it is supposed to focus on, then go back to your composition. i For macro setups, the flash will fire, but the chances are great that the nearby subject will have a shadow across the bottom of the image. This is from the camera itself. You can try tipping the flash slightly forward 20~30 to get rid of the shadow, but now the flash will be too bright because the sensor is not pointing well at the subject. This might be the perfect time for an external flash. Self-Timer. Macro focus and self-timer are combined, so even if you are shooting very nearby objects, the self-timer will work. Press it once and shutter timing is delayed ten seconds, as witnessed by a small count-down number next to the timer icon. i Much macro shooting is done with the camera in odd places and not always solidly mounted. It may be sitting on a tree branch or an irregular surface. Touching it during exposure will only get blurry images. Press the shutter button a second time, and the self-timer count-down is immediately cut back to three secondsjust enough time for the camera to settle down when your fingers let go.

Chapter 3C

Camera Operation 995

3C-11

New on the Coolpix 995 is a feature borrowed from Nikons experience with the 880: Quick Review, and it has its own dedicated button above the monitor screen. One press of this button, and the most recent image you have gathered will overlay the upper left portion of the monitor display. Its only half-sizea quarter of the monitorbut even at this size, you can quickly judge the tones in the picture and the basic composition. One more press of the button and the image fills the monitor. Now you can use the right zoom control button to enlarge the central portion of the shot up to 6.0X. The Multi-Selector can be used to scroll around the enlarged image. To collapse the image back to full-monitor size, use the backward (left) zoom button. A third press gets out of Quick Review mode, but there is a better way: i As soon as you half-press the shutter release, the review mode is abandoned and the camera will prime all systems for the upcoming exposure. You dont have to shoot, but the camera is ready for you.

QUICK REVIEW

LOCK THE LOAD

The swivel connection between the camera halves seems fragile to some because, after all, doesnt something move? Dont worry. Its very strong. The swivel click-stops at each 90, and your hands will find these points easily without looking. But when you add a very heavy accessory lens to the camera, the weight can cause the swivel to droop past the click stop. The swivel will hold a wide angle converter, tele converter, a fisheye lenseven a heavy telephoto converter like the EagleEye OpticZoom or Kenko 8 x 32 monocularwithout sagging. The TC-E3 tele converter is heavy, but even its weight will not cause the camera to twist at the swivel unless more force is applied. For security, the 995 has a sliding latch next to the tripod socket that keeps the swivel from pointing any farther downward than the 90 lens-forward position. Its really a swivel limit, not a lock, and the rest of the range of the swivel twist is unaffected by it. i You can keep this feature active for most shooting, but if you take a frequent number of shots overhead and turn the monitor downward for viewing (I do this a lot), then the swivel lock will get in your way. Fortunately, it is easy to disable the lock.

MENU SYSTEMS OF THE 995.

Auto Rec menu systems are virtually identical to those of the 990. You have control over Folders, Monitor Options, Shutter Sound, Auto Off, Sequence Numbers, CF Card Format, and the Date/Time setting. Folders allows you to create and name computer-like folders on your CF Card. Just like the folders on your computer desktop, the one you select will receive your shots until you select another. A default Nikon folder is always present and usually your shots will simply end up there. It is rare to use this system, but if you need it, you need it. You can also rename and delete folders with options found on this page. Monitor Options allow you to control brightness and coloration of the camera monitor. With the monitor set all the way bright, using it in bright situations is enhanced somewhat. The factory setting for the Hue control is good from the factory, but you can change it here if you wish. Shutter Sound can be nothing (silent), or the low level beep that is the cameras default sound. Auto Off assigns the time the camera will remain awake after it was last touched. You will need to press a buttonany buttonto reset the timer. Your choices are 30 sec, 1 min, 5 min, and 30 min. Sequence Numbers gives you the option of letting the shot reference numbers increase from card to refreshed card as you shoot. Like the odometer on your car, the numbers keep increasing. Alternatively, by setting this to Off, the numbers will start at DSCN0001 with the next fresh card. CF Card Format allows you to refresh your card by erasing every single thing on it. That is a preferred way of turning the card into fresh, unexposed film. In fact, the item is easiest to implement from this very menu. It is far more difficult to find and implement from Manual Rec and Playback menus, but it is there, too, if you need it. Date is for the Date/Time setup. The internal clock is very accurate, and the only time you may need to come back to this item is if you are traveling to a different time zone and wish to update the hour and day.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

THINGS YOU CANT DO IN AUTO MODE.

While AUTO mode is quick and simplified, there are many things it cant do.
You cant manually focus. You cant automatically bracket exposures. You cant set the white balance to specific sources or manually white balance the image. You cant change the light meter type. You cant adjust the speedlight brightness. You cant change the ISO sensitivity of the camera. You cant use special features like BSS, Image Adjustment, or Noise Reduction. You cant set the exposure manually by f-stop and/or shutter speed.

For things like this, you must use MANUAL MODE.

MANUAL REC MODE

When shooting in Manual Rec mode, the fullest range of camera flexibilities is at your fingertips. Here you have absolute control as to which systems you wish to manually set and which you will allow the camera to set for you. One of your greatest tools is found in the Menu system. It is arrayed over three pages of settings and gives you more control over the image capture process than any other digital camera available as of the date of its debut.

EXPOSURE ENCLOSURE

The single, most fundamental thing a camera does, is to allow the appropriate amount of light to the imager. Whether film, video imaging tube, or digital sensor, the concept is identical. The Nikon 995 has three variations of automated exposure and fully manual exposure for you to explore. You set these with the Func1/Mode button pressed while rotating the Command Dial. i Watch out! It is possible to assign another function to this button and if you do, it can confuse you utterly. The menu item under Setup > Controls > Func1 is where you set it back to Mode. Func2 should show +/-. Program exposure is the one used in Auto Rec. It uses the imaging chip itself as its own best light meter and computes the best compromise of f-stop, shutter speed, and imager sensitivity, to achieve the shot. i Trust it. Flexible Program. With Program mode selected, you still have control of the settings for shutter and iris. As you move the Command Dial left or right, an asterisk * appears above the P (P*), indicating that you have abandoned the cameras chosen exposure combination but are calculating an identical exposure by lowering the amount of light from the shutter while increasing the amount of light the iris IDENTICAL EXPOSURES is letting in, or vice versa. The total amount of light is not changing, but you are selecting The numbers are different but alternate versions of it. In a sense, you are selecting more or less Shutter Priority or Aperture the exposures are equivalent. Priority computations for the shot. Each click changes the exposure by 1/3-stop. F-number Shutter Speed i Get to know this feature. It may seem confusing at first, but as you watch the shutter 2.8 1/1000 speed and iris settings on your monitor as you adjust it, you will gain an intuitive sense of how 4 1/500 it works. You may never need Shutter Priority or Aperture Priority settings again. 5.6 1/250 i Under extreme circumstances the shutter speed you see in the Playback data screens may 8 1/125 show an exposure as brief as 1/2325 sec! You cant select this manually, but its nice to know that Nikon has created such a wide range. In order to cause this, you may have to boost the ISO up to 800 and shoot a pure white object in brilliant noonday sun.

Chapter 3C

Camera Operation 995

3C-13

Shutter Priority mode puts you in command of the shutter speed while the camera computes everything else. The maximum shutter speed you can select here is eight full seconds. Shutter speeds change in whole stops; 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, and so on. Top speed is 1/2000 sec! At this point you are freezing tennis balls in mid air. But only if you have enough light. i Under Firmware version 1.6, the maximum accurate Shutter Priority combination is 1/1000 sec at f/2.6 with ISO 100 (at widest zoom). Selecting 1/2000 sec jumps the iris to f/4.7, slightly too little to make daylight exposures. It would appear to be a bug or technical limitation of some sort. Perhaps a future firmware will eliminate the issue. The work-around is to increase sensitivity of the camera to ISO 200 or above. Auto ISO seems to not be a viable option. i As soon as you are below 1/60 sec you are in shaky territory. Many people cant hold the camera truly steady below 1/125 sec, so learning how to impart extra steadiness to the camera hand is a worthy technique to cultivate. Especially when the zoom lens is toward telephoto. The longer focal length magnifies any hand movement and requires higher shutter speeds. Think tripod. i If you are within the range of the appropriate exposure, the shutter speed number on the monitor will show steadily. If you have selected a shutter speed that is too long for the camera to match with an appropriate f-stop, the shutter speed number will flash. If the shutter speed is too brief, and no aperture wide enough to match with it will result in a proper exposure, a warning signal goes offthe red speedlight LED next to the optical viewfinder will flicker rapidly. Aperture Priority mode allows you to select the specific f-stop while the exposure computer calculates everything else. If you were shooting macro images from a tripod, you might wish to use a smaller f-stop to increase the depth of field, the area of relatively sharper image, while shutter speed wouldnt be as critical. If you were shooting a portrait and wished to blur the background as much as possible (enhanced by using a Nikon tele converter), then forcing a large f-stop would do the trick. i The maximum shutter speed Aperture Priority will produce is 1/1000 sec. Manual exposure mode gives you total control over everything. A graphic light meter of sorts shows up on the monitor as you change shutter or aperture. A single press of the Func1 button will select between your ability to set shutter or aperture. The current selection will have a color tint to the numbers on the monitor screen. As shutter speed goes below 1/8 sec the numbers will show in amber. Above that they show in light blue. This signals that you are entering the zone in which pixel noise may become a factor in your image. (See NR in the Menu Page 2 section on page 3C-24.) i The light meter graphic fills white boxes with white spots to indicate appropriate exposure. This cant be seen against a white image. On the LCD display on top of the camera, at the lower right corner the exposure is being tracked numerically. The + or numbers indicate how many stops you are away from correct exposure. A zero indicates correct exposure. If you see a + or symbol without a number, you are within a fraction of a stop of correct. i As with Aperture Priority mode, clicks of the Command Dial adjust the aperture in 1/3 stop increments. Shutter adjustments are in one full stop increments. To zero out the exposure, you would need to resort to aperture adjustments for that last fine tweak. i This exposure factor image and the meter display on the monitor screen stay visible for only seven seconds after your last adjustment. i The maximum shutter speed the camera can manually achieve is 1/2000 sec. At this speed hummingbird wings nearly freeze. i When you see the 1/2000 in red, it is signaling that it is not really functioning. This shows only at lower f-stops. It only performs as expected at wide zoom, f/4.7 and above; at mid-zoom, f6.2 and above; and at full tele, f/9.2 and above. At those settings, the numbers show as white numerals.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

MENU PAGE 1

Menu page one lists seven fundamental options. These are the settings that you will most likely wish to adjust or change as you shoot. They include: White Balance Metering Continuous BSS Image Adjustment Saturation Control Lens The implications of these selections are important for you to know. With the power of flexibility comes the responsibility to set things right. Heres how they work. White Balance setting. The options you are immediately confronted with include: Automatic WB Preset Fine (sunny) Incandescent Cloudy Flash Fluorescent Automatic examines 256 areas of the image with a matrix color metering system and draws its conclusions from that complex reading. It does this in a fraction of a second before the exposure is made for a very up to the moment reading. As the scene changes its colors, this system will track those changes, and it resists being fooled by all but the most difficult situations. Use it most of the time in outdoor light, and you will not be disappointed. Note: With Firmware 1.6, the white balance range of the 995 is narrow. The 950, 880, 775, and 990 adjust over a much greater range, and many feel that this is a correctable bug. Check in to the www.digitalsecrets.net website for the latest about this topic. i Images with a strong color can fool this system. If you were shooting a scattering of wild flowers over a red brick surface, the dominant color of the subject would give the color matrix meter nothing else to compare to. It would assume that the warm color meant warm light and it would compensate for it, dulling the color of the original subject. Use the Automatic white balance setting when you are shooting images with a variety of colorsor neutral subjectswithin the frame. WB Preset allows you to show the camera what the color of the light is supposed to be. This is the most accurate color balancing system the camera can achieve. You do it by scrolling right from the menu choice and selecting Measure. Anything the lens is pointed at will now be examined by the camera and assumed to be white or gray. If you hold a piece of white paper in front of the camera (a business card will do) the white reflection of the ambient light will force the camera to change its internal settings and portray that sample as neutral in color. i The white balance is easy to fool. The back of the cover of this eBook has an array of 48 color swatches that let you use the WB Preset function to put color filters into your camera. Point the camera at the color opposite the filter color you desire (the silver dots connect opposites). Perform the white balance on that color patch. Immediately the camera will begin shooting as if it had a color filter on the lens. The setting will stay in place until the next time you change the WB Preset. Turning the camera off or changing the battery will not erase this custom setting. It will be there until you change it. Fine is Nikons word for Sunny white balance. Not to be confused with Fine, the compression setting. On the playback data screens and in EXIF files, this will be reported as Sunny.

Chapter 3C

Camera Operation 995

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Direct clear sunny days can use this setting and accurate colors will fill every shot. It cannot be fooled. Its a factory setting designed to give you perfect results. You can, however, adjust it to your own taste, if you wish. Select one click to the right with the Command Dial, and there you will see a numbered column. Positive numbers are cooler and negative numbers deliver warmer colors to the exposure. The degree of change is modest but useful. Zero is trustworthy. It delivers the most accurate color for the greatest range of images. All the fixed, factory presets have this warm/cool adjustment. Incandescent is the white balance appropriate for indoor, tungsten filament bulbsthe hot kind that need to cool off before being touched. But those bulbs come in a range of color temperatures from the intense white of halogen bulbs (perfect for this setting) to the gold of low wattage light bulbs. You can always perform a WB Preset under any lighting, but if you were shooting in a room or studio lit with bright halogen (also called tungsten-halogen), this is the setting you would select. i Stage productions use dimmable lights. That means tungsten filament bulbs. So the Incandescent white balance would probably give you the best results if you were photographing a stage play. Be aware that the spot meter will probably give you the best light meter in this shooting environment. Cloudy is appropriate for overcast days. Your eyes wont tell you but your camera will, that full sunlight is warmer than cloudy lighting. This setting produces slightly warm results when used in full sunlight and neutral results when used under overcast skies. Flash is the white balance most appropriate for flash photography. The in-camera flash unit and most external flash units will produce the best color with this white balance setting. That includes old flash units and studio strobes as well. Light from flash tubes is colderbluerthan sunlight and using this setting outdoors under full sun will deliver even warmer results than the Cloudy setting. i Each factory presets fine adjustment is memorized individually. You can set the camera to warm the results under cloudy skies and warm the flash pictures while leaving the indoor and sunny situations in the middle, more neutral, position. The harsh light of direct flash benefits from being warmed. i Using the Cloudy or Flash setting for shooting sunsets is a Good Idea. Using Auto white balance for sunsets is a Bad Idea. Auto will tend to see the sunset as too warm, so it will compensate for it and drain the color down too much. Flash will tend to warm it up a lot, and that may be closer to the effect your eyes are beholding. Fluorescent has three settings to match to the three most popular fluorescent bulbs. The easy way to use this is to see which setting seems to look best on the camera monitor. i If none look right, perform a White Balance Preset. Metering. There are four different types of light meter in the 995. Each is useful for specific kinds of images solving unique exposure situations. Matrix meter is the king of light meters. It reads no less than 256 areas (16 x 16 zones) of the image, forms an exposure conclusion, and intelligently decides where to set shutter speed, iris opening, and camera sensitivity, all in a fraction of a second. This is, perhaps, the most sophisticated meter on any digital camera, and it works hard to capture the image at the best place within the tonal range of the camera. It will see contiguous areas of similar brightness as being more important than a bunch of isolated areas of similar brightness and expose for things that can be regarded as probable objects. Center Weight metering averages the light values in the middle of the shot, exposing for just this area. It ignores the corners of the image and assumes that you only wanted things in the middle of the picture to be considered. Spot metering reads only the area within a small rectangle that shows on the monitor when it is activated. Great for backlit subjects, people in spotlights (in nightclubs, on stage) or any place where decisive, limited angle readings are needed.

METER SELECTION

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

AF Spot Area metering combines two concepts in a logical arrangement of both light meter and focus selection. As we will learn later, there is a system in the camera that will select any one of five auto focus zones, either automatically, or at your whim. i Since spot readings are best for things like back-lit or isolated subjectsthe actor in a spotlight, for instanceyou may find that this feature has distinct (although rare) applications. If you shoot subjects in a shaft of window light, dramatic stage lighting or standing in a pool of sunlight, selecting the Spot AF Area and either AF Area Mode > Manual or AF Area Mode > Auto, the bright subject against the darker background will nearly always be your focus target, either by your intervention or by the cameras choice.

MOTOR DRIVE

The Continuous Shot setting may confuse you at first. Perhaps you could think of it as the motor drive switchalthough it is more than that. This is where you decide the manner in which the camera captures images: Single Continuous Multi-Shot 16 VGA Sequence Ultra HS Movie Single shot delivers one image per shutter press. i You should remember that at the half-press point, the camera determines exposure and locks its auto focus. This can take a second. Try to get in the habit of half-pressing the releasepausethen following through with a full-press of the shutter button. Now the camera reacts to your finger in a tiny fraction of the amount of time the whole exposure sequence requires (< 0.1-sec). Continuous delivers a string of images at 1.6 fps (frames per second), which is analogous to a motor drive still camera. It will capture at least three images in a row at Fine compression and six or more at Normal compression. Smaller image sizes gather even more images before the camera has filled its internal buffer, slowing down while it records to the CF card. The UXGA image is a good compromise and at 1600 x 1200 pixels, it makes very good looking, letter page-size prints. In Continuous capture mode, it will gather at least eight Normal-compressed shots before slowing. Continuous mode disables the cameras slow-cycling internal flash but not the external flash trigger. The camera assumes that an external flash unit might be quite quick. i Even though the camera has filled its internal buffer, it will try to keep taking pictures. Only the internal housekeeping of writing to the memory will slow it down. Keep your finger down on the shutter button, and as soon as the buffer has enough space for another image, it will collect the next shot. In VGA mode, with its small 640 x 480 pixel images, recording the shots to the card is fast, so you may scarcely notice when it slows. You will still be able to capture at least one shot per second even with full-size images in Basic compression, right up to the point at which your memory card runs out of room (providing your CF card is up to it). Multi-Shot 16 mode does a unique thing. Once started, the camera takes 16 images at 2.2 shots per second and arranges them on a page like a comic strip, left to right and top to bottom. Each shot is 512 x 384 pixels in size and the page is 2048 x 1536 pixelsexactly the dimensions of a full-size single image. It doesnt fire the internal flash while doing this, but if you have a fast recycling external flash unit (at 0.45 sec per interval, it must be really fast) then you can gather flash shots. BSS and Noise Reduction are not available for Multi-Shot 16. i You can only access it with the camera set to a full-size image. VGA Sequence is a handy way to set size and speed at the same time. You could do this manually and get virtually identical resultsa continuous stream of Normalcompressed VGA imagesas fast as the camera can shoot. You will be able to gather around 40 shots this size before the camera pauses to write the pictures to your memory card. The internal flash is disabled in this mode but an external flash will fire.

VGA Sequence.

Multi-Shot 16

Chapter 3C

Camera Operation 995

3C-17

Computer is only $30 and includes a function that is called Import Image Sequence. With this tool, you simply select the first frame of the ones you wish to string together, choose a frame rate from 10 seconds per frame up to 30 frames per second, and sit back while the shots are pulled together as a high-quality QuickTime movie. Its so fast that a hundred VGA shots only take a few seconds to assemble into a playable movie. Ultra HS creates a new folder in the camera and fills it with QVGA frames at 30 fps for up to 70 frames. It is optimized for high shutter speed motion analysis playback, one frame at a time. UHS frame. 1/1984 sec. Neither internal nor external flash is enabled. To see these frames as an animation, you will need to import them into your computer with a program such as Apples QuickTime Pro. Movie mode shoots pictures that are half the size of a TV frame (QVGA again) at 15 fps for up to 40 seconds. The first press of the shutter button starts filming, and a small number on the monitor shows you how many seconds remain. A second press of the shutter button stops the movie. No sound is recorded and the flash is disabled, but you can zoom during the shot. The shot goes into your computer in the QuickTime movie format with the suffix .mov. You can play this motion sequence back on your camera monitor directly when reviewing images. The file is usually large and will take some time to load into viewing condition, but by pressing the QUAL button, you will see the entire shot in real time. Movie frame. About 1/15 sec. i The time it takes the movie to load into the camera from the CF card before you can view it is a sizeable fraction of the running length of the scene. So a 5-second shot will only take a few seconds to load, but watch out for long scenesyour camera isnt broken; its simply thinking. A full 0:40 scene can take over fifteen seconds to become fully active. i If you play the scene back on your camera monitor, you can pause the scene using the center button under the monitor. Now the Multi-selector can advance or back up one frame per right/left click. Instant motion analysis at 15 frames per second. i Continuous AF is needed for any continuous focus change during movie capture. If you set the camera to Single AF, it will lock the lens at the beginning of the shot and will not change focus during the scene. i You cant run a movie playback in Quick Review, you must have the camera in Playback mode to see it in motion. BSS (Best Shot Selector) is a magic feature found on no other line of cameras. The concept is simple: You hold the shutter button down while the camera beeps off a string of shots. But before the shots are saved to the memory card, a software routine with an eye for sharpness looks at each picture and decides which one has the most detail. In case of a tie, the most recent image is selected. Then only that shot is saved to the card. Since the largest file of a string of compressed images will be the one that has the most detail, thats the one which is saved. i In a very practical sense, BSS is a luck-enhancing feature, not a panacea. It will improve your chances at getting a shot with a slow shutter speed, but there is no guarantee that all shots gathered will include one that is as sharp as you would wish for. BSS success. This i Dont try this in Hi (full resolution TIFF uncompressed) format. It wont work. You cant even select BSS image was captured at 1/7 zec in Hi. It also cant be used with Continuous Shot mode or when noise reduction, NR, is turned on. hand-held. i It can be fooled. If you were to shoot a long view of a city at night and move the camera during the exposure, every point of light would become a streak. Each streak would appear to the computer as a more detail-rich image than a field of tight bright spots from a steady camera. Versions of this effect can show up on contrasty areas of hand-held images under many kinds of lighting, but in general, BSS works hard to give you that sharpest image. Perhaps it would be helpful for you to think, Biggest Shot Selector in the back of your head when shooting. It is very helpful when shutter speeds are lower than 1/60 sec and when difficult hand-held situations present themselves. Use itbut shoot several saved images, just in case.

i You can animate these images in your computer for low cost. QuickTime Pro from Apple

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Image Adjust is a function that first appeared on the Coolpix 950 and is beginning to appear on other brands. Here you have the option of changing the response curve of the camera by lifting its gamma (center point) up or down producing the effects called Brightness + and Brightness respectively. This makes the image brighter in its central tones without affecting its highlight or shadow values. You can also select the Contrast + or Contrast controls which perform a more complex function. Here the major part of the response curve is given a steeper or shallower angle respectively. i The practical result is that with Contrast +, flat-lit, contrast-challenged subjects, such as shapes in fog or people in cloudy, non-directional lighting, can be perked up a notch. Contrast gives the image the immediate look of seeming too dark, but what has really happened is that the highlights have been stretched while the shadow tones have remained locked where they would be in a normal exposure. More detail will be available in high-key subjects like white clouds, snow, beaches of Contrast minus, normal, and Contrast plus under Prowhite sand, and white clothing like bridal dresses. gram exposure. For digital darkrooming adjustments, Id rather start with the Contrast minus image on the left. It i With Contrast selected, you will need to experiment to underhas a wider dynamic range. stand the behavior of the setting. Usually, images that are shot with added EV +0.3 or +0.7 will bring the middle tones up to where you expect; yet the highlights still retain greater range. The major difference, by doing this combination of settings, is to be seen in the shadows. The picture looks fairly normal, but shadow detail elevates by the EV + factor.

Saturation can always be added in the digital darkroom, but when you add or subtract it as you shoot, you may be able to control the look of prints that never get into your personal custom print lab. The normal image is in the center, and the side images were shot the lowest and highest saturation settings.

Saturation Control is a new control to the Coolpix 995. You may elect to adjust the saturation of the image by 1 or 2 units, +1 unit, leave it at Normal (the recommended setting), or drain color completely and shoot in black and white. When the camera is set to B&W, the viewfinder is black and white, the white balance is disabled, and all of the other systems of the camera behave normally. The actual change in image saturation for the numbered settings is small. For very high chroma subjects, such as neon signs at night, the 2 setting may have its uses. The 1 setting may give you a more film-like color version of the scene in brightly lit shots, and the +1 setting is useful for scenes in which the native color depth seems shallow. It perks up images such as graphics, scenics and muted natural colors but may be too much for flowers and portraits. i In B&W, the camera shows you a monochromatic monitor image. Adjustments to Brightness +/ and Contrast +/ are selectable. Now you can have several different types of film in your camera that previous Nikon 9xx cameras (and virtually all other digital cameras) lack. And through it all, you will be seeing the composition of your shots in living black and white as you shoot. i The imaging chip is a color receptor. Any color filter placed over the lens will cause the B&W image to behave with the same effect the filters would have on B&W film.

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Lens selection is a handy group of optional settings that limit the behavior of the zoom, exposure and focus systems for particular lens converters or accessories. You can use these converters without using these settings, but they are provided as a guide that optimizes the relationship of camera to converter. The choices are: Fisheye 1 Fisheye 2 WA Tele 2X Tele 3X Slide Copier Fisheye 1 zooms to full wide, turns the exposure metering system to Center Weighted, disables the internal flash, and sets the focus to infinity. It assumes you wish to take fullhemisphere images with the FC-E8 converter. The Infinity setting is all that is needed for virtually any shot, since the lens is in focus from a few inches from the glass to the horizon. i When you select out of Fisheye 1 to choose another lens setting, or no setting at all, the meter system remembers where it was set before and restores your chosen meter. So the Center Weighted meter is only temporarily invoked with Fisheye 1. Fisheye 2 zooms the camera to the exact place at which the zoom lens+fisheye produces a full-frame image. In this setting the FC-E8 becomes a curvilinear wide-angle lens that fills the frame. The camera flash unit is disabled here, too. Tele 2 limits the zoom controls rang and parks the zoom at full telephoto. Its matched for use with the TC-E2 tele converter, which does not cover the entire zoom range. Uncontrolled wide zoom settings will reveal a circular vignette around the image. This setting stops the zoom from going any wider than 14.1mm (equivalent to about a 67mm focal length on a 35mm camera), thus avoiding vignetting. From here to full tele zoom, you experience a 2+:1 zoom range for framing your shots. The 995s zoom is free to cover the 14~32mm range internally, equivalent to a 35mm camera with a 134mm to 304mm lens. The camera flash is disabled, and the meter remains where you last set it. i Notice that with the TC-E2 in place, some overlap of the zoom range occurs. Tele 3 is designed for the TC-E3 lens with its 3 X magnification. The setting behaves just like the Tele 2 lens setting, except that its rear zoom limit is adjusted to the camera lenss 19.6mm position, insuring that no rearward zoom includes a vignette. It produces an effective remaining zoom of almost 1.6:1 that covers the 35mm camera equivalent range from 280mm to 455mm. i At these long focal lengths, camera shake becomes a significant factor. Shutter speeds above 1/250 sec are recommended, along with stabilization techniques such as tripods, cradling the camera while your hand rests on a solid object, and remote triggering. You may even wish to increase ISO to 200 in order to achieve faster Full zoom (left), TC-E2, and TC-E3 (right) Nikon converters on the same subject (152mm, shutter speeds, since your widest 304mm, and 456mm equivalent). This is a full-height, vertical slice out of three horizontal images that were all shot 18 feet (5.5 meters) away. All exhibit exemplary sharpness. aperture at full zoom is f/5.1.

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Slide Copy Adptr. The Nikon ES-E28 Slide Copier was introduced to the Nikon lens accessory line in late 2000. It attaches to the lens and facilitates the framing, focusing and copying of 35mm slides, film strips, and negatives. It is a cylindrical barrel that is capped with a light diffusion material. The copier comes with carriers for slides of any thickness and strips of uncut film. i Using the ES-E28 means working around its native shortcomings. The diffusion material built into it is not very diffuse, and any small diameter illumination source will create a pronounced hot spot behind the image at virtually any distance. To work around this, you will have to point the whole device at a well illuminated white surface, or perhaps you could improve on the diffusion material Nikon chose to build in by replacing it, or by adding neutral diffusion material over it. With the Slide Copy Adptr setting, the camera adjusts to several things. Slides are more contrasty than real life, so the Contrast setting is switched on and to compensate for the slightly darker image this produces, the EV adjustment is set to +0.7. The Slide Copy Adptr lens selection has two options, Positive and Inverse Color, to further help you copy film negatives. These are almost always used with the film strip holder. i White balance on the blank white diffusion material first. If that isnt satisfactory, white balance on a slide that seems to have relatively neutral color content. Macro focus mode is automatically selected in this setting, and the lens zooms to the optimum spot. You may adjust this zoom setting for framing purposes, but every time you power up the camera, it will return to this zoom position. i Now you know how to set the camera for instant jumps to Macro mode. By selecting Slide Copy Adptr you will immediately be in Macros sweetest spot. Cool. But note that the Contrast and EV +0.7 adjustments are in place. i You may perform a White Preset on the image if you wish, but try to find an image that does not have a strong colored subject to it. A picture of a white building, gray asphaltanything without a dominant colorwould be fine for this purpose. Once memorized, most other images in the same light as your reference image will come out close to their normal coloration.

i NEGATIVE COMMENTS

Negative copying is handled through the strip film carrier. With this, a string of up to six images is held in place with the plastic mount, and this is slid through the copiers frame to position the desired image in front of the lens. In the Inverse Color setting, the orange cast of color negatives is instantly compensated for with a special version of the cameras white balance circuitry. Contrast is switched on and the camera is immediately set to EV +1.3. Quite a complex of changes. i Uh, oh. Unfortunately, with Inverse Color selected, the regular white balance circuits are shut off as well. This means that the color of your light source is now the only means you will have of affecting the color of the shot. i Perhaps the best light source for working with negatives is staring you in the face right now! A blank, white, open window in Photoshop (PS or PSE) can be color-adjusted using Photoshops Hue and Saturation controls to deliver any color light you will need. Use the tryout version included on this CD if you dont already have Photoshop. Light glowing from your computer screen is naturally cool to begin with, so colors generated here start close to optimum. i Make the blank window about three times the diameter of the slide copiers diffusion circle. Give it an initial dimension of 100 x 100 pixels, and enlarge it to a working size.

Colorful visitors to the Kennedy Space center from a long-forgotten color negative. This page: First exposure using a white computer screen and first color correction attempt. Next page: refinements.

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Second attempt at better color and Photoshop Curves control refinements.

how to adjust the color light source to achieve the best results to begin with, but understand that the final tweaks may have to be performed individually in the digital darkroom. Shoot a test image. It will be the wrong color. This is virtually inevitable. Its like this in color labs, too. Always. The first step is to appreciate what color the image looks too much like. Adjust the color of the light window on your computer screen to about the same color as the wrong tint you see in the test image. Its negative, so you fight blue with blue. Refine with a second test image. When you add too much color to the light source, the tint will become the opposite color. Reduce the saturation in the source window and try again. Eventually you will see that the hue may need adjustment. Sample the current color and adjust it with the color wheel by moving the current color point in the direction of the current wrong tint. Each move gets you closer. The final step is to make Curves adjustments in Photoshop. The series here made two color adjustments and one overall plus color channel Curves tweaks. i One additional method that you have available is to shoot without the Inverse Color selection, and use the iNovaFX iColorNegProcess Photoshop Action filters to invert and finetune your images. By doing it with them you can white balance off of a neutral subject in your negative before making the exposure, and that helps the final result quite a bit. Try it using both methods to see which works best for your film negatives. Directions for the iNovaFX filters can be found in Chapter 9. i The Inverse Color function has another use: making original shots look like color negatives for special effects purposes. And, no, you cant shoot images this way and get them to look normal later in Photoshop. i Black and white negatives are even more easy to convert to digital images. With these, you should capture the image with the Positive setting, then invert it in your editing program later.

i For later manipulation, the accurate technical results in the camera are needed. Learn

i NIKON LENS CONVERTERS

Nearly every non-Nikon optic that can be fitted to this camera will show greatly reduced sharpness at the edges of the converters image, but this effect is not seen as much in the lenses that Nikon has produced exclusively for the 9xx series of cameras. Their designs have been computed from the outset to sit at the exact place they occupy in front of the zoom elements within. As a result, they are the sharpest lenses seen on any of the compact digital camera designs witnessed so far. The second menu page includes a different mix of camera settings and options. These are the ones less frequently visited. They include: User Choice EXP. (Exposure Options) Focus Sharpening BKT (bracket) NR (Noise Reduce) C (Reset) User Choice gives you three different cameras. The one you most often use, plus a User 2 and User 3 setting. All three allow you to memorize any function or mode from Menu Page 1, plus the Sharpening Setting from Menu Page 2, and have the entire complex of setups and choices instantly in place for your next shot. Switching between User settings is by clicking the Command Dial left or right. i Getting to Menu Page 2 quickly is a habit worth cultivating. Learn to quickly double-press the Menu button to get right to it. Now you are immediately in touch with the User choices. From Menu Page 1, you

MENU PAGE 2

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Interesting setups can include


SETTING
White Balance Meter Type Single / Continuous BSS Lens Type Image Adjustment Saturation Sharpness

SET A-JOURNALIST
-NASpot AF Area Continuous -NAWide Auto B&W High

SET B-CASUAL
Fine (Sunny) Matrix Single On Normal Normal 0 Auto

SET C-MACRO MOVIE SET D-OFFICE


Auto Matrix Movie -NASlide Copy (Less Contrast) -1 Off FL 3 Center-Weighted Single Off Normal More Contrast +1 Normal

can scroll upward and go directly to the bottom of Menu Page 2 since both pages are really one extended list of items in a selection loop. i Watch out, if you scroll backwards like this, the first choice there is Reset, and you rarely would need that! Once you are in any of the User Choice settings, any change you make to the controls of the camera will stay with that setting until updated. They will survive through loss of power, battery changes, sleep, and long periods of having the camera off. i A good strategy for using the three setups is this. Have the User Set 1 be the one you constantly expect to change. Now User Set 2 and User Set 3 can become specific favorite different kinds of cameras. You can make your other two setups any combination of menu choices found on Menu Page 1 plus the sharpness options. So you can park all sorts of relatively complex presets here. i You must remember that a User Set choice does not select the type of focus automation. If you are selecting the movie mode with a User Setting, the camera only focuses at the very beginning of the shot and although you can zoom during the scene, it wont track focus. This is not a full-featured video camera. i Movie mode does change exposure during the shot unless you are in Manual Exposure mode. The brightness of the scene will jump by small 1/3-stop increments as you pan across the subject. This is not a full-featured video camera. Exposure Options affect the way the camera organizes its exposure elements. Within this control you have these alternatives: AE Lock EXP. +/ Exposure mode AE Lock is used in cases where you wish to lock the exposure and white balance so the succeeding string of exposures are exactly and precisely identical. Panoramic images would suffer if the exposure wandered from shot to shot, for instance. So would a string of images shot for animation. The AE (Auto Exposure) Lock is set to capture the next image using any means you may have, from any of the white balance setting methods, meter methods, or manual adjustments you may make. Once that first image is taken, all following images (until you switch the feature to off ) will be identical. The control includes the option to Reset the lock, discarding the previous setting. i The most common reason to lock the exposure is for gathering segments for a panoramic, stitched image. Such images must be gathered at the same exposure settings and the same Zoom settings. If you zoom after the first exposure-establishing image has been taken, the camera cant guarantee the identical or equivalent exposure from shot to shot. If you re frame for a new sequence, you must reset the AE Lock before continuing. i Full Manual exposure mode does provide a way of maintaining the exact same exposure under different zoom settings. Also, see Fixed Aperture later on.

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EXP. +/- is an exact mirror of the EV +/- (Exposure Value adjustment) function found normally under the button on the top of the camera labeled Func2. Nikon included it here since it is possible to change the actual function of the Func buttons in on the Settings Menu page. I recommend keeping these function buttons at their factory settings. Exposure Mode will probably seem confusing. Most of the time you wont even be able to select it. Thats because it is intimately connected to another control found on the Set-Up menu pages. When you program the Func1 button to some other function than Exposure Mode selection, this item becomes available as your way of selecting among Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority or Manual Mode exposures. Another good reason to leave the Func button settings alone! Focus Options allow you to decide four main things: AF Area Mode Auto-Focus Mode Focus Confirmation Distance Units AF Area Mode settings bring into action the five-zone auto focus option and either lets the camera select which zone is active or allows you to manually select the active area using the Command Dial. Or you can turn this system off. Off assumes the center of the image is the cameras focus target. i With Focus Options > AF Area Mode > Auto selected, the camera shows a red bracket in the one area of the five available, indicating which it has used to successfully achieve the best focus. If the red bracket does not appear, that means the camera has not been able to achieve good focus. Without good focus, the green LED next to the viewfinder will flash as well. Auto-Focus Mode gives you two options, Continuous AF and Single AF. Continuous AF constantly attempts to keep the camera in focus, but when new things enter the frame, they dont always cause the system to unlock from whatever it had previously targeted. Continuous AF is fast, but it can become confused by certain types of subject matter. Single AF is slower to respond, but with each time you half-press the shutter button before an exposure, it searches from infinity to close, always looking for something that is getting sharper. Any nearby object within even a few feet of the camera will be detected and locked onto. The camera always assumes that the nearest object in the focus area is the one you wanted to bring into focus, and this is usually the case. Once again the practice of half-pressing the shutter release before the moment of exposure becomes a Good Thing to know. i With the AF Area Mode system off, the camera will focus on objects that occupy a larger section of the center of the image and will tend to select the nearest object. When this is combined with Single AF, it is very hard to lose focus on the nearest object close to the center of the image. i With Single AF and Macro focus mode working in tandem, it is almost impossible for the camera to ignore a nearer object in favor of the background. Stolen focus will be avoided. i In Movie image capture mode, Continuous AF will allow the camera to refocus (slowly) during the scene. With Single AF selected, the camera will hold the focus distance constant throughout the duration of the moving scene. Focus Confirmation creates an interesting effect on the monitor screen. Objects that are in good focus are given a very high level of image enhancement that shows up as an extra-crispy looking image on the monitor screen. You can elect to have it work with MF, manual focus only, or let the effect display all the time, or be disabled altogether. i Focus Confirmation is excluded from images gathered in Ultra HS and Movie modes. Distance Units that show up in Manual Focus mode can be selected to show as Meters or Feet. i In the EXIF data that displays during playback, you will notice that the distance is always displayed in meters. Image Sharpening options are marked with the diamond symbol. Your options are Auto, High, Normal, Low, and Off.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Off adds no electronic sharpening at all. The image is exactly as the imager saw it. It will look quite soft on your computer screen, but it is in a virgin state, so you can run an external sharpening program on the image if you wish, or selectively sharpen parts of the image. A special iNovaFX filter is designed to sharpen these. Auto sharpen is the most common setting, good for the widest range of normal images. Nikon has been very careful to use the in-camera sharpening processes without getting overly aggressive. The stepped variations give you High, Normal, and Low sharpness directly from the camera. Note that High may produce artifacts around fine detail like hair, twigs, and wires. Low avoids virtually all sharpening artifacts and tolerates in-computer sharpening enhancements better than Normal and High settings. Auto Bracketing (BKT on the menu) is a useful feature that lets you shoot 3 or 5 images around the target exposure. When one of these choices is invoked, the camera will shoot a string of shots that acquire underexposure(s), normal exposure and overexposure(s). Each shot in the bracket can be 0.3 EV, 0.7 EV or 1.0 EV apart from the others. A symbol with BKT and the shot exposure separation number will show on the monitor screen when it is active. Your choices are: 3 shots 0.3 EV 5 shots 0.3 EV Sharpness range. One side was with sharp 3 shots 0.7 EV 5 shots 0.7 EV ness off, the other with sharpness at maxi 3 shots 1.0 EV 5 shots 1.0 EV mum. The 995 has two intermediate levels. i BKT works automatically in Program, Shutter, and Aperture priority modes and only when the range selected is available. In Manual exposure mode it only acts as a guide for the meter graphic. i By using the 5 shots 1.0 EV, your string of images will cover 2 whole stops above and below the normal exposure. A method of using these images to achieve an image with greater dynamic range than a film negative is found in Chapter 9 along with a group of iNovaFX filters that facilitate combining the shots in Photoshop. The two extreme images and normal exposure image are stacked, combined in a novel way, and flattened into a single long-scale image. Shooting such images requires zero camera movement between shots. The Nikon MC-EU1 remote cord will help you to squeeze off a string of shots without touching the camera directly. i With a bracket setting selected, the camera is committed to shooting the entire sequence brightest to darkest. But it doesnt happen in rapid order unless you combine the BKT setting with Continuous Shot, and hold your finger down on the shutter release until all three or five images have been achieved. When you shoot in Single Shot mode, the camera first gathers the brightest exposure, then proceeds through subsequent shots to the darkest exposure. Flash behaves as usual, while BSS is disabled. i Bracketing will remain active through sleep cycles and switches of the mode dial to Playback or Auto Rec and back to Manual Rec. It will only disappear if you Assembled from a five-shot Bracket. switch to off or go into the menu system and turn it off under the BKT selection. If you start a series, then alter any constant like shutter speed or f-number, it will start over from the lowest extreme of the bracket series. Noise Reduction (NR on the menu). With this turned on, any shot longer than 1/30 sec will put the camera through some heroics that reduce pixel noise in the image. The camera will take two shots; the one you want and another one of a blank, solid black image. That second shot is made using the exact same shutter speed of the original image. Any pixels that show up as specks on this blank frame will be light spots on the picture as well. The camera will use light spots (blown or noisy pixels) on the dark frame as a template to fill the ones on the shot with the color of surrounding pixels. It makes the noise go away.

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Noisy / noise free. In-camera noise reduction is much faster than doing it in editing.

You can achieve this same effect with the iNovaFX iFF-series filters if you record a black flaw frame when you shoot your long exposure. The inclusion of the incamera noise reduction feature makes the idea much more accessible and it works very well. i NR will not work on images of 1/30 sec or shorter. It isnt needed there. Reset All (C on the menu). Here is the control that will reset the camera to its factory-default settings. If the camera is misbehaving, and nothing you do seems to make it right, it is good to remember that digital cameras are computers with eyes, and like all computers, they may get into modes that defy explanation. You can jump past confusion and be back in operation quickly by forcing a Reset. i When you invoke this command, the current User Set is the one that returns to the factory preset and the other two do not, although many other settings from Menu Page 2 and all of the Set-Up pages will be reset. It may be a good idea to perform the system Reset on User Set 1 so you dont lose any of your other settings.

Menu pages 1 and 2 contain the ideas you will most often access. The Set-Up menu pages hold those things you will likely rarely touch. Folders behaves exactly the way it does in Auto Rec. Monitor Options adds to the options for brightness and color adjustment that are found in the Set-Up menu of Auto Rec. New here is the Display Mode option, which allows you to select the startup condition of the monitor. Monitor On is normal, but you can set it to Review Only, which keeps the monitor off until a shot has been taken, then lights it up for review. Preview Only shows you the setup of a shot but doesnt bother showing you the result, and Monitor Off keeps the monitor off at all times. i With Monitor Off, battery life is greatly extended. If your battery is showing low, select this option. You might get 30 to 80 more shots per charge! Controls lets you decide which of several things are memorized when the camera is switched off. You can elect to have the camera keep track of Flash Settings; distance settings of Infinity, Macro, and Self-Timer, Mode (Exposure Priorities); or +/ (EV adjustments). Notice that you check these boxes and must then select the Done item at the bottom of the list in order to make your selections valid. The Self-Timers symbol is shown with the distance settings, but is not actually remembered through an off/on cycle or a sleep/awaken cycle. This is normal. The Self-Timer is a function that evaporates after one use and must be primed each time. You wouldnt like to pick up your camera for the first time in a while, only to find that it had its Self-Timer still active for your first shot. Func-y. Another pair of items marked Func1 and Func2 allow you to assign certain functions to these handy buttons so you dont have to go searching through the menu system to access the feature. They come pre-wired to the Exposure Mode and EV +/ functions, respectively, and after you get used to the camera, you will probably like to keep them attached to these ideas, but its nice to know you can change them if you wish. i In my experience answering the problems people have had with their CP990 cameras over the last 15 months, a whole category of confusion has been generated from people accidentally leaving some other function attached to one or both of these buttons. Each works by holding the button down while rotating the Command Dial. Your choices for change include: Mode settings of Program, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, and full Manual exposure modes. Focus Options, the exact same ones on the button at the lower left of the monitor. Flash Options, the exact same ones on the button at the bottom center of the monitor. White Balance, so you dont have to change it with a menu item.

SET-UP MENU PAGES

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

EV +/ settings that allow you to quickly adjust auto exposure behavior. Metering allows you to select between Matrix, Center Weight, Spot, and Spot AF Area meter methods. Zoom Options allow you to select how the zoom behaves upon start-up. You can set three ideas here: Digital Tele, Startup Position, and Fixed Aperture. Digital Tele can be switched On or Off. With it on, the optical zoom stops moving at full tele position, but it only pauses there for a moment before the digital zoom starts adding its effect to the shot. The image jumps forward in 15 small increments, 1.2X, 1.4X, 1.6X, 1.8X3.6X, 3.8X, 4.0X, enlarging the image more each time. A number next to the zoom bar chart on the monitor screen tells you the zoom factor. i The center pixels from the sensor are being enlarged to the image size currently selected. At 4.0X, for instance, on a full-size image, the center 512 x 384 pixels are being enlarged to fill the entire frame! That degrades image quality considerably. The only benefit is to increase the size of the subject in the frame. That may be satisfying on the monitor, but the final image will suffer. i Digital Tele is disabled when the monitor is inactive. It will only be present when the camera knows you can see whats going on. i The Digital Tele feature enlarges the pixels from the image sensor, but if you have the camera set to a smaller size image, the loss of quality will not show up as much. As long as the enlargement factor matches the reduced-size frame factor, the resulting effect will be identical to simply cropping out a portion of the full-size frame. A 2.0X digital zoom applied to an XGA image, which has exactly half the pixels per dimension of the full frame, will look exactly like a center crop from a full-frame image. i Any digital zoom factor smaller than the frame size reduction factor will pass some beneficial degree of oversampling into the result. Now that image will look sharper than a simple crop from the center of a full frame. For example, any digital zoom factor under 3.2X will produce a VGA (640 x 480 pixel) image that is sharper than a simple crop from a full-size frame would be. i In a practical sense, any image with a digital zoom factor included that is 0.75 times the reduction factor will appear substantially sharper than a direct crop. This means that for an XGA image the 1.6X digital zoom is about your practical limit, and for the VGA image, a digital zoom factor of 2.0X~2.2X is about as high as you would wish to push it. Zoom Startup Position controls the place within the zoom that the camera awakens to. The zoom lens parks at a particular spot in its zoom range when the power is off or the camera goes to sleep. At this position, the elements and mechanism are better protected from physical shock. Upon awakening, however, you may wish to have a camera that starts wide, or full telephoto, or wherever you last left it, so these choices are available. i The native parking position is near the tele end of the zoom. Zooming the lens here before turning the camera off assures the quickest startup, since the lens doesnt have to travel to some other place before the camera is ready for action. Since this zoom repositioning is happening while other systems in the camera are awakening, the forward half of the zoom range is included in this fast

FIXED APERTURE RANGE


ZOOM Wide Mid Tele F/2.6 F/3.7 F/5.1 F/7.5 F/10+ XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

X = attainable = not available

startup idea. Fixed Aperture creates an aperture that does not vary its f-number as the lens zooms. Usually the iris in the lens is physically locked to a setting, but the zooming of the lens causes wide open to change from f/2.6 at wide

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angle to f/5.1 at full telephoto. The iris hasnt mechanically changed during this transition, but the effective aperture has. This variable iris effect is a compromise made by the optical designers so the lens could be made small and fit within the body of the camera. Fixed Aperture changes that for Manual Mode exposures only. Once set, the camera will track the aperture within the range available as you zoom. If you zoom beyond the range at which that aperture can be accessed, the iris will open or close proportionally. Keep your eye on the aperture number on the monitor if you are using this feature while zooming. Auto Off behaves exactly the way it does in Auto Rec. Seq. Numbers behaves exactly the way it does in Auto Rec. CF Card Format behaves exactly the way it does in Auto Rec. Speedlight Options allows you to vary the effective power of the camera flash with controls just like the EV +/ controls. The range is great, 2.0 full stops of control, and they only affect the flash. Here too, you can turn the Internal Flash Off and switch the Shot Confirm Lamp on or off. i Oddly, the Int Flash Off item that switches the cameras speedlight Off must be set to On in order shut it off. Are you with me on this? With Int Flash Off set to On, the cameras speedlight will be non-functioning. With Int Flash Off set to Off, the camera flash will be on. !! i Notice also, that when you wish to use an external flash with the camera, that you must pop open the cameras flash, even though it has been rendered non-functioning by setting Int Flash Off to On, otherwise the external flash wont fire. !!! i The Speedlight Options are the very most distant (hardest to access) choices in the entire menu Set the Int Flash Off funcsystem. They require more button presses to reach than any other selection. tion to On in order to keep the camera speedlight off. Shutter Sound behaves exactly the way it does in Auto Rec. Follow? Date behaves exactly the way it does in Auto Rec. Info. txt sets up the ability to track exposure data onto your CF card in a separate text file called info. txt, which is placed in the folder your pictures are being written to. With Nikon View 4, this data can be copied into your image files as they are transferred into your computer. Programs like Fotostation and Photoshop 5.x and 6.x can then read them as caption data. The entire contents of the EXIF data (all the things you can see on the Playback data pages, plus a little) will be there. Video Mode selects between PAL, the European TV standard, and NTSC, the American TV standard. The video out can feed TV sets all around the world. Language allows German, English, French, Japanese, and Spanish menus to be presented. Disable Delete turns on or off your ability to make quick deletions of the previous shot during the brief review of the scene following the shot and during Quick Review. It does not affect settings in Playbacks reviewing and editing functions. i If you attempt to delete an image or movie scene using Quick Review and you get a screen message that says CANNOT DELETE IMAGE, it will be due to Disable Delete being set on.

PLAYBACK MODE

When the camera is switched into Playback mode, it becomes an editing and tagging tool that can delete images, protect them from deletion, tag them for printing, hide them from playback, and transfer them into your computer. Here you can create a rudimentary slide show directly from the images in one or several folders. The images will play through the camera monitor and out the video cable to a TV in either PAL or NTSC video standard. This is useful both during shooting and review. As Playback mode is switched on, the most recent image is displayed on the monitor. Everything on the monitor is mirrored on the video out, so for really clear images, you can hook up to a TV. Clicking the Multi-Selector to the left will bring up earlier, lower numbered images, starting with the most recent. Clicking to the right will display later, higher numbered shots, and when the most recent is displayed, the next will be the oldest image on file in the current folder. Any images that have been gathered to other folders will be accessed through the menu system.

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Some data will show up in the corners of the shot, and when you click the Command dial to the right, a full page of data will appear. On it you will see many of the technical details about this specific image. One more click right, and you will see a second full page of data. These two pages of information are the EXIF data pages, and their data is captured into your computer when you copy images from the CF card onto your computer hard drive through a CF card reader. EXIF data tracks what the camera knows about these ideas: What model of camera made the image What the Firmware Version is What sort of meter estimated the exposure What exposure mode was employed What the shutter speed was What the aperture was What Exp +/- was used What the focal length was What sort of focus system was used Whether the camera flash was used What image adjustment might have been used What ISO was used What white balance was used What saturation setting was in place What sharpness setting was used Whether the digital tele was used, and at what magnification Whether a lens converter setting was employed How big the actual file size is i The EXIF file also contains the data from the first Playback page, which includes the date, time, image size, and compression setting. The most useful bits of information from all this may be PLAYBACK DATA PAGE TWO
Camera model number, E995 Firmware version E995V1.6 or higher Metering choice Mode Automatic or Manual Shutter speed Aperture Exposure Compensation in EV Focal Length in actual millimeters Focus type

PLAYBACK DATA PAGE THREE


Speed Light On or Off Image Adjustment Sensitivity in ISO White Balance setting Saturation Sharpness setting Digital Tele setting Lens Converter choice File Size in kilobytes

the time/date/file-size/shutter-speed/f-stop/ISO group, although certain data gain unique priorities with each shot. i Stored invisibly with JPEG data is the Print Image Matching code, an invention from Epson. It can influence PIM-compatible printers such as the Epson 785EPX and Photo 895 models, as well as compatible hardware and software, to produce superior results by maintaining better print color from the image file. In Playback mode the buttons on the camera gain new functions. The M-Focus buttonthe one under the monitor with the trash icon above itnow becomes an easy way to delete the current image. A choice made with the Multi-Selector will confirm the desire to delete the shot. After your

Chapter 3C

Camera Operation 995

3C-29

first dozen or so deletions you will wish to find a faster way, and there is one in the menu system (described a little later). The ISO button now becomes a way to review several images at once. One press shows nine tiny thumbnails, and another press jumps to four larger thumbnails filling the screen. One more press brings you back to the full screen, current shot. Zoom buttons behave like they do in Quick Review, described earlier. They magnify the shot up to 6X, allowing you to examine a small part of the whole image so you can check for focus and detail. Its helpful to be able to zoom this far into an image just to check on things. With VGA images you are zoomed into the central 80 x 106 pixels of the shot. With full size images, the zoomed view is inspecting a 256 x 341 pixel slice of the picture. i The right zoom button zooms the view into the shot, the left one zooms you back to the full image, and additional left presses give you the 4-up and 9-up images. The Monitor button, upper left of the monitor, successively switches the monitor text overlay off, then turns the monitor off (but leaves the video output functioning), then switches it back on. i If the camera falls asleep with the text off, it will be off when the camera awakens with the press of any button on the camera.

PLAYBACK MENUS

The Menu button overlays the image with the Playback Menu page. Here you can delete large quantities of images; make and name folders; run a video slide show; mark them for printing, protecting, and hiding; and transfer images into any USB port equipped computer with Nikon View 4 installed (Mac and Windows). Delete is the top entry, and this can delete Selected Images, All Images, or Reset Trns/Print. Selected Images creates a screen filled with the six most recent images in tiny thumbnail format. Using the Multi-Selector, an upward or downward press will mark or unmark the current image for deletion. It isnt deleted instantly, so you can decide to unmark ones you are not certain should go away. The left/right arrows move through the images and you will probably select only some of them for deletion. If you now touch the Size/QUAL button lower right of the monitor, the screen of thumbnail shots will be overlaid with this message, 34 Erase Images Yes or No? The number is however many you have marked. Yes blows them away forever. You cant get them back. All will completely erase all images in the current folder except those which have been marked for protection or which have been marked Hidden. Reset Trns/Print will cause any images previously marked with the Print Set command or the Auto Transfer command to become unmarked for either of these functions. Folders allows you to create, rename, or delete folders. It is the exact same menu found on Auto Rec and Manual Rec menus. Slide Show permits you to create a rudimentary display of your images over time. The inner menu gives you the Frame Interval choice of 2, 3, 5, and 10 sec per image, and only images that are not marked Hidden will show from the current selected folder. Protect behaves the same way that Delete > Selected Images behaves. The symbol of an antique skeleton key is dropped on each thumbnail image you choose with an up or down click on the MultiSelector while left/right clicks move you back and forth through the shots. Images with the key symbol are protected from being erased when you choose Delete > All Images (above). i You must validate your choices by pressing the Size/QUAL button or no protection will occur. Hide Image also behaves the same way that Delete > Selected Images behaves. The symbol of a dashed rectangular outline is dropped on each thumbnail image you choose with an up or down click on the Multi-Selector. Left/right clicks move you back and forth through the shots. Images with the dashed outline symbol are protected from being erased when you choose Delete > All Images (above). The dashed outline will appear on the upper third of the thumbnails and can co-exist with any other

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Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

symbols the thumbnail collects. Soon you will have so many icons on top of your image that you wont be able to see it. Print Set also behaves the same way that Delete > Selected Images behaves. The icon of a printer is dropped on each thumbnail image you choose with an up click on the MultiSelector while left/right clicks move you back and forth through the shots. A small number appears above the printer icon signifying the number of duplicates being called for. Successive up-clicks mark the image for more duplicate prints. Down-clicks reduce the number to the minimum of 1. At zero, the symbol disappears and the image will not be marked for printing. Images with the printer icon are protected from being erased when you choose Delete > All Images (above). Auto Transfer also behaves the same way that Delete > Selected Images behaves. The symbol of a two-way lightning bolt is dropped on each thumbnail image you choose with an up or down click on the Multi-Selector while left/right clicks move you back and forth through the shots. Images with the bolt symbol are protected from being erased when you choose Delete > All Images (above). Hidden images cannot be seen when Auto Transfer selections, Print selections, or Protect selections are being made. i If you think you had an image that somehow disappeared, check with the Hide Image command. Oh, there it is... Images marked with the Auto Transfer symbol are detected with the Nikon View 4 software program from your computer. With Nikon View 4 in your computer, plug in your cameras USB cable, and stand back. The process is automated. The camera and computer form a Vulcan Mind Meld, and all Auto Transfer > Selected Photos will now transfer to your computer without further human intervention. Alternatively, you can choose to transfer all of the cameras shots with the All Photos option. With this, only images that are not Hidden will be copied into your computer. i But you may not need Nikon View 4 to do the job. Nikon View 3.1.1 work with somewhat less functionality. As soon as you connect your camera to the computer with the USB cable, an icon will appear in the same way another disk drive or CompactFlash card reader would show up. Surprise! This can be opened up and inside a folder marked 100Nikon will appear. Opening it will show you a bunch of numbered files that are your images. You can now drag and drop them into any other folder in your computer. i One of the handy aspects of Nikon View 3 was its usefulness as a general-purpose folder magnifier. ANY folder could be dropped into it and the contents would appear as giant thumbnail images of the pictures within. Even images made with other software. i Nikon View 4 sidesteps this function and facilitates connecting your images with Nikons special website from which people may view your images and photographic prints may be ordered. Theyve done a lot to make the process convenient and hassle-free. The prints, however, cost money.

SET-UP MENU PAGE

Virtually all these settings have been encountered in the setup pages of the record mode menus. Monitor Options behaves exactly the way it does in Auto Rec and Manual Rec. Shutter Sound behaves exactly the way it does in Auto Rec and Manual Rec. Auto Off for Playback can be set to a different time than for the two record modes. You can set the camera to 30 sec and the Playback to 5 minutes if you wish. CF Card Format behaves exactly the way it does in Auto Rec and Manual Rec. Date behaves exactly the way it does in Auto Rec and Manual Rec. Video Mode behaves exactly the way it does in Manual Rec. Language behaves exactly the way it does in Manual Rec.

Chapter 3D

Camera Operation 775

3D-1

Camera Operation
Nikon Coolpix 775
The Coolpix 775 has many cool features. Although it shares a number of the functional aspects and menus of the CP950 and CP880, it is a completely new camera from the ground up. It is the smallest Nikon Compact Digital Camera and has the smallest feature set. Still, it offers a lot. Especially to newcomers to digital photography: It runs quite fast in general, taking up to two shots per second in Continuous still mode. The zoom lens is 5.8~17.4mm, equivalent to a 38~114mm zoom lens in a 35mm camera. The battery is via Alkaline 2CR5 or EN-EL1 Lithium Ion (a.k.a. LiION or Li-ION) rechargeable batteries (charger included). The replaceable memory is in the CompactFlash Type I format. Image Quick Review is facilitated with its own dedicated button. Image memory internally is large enough for a ten-shot UXGA, Fine, BSS capture. Nine exposure options including seven Scene programs that allow quick selection of exposure types. = ISO ranges from 100 to 400. An Image Adjustment menu adjusts contrast, brightness, and color. InfoBite Review zoom inspection has a 2X blow-up on the monitor. XGA and VGA image capture sizes are available. The 775 is a great introduction to digital photography in general, and images from it will print very good looking pictures all the way up to letter-size pages. This tiny camera packs a lot of picture power in a small space. It isnt the smallest 2 megapixel digital camera on the market, but it brings a feature set that even a crusty old pro can enjoy. I bought it wondering if it was good enough to write about. It earned my respect, and this chapter is the result. First, it is a true go-anywhere camera. It isnt waterproof, but it will fit in an inner coat pocket unnoticed all day. It is a kind of pass around camera. Easy to teach people how to use, easy to master, and easy to connect into your digital darkroom, provided you have a computer with USB connections. The images are vivid, the prints they make will cause a lot of approving clucking and wooing, This is an image straight out of the CP775 with no digital darkrooming. and it will bring many more smiles and eyebrow hikes to It used the built-in BSS (Best Shot Selector) feature to catch the sharpest peoples faces than you might expect. It makes the transiimage under difficult lighting, but as you can see, it captured mixed light sources, high contrast, and shadow detail quite well. The camera tion from film to digital both pleasant and rewarding. speedlight (flash) is off during BSS capture. The unusual colors in this The 775 feels almost spy-cam small, and getting used parking garage were precisely the colors that attracted me to the shot. to the relevance of the controls will be your biggest challenge. Even if you have worked with other digital cameras, this one may throw you a curve or two as you get to know what each button does, and when it does it. Its easy to get into picture taking by simply clicking the Mode dial to Auto Rec and throwing the power switch On. That four-button Multi-selector/Zoom control is about all you will need to learn how to use to start with.

3D-2

Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

There is a first Major Lesson to be learned. Here it is:


1. Press the exposure release half way until your finger feels resistance. The focus mechanism, flash, and exposure computer will quickly determine the right thing to do next.

Unlike small point and shoot film cameras, this ones 4000+ focus point system is very accurate and it will tell you when it has achieved perfect focus by lighting the green LED next to the optical viewfinder. All of this will take about one second.
2. NOW, and only now, press the exposure button the rest of the way. Depending on how the camera is set and the lighting conditions for the shot, the exposure will be made and the flash may be part of it.

Instantly you will see your shot on the small camera monitor screen. There it is for about two seconds, so you can get an idea of what your picture will look like, then the live image will return. The CP775 inherits some of the best features from the CP950, the legendary 2.14 megapixel split-body camera discussed in Chapter 3A. This one weighs about 40% of that older camera and includes seven Scene modes similar to those found on the CP880. Scene modes are a key feature that will lead you by the hand to superior exposures under a wide variety of shooting situations. Hidden within the Scenes are sophisticated programs that combine meter considerations, flash options, lighting conditions, camera sensitivity (analogous to film speed), color adjustments, shutter speed settings, and iris settingsall to bring you the best looking shot under the immediate circumstances. i Try to get into the habit of reading about these features and controls with the camera at hand. Play with it as you encounter these ideas. If you are new to digital photography, you may not remember everything at once, but your fingers will help you remember where ideas are hidden.

ASSAULT ON BATTERIES

The CP995, CP880, CP885, and CP775 all use Nikons EN-EL1 rechargeable lithium-ion (Li-ION) cell which was introduced with the 880. Its smaller than two AA cells and delivers a rated 4.875 watt-hours of power per charge. For comparison, four AA NiMH rechargeable batteries of 1400 mAH capacity deliver 6.72 watt-hours of total power for a CP950. Obviously, the new EN-EL1 stores more energy in a smaller volume than typical rechargeable AA cells do. A small camera like this needs an appropriate, long-running battery. The EN-EL1 has a number of advantages, and only one disadvantage. 1. It is small. 2. It is light. 3. It comes with a battery charger included in the box with the camera. Different versions ship with the camera in the USA and in other parts of the world. 4. The US charger (MH-51 with EH-51 Transformer) charges quickly (two hours). 5. The charger runs on 100 to 240 volts AC (47-63 Hz). So it can adapt to power all over the world. 6. It has no charging memory effect. As do Ni Cad batteries. 7. It does not lose its charge just sitting in your camera bag. Idle NiMH cells do lose charge slowly. About 30% per month, but these hold a charge for years. 8. It comes with a cap that keeps the terminals covered in pocket or bag. 9. It lasts. One EN-EL1 runs the CP775 camera for as many pictures as four AA cells will power a CP950. So the per-charge life is a very long, 100 continuous minutes with the monitor on. 10. It drains predictably. The camera power icon indicates power remaining quite accurately. (Of course you only get one warning signal. When the 1/2 charge indicator shows, you still have a lot of power before it becomes useless.) And if you need another reason, the most important may be: 11. There is only one of them. Swapping out the power unit is fast and easy to control.

This is a power supply with eleven good features and only one bad one. Maybe the price will come down...

Chapter 3D

Camera Operation 775

3D-3

Ive dropped AA cells for years, now, and have become a relative expert at it. I also drop CompactFlash cards, but thats a different story. Fumbling several separate objects in one hand while loading the battery compartment is no longer fun. This power pack is a welcome idea. The non-US charger is designated as a MH-50 and charges the battery in about six hours. Since a battery will absorb about 80% of a full charge in the first half of the recharging cycle, dont be afraid of using a partly recharged battery after only a few hours of charging time. i You may need to charge the depleted battery for just a few minutes to build a useful charge. Ten minutes of charge can buy you nearly twenty minutes of use. Get stuck in the boonies without power? It happens, and the single use 2CR5 batteries ($10 each at Radio Shack and as little as $4 on the Internet) that you can use in place of the EN-EL1s, can be difficult to find. Plan ahead. My advice: Get one extra EN-EL1. They charge in a couple of hours, and while theyre not cheap (around $30~$40 apiece), the charger that came free with the camera may be the last one you will ever need. I always carry an extra EN-EL1, and often a 2CR5, just in case. The 2CR5 batteries are also Lithium cells but cannot be recharged. The $6~$10 2CR5 puts out twice as much power as a fully charged EN-EL1, but does it only once and then becomes a Lithium paperweight with environmentally unfriendly chemistry inside. Please dispose of all your dead batteries to a responsible recycling center, and dont simply throw them in the trash. Whats the disadvantage? Price. Still, with 500 recharges, the cost per charge is microscopic. Six to eight cents per charge. No pain there.

CARD CARRYING STORAGE

CompactFlash cards are the memory for your camera. The size of a large postage stamp, they contain memory chips that are filled by the camera to accept many megabytes of image files. i In a flash the memory locations on the chip change state and wont drift until they are given the instruction to change again. Cards in your pocket wont lose their pictures. They cant be fogged by x-rays at an airport inspection station, and they wont fade away over time. The Compact Flash cards are available in two sizes. CF I and CF II. The CP775 only takes the thinner, Type I cards. Not every card from every manufacturer will work in your camera. Most do, but there are some mighty sweet sounding deals out there that could burn you. i Buy yours only from a source that will take it back and return all your money if it doesnt work. Avoid places that charge a restocking fee. Walk away from any deal that does not live up to these cautions. We are now going into the interactive portion of this chapter. Grab the camera and try to have a fresh battery inside. If the battery dies during this playful session, put it in its charger while you read ahead for a while. The battery will only collect a partial charge during that few minutes, but it will likely be enough to let you try a few things.

AUTO REC MODE


When shooting in Auto Rec mode (the green camera icon on the mode dial), you have a lot of extra control over things. This is the mode that offers the greatest amount of manual intervention with your shot and gives you the greatest range of options. Like the other still image modes, you must select two fundamental things. How big is the image going to be after it is captured? What compression settings will you use? Once you have selected these, they will remain selected until changed in any of the menus that have access to them.

3D-4

Mastering the Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

SHOOTING MENU

To make these selections you must press the Menu button at the lower right of the monitor screen. A page of options appears. These are the Shooting Menu choices. Image Quality Image Size White Balance Continuous BSS Exp.+/ Image Sharpening i You use the Multi-selectors up and down arrows to scroll through the list. If you scroll off the top or bottom, your selection loops to the other end of the list. When the menu first appears, the Qual option is the first thing selected, but by pressing the up arrow once, you will be immediately in touch with the Image Sharpening option which first appeared to be at the bottom of the list.

CMPRSN

Image Quality is the amount of compression you will apply to the image as it is being stored. A full-size UXGA image of 1600 x 1200 pixels is 1,920,000 spots of color, and with three computer bytes of storage spaceone each for the red, green, and blue values of that pixels color informationthe amount of storage space each image would consume is 5,760,000 bytes. Thats over five megabytes per shot! Trying to store that much data per picture would take time and money. CF memory storage isnt exactly cheap. So the image is compressed inside the camera using a compression technique called JPEG, which reduces the amount of data in the picture while preserving as much detail as possible. It was invented by the Joint Photographic Experts Group. Notice the initials. The three options for compression are: Fine. Nikons implementation of this highest-quality setting is so good that it is virtually indistinguishable from an uncompressed image. Typical shots end up consuming under 700,000 bytes of storage space. The number is never the same for two images, because the exact amount of detail in each is what the compression is trying to preserve. i Compression uses more bytes of data to preserve sharp detail. The more detail in the shot; the greater the file size. i Blue and red are easier to compress than green, because green carries 60% of image sharpness. A brightly lit lawn full of highly detailed blades of grass is more difficult to compress and would yield a larger file size. Shoot a picture of a lawn, and then take a picture of blue sky with a small cloud or two, now examine the file sizes on your computer. The lawn image could take more than twice the room of the sky shot! i Use Fine compression for images that you will want to enlarge bigger than 8 x 10. If you are making prints that are 5 x 7 and under, or you are shooting images for distribution only on the Internet, you will not need this much quality in your image. Normal. Many people assume that this is a compromise setting, but Nikons compression engineers have made the Normal setting better than the top quality setting on many other brands of cameras. I do most of my shooting with Normal compression to cut down on storage space, because it takes up only about 2/3 of the memory of Fine. In practice, you will likely not be able to tell the difference between Fine and Normal for most images. It is perfectly good for capturing shots that are intended for letter page size prints and general use. i Since the file size is smaller, you can capture 35% more images on a given CompactFlash card. Basic. Although this is the lowest setting and represents the most compression, dont be afraid of the Basic setting. It is very well implemented and produces twice as many shots as Normal, and three times as many as Fine for the same amount of CF memory! If you look very hard at images on your computer screen you may begin to see compression artifacts around high contrast subjects in your image, but if you print these

Chapter 3D

Camera Operation 775

3D-5

pictures out at 5 x 7 ( 130 x 180 mm) or smaller, you will never see the artifacts, and all the detail from the full-size image will still be in the print. Image Size gives you the option of shooting full size 1600 x 1200 (UXGA) images, or 1024 x 768 pixel images (XGA), or TV size frames of 640 x 480 pixels (VGA). For these three sizes, the image chip captures the full-size image and then intelligently down-converts all that data to one of the smaller sizes before it is stored on the CF card. Its called down-sampling and it produces results for the smaller images that make them more pixel-perfect. A full size, 1:1 image on your computer screen will show just a portion of the picture, since your computer screen probably isnt 22.2 inches (564 mm) wide. At a computer screen resolution of 72 pixels per inch (28.34 pixels per cm), it would have to be that big to get the entire shot in. (On a flat screen LCD display at 91 ppi, the image would be 17.6 inches (447 mm) wide. Your screen may vary (some do show a full 1600 x 1200 pixel image). The camera captures all still images at full size before reducing them to XGA or VGA formats. In doing so, it considers all the pixels in the full-size shot and blends them together using image processing techniques that preserve as much data, detail, color fidelity, and sharpness as they can. i The XGA image preserves about 75% of the detail captured in the full-size shot. Yet it is just 40% of the file size of the full-size shot. Are you thinking what Im thinking? 250% of the number of images, each big enough for a 5 x 7 that looks darned good? i For gathering images that will never be printed larger than 7 inches (180 mm) wide (or tall), the XGA option is a good one. On prints that are 4 x 6 inches (100 x 150 mm), XGA originals can seem as sharp as images in super-quality publications such as the National Geographic magazine. Print your XGA images out this size on a photo-realistic printer and compare. Surprising, eh? i VGA shots are perfect for the Internet. On a computer monitor, they feel large. If you email shots around the world, VGA is your best option. At Normal and Basic compression they wont take up much email bandwidth, yet the quality is high and the enjoyment factor on the receiving end is great. Strategies for mixing up the image capture sizes and compression settings will grow on you over time as you get experience seeing the printed results, the on screen results, and the Internet results. Try shooting things at a variety of settings and note the compression and file sizes as you play with them. Your own eyes will guide you into the settings you feel most comfortable with. These three sizes are joined by two more that show up only under certain circumstances. A 400 x 300 pixel image is created for each Multi-Shot 16 panel, and a 320 x 240 pixel frame is created in movie mode. One camera; five different image sizes.

SIZE MATTERS

WHITE BALANCE

White Balance adjustments are important to master. The Auto White Balance setting is exceptionally good and will give you great looking images nearly all the time whether you are outdoors in full sun or indoors shooting under candlelight, but sometimes you simply have to take control. Fortunately, the Nikon 775 gives you a very wide range of control. The menu choices are: Auto White Balance. This is the default setting and it will show up any time the camera is cycled off and back on. That means an actual operation of the On/Off switch, which is not the same as when the camera times out and falls asleep. More about this later.

3D-6

Mastering the Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Any auto white balance system relies on the cameras opinion of what the light is like in both brightness and color. It forms that opinion by peeking at the scene before you make the exposure. Nikon compact digital cameras use a color matrix technique to establish the automatic white balance, and that means it gets it right virtually all the time (Do you see any difference between the Auto and WB Preset parts of the preceding image?). This little camera sees the image as 256 areas of color and is able to ignore isolated objects that have strong colors, which would otherwise sway the cameras opinion of the right color balance. White Preset. This option allows you to show the camera what the color of the light truly is. It also allows you to fool the camera (in a nice, creative way). To implement the White Preset, you will need a white surface that is bathed in the light you wish to show to the camera. 1. Select the White Preset menu option, and click right with the Multi-selector. A new screen of options will show up and the lens will zoom to telephoto. 2. Point the camera at the white reference object that is in the light being measured. It can be a business card, a shirt, a white painted surfacemany things will work, and they dont have to be in focus or even nearby. You can also perform this on a surface that you know to be neutral gray. 3. Select Measure and click right while holding the camera steady. The measurement will be made, and that surface will look gray now on your monitor screen. Like magic, the entire scene will appear to be bathed in neutral white light. Even if the light source is a fluorescent tube or a decidedly warm candle! This works in light that has a color cast to it, too, such as fluorescent lights that have awkward amounts of color in them. Suddenly all these sources appear to be pure, colorful white. i A dimmed-down incandescent bulb will be too gold even for the auto white balance to deal with. Candlelight shot with the auto white balance will also show up as gold-warm. When you think about it, thats the way your eyes see things, too. But you can force these way-warm sources to look like pure white light using the White Preset. i The only exceptions are those colors of light that are missing major basic chunks of the spectrum. Mercury-vapor and Sodium-vapor lamps used for streetlights and area lighting are the White balance filters. The top exception. We have a fix for those in the iNovaFX filter section in Chapter 9 for users of the full image was balanced off the background. All others were version of Photoshop. i The White Preset can be fooled! Sometimes you want that image to look a little warm. After balanced from the eBooks iChart colors, simulating color filter response. all, how many times does a candle really look pure white to your eyes? If you substitute an object that isnt quite white when you make the white balance measurement, the camera wont know that you are sneaking an alternate color under its nose and it will do the white balance anyway. The result is that shots will now appear to have the opposite color to them. i White balance off a powder blue Post-It, for instance, and the image will appear to be quite warm. White balance off a bright red flower, and the whole image will turn ghostly cold. You can even white balance off a bright yellow surface under dimmed incandescent light and get a deep blue cast to the shot. i The back of the color cover sleeve on this eBooks package has 48 spots of color created especially for creating color filters inside your camera. Select the color filter you wish to put over your lens and white balance off the color connected to it with the silver dot. Each of those two connected colors is the opposite of the other. Each will create the color of the other in your cameras white balance system. With these you can create color tints and moods without ever having to buy color filters. Fine white balance is for full-sun daylight. Incandescent white balance is for indoor bulbsthe tungsten filament kind that burn your fingers. Fluorescent white balance is for cool white fluorescent bulbs, the most common kind. If this doesnt work well with your fluorescent-lit area, switch to Auto white balance. Cloudy white balance is for daylight under cloudy skies. It adds a bit of extra warmth to a normal full-sun shot.

Chapter 3D

Camera Operation 775

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Flash white balance is for the camera speedlight. It adds the most amount of extra warmth to the shot and can be used to force a warm look to daylight images. Use this for sunsets and they will seem extra golden rich.
IMAGE STORAGE RESULTS
Quality

16MB COMPACTFLASH
Full (UXGA)
1600 x 1200

COOLPIX 775 [Predicted~actual (continuous range)]


XGA
1024 x 768

VGA
640 x 480

Fine Normal Basic

16~22 (4-5) 33~40 (8-9) 65~74 (16-18)

40~54 (11-13) 78~95 (22) 147~158 (37)

99~120 (26-28) 181~209 (48-51) 331~313* (72-77)

Notes: People wonder about how many shots you can shoot on a charge of the EN-EL1 battery. All of these exposures plus several retests were made on a single charge with the monitor illuminated all the time but with the flash off. That totaled about 1100 exposures wthout a break. The battery was not yet showing its battery level warning by the end of the test. The camera monitor darkens after a string of shots, as in, This is to show you that Im busy processing. The green LED near the monitor flashes then, too, to let you know an internal task is happening. You can brighten the monitor with a half-press of the shutter and take more pictures as soon as some of the cameras buffer has been transferred to the CF card. Within five seconds of your last shot, you can take the next. * In both the 995 and 775 cameras, the predicted number has been optimistic in this category, with the actual frames captured being slightly lower.

MOTOR DRIVE

Continuous image gathering modes select from Single frame, Continuous frames, and Multi-Shot 16 modes. Single frame is just what you expect from most cameras. Press the shutter release once and you get one image. To shoot the next image you must press it all over again. Dont forget Major Lesson number One. Half-press/Full-press. Continuous frame. Many 35mm cameras have a motor drive that shoots pictures rapidly in a row. So does the 775. This selection lets you perform single image gatheringone brief per press of the shutter buttonor Continuous image gathering, which creates a digital motor drive by holding the shutter button down longer. In Continuous mode, the only limiting factor is how many images the camera can hold internally before filling up with pictures. As it turns out, both image size and compression are directly linked to this idea. You simply hold the shutter release down, and the camera gathers a continuous stream of images. The second shot shows up about 1.5 seconds after the first, but the third, fourth, and so on, are about one second apart. At small sizes or greater compression, performance increases. i The contents of the image affect the storage size of the final result. The camera can do several things at once; take pictures, re-size them, compress them, and store them onto the CF card. The number of shots in the cameras internal memory buffer eventually will put a halt to letting any more shots be taken. Writing to a CompactFlash card is slower than writing to internal memory, so when the internal memory fills up, theres nowhere to put the next shot. i If you keep your finger pressed onto the button, eventually the camera will free up the space taken by the image it was writing to the CF card, and another exposure will be made. With small images at high compression (VGA Basic, for instance), this can happen so quickly that the internal memory cant fill up as fast as images can be written to the CF card. In those cases, Continuous shooting is truly uninterrupted. Usually the effect of buffer overflow is a string of shots at about 1 sec intervals followed by a general slowdown of the exposure frequency. i As a string of shots is gathered, the green LED near the viewfinder eyepiece will blink until the images are all transferred to the CF card. Dont remove the card while this light is active, or you will mess up some of your shots and probably confuse the CF Card in a very bad way. If you switch the camera off while this is blinking, the camera will stay awake until it is finished processing the shots.

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Mastering the Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Multi-Shot 16 shoots sixteen images and lays them out like a comic strip, with four rows of four images each, in reading sequence. In order to set it up, you need to select the full size image and the compression setting of your choice before you begin. All 16 shots are made at about 1.6 per second, and each is 400 x 300 pixels at a very good quality. The camera literally shoots a full frame image for each of the sixteen exposures and scales them down to this size quite quickly before stitching them into the common image. Each shot looks much better than a still frame from Movie mode, for instance, even though it is only 80 pixels wider. i Macro, exposure compensation, and white balance are all still available.

BSS

BSS is the Best Shot Selector, an exclusive feature on the Nikon compact digital cameras that started with the 950. It lets you shoot with unsteady hands and gathers up to ten images before it does its work. And the work seems like magic. The camera examines the string of shots and picks the sharpest one, keeping only that one while discarding the rest. Try it in dim light, and you will be amazed at how often it keeps a pretty sharp image. Now try the same subject in the same dim light without it to see how many shots it takes you to get a good one. i In a way, BSS is really a luck enhancer, because even at 1/4 sec, some of your hand-held shots could be sharp. Nikon isnt talking, but one way it could be selecting the most detailed image is by compressed file size. Bigger files mean more sharp edge detail. i In extreme cases (right), shoot several images with the BSS on. i BSS can be fooled by things like night scenes containing a lot of little points of light. As your hand shakes, little streaks are formed in the shot. Those streaks look like more detail, not less, to the BSS selection algorithm.

With and without BSS at 1 sec. Hand-held! The right image was captured with BSS turned on. (Both are cropped.)

EV ADJUST

Exp.+/ is the exposure compensation adjustment. By setting negative numbers here, you are forcing the camera to under-expose the shot. Positive numbers brighten the image with over-exposure. Digital cameras need precise exposure, so Nikon has conveniently provided 1/3-stop adjustments here. The range is two full stops over and under for a range of four stops total. That means you can decrease or increase light from the proper exposure with as much as 4 times the light that the meter assumed was right. i Looking at the monitor under bright lighting can fool you. A common mistake is to think the image is too dark, so you brighten it up with the EV control. Remember that the camera has more grace in the shadow part of the image than it does in the highlights. i It is better to err on the side of slightly too dark than slightly too light.

Long exposures with high contrast subjects can end up looking like lines of more detal. This can fool the BSS feature into keeping the image with the most streaked movement in it.

Sharpening off / sharpening on maximum. Auto sharpening will select the best compromise, most of the time.

SHARPEN UP

Image Sharpening adjustment allows you to pick the amount of electronic sharpening the camera will add to the image before storage. Your options are Auto, Normal, High, Low, and Off. In Auto sharpening, the default mode, the contrast and detail content of the picture influence the level of sharpening that is added. i Whenever you turn the camera off, the sharpness setting is lost along with the white balance setting you last chose. BUT you can rotate the dial to Playback and let the camera fall asleep, and it will remember the sharpness and white balance settings, even after it closes the camera up for pocket carry.

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Quick Review, Monitor, Zoom, or Menu buttons all do this. The Menu button is especially good to rouse the camera, because it activates in Menu mode with all the items readily accessible.

i Any time the camera falls asleep you can awaken it with a press of certain buttons. The shutter release,

SETUP MENUS

Setup Menu page is accessed by clicking left with the Multi-selector, then clicking up or down away from the Menu Page 1 tab, then clicking right into the items. The choices here are spread out over more than the first items you see and include Brightness, Auto Transfer, Seq. Numbers, Memory Card Format, Date, Auto Off, Video Mode, and Language. Brightness adjusts monitor brightness. You may wish to increase monitor brightness when working in bright light, and you may wish to lower it if you are shooting in the dark, as for a stage event. i No, this does not affect the picture file. But it can throw off your ability to judge how bright the shot was if you leave it set to one extreme or the other. Auto Transfer triggers the off-loading of images into a computer that is running Nikon View 4 (or greater) and which is connected to the camera with the USB data cable. If this setup is made with no further preparation, selecting Transfer will immediately off-load all images in the camera. Each picture is transfer-marked when it is shot so unless you switch off the transfer icon in Playback mode (described later) all images will be loaded off to your computer. i If you dont have Nikon View 4 installed, the camera will show a title on its monitor saying Preparing to Transfer for about a minute, then realize it cant make it and show another title saying Communications Error. i You can still download the images, though, because the camera itself will show up on your computer as if it were a new disk drive. You can click-drag images to other folders, the same way you would copy files from one folder to another across multiple hard disks. Seq. Numbers gives you the ability to pick up where you left off. With this ON, the shot number (DSCN0001 DSCN9999) will continuously rise. Any new card inserted into the 775 will now pick up where the last shot left off. If the incoming card already has a higher number than the last one that the camera was aware of, the new shot numbers will pick up from the higher number. Memory Card Format is the way to completely erase and refresh your CF card. You can erase images in the Playback menu but here you will do more than that. This control erases everything on the card. i Some people worry that they will use up the card and someday it will become useless. While technically that is true, you would have to reformat the card every day for about a thousand years to finally wear it out. Date lets you set the time and date that will be integrated with the image as it is saved. Years later you can open these shots in Nikon View 4 and know the exact moment the image was shot. Several format choices give you some flexibility as to how the date will be expressed. Auto Off gives you control over how long the camera stays awake before entering the batterysaving sleep mode. The 30 sec setting saves the most power. 1 min is good when working on a problem setup. 5 min will keep the camera alive for complex setups, and 30 min might be a good setting if you were using the 775 as a web cam, feeding your live image into your computers video input for instant display on the Internet. Video Mode allows you to select PAL and NTSC video standards for the video out feed. NTSC is the standard in Japan, the US, Canada, Mexico, and parts of South America while PAL shows up in most other places in the world. Language gives you the choice of having menus show up in Deutch (German), English, French and Spanish. The word Language in Espaol is Idioma but when that word shows, E does not stand for Espaol; S does. Go figure.

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Mastering the Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

ISO LATED

The camera will select its sensitivity rating. ISO will float between 100 and 400 depending on how much light is available. Under the dimmest lighting, exposures can reach a one second maximum.

FLASHARAMA

By pressing the center button under the monitor, you can select from among the several flash modes. Off, Auto Flash (the default on power-up), Force Flash, Night Portrait flash, and Auto Anti Red-eye Flash. Flash-free images are only available with the flash options selected to Off. Without flash, the camera will attempt to get the image anyhow, but shutter speeds could go up to one second. Auto Anti Red-Eye flash is a system that is designed to avoid a common problem that arises when people in low light are being photographed. Human eyes have a changing iris that opens up quite wide in low lightjust the thing to create red-eye. i Red-eye is a phenomenon of geometry and lighting. The more parallel the rays of the flash are to the light rays the camera gathers, the greater the chances of red-eye. Since the flash units center is only about 30mm away from the center of the lens, returning rays are very parallel to outgoing rays. People in dark places have their irises open wide, and that lets more light into their eyes that can bounce back toward the camera. To compensate for the inevitable red-eye effect that the nearby flash tube would produce, the flash fires twice! You notice it right away. The first flash causes subjects eyes to iris down. Healthy human eyes respond quite quickly to pulses of light, and by the time the second flash occurs, they are momentarily immune to red-eye conditions. A second after the flash, the subjects eyes have returned to normal. Cute, eh? i The Auto Anti Red-Eye flash has a second feature to help reduce red-eye. A light on the front of the camera comes on just before the picture is taken, alerting the subjects that the camera is about to fire in a gentle way. Subjects irises respond a bit to this light, too. The psychological effect is that when people see this light, they intuitively brighten up for the coming picture. Force Flash. No matter what the lighting iseven full daylightthe flash will fire. This is very good for fill flash outdoorsjust enough light to perk up deep, contrasty shadows on nearby subjects. i Force flash will still fire the flash tube twice, but it doesnt activate the white warning light, and it does trip the shutter that much earlier. This makes red-eye images nearly impossible to produce on nearby subjects when using any of the flash modes with the 775. i If you turn the camera completely off, or switch it to Play mode, the Force Flash mode will revert to Auto Anti Red-Eye, but if you let the camera just go to sleep, Force Flash will be available to you when you revive the camera. This behavior is common to all flash modes. Still, it doesnt close up the lens when the camera falls asleep in any of the picture taking modes. We will solve that in a moment Night Portrait flash is the reduced-intensity flash variation that makes the Night Portrait Scene mode possible. It is included in the loop of flash possibilities for easy access in Auto, Beach/Snow, and Portrait modes as well. It fires the same double flash sequence but omits the signal light before the shot and lowers the flash intensity considerably. The shutter speed used in a Night Portrait shot is long, so hold the camera steady. i When shooting in Macro focus mode, this is the right flash to select. Auto Anti Red-Eye and Auto flash will overpower very close subjects, but Night Portrait flash will work right up to about three inches. i Night Portrait flash setting includes much of the ambient light in the picture by combining long shutter speed and flash together. It wont fire unless the light is low, but if things are in motion, ghostly shadows of the movement will surround your flash-frozen subject. This can become a Good Thing if you practice with

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the technique and learn how to combine the two components of the exposure, the frozen flash image and the smeared, moving image. Other cameras call this SLOW flash. Auto flash is similar to the Auto Anti Red-Eye flash without the signal light to alert subjects that the camera is about to make the picture. Because the signal light is off, the exposure and flash happen right away. When sufficient light is available to make an image without help from the flash unit, it will not fire in this mode. i If you wish to have the flash fire under these conditions, you must set the Force flash option.

AUTOFOCUS

Stolen Focus

The camera will automatically find what it believes is the best focus. It is continuously hunting for best focus in the very center of the shot, and it is using a stepper motor with over 4,000 fine focus positions to make its decision. In the full tele zoom position, this sort of discrimination is needed to accurately control focus. i You can lock focus. Half-pressing the shutter button locks exposure and focus but does not take the shot. You can use this to lock focus on a part of the scene, then immediately re-frame and press the rest of the way for the shot. If flash is involved, its exposure wont be determined until the flash begins, so only ambient light exposure computations are being frozen with this technique. With Auto Focus the camera can make mistakes. It might focus on the background behind a nearer subjecta term I call stealing focuswhen the background has more texture or vertical detail than the nearer target. It takes some practice to avoid the stolen focus phenomenon, but you can rise above it. If you are using the optical viewfinder, make sure that you have given the camera enough time on your target for it to settle there and ignore the background. i Nikon cameras have an extra focus trick up their sleeves. You can force the camera to try for its absolute most-precise focus by turning the monitor off. It will now switch from continuously focusing, to focusing only when the shutter button is partly pressed. However, if there is not enough light for it to reliably focus, and the monitor is offno shot will be taken. You wont get that shutter button to expose a picture at all. i In total darkness the camera has nothing to lock onto. Cleverly, it assumes you will be taking a flash picture and it will park the focus at just the right distance to achieve sharp focus on typical flash-distance subjects. But this only works if the monitor is on. Yes, the monitor must be on to shoot in darkness so deep that it cant show you anything. I did not make this up. i To avoid stolen focus, zoom into your subject to let the camera unambiguously see what the right distance to subject is, then zoom back just before pressing the shutter release to lock focusthen and only then re-frame to your final composition. You have fooled the camera into behaving correctly by showing it where it should be in focus, and it will only refocus on another subject if it has a good reason to. By limiting its field of view to the right target, you have prevented it from daydreaming. Then you locked out further consideration by half-pressing the shutter release. More than that, youve increased your camera-management skills.

ZOOM-O-WRESTLING

Tele zoom at less than one foot away.

The two zoom controls move the lens throughout its range from wide to tele. With a 3:1 zoom range, the 775 lets you get closer to your subject in telephoto position. With a UR-E3 Converter adapter, you can mount the WC-E63 wide angle and TC-E2 telephoto lenses on the 775. Focus is limited to only 10.25 inches (0.26 meter) at full tele, but thats enough to fill the screen at tele zoom with a very small object only 3.25 inches (80mm) across. At wide angle, the frame is now almost exactly 10 inches (254 mm) wide. But the 775 doesnt stop there. Nikon digital cameras have always had a much closer focus ability as we shall soon see.

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Digital Zoom extends the range of the optical zoom lens. But it does this at the expense of image sharpness. If you keep holding the zoom button down, you will hit full tele zoom, and after a one-second pause, the camera will silently continue to jump forward with the digital zoom. Numbers will appear on the monitor: X1.25, X1.6, X2.0, and X2.5. What is happening is that the central group of pixels are being enlarged more and more. At X2.5, the center 640 x 480 pixels are being enlarged to fill the entire frame. This makes the pixels 2.5 times as large as normal and does nothing to improve image quality. It does, however increase the size of the subject in the frame. That may be satisfying on the monitor, but the final image will suffer from the enlargement of the original pixels. i Theyre not getting any sharper, just bigger. i You can use this digital magnification as a sort of focus magnifier for close work and then step backwards to the optical zoom knowing that the camera can actually achieve focus at this position. i Digital zoom combined with smaller image sizes give useful results without as much degradation in image quality. With VGA images you can use the whole 2.5X range without actually enlarging the pixels. This setting is exactly like cropping the center 640-pixel wide chunk out of a full image. At X2.0 or less, down-sampling actually improves image quality. Similar results can be achieved in XGA mode with zoom factors of X1.6 or less. i Digital Tele is disabled when the monitor is inactive. It will only be present when the camera knows you can see whats going on.

The effect of 2.5 x digital zoom is to blow 640 x 480 pixels up to full size. View at 300%.

FOCUS DOMAINS

The button at the lower left under the monitor selects different focus and self-timer combinations. In sequence, this button selects Self-Timer, Infinity Focus, Macro Focus, and Macro Focus plus Self-Timer. Self-Timer. A stopwatch symbol will appear on the monitor indicating that the next shot will be via the Self-Timer. Press the shutter release and numbers next to this symbol will start counting down from 9 8 If you press the shutter button again, the sequence will now jump to 3 2 This shorter mode can save you time if you dont want to wait ten seconds for each shot. i Press it once more and the count-down will halt, but you will still be in Self-Timer mode. Infinity. The twin mountain icon shows that the lens has been locked at infinity. Very useful if you are using the camera with an optical convertersomething like a telescope, for instanceand you want to remove the cameras auto focus from the equation. By locking here, there is no focus lag. Zero. The camera responds fastest in this mode and if you are shooting wide-angle images your zone of sharp focus outdoors in good light extends from 3 feet (1 meter) to infinity at this setting. i In Infinity setting, the camera flash is disengaged. Macro. In Auto exposure mode, press the lower left button under the monitor three times in a row and a small tulip-like flower will show up in the upper right part of the monitor screen. Thats the Macro icon. The camera can still shoot objects at any distance, but it will focus closer when in this mode. That would create slower operating focus, if it were left on all the time, so Nikon made it an option. At full wide zoom you can now shoot things 1.5 inches (32mm) wide! In this mode you can zoom to mid tele and get back a bit farther from your subject but the smallest field of view is now just about 2.0 inches (50mm) wide.

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the camera farther back. Shooting as close as possible can prevent a significant portion of the ambient light from reaching your subject. You can get too close! i If you are shooting any nearby subject, you can press the focus regime button three times to put it into Macro mode causing the camera to search closer. Now the lens locks onto the closest thing it sees. It doesnt have to be macro-focus close to the camera, but Macro mode will cause the camera to do a nearer inspection of the scene. i For macro setups, the flash will fire, but most flash modes will overexpose the image. Try the Night Portrait flash mode. It works up to about 3" (80mm) from the lens. Self-Timer with Macro. Macro and self-timer are combined so even if you are shooting very nearby objects, the self-timer will work. i Much macro shooting is done with the camera in odd places and not always solidly mounted. It may be sitting on a fence post or an irregular surface. Touching the camera during exposure will only get blurry images. You can try pressing the shutter release twice in a row to set up the three second count-down, or you can use Macros natively longer focus sequence to delay the exposure. Press the shutter button and immediately let go of the camera (providing it wont fall or tip over when you do). The more selective macro focus will take about a full second to lock in, and the exposure will be made while your fingers are away from the camera.

i The mid-zoom setting may not produce the largest magnification of your macro subject, but it positions

QUICK REVIEW

The Coolpix 775 has a feature borrowed from Nikons experience with the 880 and 995: Quick Review, and it has its own dedicated button right of the monitor screen. One press of this button, and the most recent image you have gathered will overlay the upper left portion of the monitor display. Its only half-sizea quarter of the monitorbut even at this size, you can quickly judge the tones in the picture and the basic composition. One more press of the button and the image fills the monitor. To see the image without text overlay, use the backward (left) zoom button. A third press gets out of Quick Review mode, but there is a better way: i As soon as you half-press the shutter release, the review mode is abandoned, and the camera will prime all systems for the upcoming exposure. You dont have to shoot, but the camera is ready for you. i When in Quick Review mode, you can use the Up/Down buttons on the Multi-Selector to see the next or previous images. One thing you cant do: magnify the review image. For that, you will have to enter Playback mode.

PLAYBACK MODE
When the camera is switched into Playback mode, it becomes an editing and tagging tool that can delete images, protect them from deletion, tag them for downloading, tag them for printing, hide them from playback, and transfer them into your computer at the press of a button. Here you can create a rudimentary slide show directly from the images in memory. The images will play through the camera monitor and out the video cable to a TV in either the European PAL or American and Japanese NTSC video standard. As this mode is switched on, the most recent image is displayed on the monitor. Everything on the monitor is mirrored on the video out, but that monitor is sub-video resolution, so for really clear images, you can hook up to a TV.

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Clicking the Multi-selector upward will bring up earlier, lower numbered images starting with the most recent. Clicking downward will display later, higher numbered shots and when the most recent is displayed, the next will loop back to the oldest. The monitor will show images with data in the corners of the shot, and when you click the Multi-Selector left, the data will disappear showing a clear image.

BUTTON UP

In Playback mode the buttons on the camera gain new functions. The Focus Regime buttonthe one with the trash icon above it under the monitornow becomes an easy way to delete the current image. A choice made with the Multi-selector will confirm the desire to delete the shot. After your first dozen or so deletions you will wish to find a faster way and there is one in the menu system (described a little later). The Flash Selector button now becomes a way to review several images at once. One press shows nine tiny thumbnails, and another press jumps to four larger thumbnails, filling the screen. One more press brings you back to the full screen, current shot, making this an easy way of scrolling around the contents of your camera. You also use this view for quick tagging of images for later transfer into your computer. In either the nine or four image view, the zigzag double arrow transfer icon will appear or disappear with presses of the Transfer button, and if you are using Nikon View 4 software in your computer, the instant you hook the camera to the computer, all marked images will be streamed into your computer, and the marks on the images will be deleted as each image successfully crosses over. The Multi-selector buttons behave rather like a miniature joystick, with Up moving backwards in time and Down moving closer to the most recent image while Left and Right move the selection left or right in the field of thumbnails. The Quick Review button gains a new function, too. One press and the center of your monitor image will blow up to a double-sized slice of the saved image. It works from any thumbnail or full-size image selected. Here the Multi-Selector becomes a joystick again, allowing you to jump to the sides and corners of the shot to see how details look there. i When viewing a full-size image, the Left Multi-Selector button successively switches the monitor text overlay off and on. If the camera falls asleep with the text off, it will be off when the camera awakens with the press of any of the awakening buttons on the camera. These include all four Multi-Selector buttons, Transfer, Quick Review, and the Shutter button. i If you press the Menu button, it will awaken all right, but the Menu page will immediately replace the image with the Playback Menu.

PLAYBACK MENU

The Menu button overlays the image with the Playback Menu page. Here you can delete large quantities of images; run a video slide show; mark them for printing, protecting, and transfer images into any USB port equipped computer with Nikon View 4 installed (Mac and Windows). Delete leads to several choices. It can delete Selected Images, All Images, or Print Set. Delete Selected Images creates a screen filled with the six most recent images in tiny thumbnail format. Using the Multi-Selector, an upward or downward press will mark or unmark the current image for deletion. The image isnt deleted immediately, so you can unmark ones you are not certain of before completing the operation. The Left and Right buttons move through the images, and you will probably select only some of them for deletion. If you now touch the Quick Review button right of the monitor, the screen of thumbnail shots will be overlaid with this message, 17 Erase Images Yes or No? The number is however many you have marked. Yes blows them away forever. You cant get them back. They have vaporized. No discards the whole idea and deletes your choices, so choose carefully. Your only choices at this instant are to discard what you have marked or forget the whole thing.

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Every image you delete gives you more room on your CF card for new images. After even a few hours with erasable film you will wonder why they didnt figure a way to do this decades ago. i Reviewing images on a 1.5-inch monitor wont tell you about the details that might be lurking in them. Reviewing them in your computer later will. If you have any doubts, save questionable images for later review in your computer where you can see more detail. You have to balance this decision against the need to recycle the memory space in your CF card. Delete All Images will completely erase all images in the camera that are not marked for protection (see Protect Images below). Delete Print Set will cause any images previously marked with the Print Set command to become deleted. This selection assumes you have already printed those marked images. i The CP775 employs a system to mark images for printing. The DPOF system connects a printing request to the image. An image marked for printing becomes a special case that can be deleted with the Delete Print Set command. If you use a printer or printing service that accesses images directly from the CF card, this may be a handy way for you to recover CF memory after you see your final images printed out. Delete Print Set will not delete images that are also marked as Protected. i If you have not actually printed them, you can think of this command as an alternate method of marking a set of shots for easy deletion. Perhaps you have decided that the images you have marked with the printing icon are second-priority. Images you could live without if you needed the card space for new shots, so to speak. In such a case, the Delete Print Set would easily discard the marked shots once you decided they werent worth taking up valuable memory on your CF card. Slide Show permits you to create a rudimentary display of your images over time either on the camera monitor or on the video output to a TV. Images will play in sequence with a brief blink between shots. The inner menu gives you the Frame Interval choice of 2, 3, 5, and 10 sec per image and when started, all images in memory will play from beginning to end. You can stop playback by pressing the center button under the monitor. The image will freeze overlaid with the option to resume playback or to select a different display interval. Protect behaves the same way that Delete > Selected Images behaves in its selection process. The symbol of a key is dropped on each thumbnail image you choose with an up or down click on the Multi-Selector while left/right clicks move you back and forth through the shots. Images with the key symbol are protected from being erased when you choose Delete > All Images (above). i Since it is possible to select certain images for deletion, it is easy to get into the habit of shot-byshot deleting. Resist it. In many cases, you may wish to keep only a few shots and still recover most of the memory on your CF card for new pictures. Think before deleting. If the number of keepers is smaller than the number of rejects, then marking the keepers with the Protect key will save you time and repetition. Mark the images to be protected, then Delete All. The protected ones will remain. i You must press the Quick Review button to finish the process. Otherwise, no protection occurs. Print Set also behaves the same way that Delete > Selected Images behaves in its selection process. The icon of a printer drops onto each thumbnail image you choose with an up click on the Multi-selector. Left/right clicks move you back and forth through the shots. Successive up-clicks mark the image for more duplicate prints. Notice that a little number increases up to a maximum of nine. Down-clicks reduce the number to the minimum of one. At zero, the symbol disappears and the image is not marked for printing. You can also elect to have the exposure Info and/or Date show up on your print! Only printers that adhere to the DPOF printing protocol will cause these bits of data to print with the picture. i Printing services and DPOF compatible printers dont change anything on the contents of your CF card when they are using your files to make prints. The card comes back to you in its original condition. It is up to you to make the determination whether you wish to further save or delete the marked images (See Delete Printed Images, earlier).

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for an actual printing tag, you can use it to mark images for deletion using the Delete Printed Images command. Like the Delete Selected Images command, this one needs to consummate the selection at the end of the tagging process. When you come back to review images later, you can further edit which ones are in this group and which ones are not. Auto Transfer gives you the option of marking all images (On) or no images (Off) for automatic transfer to your computer upon being hooked up to it. i This is merely a bulk-tagging operation, and any carefully selected transfer icons you have placed on images will be swept away by either of these two options. i If you have selected this menu option by mistake, you can get out of making either choice by pressing the Menu button to exit the menu system.

i This is the command that lets you mark a group of images for easy deletion later. If you are not using it

Scenes
Scene modes are pre-solved exposure problems. They combine expert choices that orchestrate iris, shutter speed, sensitivity, white balance, sharpness, EV compensation, and flash type, each under an easy to use selection named for its most-often encountered application. Movie Scene converts the 775 into a silent video camera with a 15 frame-per-second, half-video size image. Storage is as a Quicktime movie file, and there are no menu choices for you to modify its settings. You can shoot up to 15 seconds per shot. A counter shows :15 in the lower right corner of the monitor screen, and when you press the shutter release the movie capture begins. It counts down the seconds remaining, and only a second press of the shutter release, or running out of time, will stop the shot. To play the scene, click to Playback mode and press the right arrow on the Multi-selector. A second press pauses the movie playback, and a third press starts it up again. i Unlike a real video camera, scenes shot on any digital still camera dont play back strung together. If you want to do that, Apples QuickTime Pro (Ive paid more for two large pizzas) can be downloaded and paid for on the Internet. Versions are available for Mac and Windows computers. www.apple.com/quicktime/. i As a scene progresses, the brightness of the image will seem to step up or down in intensity, sometimes. This is because the shutter speed is the chief adjustment for exposure. There is no way to avoid the phenomenon on this and other digital cameras. Sunset Scene is optimized for pretty sunsets. It boosts color and warms it up by a noticeable degree, then disables the flash and disables access to macro focus. Auto white balance can wash out sunsets, but daylight WB makes them vivid. Options include Infinity focus and Self-Timer selections only. i This mode is a great for boosting and warming the chroma on just about any image except things you wish to capture in Macro mode. i For an alternate sunset formula, you can manually change the Auto exposure mode to Fine (sunny), Cloudy, or Flash White Balance. Of the three, Flash will make the sunset look warmest, since it anticipates a colder light source than the sun. But the Sunset Scene setting is the warmest of them all.

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Beach/Snow Scene assumes that much of your image is bright and should appear that way in the picture. It also assumes you are working with sunlight. Light meters tend to make a beach, snow, or white-background studio image look too dark. Beach/Snow starts up in Auto Flash mode (not the anti-red eye version), but you can press the flash selector button and choose any other flash setting or off. Just because you are in a bright environment doesnt mean you wouldnt want to put some extra light into shadows. If you select Infinity focus, the flash is turned off, and as soon as you select Macro focus, the flash reverts to its last setting. i When shooting a small subject on a light background, you may wish to check the flash setting for this Scene mode. Better results may come from dialing in the Night Portrait Flash mode for macro work. i Small objects on light backgrounds work well in window light. i All flash and focus range options are available for this scene mode. Landscape Scene assumes you are taking pictures of the grand vista of nature, and as many nature photographers know, nature can throw you a curve. Your eyes see things better than cameras do, so this Scene mode provides a little nature-helper. Here, too, the camera is set to infinity focus, and the color saturation is boosted up to help cut through any atmospheric haze between you and that mountain over there. You can always set the camera to Infinity focus manually, switch off the flash and take a similar picture in Auto exposure mode, but it would lack that extra bit of color. Landscape Scene only allows access to the Self-Timer, and it wont shoot macros. i This would be a good mode to use for telescope or microscope adaptations of a CP775, since both of those can benefit from extra saturation and both have their own manual focusing methods. i The only options in this mode are image size, compression, and Self-Timer. Night Portrait Scene helps you take more human-looking pictures in dim light with the camera flash. It lowers the intensity of the cameras speedlight (Nikons proprietary word for flash unit) to compensate for the darker backgrounds most night subjects have. Since many people pictures at night are in dark environments, the lowered flash works in their favor avoiding flash over exposure. Interestingly, the Night Portrait Scene uses the Anti-Red Eye flash setting, although one of the standard flash options is the Night Portrait flash, which can be accessed from Auto mode and Beach/Snow or Portrait Scene modes. i If you wish to amplify the exposure values of the background in a night portrait shot, use Auto mode with the Night Portrait Flash setting. i The only options in this mode are image size, compression, and Self-Timer. Portrait Scene opens the lens up fully in an attempt to allow the background blur a bit from the reduced depth of field. Since the 775 has only a two stage exposure iris, and both of the stages use the full aperture of the optical system, this specification may be moot. As the camera starts up, Anti-Red Eye flash is selected, because who wants red-eye in a portrait? Well, the double flash scheme of the 775 pretty much avoids that, anyhow, but the extra white light from the camera prior to the flash does tend to add an extra bit of anti-red eye protection. i You can select any alternate flash setting, if you wish, and even turn the flash off so natural lighting will be the only light on the subject. i The only options in this mode are image size, compression, and Self-Timer.

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Backlight Scene puts light where you need it for subjects with strong backlight. The camera speedlight fills your foreground subject to help balance with the stronger light beyond. Force Flash is the setting for the speedlight, and no other options are available except for Self-Timer. Force Flash always goes off no matter what other light is available, and when a subject is back-lit, you most often need it. i Now that you know the chief difference to this Scene mode is to call up the Force Flash mode, you can use it to enter that configuration for any shots except macro. i The only options in this mode are image size, compression, and Self-Timer. Party Scene starts up with the Auto Anti-Red Eye flash setting activated and locked, and shutter speed lowered to preserve a hint of background lighting. SelfTimer is your only option, but under these settings, the camera will decide if flash is needed or not, so you and your fellow party-goers can pass the camera around for quick, easy picture taking. i This is a great time to memorize the line, Its digital. Press the shutter and hold it steady for a second, and say that each time you pass the camera to a new person.

i SPECIAL TECHNIQUES

The Coolpix 775 is a digital camera that has been streamlined for more casual users. Its low initial price, long battery life, simplified controls, small size, and range of features make it a good choice for newcomers who are making that first transition from point and shoot film to point and shoot digital photography. Yet it contains a few refinements that make it a fun camera for more advanced photographers. The excellent Nikon manual that comes with it in the box will answer many of the questions this chapter does not address, but there are some special techniques the 775 can provide you that are not found there.

IMAGE DOWNLOAD WITHOUT NIKON VIEW 4 i You can download images into your computer directly from the USB connection without Nikon View 4.

Although this software expedites the Instant Download feature and data base functions, you may find it convenient to simply connect the camera and look for the Nikon Camera icon on your computer desktop. Once you plug the camera to the computers USB connector, it shows up the same way a CompactFlash Card Reader or new disk drive would appearas an icon at the root level of your menu system. On a Macintosh, it simply shows up as another data source icon. On a USB-compatible Windows system, it shows up as a new drive. Open this new drive and the 100Nikon folder will appear along with another item labeled, Image Previews. Open the 100Nikon folder and there are all your images. You can drag and drop them into another folder with very little effort. During this process, the camera will appear to be asleep. This is deceptive. It is alive and engaged in the image transfer mode, even though the monitor is off. If you leave it plugged in, it may drain the battery. At some time it will seem to spring to life and show Battery Exhausted! on the monitor.

SLOW FLASH i SLOW flash effects are those that start with a subject in dim lighting that you wish to freeze

using the camera flash, and combine with the surrounding light. By shooting in Auto exposure mode using the Night Portrait flash setting, this sort of exposure can be created. The flash will fire, but the shutter speed will be just a bit faster than what the camera would have used without the flash being available. Night Portrait flash mode used with Auto Rec mode brings the intensity of the flash down to about half of what the other flash modes would produce. If the camera or subject moves under these

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conditions, the result can be dramatic. The frozen image is often portrayed against the ghost of subject or background movement, creating a dynamic effect.

MACRO FLASH i Macro subjects can benefit from flash illumination. While the

other flash settings are good from about 9 feet (3 meters) to as close as 1 foot (30cm), the Night Portrait flash combined with Auto Rec and Macro focus will work as close as 3 inches (75mm) or less. i The Night Portrait flash shows yellow when it will fire. If it is white, its telling you that there is too much ambient light for it to go off.

only from the second flash. The dual-flash technique for controlling red-eye has been used in other cameras as well. The Nikon 880 performs the same way. Look for the DigiSlave DSF-1s flash unit. It has a switch that allows you to fire the flash on the first or second flash pulse coming from the camera speedlight. With the DSF-1s, you can employ the infrared flash technique outlined in Chapter 4, How can I trigger the flash wirelessly? By using a sliver of black slide film over the camera flash, you allow only the pulse of infrared light to exit the camera speedlight. The slave unit sees this and fires the flash on the second pulse of infrared light. Since the infrared is, for all practical purposes invisible, the only light that shows up in your image is that from the slave flash.

SLAVE FLASH i Slave flash use with the dual flashing 775 will require slave units that trigger

FLASH FAIL-SAFE i The Coolpix 775 will attempt to fire the flash, even in the dark, guessing about the focus distance if it

has to, but only if the monitor is on. In very dark environments, when you turn the monitor off, the camera enters into a safety mode that prevents it from firing the flash when the shutter button is pressed. This could happen if the camera is in a pouch, purse, or bag. The moral to this story is this: If you are in total darkness, turn the monitor on. Now the camera will take the picture even if it has to guess where to focus the lens.

QUICK READY i This is a technique I use all the time to keep the camera folded and capped but quickly

accessible without having to touch the master On/Off switch. If you combine these steps, you can cause the camera to go to sleep and cap itself at the same time. 1. Set the Auto Off for 30 sec: Auto > Menu > Setup > Auto Off > 30 sec. 2. Select BSS or Continuous frame rate, if you wish the camera to awaken with the speedlight turned off. Select Single frame if you wish the flash to be immediately active 3. Rotate the Mode dial to Playback. In 30 seconds the camera will fall asleep and fold up at the same time. When you next touch the camera you can awaken it with the Multi-selector, Quick Review button, Shutter button, Menu button, or with one counter-clockwise click of the Mode dial. The chief advantage here is that any selection you have made in the Auto exposure menu for Sharpening or White Balance are now preserved through sleep. Without this technique, simply switching the camera off will delete these choices and open the camera in its default settings. If you are storing the camera in a pocket or purse, pressure against any of the several awakening buttons (Shutter, Quick Review, Menu, Multi-selector) will only cause the camera to awaken in Playback mode so the lens will not lose its protective automatic cap. It will stay on for 30 seconds, then fall back asleep, provided pressure against the buttons is

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only temporary. But in many cases, this is unpredictable. For storage that is anticipated to be longer than an hour or so, switching the camera off may be desirable.

INFRARED i The infrared sensitivity of

the CP775 is pretty high. With the appropriate infrared filter over the camera lens, only infrared light is allowed in. These filters look black to your eye, but to the camera they let in enough of this low frequency light to make an image. And what an image it is. In Chapter 4 you will see the question How do I shoot infrared? The 775 behaves similarly to the CP950. The image here was made through a single sheet of black, unexposed, developed 35mm slide film. Slide film passes about 97% of all IR light while holding back visible colors. Exposure was about 1/4 second in full daylight. The second image was taken without a tripod, the camera resting on a fire plug. A Schott 093 filter (equivalent to a Wratten 87c) was held over the lens for an exposure of one full second. Both images show the subtle coloration digital infrared cameras pick up in spite of the deep black-looking filters that cut down on visible light. Experiment with different white balances before the infrared filter is placed over the lens, and you will discover even more oddities of subtle coloration. Both images are presented without any color adjustment. i When shooting with a blacklooking IR filter held over the lens of the 775, pay close attention to the focus light. The 775 may need to be half-press refocused several times before a focus lock is achieved. It thinks it is working in the darkest of places and may take a while to adjust its internal sensitivity enough to catch a reasonable focus. The lower image took half a dozen refocusings before the focus lock LED glowed a steady green, and BSS helped acquire a stable shot.

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Chapter 4 ...How Do I?
THE SINGLE MOST VALUABLE THING YOU CAN DO TO TEACH YOURSELF PHOTOGRAPHY IS TO SHOOT PICTURES, AND THEN ATTACK THEM WITH AN ANALYTICAL EYE. IMAGINE THE INNER DIALOGUE WHEN THIS SYSTEM IS WORKING WELL...
There. Nice shot, eh? You call that a nice shot? Well, yes; its well exposed, and you can recogni Idiot! What about the horns growing out of her head? Those arent horns. Thats a tree that simply happened How come you have this this twist to the shot? I guess the camera wasnt quite level. Shame about the red-eye, Dont. You. Think?

i=

InfoBite

As long as you keep this session inside your own head, you can become your own best reviewer, critic, and analyst. Some people seem to have an immediate gift in this department, and some dont. If you werent born with the photographer gene switched on, chances are great that you can teach yourself the skill of seeing with a camera and improve your photographs immensely. i Learning photography isnt as difficult as learning to read, and we know you learned that. Courses in photography can introduce you to the basic skills and open your eyes to a range of experiences, but ultimately, only your own ability to study, edit, and improve your images is going to create your inner guru. This long chapter will add to the skills that lead towards that awakening.
The first thing that will help you is knowing your camera backward and forward. It's also the second and third thing.

The primary piece of equipment you will be using is the photon, the basic particle of light. Soon you will learn how to organize them into images. Since they are spraying around the environment all the time at the atomic level, you will need to exercise a bit of control over their actions. The camera will assist in their capture. As you exercise the steps of understanding the camera, it stops being a thing and starts being an avenue, a means to an end, a tool with abilities and boundaries that will facilitate some things, and hold up others. As an object, it will fade away and become less visible to you. After a few months, you will be occasionally surprised when a stranger comments about the camera. Ooo! Is that digital?? We are still at this point in the culture. Learn to take it for granted. Oh, yes. The films free, you know...

Know Thy NIKON

4 -2 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

The Nikon digital cameras aren't as immediately familiar as most film cameras, and everybody who encounters them goes through a series of questions. Here are some of the most interesting ones.
How How How How How How How How How How How How How How How How How How How How How How How do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do I power the camera? I start the camera up? I hold the camera for stability? I use tripods? I frame the shot? I make the exposure? I make the picture brighter or darker? I compensate for back light? I get the color right? I force the camera to focus where I want? I shoot in available darkness? I use optical accessories? I use the digital zoom? i play the picture back? I set up my preferences files? I use BSS? I fool the camera into doing what I want? I shoot infrared? I shoot in 3D? I shoot panoramics? I add four vital accessories that Nikon forgot? I take it on vacation? I take it abroad? 4-2 4-3 4-5 4-5 4-7 4-10 4-12 4-16 4-17 4-20 4-22 4-25 4-30 4-31 4-31 4-32 4-33 4-34 4-36 4-38 4-43 4-45 4-47

HOW DO I POWER THE CAMERA?


ASSAULT ON BATTERIES

The MH-204F battery charger can be powered all over the world by either a 120 v. or 240 v. MW41 AC power supply.

The 950 and 990 Nikons come with four alkaline AA batteries. Tsk, tsk. Bad. Wrong. These dont last very long, and theyll drive you crazy. Let me tell you a secret. It is the secret of NiMH. The battery. Digital cameras eat electrons for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That means batteries, batteries, and more batteries. One of the worst trade-offs you could make is to embrace digital photography freeing the environment of photo chemical pollution only to pollute the environment with used, dead alkaline batteries. Rechargeable batteries have crossed the cost and speed barrier in the last thousand days, and you should never have to buy alkaline batteries ever again for your camera. Nickel-metal hydride is the magic word, and its abbreviation, NiMH (sometimes written as Ni-MH), is what you are looking for. If somebody tries to sell you anything else, run away. The 950 and 990 Nikons use four AA batteries (called LR6 outside North America), the most common size. The battery door on the base of the camera has a double lock, which should prevent

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NiMH AA batteries are the best choice currently. Pun intended.

Lithium AA singleuse cells are the best power insurance when the rechargables are all used up. A set of these in your bag will keep you going in emergencies.

you from ever accidentally opening it. Three sets of four batteries plus a fast, 90-minute charger from Thomas Distributing will cost you just about $50.00 and will last you for years of pictures. The champion of chargers is the Maha MH-204F which charges NiMH batteries in as little as an hour (and a half-hour charge fills them over 60%). It also connects through your cars cigar lighter with an adapter cord. Batteries hooked up this way charge even faster than they do with the AC power cord. NiMH batteries are rated at only 1.2 volts (fully charged they test at 1.28~1.34 volts), but they deliver their current over time much more consistently than any previous type of rechargeable battery. Unlike Nickel-Cadmium batteries (also called NiCad and Ni-CD), there is no performance penalty and no memory effect from keeping them topped off. Prices and capacities are constantly competing for your money. i NiMH batteries slowly lose their charge over time. A month after that last charge, they may only have half the power available. If you have multiple sets, top them off before a big weekend or photo-intensive event. If you want to make sure you have spare power with you, buy a set of lithium AA cells. Theyre light, run five times longer than alkalines, and have no shelf life problems at all. Starting with the CP 880, and continuing through the CP995, CP775, and CP885, power comes from a Lithium-Ion EN-EL1 rechargeable power pack. One charge runs the camera about as long as a set of NiMH cells ran the earlier cameras. They are light, quick to charge (two hours) with the EH-51+MH-51 charger/battery holder, and they dont lose their charge just sitting around. They cost more than AA cells, but you dont have to wrangle four of them into the camera every time you reload it. Get at least two. They charge faster than you can use them up. But the EH-50 recharger that is supplied outside the U.S. takes up to 6 hours to recharge them. Unusual, since the EH-51 is 120~240 Volts AC and with the appropriate plug adapter, works all over the world. i Single use 2CR5 lithium non-rechargeable power packs are the back-up of choice with these newer cameras. They last twice as long as a fully charged EN-EL1 and they cost as little as $4 apiece in specials we have seen on the Internet.

HOW DO I START THE CAMERA UP?


Starting the camera isnt trivial. Sure, you flick the Master Switch from off to on, but there is more to it than that. Whats your preference, Auto or Manual? Practice getting this right. It will save time and help you when a situation starts to become pictureworthy right before your eyes. The secret here is to train yourself to turn the camera on by feel alone. Like a quick-draw gunslinger whose fingers automatically know how to set up his shot, you must train your fingers to grab the camera, cock the internal computer, and pull the trigger shutter in one smooth motion. The process described here will help you in the dark, in emergencies, and in places

Training the neural pathways of your camera hand will pay off as soon as you shoot a picture you would have missed due to fussing. Learn click and click-click by feel.

4 -4 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

where your eyes are doing something else like watching that shot coming together. It is called The Grip.

Place the camera with your left hand into your right hand for greatest security.

A GRIPPING EXPERIENCE

Train your fingers to find The Grip that works best for you. Pick up the flattened camera with your left hand by the viewfinder/lens section with the lens pointed up between your thumb and fingers. Use your left hand to PLACE the camera in your right hand with the fat part of the body SEATED in the deepest part of your palm with the monitor facing you. The cushion of your right thumb should be the main gripper on the back of the body while your middle to pinky finger fold over the rubbery finger grip on the front. You simply cant get as good a grip on the camera with your right hand alone. What you do with your index finger is now the critical operation. A swift gentle touch to the front of the Master Switch will tell you whether the camera is already switched on, but asleep, or if it is actually in the Off position. It is okay to leave it in the sleep position, and there are certain advantages to this. By training your fingers to know the difference, you are eliminating confusion at a basic level. Now your finger has the information it needs to either flick the Master Switch on, or press the Shutter Button to reawaken the camera. With practice your finger, not your eyes, will learn Basic camera drill: Getting it into action. Do it by the difference between Auto, Manual, Play, and Off. From Off, feel, not with your eye on the camera. The less time the Auto mode is one inward tug click and Manual mode is you spend looking at the camera, the more you will see your shot coming together. two click/click. If you go three clicks you are in Play mode. Mapping the feel of these options into the finger-action part of your brain is the key. The body is in a firm grip, and while the camera spends a couple of seconds waking up, your left hand can be dealing with the lens cap. i At no time during this process has it been necessary to look at the camera. One of the easiest ways to shoot is to set the camera to go to sleep in 30 seconds or one minute, then re-awaken it with a half press of the Shutter button. Its called Auto Off in the menu system. Power drain in sleep mode is minimal, and the camera pops back to ready in three seconds or so. This power-off cycle can be irritating if you are setting up a complex shot. Change the sleep timer to five minutes if you are doing a tripod shot. A quick glimpse will confirm what your fingers have accomplished. Since the camera is now awake and within your control, photography can begin. i As melodramatic as this may sound, you can train yourself to quickly bring the camera from its case to shooting position with about ten minutes of practice in front of a full length mirror. Over and over, feel for the camera body with your hand, and go through the steps of establishing The Grip, switching the camera to shooting mode, dealing with the lens cap, and bringing it up to your eye. All while looking at your own face in a locked gaze. Some claim that it helps to wear a white Stetson and boots.

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HOW DO I HOLD THE CAMERA FOR STABILITY?


THE AMAZING HUMAN TRIPOD
Having gripped the camera correctly in the first place, your left hand is free to twist the lens segment away from you. The click stop at 90 is easy to feel, and the camera easily lifts up to your shooting eye without smashing into your nose (the way everybodys SLR does). If you can, press the top of the camera against your brow, and gently compress the camera between both hands. You will have achieved a three-point stability between the left, right, and center connections to your body. Shooting as slow as 1/30 sec requires extra bracing. Bring your elbows into contact with your torso, or if you are sitting, connect your elbows to your hips, ribs, or knees. i If you are in an awkward position, try to stabilize your cameraholding hand as much as you can. Press your right wrist against a table, wall, post, pillar, or tree. If you must shoot from an overhead viewpoint, stabilize the hand that is gripping the camera. This is more important than keeping both hands on the cameras body. The triangle made from shoulder to shoulder with one hand gripping the wrist of the camera hand is far more rigid than having two hands in contact with the camera. i To prevent the camera from being knocked out of your grip, always use the wrist strap (described later).

HOW DO I USE TRIPODS?


THE THREE USES FOR THREE LEGS i There are three ways to use a tripod, coincidentally.
As a point of view achiever As a brace As a copy stand To be a portable self-contained point of view manager, the tripod must be able to extend up to eye-level or higher. With the camera at normal shooting height, a hand-held SLR point of view can be achieved. Point of view shots can also be very low, on the deck, out over the side of a boat, in a ditch looking up, or eye-to-eye with a three-year-old. Dont think of the tripod as a thing that levels the camera at various distances from the ground, but start seeing it as a mechanical frame with a camera holder built into it. Now how would you use it? How about impossible shots like positioning the camera five feet off the side of a boat looking back? Extend the tripod to the maximum, and plan the relationship of monitor, pan head angle, and lens twist so when you hold the camera out over the sea you can still see the monitor. This is not for the faint-hearted, but you did remember to insure the Nikon, didnt you? The self-timer will give you just ten seconds to get the shot.

4 -6 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

BRACE YOURSELF

When a tripod is used as a brace, it becomes a stabilizing element for a shot made under muscle tension. The camera and tripod are being pressed against a surface, a slope, stairs, or even a wall to provide a fixed point of reference, not a total independent support. By pushing down through the middle of the tripod you are adding artificial gravity. Stability is temporarily achieved. When you go to buy the tripod, make sure the one you get can take this sort of down-through-its-center force. Some slip, others are simply too heavy. Some have spikes on their feet and chew up the walls and furniture. Make sure any spikes can be easily retracted into rubber feet. When the tripod is used as a copy stand it usually positions the camera pointing down at objects or artwork on a flat area like the floor or on the top of a table. If your tripod doesnt angle down a full 90 thats okay, because you would surely have part of the tripod in the shot if you used it this way. Try extending the back leg of the tripod causing the pan head to overhang the area between the other legs. You A tripod isnt an ideal copy may have to fix a weight on the back leg if you go too far, but the stand. Shadows from the legs can become a problem. chances are good you can reach a spot where you can point straight down, getting the tripod itself and its shadows out of the shot. i If your chosen tripod has a wide rubber or cork gripping surface around its camera screw, and many do, the small base of the Nikon 950 may not mate well with it. The flexible material of the tripod base plate at the point of contact may cause a less than solid fit. A small plate of thin metal or even Formica (oddly enough, a piece about the size of a sample chip) with an appropriately positioned hole in it may provide the anti-wiggle you need. Careful here, those threads are high tech plastic. The 990 and 995s metal threads and flat bottom avoids this issue. One of the single most useful items you can have in your kit is a Q-pod. This is a small simplified tripod with widely placed telescoping 3 to 5-inch (70-130mm) legs. Its tilt head clicks into preset positions, and it weighs about an ounce and a half (42gr). It makes a dandy tabletop macro stand, and I would never leave home without it. On a desktop it can immediately convert into The Q-pod weighs so little a micro copy stand, with the lens you can have it on your camera 99% of the time. positioned just a few inches above the surface. This allows the camera to fill the screen with a penny or climb into the interior of a 35mm slide. Any light table could quickly become an instant slide copying setup. Theyre under ten dollars apiece, so get several and give them to your friends, present them at birthday parties, use them as stocking stuffers, and put them under all your cameras.

CAN YOUR TRIPOD STAND THIS?

Q-TE

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HOW DO I FRAME THE SHOT?


There is a subtle difference between framing a shot and composing a shot. Framing rather implies getting it all included, determining where the edges are. Composing implies arranging the elements within the frame into a creative, communicative visual story. The frame is the boundary within which the composition dwells.
Every picture tells a story, dont it? Rod Stewart

Knowing which eye sees best for photographs is important. Usually it is your dominant eye, and here is how you can find out which one that is.

EYE DOMINATRIX

With both eyes open look at somebodys face across the room. Hold up your hand, and place your index finger over the image of that persons face. Now close one eye. If the index finger didnt appear to jump off the face, the eye that stayed open is your dominant eye, the one you most naturally aim your gaze with. Try it several times. If you dont get consistent results, I would be surprised. Perhaps some folks are just naturally ambioculustrous (derived from ambidextrous).

SEE HOW THE OTHER HALF SEES

Many people are so used to working with their dominant eye in non-artistic ways (like reading), that it becomes the eye least likely to make good pictures. It always wants to put faces in the middle of the frame with such a direct, laser-like aim that compositional qualities go out the window. If you are one of these people, I recommend forcing yourself to shoot with the less experienced eye. Id like to think that the newly engaged hemisphere of your brain, being challenged with a new task, was grateful to be included in the creative process. Training your less experienced eye to be the photographer is often less of a re-training process. Give it a try, and after a number of images, you may have found an artist on your face you didnt expect.

COMPOSITION RULES

There is a general rule for framing compositions. It will serve you well, most of the time, but like many rules, it exists to be broken. If you break it, dont come running to me. Divide an image into nine equal segments, like a tic-tac-toe game. This is The Grid. Hovering near the intersections are natural, human-scale, subconsciously appreciated center-of-interest points. Not exactly at these intersections, just nearby, and completely dependent on the subject. If a strong feature isnt near the intersection, better it be near the dividing lines than too centered or too near the edge. This effect shows up more often than not. In a close-up of a face, the eyes and mouth naturally fall near these divisions. When you are aware of this basic guideline, you can transcend it.

4 -8 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Other compositional formulas include triangles, circles, intersecting perspectives, negative space, rhythm, balance, and a host of variations that can be infinitely pursued. Color and tonal changes made to an image can change the composition. Photographers can manipulate composition with tools like Photoshop, giving them an almost painter-like freedom to improve the image, post-exposure. i Artists enjoy breaking the rules. Its in the job description. It is written across the license in large red letters. There should have been an artistic Its basic. It seems to be built into us since birth. Centers of interest usually license included with the camera. Youll find one on the CD. feel more comfortable if they hover Howard Pyle, an American illustrator at the beginning of the 20 century, near these lines. was already saying, If its small, make it smaller. If its big, make it bigger. His student, Andrew Wyeth, took him at his word. Search out their images on the Internet. The compositions are instructive. Georgia OKeefe didnt put a flower in a picture, she used the center of the flower as the picture. Ansel Adams, a pivotal force in photographic art and renowned for his prints said, A print is never finished. A rule is never final (including this one). If you can get into following The Grid intentionally, then you can get beyond it. Not through ignorance, but deliberately, to achieve better images.

DECOMPOSED

In general, the things you want to avoid are the almosts. These are the composition killers, the things that make the shot almost good, but not quite.
Almost #1: Touching the edge of the frame.

If a vital element like the very top of a head exactly touches the top of the frame, something in our brain says, ouch! It is better to frame the shot with a little headroom, or do the opposite, cropping into the face a bit and making the picture look more intimate. Long shots that have feet exactly on the edge of the frame offend our subconscious, too. With the Nikon compacts, the image is big enough and sharp enough to crop out some offending parts before printing, and this will help correct errant frames. When in doubt, frame a few percent wide, and give yourself the opportunity to be more precise later when the clock is ticking more slowly in your digital darkroom. Eventually, you will gain a sense of pride from framing precisely in the camera, but not every image is the exact shape of the frame.

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Almost #2: Off centered.

A group shot that is off center 5% wont feel right, unless something cute is happening in the off-kilter part of the frame. That is a type of composition in which symmetrical framing is probably your best bet. But dont forget Almost #1.

Almost #3: Too centered.

Sunset in the Bahamas and the dramatic colors of the sky float leisurely over the silver sea, bisecting the picture into top and bottom with the sun target center. How dull. Better to point up towards the sky, and rest that horizon along the lower composition line of The Grid, while shifting the sun to one side or the other. Completely centered images can be the appropriate composition of certain shots which look much better this way, an eye close-up, for instance.
Almost #4: Too small.

Everybody has seen the shot of Aunt Evelyn against the Grand Canyon. She is looking at the camera with the scenic panorama behind her. She is about half the height of the image, and she is clutching her purse against marauders, looking exactly like a posed tourist picture. We cant see if she is happy, sad or tired, we can only tell that at some point in time she ... was ... there. My eyelids are growing heavy. Now its your turn. Walk up to your subject. Would you look at that, Aunt Evelyn. Can you believe that the whole thing was basically carved out in a few months?
True. (According to geologists) It looks this way because a fast gouging torrent carved it when a huge up-stream inland sea suddenly drained. Otherwise the Mississippi River [older] would be grander and deeper, and all old river courses would be just as dramatic.

As she ponders this challenge to her preconceived notions, frame a shot that includes her head and shoulder on one side of the picture and the depths of the canyon on the other. Forget the purse, nobody gives a darn about the purse. If a marauder grabs it, take his picture. Make sure you are looking slightly downward so the horizon isnt cutting the picture in half, find features in the view that seem to balance on the grid, and shoot a bunch of exposures as your subject looks at the scene and back at you. When she realizes you are shooting several picturesah! Theres that smile Now throw away the poorer shots and show your friends the now-interesting sequence of Aunt Evelyn pondering the torrent that ripped the canyon into existence.

4 -10 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Your Own Favorite Almost.

The one that keeps poking its nose into your pictures. The tendency to shoot everything to the left or overexposed or with the finger jab moving the camera just at the moment of exposure. If you study your images with a more discerning eye than, Oops, heres another one that Just Didnt Turn Out, your learning curve will travel steadily upward. A coach can help. If you keep making the same mistake over and over, but cant seem to nail the problem, ask a friend or family member to watch you as you shoot, and see if they can spot the habit that may be interfering with your shots. Do you squint or blink at the moment of shooting? Do you look over the camera at the moment of truth? Maybe they can detect it for you.
Every picture tells a story. Shouldnt it?

Bad photo of fun moment. Can you count the mistakes and/or shortcomings? Hints: Background, lighting, framing, composition, level, pose.

HOW DO I MAKE THE EXPOSURE?


PRESSING ENGAGEMENT
When the shutter is half-pressed, a decision about the exposure is made. In a quiet environment you can hear the cameras inner systems come to a halt as you feel the Shutter Button find the half way point. Sometimes it will take the camera an additional second to lock the autofocus into place, and only then is the camera ready to get the final exposure. A smooth, non-twitching, non-stabbing press of the Shutter Button will then take the shot with a very short reaction time. If you are aware that the camera is using a low shutter speed of 1/30 sec or slower remember that the push your finger is making on the Shutter Button is probably the biggest thing shaking the camera. A squeeze is called for, not a jab. i Half-press, then expose, is something you need to develop as a working habit. Modern 35mm autofocus film cameras work this way, too. If you hand off the camera to people who arent familiar with it, just tell them, Its Digital. Press slowly, and hold it for a second. Practice saying this until it becomes automatic. Otherwise they may shoot with what I call the Voil attitude, pressing with a finger flourish and then, because they felt something, while the shutter is actually open, they express an inappropriate follow-through with Vanna White gestures just as the shutter finally opens. A smear shot is the result. Too many frames of film are wasted every day this way. Fortunately you can check the result right away and recover. Now remember, its Digital ... Hold it for a second. People often press the Shutter Button too urgently, as I do elevator buttons. It wont help here. Other things affect how the exposure is accomplished, the focus system and the meter type.

FOCUS GROUP

In Auto mode, the camera is constantly trying to stay in focus, and this speeds up the moment of exposure in some instances. In Manual mode you can set the camera to either continuously focus or only focus when the shutter is pressed. The option is chosen through the menu system. The focus system doesnt affect the exposure, but it can delay it. For details, see Camera Operation in Chapter 3.

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The Matrix metering system in the Nikons is extremely good. It is smart, anticipates your most frequent wishes, and nails the exposure to the page. The Matrix meter uses an array of 16 by 16 zones of the picture to define areas of maximum dark, maximum bright, and light levels in between. These 256 readings are then analyzed for brightness range, position in the frame, and statistical content. A formulaic algorithm is compared to the image profile, and a decision is made about the most likely exposure the data indicates. It feels like having a zone-system exposure expert making hundreds of spot readings over the image and giving her best guess as to which exposure would achieve the surest results. Sometimes the Matrix wont give you what you truly want. The other two systems will help. The Spot meter measures a small, outlined, rectangular area in the middle of the shot, and will expose only for what is inside the spot. On the monitor screen a rectangle is superimposed over the picture when the Spot Meter is active showing the sensitive area. Try to hold this area over a face or medium-toned feature while you half-press the shutter to lock in the exposure and focus. Now you can shoot people against bright backgrounds and in confusing light. If you are shooting actors on a stage under theatrical lighting, or night shots, the Spot Meter is recommended. If the spot is accidentally centered on a bright light or exceptionally bright feature in the image, an unwanted underexposure will occur. There are right times to use the spot, and times when it can get in the way. It is worth practicing for an hour or two shooting images just for the experience of seeing how you can master exposure with this meter. Review the results not just on your camera monitor, but see what they look like on your computer monitor. Then blow away the shots you dont want. Free film means free experience.

MATRIX TRIX

SPOTS BEFORE YOUR EYES

CENTRALLY LOCATED

The Center Weight meter behaves like a hand-held light meter of modest angle and pays more attention to the middle of the frame while averaging the exposure for about the center half of the picture. This is more like the exposure meter on cameras that are designed for more casual, less-experienced photographers. It makes nice exposures much of the time, and you may prefer it if you do lots of portraits or standard setup shots. More forgiving than the Spot, Center Weight is a good meter for average illumination in well-lit gymnasiums and nature scenes in which a matrix meter might be fooled by a bright overhead sky. Practice with all three meters to learn their talents. You paid a lot for the camera, and having it teach you its metering secrets is one way it pays you back. How much experience can it give you in just a single afternoon of shooting and reviewing? More than a seminars worth.

FOLLOW SPOT

In the 880/885/990/995 you can choose to have a spot meter follow the focus zone either in the auto or manual zone selection modes. It is tricky to get this meter to deliver predictable results. Yet it's quite handy for objects moving in the shot against a dark background, like an actor on stage in a spotlight.

4 -12 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

GET YOUR PROGRAM

Exposure is always a balance between sensitivity (expressed as ISO index numbers), shutter speed, and the ability of the lens to gather photons, the f-stop. The Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, and Program modes each are useful in different situations. While metering systems guide you, Spot and Center Weight are available only in Manual mode. You may choose to set the exposure up to two stops up or down in any of these modes with the EV +/feature. Your setting is (as an option) retained after the camera is shut off and on again. The menu system can optionally track this for you. In the 990/995, the fully Manual exposure mode presents a graphic meter to guide you. The details in Chapter 3, Camera Operation, will help you finesse exposure.

EIGHT TYPES OF FILM. OR WAS IT...

Once in Manual mode, the 950 emulates eight different types of film. Color film with an ISO sensitivity of 80, 100, 160, and 320, plus black and white film with each of the same speeds. The color image at ISO 80 is the least grainy, and the black and white image at ISO 320 is the most edgy. With Photoshop you can add extra grain to the B&W images for a definitely Tri-X documentary/ available light/behind-the-scenes/undercover photographer on the brinksort of look. The combination of in-camera options and post exposure manipulations will allow you an immense range of photographic styles that extends well beyond the stylistic choices different films provide. Knowing what type of film to use for a given shot The 880 and 990 allow you to select ISO 100, 200, 400 plus color is always helpful. But it didnt help me here. I just happened to be playing with the B&W feature at ISO 320 or B&W, for six basic kinds of "film". The 995 adds ISO 800! (+2 on the 950) when I came across this exuberant group. Sometimes its just luck. Whoops! Theres more! The menu system allows you to select a three-step contrast range or two different tonal curve-generated brightness settings for your image, too. Nikon pioneered this feature. You can select low, normal, and higher contrast images with a simple menu choice. Or you can let the camera figure these automatically. The Coolpix 995 adds a saturation control that ups the permutations of film types. Five saturation settings (including B&W), five tonal curve adjustments (Image Adjust), and four ISO settings give ...um... 100 film types. Whew!

HOW DO I MAKE THE PICTURE BRIGHTER OR DARKER?


AUTO MOTIVES
Camera, thy name is Exposure. The central thing all this light metering technology accomplishes is a correct exposure, and the Nikon compacts have a bunch of things to say about that. Automation forms the heart of the Auto Record setting. It coordinates the Matrix exposure meter system with the auto focus system with the flash system and delivers good exposures properly focused almost every time. It is the system of choice in any fast-changing environment and the one you want to be set to when you hand the camera to Uncle Bert to shoot you and Jasmine. Um, Bert, this is one of them digital cameras. Its a little tricky. Press the shutter slowly, and hold it still for a second or so. You still have some control over Auto exposure. It can be adjusted up and down in thirds of an f-stop with the EV +/- control. Learning this adjustment is essential, because it will start you on your way to both finessing exposure and fooling the camera on demand when you start learning manual techniques.

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EV -1.0

Normal

EV +1.0

Exposure compensation gives both Auto and Manual metering the ability to under- or overexpose on demand. Sometimes it's just better to correctly expose the subject and let the rest of the shot do whatever it will. The meters don't know this. You have to tell them. For that you need experience.

On the monitor a number will become visible just to the right of the f-stop number. It will tell you how much compensation you are dialing in. The range is two stops over and two stops under, and changes occur in one-third of an f-stop increments, which is appropriate for a digital cameras less-forgiving exposure range. i When you set this exposure compensation in Auto Record mode, the setting is forgotten as soon as you shut the camera off, but not if you simply let the camera fall asleep. A menu setting for the Auto mode lets you set the awake time of the camera, and since it only takes three seconds for it to come out of sleep, you can set the awake time to 30 seconds or one minute and keep taking compensated pictures without using excessive battery power. Once you are in Manual mode, the ability to control the exposure increases. Still, how do you know that a shot needs a little more or less exposure? How on earth would you know in broad daylight when the monitor cant be seen well? About the only time the monitor can guide you as to the exposure you need to compensate for, is when you are in ideal viewing conditions for the screen on the back of the camera. At any other time you are guessing, and only experience can give you comfort with guesses like that. When you can see the monitor screen well, look for things that are extremes to guide you. Photoshop can fix underexposure more easi Bright beach sand, fields of snow, acres of dark ily than overexposure. This repair (the right lava rock, subjects against bright or dark walls or backside) took only a quick slide of the highlight groundsthese can fool any meter. If the entire environcontrol in Levels. ment is very light, automatic meters will underexpose. Compensate by overexposing bright backgrounds so they show up as appropriately bright in the final picture. Try +0.7 and +1.0 EV. Do the shadows block up and seem to have no, or low, detail? The camera monitor isnt as accurate as a computer screen. Bracket the exposure, boost exposure +0.3 or +0.7-stop, and take another shot for safety. i Keep in mind that Photoshop can pull an image up from a slight underexposure much more easily than it can correct an overexposure. All exposure compensations made later will reduce image quality to some degree. Try to err on the side of slightly too little light if you can. A new control is available to compensate for exposure problems in Manual Record mode. The Contrast +/- and Brightness +/- adjustments found in the Image Adjustment menu item on Menu Page 1.

4 -14 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Creating a wider dynamic range for contrasty subjects. Sky detail is OK in the normal exposure, left, but shadows are much too dark. The exposure made with Less Contrast, center, has extended highlights and looks darker but notice that the deep shadows havent changed. Boosting exposure +1 stop, right, brings the highlights up but brings shadow detail way up. Result: +1 stop lighter shadows, +0.3 stop brighter sky. (Manual mode images are all reproduced completely unretouched.)

Do the highlights bleach out and show no detail above a certain brightness? Either compensate with a lower exposure of 0.3 or 0.7-stop, and take extra shots, or go to the Image Adjustment setting on Menu Page 1, and choose the Contrast setting (also called Less Contrast). Immediately, the highlights will contain more detail, but midtones will drop. i On the 88x and 99x cameras you have a guide in the form of a histogram on one of the review screens. Two clicks left from the arrival page with the Command Dial, and it appears. Just like the histogram in Photoshop's Levels control, it shows the relative brightness population density with dark on the left and light on the right of the graphic. For most subjects it may look like a mountain range tapering off to each end. Night shots and snowfield shots will show peaks at the dark and bright ends respectively. i If you are shooting into the sun with a back-lit subject, or have a preponderance of high-contrast subjects, you can get more tonal range in printing by starting with images shot with the camera contrast set low. Experience shows that a combination of Less Contrast plus a +0.3 to +1.0-stop exposure compensation actually extends the dynamic range of the camera by about one full stop! This form of exposure compensation opens up shadow detail, and the lower contrast preserves highlight detail better overall (see example above). Similar but not twins. Nikon 990 When higher contrast or snap is desired, the camera contrast can be set to Contrast+ (More Contrast). Now the shadows are darker, the highlights brighter, and histogram and the histogram from Photoshop of the same image. Dark the world cheerier. Its not exactly Kodachrome, but it has zip. For subjects that lack is left, light is right. contrast, it will help define them. It also has a down side. i When you have a haircut and they ask you how you like it, the one thing you cant say is, Fine, but could you make it a little longer in the back? Once you throw data away, its gone. Shooting an image with extra contrast tosses some visual data away. You can add contrast later, before you print the imageand Photoshop will let you do things that are even fancier than that. When you shoot with less contrast, you are actually gathering more data in the form of a wider range of brightness, and this is useful when manipulations are made before printing.

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HIGH PRIORITIES

In Manual Mode you can also choose from P (Program), S (Shutter Priority), and A (Aperture Priority) exposure methods. Program mode is used in Auto Mode, and it attempts to give you the best balance of shutter speed, f-stop, and ISO sensitivity to refine the exposure. As in Auto Mode, you can still over- and underexpose the picture with the +/- button in 1/3-stop increments. Program is your best bet in most cases. It understands that you are a human with unstable hands, so it prefers to give you higher shutter speeds when it can. The other two modes are for controlling things in special situations.

I SHUTTER TO THINK

Water in a 1/2 sec exposure, left, looks like its moving and alive. The same falls at 1/500 sec looks frozen. The cityscape, top, benefits from underexposure because its supposed to look dark.

Shutter Priority Mode allows you to lock in a selected shutter speed from 8 sec to 1/500 sec on the 950, plus one more step to 1/1000 sec on the 990 and 1/2000 sec in the 995, and lets the meter system choose the aperture and film speed to achieve the correct exposure. You can use this mode to expose bright and dark images if you wish, by setting it to impossibly long or short shutter speeds. i For some things, a manual shutter setting is invaluable. Lets say you wanted to include a TV image in your shot. Just snapping a shot at 1/60 sec wont do it. The TV image will often be flawed with a bar across the image. At 1/15 or 1/8 sec the TV picture will look normal in your shot. Youll even see every scan line. i Lets say you wanted to expose a city at night from a high vantage point. You might wish to make it look like it does to your eye. Often, the camera would choose an exposure that would be too long, but you can select the exposure time that gives the most realistic results even though the aperture is fully open. i At the side of a fast flowing stream or waterfall you might want to portray the water with a nifty time-streaked airbrush effect. A 1/2 to 2 sec exposure will give it to you, although you might have to mount a neutral density filter or two over the lens to bring the light down to a usable range. Any shutter speed longer than 1/30 sec requires absolute stability of the camera unless you are using the blurred background as an effect. For many long exposure shots, even tripod shots, mastering the Self Timer will help greatly.

Aperture Priority locks into a selected aperture and causes the camera to adjust exposures with the shutter speed alone. You select one of the 950's three f-stops, which equate to f/2.6, f/4.4, and f/7.4 at wide-angle zoom position, and f/4.0, f/6.8, and f/11.4 at the telephoto end of the zoom. To save physical size in the lens design, the effective aperture changes throughout the zoom. The automatic exposure now ramps the shutter into exotic fractions of a second (1/43, 1/70, 1/210) and is quite precise. Although the published specification on the shutter speed says it maxes out at 1/750 sec, it actually achieves shutter speeds of 1/793 sec in bright conditions. The 990 and 995 do a bit better. Here the f-stops are continuous. The aperture can also be locked at points that are common from wide to tele, so exposures at any zoom length will be consistent.

THE F-WORD

4 -16 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

When you want to see shutter and iris information, you must enter the cameras Play mode, and select the information screen with the Command Dial or Multi Selector. Images are saved with data covering many aspects of the shot. Zoom setting, contrast setting, distance, and many other details reside here. Any cataloging or filing program that reads the EXIF data, including Nikon View and the HotShots programs, will reveal it as well. A small amount of ISO sensitivity is used in certain shutter-priority cases to bridge the gap between f-stops in the 950 without introducing artifacts into the image. These cameras, by the very nature of their miniaturized optical systems and image sensors, have inherently great depth of field, which is the range of sharpness from near to far at a given focus and aperture setting. As apertures get smaller, f-numbers get larger, and depth of field gets deeper. At infinity focus, the widest opening in wide-angle, f/2.5, depth of field is from about eight feet onward. If you shoot at the highest f-number in full telephoto your depth of field is still better than fifteen feet onward. Larger f-numbers (f/16, f/22, etc.) simply arent needed to create depth of field. The formula for figuring out exposure equivalence is [(1/film sensitivity) sec @ f/16 = brightest daylight at noon setting] anywhere near Earths orbit. The formula works on the Moon, too. The Nikon 950s slowest ISO of 80 @ f/7.4 is equivalent to about 1/400 sec for a normal daylight shot. Full daylight exposure is covered with extra shutter speed up to 1/750 for those bright snow or beach shots. The sun isnt getting any brighter, so the camera is well within its targeted range.

HOW DO I COMPENSATE FOR BACKLIGHT?


Subjects are often sandwiched between the bright part of the scene in front of you and the camera. The camera may mistakenly assume the brightest part of the image is what you want to expose for. When this happens, you have to help the camera decide. The Spot meter or Center Weight meter can help.

HERE, SPOT

With the Spot meter, your light reading will only be a small area in the middle of the image. The optical viewfinder has a bracket in the middle of its view that can guide you into the meter spot area, and the monitor actually shows a rectangle defining the spot reading area of the camera. Hold this area over your subject and half-press the Shutter button. Exposure and focus will lock, and as long as you keep the button half-way pressed, you can re-frame the image to get the best composition, or wait for the pose to come together. Center Weight metering is used in a similar way. Think of it as a very broad, fuzzy spot meter that works well with larger, more screen-filling objects. Even Matrix metering can be used to compensate for back light if you are able to fill the screen with the object before half-pressing and re-framing. Play is a valuable teacher. Experimenting with these three meters is a necessary part of getting used to the camera. When the camera is a new piece of equipment to you, it is well worth your time to shoot many pictures just to see how the camera handles them. Give yourself exposure challenges. How do you shoot people in shade when the world behind them is brightly lit? How do you make a good exposure of somebodys face when that person is indoors, and the city out the window in the background is in full sunlight? Examining your own test exposures will tell you plenty.

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There is an opposite effect that happens when somebody or some object is in a shaft of light with darkness all around. The Matrix meter wont help much there, either. Again, the Spot or Center Weight meter may be your best bet.

HOW DO I GET THE COLOR RIGHT?


Electronic imaging is able to achieve a balance between the red, green, and blue components of the image in an attempt to portray color temperature correctly. As we may remember from basic physics, the color temperature of the light-emitting layer of the suns upper atmosphere is about 5800 Kelvin, and a 100-watt bulb has a color temperature of about 2600 K. (Kelvin temperature is measured from absolute zero in Centigrade degrees. So the glowing part of the sun is about 5527 degrees C.) The full range spectrum of colors each of these sources emits is biased bluer for the sun and much redder for the bulb. Then there is the sky. It passes red light and scatters blue. Shadows outdoors fill up with cool blue from that canopy above, and our camera has to deal with all of it. Thats why both indoor and outdoor films exist. Each formula is tuned to the light source. Outdoor film makes images shot indoors look very gold and reddish. Indoor film shot outdoors looks stark blue. Billions of dollars in wasted pictures are shot every year when people shoot with the wrong film. But thats all history now. The Nikon 950, 88x, 99x, and 775 cameras have some of the most sophisticated white balance systems in digital still cameras. No less than seven settings are available, and 92.7% of your images will be fine if you select Auto. The Auto setting watches the scene through the lens and constantly sniffs the image for general color shifts within predictable lighting types. It adjusts well to bright sunny situations and even indoor lighting in offices and at home, but there are situations that can fool it. For these there are remedies. Fluorescent lighting is a problem for many systems because its light is not a continuous spectrum. It is made up of the color emissions of phosphors energized by an ultraviolet plasma. Some fluorescent phosphor formulas give a pretty good rendition of incandescent light, but all fluorescents have holes in their spectra that affect the look of photos shot in their light. The Nikon is able to recognize many different kinds of fluorescents and accommodate them in Auto. The range of Auto is so wide that you can make candle light look almost like full spectrum white sunlight. Often this extreme automatic correction is too much. Candles are supposed to look warm in most images. Making the image look like it does to your eye is more desirable. Even in Auto white balance, odd lighting such as mercury vapor lamps put Both images were taken in very different color light 2900K (top) out such weird spectra that the camera gives up trying to make them look and 6800K outdoor shadow (botperfect and concentrates on making them look more like they do to your eye, tom), yet the shirt looks nearly the strange, but perceptually accurate. You can instruct the camera to shoot for same. Sunny (AKA Fine), Incandescent, Fluorescent, Flash, and Cloudy. Plus the amazingly astute White Balance Preset. Sunny (Fine) can be useful for forcing a middle-of-the-day color balance into a scene. Sunsets look richer when white balance has been forced to see things with a noon-like expectation of colors. When used under indoor lights the images will be quite golden.

SMART COLOR

4 -18 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Cloudy takes the cooler edge off shots made under cloudy overcast skies, which filter out the yellower warmth of direct sun. It makes indoor shots look even redder than Sunny does, and warms up sunsets a little extra, too. It can be used to give a slightly warm appearance to shots made in full sunlight at high altitudes. Incandescent makes the camera think the light is coming from light bulbs. The kind you burn your fingers on while changing. It can be used to give a cold blue cast to daylight shots or to make dimmed indoor lighting look warm the way your eye sees it. It Sunset captured with Sunny white balance. is a good choice for warm fireside shots. This one makes candles look like candles. Fluorescent compensates for the most common type, the bulbs labeled Cool White on the 950 and 775. On the 880 and 99x cameras three different numbered variations are selectable. If the fluorescents in your shot are different use White Preset (below). Flash is used in mixed lighting where off-camera flashes are the light you need to balance to. When the on-camera flash is not being used, the camera has no other way to know what the white balance should be, and it cant determine that at the instant of exposure. Use this setting to tell it what to expect.

WHITER THAN WHITE

White Balance Preset is used when you wish to show the camera exactly and precisely what you want it to consider white to be. You then pre-set to this white reference, and it is remembered by the camera until you change it. At any time Incandescent lighting shot with you can select White Preset and your last saved white balance will become the Incandescent and Sunny (Fine) white cameras white reference. balance. Professional video cameras have a similar feature, but even these dont usually have the range of the Nikon compacts. Setting up the white balance is straightforward. You are balancing the camera to the existing light. Point the camera at a white surface that is in the lighting you wish to balance to. Tell the camera this is it by selecting the Menu choice: White Bal. Preset. This produces a menu screen that asks Cancel or Measure? and shows a square sampling area from the center of the image sensor. The 950 zooms full tele to limit the sample. The 990/995 lets you zoom wider if you wish. Choose Measure. If you choose Cancel, the cameras preset memory stays filled with the previous manual white balance. Press the Shutter button on the 950 or click right with the MultiSelector on the others, and the camera cycles through a brief exposure sequence during which it measures the RGB content of the target area of the sensor. The camera will now assume that anything it just saw equaled white. The circuits responsible for detecting red, green, and blue pixels will immediately have an internal look-up file that tells them how to create a good-looking color image. This file stays intact through battery changes until you do it again. i Point the camera at anything that is pure white or truly neutral gray. Some high quality bond papers and white fabrics have UV brighteners in them. They look a little too white to your eye and produce a slightly warmer white balance.

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A good cheap sheet of white copier bond will make a more neutral white balance target. When shooting a computer screen, balance off a menu box or word processor screen. Black text in a white balance source wont hurt its usefulness at all. For most situations, you have just told the camera what the color of the ambient light actually is, and in situations with mixed light sources, this is an accurate way of making the colors look correct in a photograph. Nothing in film photography can match it.

THE TINT IN THE PRINT

If the prints you are making in your camera/computer/printer system seem to be constantly coming out with a color tint under particular lighting, there is an unusual remedy for this. When something in the system is throwing a particular color cast on your results, in spite of your attempt to use White Preset to compensate the white balance, the camera may be misaligned, the printer could be screwed up, or some element in the computer could be causing it. If the images on the computer screen look wrong, too, then its coming from the camera, lights, or computer only. Heres a practical fix for printing: i White balance on a piece of white paper under the lighting situation that shows the worst version of the problem. Then immediately take a picture of that white surface up close. Fill the frame with it. Notice that the shot ends up looking like featureless gray. Print this as a small picture without any in-computer color fixing. A two-inch square is enough. You now have a print that contains the offending tint in the gray. Put this print into the corrupt lighting. Manually white balance off the print! The camera dutifully compensates for the color of the light plus the extra color of the tint in the print, and subsequent shots in this lighting should look quite a bit better. The story is far from over. The Nikon compacts will go to extremes to try to make the reference object look neutral white. Even if it wasnt white to start with. I call the technique an Off-White Balance. If you were to point the camera at a red surface while making a white balance measurement, no matter what the ambient lighting is, the camera will suddenly appear to live in a bluish-cyan world. Off-White Balance from a blue surface and shots will become orange-tinted. Magenta targets make green happen, green targets makes magenta happen. Subtle shifts in color can be forced by balancing on subtle off-white color patches. i A file in the accompanying CD lets you print out patches of complementary colors. Off-White Balance from the opposite color of the patch that represents the effect you want, and you will have an instant color filter on your camera. One that can never scratch or break because it has been inserted into the cameras computer logic, not its lens. The cover of this eBook contains the pattern at the left for easy access to the 48 color filters it causes in your camera. A file on the CD also has the same pattern for you to print out for ease of use. Conceivably you could make a print small enough to fold up and keep in your wallet. Filters that cannot scratch, fade or add to lens i A color patch big enough to target is all you need to force flare. In the Appendix, on the cover, and on the CD. an Off-White Balance effect. The pink, baby blue, and pastel yellow Post-It colors are easy to find, and the colors they cause are interesting. Counter-intuitively, the white parts of your images will still appear to be white! The term white balance is really a neutralization of gray balance.

OFF-WHITE BALANCE

4 -20 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

EXOTIC WHITE BALANCE TRICKS

The plot thickens. Try this. A deep red #25 filter is used in black and white photography to accent skies, darken greens, and make reds look white. If you color balance through one of these extreme chroma filters on a white surface, then shoot pictures through the very same filter, dramatic and unexpected special effects will pop out. Suddenly the world will be blue/black with yellow posterized highlights! The three tree shots below were merely different exposures made this way against a blue California sky. For even stranger results, white balance through the #25 filter pointed at a green leaf.

i Shooting with high chroma gels over the lens can lead to unexpected and often interesting effects. Nikons engineers seem to have given the cameras color circuits a wider latitude than most professional video cameras, and with this off-white balancing trick the extremes of that color space can be explored.

HOW DO I FORCE THE CAMERA TO FOCUS WHERE I WANT?


With the 950 you have two immediate methods of focus. Autofocus, and Manual focus. Since the camera is not a single lens reflex, manual focusing is given over to a series of preset focus ranges which lock in at 0.33 (feet), 0.66, 1.0, 1.5, 2, 3, 5, 10, 30, and INF (inity). In meters, the numbers show up as 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.7, 1.0, 1.5, 3.0, 10, and INF. Obviously these are only approximations, but they represent focus areas in which the depth of field compensates somewhat for inexactness. Some subjects are unlikely to wait for the autofocus. Preset the focus (here The 880, 885, 990, and 995 divide up the focus range into 50 manual zones creating a more refined selection of focus areas. The range goes all the way from at 0.33 feet) and prowl by moving the camera into position. infinity to 0.06 feet (0.02 meters). Almost everybody wants to shoot very close on occasion. While closer focus is available through the Autofocus mode, the minimum Manual focus setting is available at every point in the zoom range. And 0.33 on feet on the 950, thats a mere four inches. The 990 and 995 achieve this close setting at just a hair under full tele zoom. This is a field of view just over 1-1/4 inch wide! Very close indeed. Close enough to crop inside the long dimension of a 35mm slide. On top of the 950 there is a button dedicated to being the focus helper. It is the rearmost button behind the shutter release. Stepping through it selects Infinity, Micro, and Self Timer. Wait a minute, how did that get in there? Because the Self Timer in the 950 is in the selection rotation of Normal > Infinity > Micro > Self Timer, most people assume you cant set up micro shots and have the Self Timer function at the same time.

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The Nikon Manuals arent any help here either. An undocumented procedure works around this problem: i To shoot a Macro close-up and have the Self Timer trigger the shot, do this: First, choose the Self Timer. An icon looking somewhat like a clock with a second hand will appear on the view screen and on the camera top display. Next, hold down the M-Focus button on the camera top, and keep it down while turning the Command Dial on the front of the camera. Now you are setting the focus manually while maintaining the ability to trip the shutter while not touching the camera. i The other models include Macro Focus in the Self Timer choice, so all Self Timer shots will be forced to wait through the longer macro focusing procedure. Unless you set the focus manually. The procedure is the same as for the 950. Set the Self Timer, press and hold the M-Focus button while the Command Dial selects the distance. As the manual distance is chosen, the monitor shows you the focus distance, and the camera top display blinks all the focus icons on the 950. The 990/995 shows the numerical distance without the icon animation. i If the camera falls asleep, the setup is lost and you will have to start over. The 950, 990, and 995 let you choose continuous or single focus modes with a menu choice. Continuous is the only mode in Auto Record, but the Single Focus (the On&S-AF setting on the 950, Single AF on the 99x) mode is more accurate at the expense of speed. It takes longer to seek the nearest object but is less likely to be fooled by a contrasty background behind a less contrasty foreground subject. The 950 has a 4742 step range, from closest focus to infinity, while the 990 has 4896 steps. This increases to 7123 steps in the 995. In practice it simply feels perfectly continuous. Continuous Focus can be distracting because the camera seems to be vibrating, growling, and generally sounding like it hasnt eaten in several days. Not to worry, all that activity means it is working, not dying. The sound comes from the focus system stepper motor. Although it can sound impressive and continuous, it isnt eating much power, either. You would use more power turning the camera off to save batteries than the focus system would eat in a long time. i The growl might be produced by a motor system error. Turning it off plus opening and closing the battery door usually clears this. Dont let this happen to you. When continuIn Single Focus the camera seems more tame. It only actuates when ous focus goes bad or is stolen by a contrasty the shutter is half-pressed, and then it searches from horizon to very near background, its not a pretty picture. looking for some near object to settle on. As soon as it realizes nothing in the image is growing clearer (contours of similar tonalities arent shrinking) it suspends the search and races back to the last place it remembered finding a hard edge. That is the most likely in-focus object so now it follows through with the rest of the exposure sequence.

AUTOFOCI

4 -22 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

HOW DO I SHOOT IN AVAILABLE DARKNESS?


The problem of shooting in available darkness has been with us since the beginning of photography. And there has been only one solution in the last 170 yearsafter focusing, put enough light into the camera. The entire exercise of shooting where light is scarce revolves around either boosting sensitivity, gathering photons, or making them.

HARVESTING NOISY PHOTONS

Increasing exposure time will pump up the light because time equals photons. Times upper limit on the Nikon 950 is eight seconds. The 990 adds a Bulb setting in full Manual mode for exposures as long as the shutter is kept open. Long exposures are strictly tripod territory. You can shoot long exposures while moving the camera, but be prepared for blur/motion results. As exposure is built up over time, the imaging chip is more and more prone to noise. Thermal noise shows up as single specks of color or light spots against the dark parts of the image. (The Hubble Space Telescope has the same problem, so it chills its chips to 70 C to permit hours-long exposures.) i Most very long exposures happen in the dark of night. Night air is usually cooler than daytime temperatures, and this helps long exposures if the camera is as cool as the air. A 60 F camera has half the noise of a 70 F camera. The trick is to cool the camera sloooowly. i No, dont put it in the refrigerator to cool it down. Thats a good way to induce moisture inside. The best strategy is to let it cool in moderately cooler air for 20-30 minutes before shooting long night exposures. When shooting images over 1/4 sec try to acquire a blank black flaw frame of the same duration as your long expoA 4 sec night shot acquires noise, left. The same pattern of noise that a 4 sec capped (flaw sure. A later section deals with the frame) exposure gathers, center. Running one of the nine iFlawFix filters gives the right image. step by step use of this noise reference Examine this closely and youll see the star that was not removed by the process. frame and how it can pull 99% or more of the noise out of your shot. The 995 has a built-in NR system for Noise Reduction. With it, you wont need this technique. i Five things can be done to improve pictures shot with long exposures that still arent long enough. All of them happen in post-processing. The first is to simply accept a certain underexposure at the camera, open it in Adobe Photoshop, and build up light with a self-double exposure. You can double expose an image onto itself? Yes. To do this, you copy the imported image into stacked duplicate layers. Photoshop allows you to combine layers in a number of different ways. Two are helpful for fixing under- and overexposures. The Screen layer blending method effectively makes one layer look like a double exposure over the layers below it. By setting upper layers to Screen you effectively double expose the picture over itself, thus increasing the effective exposure. Your effective range is just over 1.3 stops. If the effect is too much, a handy opacity slider relating to the uppermost layer will allow you to reduce the effect precisely. (For overexposed frames, the top layer is set to the Multiply option. Its like stacking duplicate transparencies on top of each other and building up darkness.)

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The second method of increasing exposures is to increase or decrease the gamma adjustment in Photoshop. This is the center slider in the Levels control window. It moves the middle values of the exposure up or down while not changing the white and black parts of the picture. Screen-treated layers can have gamma adjustments, small amounts of noise (to dither colors), despeckling (to get rid of some single pixel flaws), diffusion, blurring, value curve remappings, and color corrections added as desired. The third method is to perform an adjustment to the tonality curve of the image using the Curves control in Photoshop. By grabbing the tonality graphic with a single point in the center and offsetting it to the left or right, you will accomplish the same function that the gamma curve performs in the Levels control. Curves lets you pick additional points and manipulate them, too. Highlight areas can be manipulated downward while shadow areas can be manipulated upward. Before After The fourth method is to use the iNovaFX Photoshop Action Filter called The iNovaFX ISO To Taste filter started the iSO2Taste. Its a folder called Exposure Fixes found on the CD; you simply recovery process for this image of dried flowimport it into Photoshop, and follow the instructions in Chapter 9. ers shot three stops under at ISO 3200. The fifth method is similar but is geared to recovering severely underexposed images. It is the iNovaFX iSO3200 filter and is made to pull a 3.0 stop underexposed image up to useful levels. Results are contrasty, grainy, and often surprising. If you shoot images at EV -2.0 to -3.0 in Full Manual Exposure mode on the 990/995, you may get some unexpectedly interesting results with it.

PLANTING PHOTONS

Small but bright. Cheap, too. Quantaray MS-1, top, Cobra Flashmate, bottom.

Fortunately photons are relatively cheap. They are distributed on the Earth at the rate of 4.14 x 1015 on every square millimeter each second by the sun. No problem there. But when the giant photon generator in the sky is busy on the other side of the world, we need to grow a bunch of photons for our shots. The Nikons internal flash will work, at elevated ISO 320/400, out to about 30 feet (9 meters). The problem here is that on-camera flash photography isnt the most flattering kind of light source. It could use a bit of Flash Four small Ritz MS-1 and Flashmate slaves were used in this portrait triggered wirelessly by the cameras flash using the Helper. infrared filter technique (see text). Wouldnt it be cool to have a second flash somewhere out there away from the camera? Wouldnt it be cool to trigger that flash without being hooked up to it? A number of slave flashes models are available that make this dream a reality. A very basic model called the Cobra Flashmate costs only $15 and takes up less space in your camera bag than a deck of cards. Another, the Ritz Camera Quantaray MS-1 comes with a clever mounting kit that will lash it to tripods, posts, beams, and chairs. (The 880, 885 and 775 use a double flash to reduce red-eye. Those cameras need slaves that fire on the second flash. The DigiSlave DSF-1s unit works with these.) Slave flashes trigger via your camera flash, and that flash look will still be part of the picture. What to do? Make the camera flash go away visually, but not physically. The camera flash puts out a wide spectrum. Including infrared. Not much, but enough to trigger the slave units.

4 -24 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

black slide film that was developed, but never exposed, works quite well. Slides absorb light without trapping heat, so the dyes in them are made to let infrared out freely. Tape a sliver over the flash window and so little visible light will leave the camera that no red-eye or appreciable exposure contribution will fall on your subject, but any slave flash within ten feet will go off on cue. Instant wireless flash triggering.

i Filtering the white light out of the flash sounds expensive, but it is not. A piece of

PHOTON DIETS

The Nikon 950 has no way of adjusting the camera flash. A menu page on the 990/995 facilitates setting the flash brighter or darker than the flash computers factory setting. To reduce the flash on the 950 you will need to either filter the lens, so less returning light reaches the imaging chip, or youll need to fool the sensor into believing enough light is bouncing back from the subject so the circuit will extinguish the flash tube a little early. A small piece of white material a few millimeters to the side of the cameras flash sensor will do the trick. i I use a 28 > 37mm step-up ring as a carrier for a teardrop-shaped tab of white tape. The photo shows what it is supposed to look like, and the pattern is on the CD as a JPEG file. Print it onto stiff white paper, glue it or tape it to a step-up ring, and it will begin to work for you. Nikons own flash units are fairly expensive, but versatile and quite capable. If you are using the camera for long stints of professional work, these are probably your best choice. If you wish to adapt an existing flash unit to the Nikon you will need a special cable. It is the AS-E900, and it will trigger any flash with a hot shoe. It even has a tripod socket in its base. Nikon doesnt recommend this approach stating that extra care in the design of their flashes will prevent damage to the camera, whereas others may cause damage. i A flash with a trigger voltage over 250 volts is not recommended. You can measure this with a DC volt meter touching the center and side contacts of the flash units hot shoe.

THE OLD TIME-EXPOSURE-WITH-A-PORTABLE-FLASH TRICK

With film, on a dark night in the Yucatan you could open the shutter of your 35mm camera while walking all over the Mayan ruins popping a flash here and there. If you did it right, you would build up a series of exposures that make the final picture look like you took the shot with dozens of flashes and miles of connecting wire. The picture would be magical. The technique only works in intensely dark conditions because your film cameras shutter would be gathering light for perhaps several minutes as the flashes built up the picture. But this wont work for digital cameras. How could this be accomplished with a Nikon compact? i To get this look, expose a series of successive 2 sec shots while you manually fire the flash from various places out in front of the camera, one flash for each exposure. Repeat the process until you have covered your subject from all the flash angles you feel are appropriate. Then layer those exposures atop each other in Photoshop, and combine them using the Screen option. The advantage over film is that you now have absolute control over each flash as to brightness, color, contrast, and importance to the final image. You can cause layer 8 to be dark blue and layer 5 to be yellow. Layers 6 and 3 can become tinted red, and layers 4 and 7 are diminished in exposure for effect.

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In Photoshop any number of layers can be separately exposed and built-up. In this case, seven.

To stabilize the camera, you will need a STURDY tripod. Something that will allow no movement whatsoever when you trigger each successive shot. The shots can be triggered in Self Timer mode or with a cable release accessory or with Nikons wired remote for the 880, 990, and 995. The Nikon MC-EU1 wired remote is the most versatile option since exposures can be adjusted and performed without touching the camera. With the Self Timer, you have just ten seconds to get into position. If your subject is really big, your assistant can press the Shutter Button twice, and you will have three seconds before the shutter opens. In both cases, the camera signals you when the moment arrives with its white signal light. Of course, in the dark your autofocus has nothing to lock on. Here is a good place to use the Self Timer + Manual Focus trick revealed earlier under the How Do I Force the Camera to Focus on the Part of the Picture that Should Be in Focus? topic. Harbortronics makes a wired electronic remote called the DigiSnap 2000 that works with both the 950 and 99x. It can even be programmed by your computer or on the spot to expose a string of images in time-lapse mode. Simplicity itself, it uses the exposure you set on the camera and signals you at the control unit confirming your shot. Useful if the camera is tucked away in a sequestered position.

HOW DO I USE OPTICAL ACCESSORIES?


The screw thread at the front of the Nikon CoolPix 9xx series is strong and precise. Strong enough to hold the entire camera suspended by it, and precise enough to take any 28mm / 75 pitch threaded accessory. A unique thread only found on these cameras.

STEP UP TO OPTICS

8 power Kenko monocular, top, and WC-E63, bottom.

With a 28 > 37mm step-up ring one can adapt 37mm accessories to the unique 28mm lens thread of the 9xx cameras. CKC Power makes a black anodized ring and a special mount that adapts the Kenko 8 x 32 monocular. Kenko makes a silver step-up ring. Other manufacturers are getting in on the Nikon accessory market. In the UK, EagleEyeUK.com makes a number of adapters, mounts, and optics including their 5-power OpticZoom converter. Check the www.digitalsecrets.net Website for more current details. i The 37mm ring will allow many wide-angle and telephoto accessory lenses to be used on the Nikon, but I must warn you, most of this size accessory lenses are made for the amateur video market and wont have the inherent sharpness for the high resolution Nikon 950 or 99x. They are barely sharp in the center and often terribly soft at the edges, and they certainly arent custom-designed for the Nikons internal zoom optics. i Nikon makes five accessory lenses that are computed specifically for the 900 series, and these are your best bet. There are the WC-E24 and WC-E63 wide-angle lenses and the TC-E2 and TC-E3HD telephoto lens. The wide converters give your zooms widest setting the look of a 24mm lens, and the telephoto converters double or triple the 115mm to 230mm or 345mm, respectively. All work excellently and preserve sharpness, but require (as do all optical accessories) viewing via the monitor screen. Chapter 3s Camera Operations gives details on the menu settings Nikon provides for these lenses.

4 -26 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Nikon also makes the Fisheye adapter, FC-E8, that creates a 183 bulged image that fits the frame two ways, with a selection from the Lens item on the Menu page. Fisheye 1 lens setting gives you the full circle filling the frame top to bottom; Fisheye 2 setting zooms in to the place that just fills the frame with the fisheye image. Aiming the fisheye lens is easy, everything over there is in, and every thing back here is out. Oops! Is that my foot? Okay, you do have to be careful shooting with it, but it is a blast of a lens to play with. It forces you to see in a different way. You can zoom 8-24mm within the fisheye with some sharpness and color degradation, but it will catch a type of image nothing else can. For the Japanese market only, a Nikon subsidiary makes a close-focusing 8-power telephoto called the Telesco. Perhaps they eventually will be imported to the West. Before you resign yourself to the world of Nikon optics, however, there are a few gems I can point you to that are often fun, inexpensive, useful, and that werent made for the Nikons.

Ultra Wider Fisheye

OptiVision Anamorphic

Step Ring Lens Shade

WIDE WORLD OF GIZMOS

Other optical converters coming from the world of 35mm can be mounted with step-up rings. Generally, if they were made to mount in front of a 35mm camera lens, they will be larger, heavier and potentially sharper than accessory lenses made for the 37mm world of video cameras. An Ultra Wider from Bower Marexar is an old design that makes fisheye-like images and is distinguished by its nearly flat front element. It will make a 140 round-edged image on your camera, and a used one in good condition might cost you fifty bucks. Think of it as a low-end, low-cost fisheye. Years ago, anamorphic lenses were the fad, and some of these might be found gathering dust in the used department of older camera stores. They came into the US under a number of different brand names. The one I have was relabeled Optivision, others are called Fantascope, and as you can see from the photo, it is the fastest way yet to a pain free diet. Except that the lens weighs more than the camera. i With the proper step-up ring sets, you can adapt 37->46, 46->52, 52->55, 55->58, 58->62, 62->72, and 72->77mm, and even without an accessory lens at the top of this stack, these step-up rings themselves make a dandy wide-angle sunshade. Tough, rugged, and expensive. Those rings are not cheap.
The pain free anamorphic lens diet. You could stretch this out 200% horizontally in Photoshop and see a normal looking wide aspect image.

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being as insane as it looks, if you were shooting lots of studio flash shots, it just about guarantees that no stray glare will ever reach the lens.

i The ultimate over-the-top accessory is the Matte Box. Far from

GETTING RID OF BARREL DISTORTION

The Nikon CoolPixs lens is working very hard to maintain focus, chromatic registration, and zoom. At wide-angle it displays a little barrel distortion. Many wide-angle lenses have this type of distortion, including prime lenses on 35mm SLRs. Almost every zoom lens shows a bit of the barrel at its wide setting, including TV zoom lenses that cost over ten times as much as the entire Nikon camera. It is a fact of optics that zoom lenses are fighting the four factors of magnification, chroma, focus, and distortion all at once. Fixed focal length lenses are MUCH easier to formulate. And even they have various degrees of geometric aberration. Natural images mask the effect just about completely. But if you are shooting architectural images or stitched panoramics, you must get the perspective lines or overlap regions perfectly straight.

INOVAFX ROLLS OUT THE BARREL

So I have decided to do something about it. Thats why the disk that holds this eBook contains the iNova Barrel Corrector Action Filters from iNovaFx. These are Photoshop program code that are loaded into the Photoshop Actions file. Separate folders exist for the 950/775 and 880/990/995 images because the correction they make is tied to the size of the original frame. They work with Photoshop 5.0, 5.5, and a separate group works with Photoshop 6.0. Seven preset corrections, plus a variation that allows you to choose your own barrel factor, create a flexible suite of actions. They ONLY work in Adobe Photoshop full versions 5.0, 5.5, and 6.x. iBCZoom@Widest completely fixes the widest setting of the camera zoom lens. iBCWC-E24@Widest completely fixes the WC-E24 at its widest. iBCWC-E63@Widest completely fixes the WC-E63s less distorted widest image. iBCFish@Tele completely fixes the distorted image of the FC-E8 fisheye adapter with the zoom at its most telephoto (see photos above). This represents about the maximum practical limit on the idea of de-barreling Nikon images. The original distortion is so severe with this lens combination that the

4 -28 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

edges of the image are suffering chromatic aberration (discussed in greater detail later). The filter corrects this as much as it is practical to do, but the edge has been reached. No filters for wider corrections than these will be built. iBCZoom@Tele fixes a small amount of pincushion at full zoom tele position. iBCnU completely fixes the distorted image from a novelty lens Ill describe later. iBC-V sets up any barrel distortion correction factor you wish. V is for variable. This one can even correct the opposite kind of distortion, pincushion distortion, which is found in some telephoto adapter and zoom settings. iBC Action Filters for wide originals all produce slightly smaller images than the ones you started out with. The greater the correction, the smaller the resulting image. Its unavoidable. The good news is that all of the resolvable detail of the image is preserved, in spite of the image being a few percent smaller. One corrects barrel distortion by applying the opposite distortion, pincushion. This has the effect of shrinking the center of the picture while leaving the area in the corners alone. After correction, the sides of the picture bow inward exactly as much as the sides of objects in the picture were bowing outward. The picture is trimmed, and some of the corners are discarded. If you shoot pictures for later debarreling, make sure that corner details are inside the retained area. Experiment with the lenses and filter combinations until you are comfortable using them. The iBC filters also assume that you start with 1600 x 1200 or 2048 x 1536 horizontal images. To correct a vertical shot, first turn it sideways, run the filter, then stand it back up straight. These filters should be performed before anything else is done to the image. Save your cropping, color correcting, exposure compensating, and tweaking for later. Shoot a wall of bricks, a screen door, or a graphic grid in wide-angle to use as a test of these Action filters just to build your confidence in them and to understand them better. Examples are on the CD for you to practice with. i Before you stitch images together for a panoramic, run the appropriate iBC effect on your segments. Now overlapping areas have no barrel distortion, and vertically aligned features will fit right on top of each other from top to middle to bottom of the screen. Shoot QuickTime VR images with the widest-angle lenses, and you will still have the stitching free of barrel effects that ghost and double details in the overlap areas. The iBC filters do nothing to correct keystoning or perspective, so you will have to deal with these factors on your own.

INOVAFX KICKS THE CHROMA

Some optical accessories create a different type of distortion. Chromatic aberration makes objects in the edges of a photo look like they have red and blue color fringes. Twigs in the corners of a picture may become so distorted that the only thing left of them are little rainbow stripes, not images of twigs. Needless to say, this can ruin images. Chromatic aberration happens when lenses focus different colors at slightly Anatomy of a barrel correction. Original. different depths behind the lens. When that happens the different colors that make Squared. Undistorted (and verified). Trim area showing what will be kept. Now you know up a picture are formed as slightly different-sized images. why they come out as a different size from In film, youre sunk. It is in the chemicals and wont come apart now. the one that went in. In digital photography youre not so sunk. Once again the thousands of scientists and engineers of iNovaFx have produced magical computer code that reduces the problem dramatically. These are the iNova Chromatic Aberration filters, the iCrAb series.

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The iNovaFx iCrAb filters kill chromatic aberrations, not completely but quite well. To make the effects work quickly and with maximum quality, they are loaded into your Adobe Photoshop Actions file. Separate folders exist for 950 and 990 camera manipulation. The 990 includes special versions for wide zoom alone and wide zoom plus either of the WA converters. A special series of iCrAb filters are available for the FC-E8 fisheye. It is a good lens and is very well-behaved, but it has a tiny bit of chromatic aberration when the zoom lens behind it is used in the furthest telephoto position. iCrAbFish is used on the most tele setting. iCrAbFish2 is used on the fillframe setting and is a milder correction. Use it only if your image shows color fringing. Some slight red layer adjustment is all it performs, but it may help. Note: when the FC-E8 lens is used with a full wide-angle setting, the chromatic aberration is minimal except for a blue fringe around the entire image. The only thing that will improve the image at this point is to trim the How good are they? Not perfect but way image into a circle, or suppress the blue in Photoshops Hue and Saturation ahead of whatevers in second place. Here is a control > Blue (single color correction). 100% before and after from a corner of a 990 shot made with the WC-E24. iCrAb2Taste is a general chromatic aberration filter, which asks you questions for the red and blue components separately. Since the numbers you insert here stand for the sizes of the red and blue layers, some experimentation is necessary to find what works for your situation. The corrections are in percent and are usually represent very small changes. Entries like 99.9% or 100.5% are not uncommon. What these filters do is rescale individual layers of the RGB image using Photoshops powerful bicubic scaling engine. During image processing in the camera, some luminance attributes are passed from layer to layer, and these cannot be removed completely. The filters wont perfect an image with severe chromatic aberration, but the improvement will be dramatic, nonetheless. i Like the iBC series of barrel correction filters, the iCrAb filters only are geared to the Nikon 950 or 990 at full-size, and you have to use the filter geared for your specific model camera. They are fairly useless for any other camera and lens combinations. Surprise: the 995 generally doesnt need them.

PHOTOSHOP FIXER-UPPER

What if you could have a real wide-angle lens for about thirty bucks? One of these surprise lenses may be hiding in a camera store near you. Too bad it has both striking chromatic aberration and severe barrel distortion. It is called a Quantaray Insta-Wide video lens accessory (Part # 59-166-0527), and it can only be used with a lens that focuses real close. Other than these limitations, its best feature is cheapness. Notice I didnt say price. i To use it you will need a step-up ring, and you have to set the Nikon 9xx to Macro a little forward from full wideangle. Still, it nearly doubles the field of view of the wide setting (!), and it snaps on and off easier than a lens cap (!!). No, it is not as sharp as the Nikon lenses. Not even close. The edges are fairly poor, but sometimes drama wins over sheer image quality. A special iBC correction file is included This lens is designed for video, not highfor the few who actually go out and buy this accessory. This is quality digital stills. When it is applied for you the iNovaFx Action Filter, iBCnU, and it controls much of the effect rather than image quality,lot of may find the results useful. It needs a postconverters technical shortcomings. Notice I didnt say all. exposure processing.

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HOW DO I USE THE DIGITAL ZOOM?


You dont. Not when you are making full-size images. Digital zoom (labeled Digital Tele in the Menu) is a feature that digital camera manufacturers have been required to include for marketing reasons. The inclusion of this feature is more for bragging rights, not for image quality. Oh, but OUR camera has DigiZoom! Yours doesnt. Obviously yours is inferior. Digital zoom is merely the enlargement of pixels from the middle of the picture to cover the whole picture. At 2.0X, the center 25% of pixels are enlarged to cover the whole frame and are then saved as a large file. Photoshop does a much better job of this, and there is no increased sharpness to be gained by doing it in the camera. Turn it off. Keep it off.

UNLESS

There are two uses for the digital zoom that even Nikon missed. i The first is as a focus helper. In this mode you set the digital zoom to auto and use it on the monitor screen for a focusing magnifier only when focusing the camera manually. If you are making a shot from a tripod, it may help to see how repeatable auto focus is behaving under your unique conditions. Having satisfied your curiosity, you can now return to normal shooting. i You can also use digital tele in combination with VGA- and XGA-size images to a certain advantage. If you are shooting for Web-sized images, a 640 by 480 pixel image looks fairly large on screen and at some settings the digital zoom can be helpful. What you will be doing here is setting the Digital Tele to 2.5X in the 950 or 775 / 3.2X (or less) in the 990 or 995 and keeping only VGA (640 x 480 pixel) images. Internally, the camera shoots the picture, blows it up, shrinks it down, and keeps the result. It isnt any better looking than a center cropped 640 x 480 slice of a full frame, but it also isnt any worse. It does happen right in the camera, and it looks okay for a VGA image. If the zoom factor is smaller than 2.5/3.2, then it actually benefits from oversampling. To create XGA images with a more telephoto effect, the 1.6/2.0 zoom setting is the appropriate maximum blow-up in the camera. At 1.25X Digital Tele you will have a slightly sharper image. i Keep in mind that the digital zoom will cause the A revealing comparison of a small portion of a large 990 image at camera to make images that are not as high quality as full telephoto with an overlay portion of an XGA image shot at a normal XGA and VGA images made without it. Normally digital telephoto setting of 2.0. Even under close scrutiny the detail level of both is virtually identical. What does this imply? If your subject you are reducing a full-size image to a smaller result, and is far or small in the frame at your most tele setting, switch to XGA and the detail, per pixel, is actually being INCREASED due to shoot with the 2.0 X digital zoom. You wont be losing detail and you will get 4 times as many shots per megabyte. the over-sampling from a larger original. With the Digital Tele on, less beneficial over-sampling is occurring. If you intend to produce a small-size image, many people assume that shooting the large image and cropping or reducing the image later, is the best policy. Most of the time that may be the best policy, but there are exceptions to any rule, remember?

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viewfinder is showing you the result of the enlargement in real time. Now you can see the exact framing that a 3:4 aspect ratio image will have. So it becomes more an issue of viewfinding rather than an issue of image quality.

i The best feature to using digital zoom techniques when making smaller images is that the

HOW DO I PLAY THE PICTURE BACK?


The Nikon cameras built-in monitor screen is only the beginning. At home and on the road you can usually find a TV set that will take a video input. Look for a socket on the TV that says Video In. Usually these sockets have a yellow plastic insert around the inner sleeve. The Nikon 950 comes with a special video cable called the EG-900, which plugs into a socket under the rubber cover at the front top of the camera. Two sockets are under this cover, and the other is for the AC adapter. The one for the 880/990x works the same way and is interchangeable. The other end of the cord connects to the TV. The 950 cameras sold in Japan, the USA, Canada, Mexico, most of South America and several other places around the world are compatible with the NTSC video standard. Europe, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and many African countries use the PAL standard, and cameras sold there are made to work with the local video system. Thats why you cant make your American Nikon 950 camera work on that British TV set. If you have the 775/880/990/995 you are all set all over the world because a menu choice switches from PAL to NTSC. i Video reviewing mirrors the scene on the cameras monitor but looks MUCH better. You can even view the camera in Auto rec and Manual rec modes on TV while you are shooting. You can record the image through a VCR. If you shoot product shots with the camera in a professional setting, the live monitoring feature will impress clients. As you shoot, however, the image on the TV monitor will have all sorts of issues. The color wont be right, the detail will be lower, the image will often be out of focus, and the client will have a million questions. Shoot a sample image, then switch the camera to Play mode. The image will come onto the TV screen looking superb. i Caution those you work with to comment on technical qualities only when looking at completed exposures playing back. No, thats the live feed. It never looks as good as full playback. Check with me, and Ill let you know when its ready for critique.

HOW DO I SET UP MY PREFERENCES FILES?


The Nikon 950 has a feature that is both wonderful and hidden. Wonderful because it performs a useful and vital function, hidden because you must make five button-pushes to access it, then turn the Command Dial to make a choice. It is labeled User Set, and it keeps track of three setup conditions for the entire Manual mode. Now using the settings from Menu Page 1, you can choose your favorite virtual camera. See Chapter 3, Camera Operation, for details. Future camera designers may realize that having a camera with the ability to become seemingly different cameras through a simple menu choice is the way to go. As digital cameras evolve, cameras will appear with dozens of virtual variations in the menu systems.

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Here is my own #2 file for the 950: AUTO White Bal MATRIX meter SINGLE shot BSS NORMAL Lens converter NO Image Adjust Digital Zoom Auto WB/AE Lock Off

The point is not that it is a spectacularly different camera, but that it represents a quickly accessed, fairly normal, predictable camera. This lets me do anything I want with the #1 setting and still have a normal camera within a few button pushes. i Note that you cant memorize certain selections like ISO, B&W, focus regime, image size, or compression depth as part of the preference on the 950. Since it is often easier and faster to set single items than it is to access these preference groupings, you may find that the third one is good for your most exotic variation. On the Nikon 990 or 995 the rules have changed. Every adjustment you can create on Menu Page 1 is remembered in the User Set files, and two quick presses of the Menu button puts you in touch with them. Here you can control White Balance, Meter type, motor drive selections, BSS, lens setting, contrast/brightness/monochrome setting and sharpness preference. i With a little practice you can have a camera that goes from fine grain, low contrast color to a black and white, crispy-sharp, motor-drive, spot-metered camera in mere seconds. Notice that the white balance is meaningless in B&W.

HOW DO I USE BSS?


Who could have predicted the Best Shot Selector, BSS? The Nikon CP950 was the first camera with this feature, and its function is preserved on all models since. Until in-camera memory (not the memory cards) had grown into tens of megabytes, the feature would never have been considered. Functionally, it captures a string of shots without saving them to the memory card. The shots are analyzed for sharpness across areas of contrast. It keeps track of the contrast change between areas of different brightness. All images are assigned a report card, the most recent winner (in case of a tie) is the one saved. A logical way to do this would be to quickly compress each image, then see which had the greatest file size. Greater file size means more sharp edges. More sharp edges means a probably sharper shot. It isnt perfect, but it works intelligently and only rarely gets fooled. The camera flash is necessarily off during the process, so it is an available-light trick only. It works very well to pick the best shot of a hand-held sequence of exposures at 1/8 sec and 1/4 sec where statistically some are sharper than others. BSS is good for stage-light shooting where, even with ISO boosted to the max, your shutter speed may well be at 1/4 sec or 1/2 sec. i BSS is needed less as your memory card grows larger. If you shoot in XGA or VGA mode, your need to save storage space goes down dramatically. A fresh 48-megabyte card can hold hundreds of shots in XGA Normal mode. You could just shoot and shoot, and sort it all out later. That way you get to pick the decisive moment, not the camera. i BSS thrives on having enough samples to work with. In the 950 the BSS buffer will gather up to 9 Normal-compressed, full-sized shots, and the 775/880/885/990/995 will up to ten. If your 990 has firmware (the cameras internal operating system) version 1.0, the BSS feature will gather fewer images. At this writing, firmware version 1.1 is available, and it enhances the BSS feature by gathering more images.

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HOW DO I FOOL THE CAMERA INTO DOING WHAT I WANT?


The names of certain functions are shorthand for complex programmed settings. If you can get beyond a settings name you may be able to use its function in a new way. Lens settings in the Menu allow you to select Lens types, or do they? While the 99x cameras allow you to decide where the zoom lens setting will be upon starting up, the 950 isnt quite as flexible. Still, by using the lens settings in a new way you can achieve most of this functionality.

FOOLING THE 950 ZOOM

Heres an example: you can use the Fisheye 1 setting to force the camera into zooming full wide-angle at power-up. The camera knows that this position is the correct one for giving you a full circle image with the fisheye accessory lens in place. With this Lens setting invoked, the zoom control is locked out. Every time the camera wakes up, it immediately goes wide. Its very useful only if you want the camera to go wide and stay there for every shot. But how often is that? The on-camera flash is disabled because the fisheye lens is so large it completely covers the flash tube. External flashes will still fire. In practice the fisheye lens can actually be used throughout the zoom range, and zooming around inside the curvilinear wide-angle fish is so much fun that locking it at the widest setting certainly defeats some of its creative potential. Fisheye 2 setting zooms the image to about a 65mm lens position locking it at this spot. For some applications, like short-distance portraits, this may be desirable. The camera thinks of this position as the correct one for a screen-filling fisheye image, the type where the fisheye effect goes right out to the corners. i You can use this (without the fisheye lens) for applications like QuickTime VR and panoramastitching programs which need all shots to be the exact same focal length. Every time the camera wakes up, it goes to exactly this focal length and locks. The on-camera flash is locked out here as well. Lets say you want the camera to start wide but not lock the zoom controls. Set the Lens type to Wide causes the camera to zoom to the wide-angle setting at startup and not lock. Zooming around with the WC-E24 (or the newer WC-E63) lens on the camera is a very good way to have a 24->72mm wide-angle zoom camera. Since the 950s zoom lens parks at the telephoto position, the Wide lens setting can set you free. By using this Lens setting, when the camera awakens, it zooms to the widest position and allows you to zoom after that. In addition, it forces the flash into the off setting. In all, a good setting for outdoors, off-camera flash, and manual work, if you prefer starting wide. i While using the Nikon converter lenses, most photographers rarely use the Lens Menu settings. It is simply easier to manually zoom to frame the shot the way you want, which is never the way the camera wants.

FOOLING THE 950 FLASH

Flash adjustments are found on the second menu page of the 990. They are buried on the second setup menu page in the 995. Here you increase or decrease the light output of the flash with a choice simlar to EV +/ adjustments. Not so with the 950. The built-in flash on the 950 is hard to fool. Nikon gave it brains without inhibitions. It thinks that its sole job is to put enough photons on the subject so a well-exposed picture will result. A dark subject will fool it. The sensor, next to the flash tube, wont shut the light off in time. The tube spends all of its energy in about 1/5000 sec. To the sensor, this is an eternity. It is positioned to observe the light reflecting off the subject during that 1/5000 sec, and the instant it thinks enough photons have flowed, it takes the flash tube off-line and conserves the rest of the

4 -34 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

energy for the next flash. If you shoot a series of close-in shots, you will notice that the recycling time for the flash is brief. In macro mode, it may indicate that it is flash-ready instantly. So how do we fool this little tight-looped circuit? If we were to cover the sensor, the flash would expend full power with every shot. Then we might reduce its power with filters or diffusers. Hardly an elegant solution. Isnt there a better way? By positioning a loop of frosted tape arcing over the flash window, the tape scatters the light and will partly reduce the light on your subject. The tape loop, floating a couple of millimeters above the window will also bounce some light back into the nearby sensor. The sensor will shut off the flash early because it foolishly believes that enough light has returned. The only caveat is that you have to set it up carefully and adjust it on the spot under the lighting conditions you are using. i A simple solution using the same principle is this: A small, curved tab of white tape or plastic is attached to the back of a 28 > 37mm step-up ring, acting as a flash reflection controller. The tabs arc-shape permits more or less reflector surface to hover near the sensor depending on the rotation angle of the step-up ring. The rings rear surface serves as an attachment surface that floats the tab about 5mm in front of the face of the camera but does not obscure the sensor or the flash. You can make one yourself from the pattern on the CD. The design is my own, and the prototype has saved me from over-flash many times.

RUBBER LIGHT

Red-eye occurs if the flash and lens axes are close together causing light to bounce directly back into the lens. Both the 950 and 990 produce more than their share. Moving the flash unit an inch to the left would have solved the problem, but it would have made the camera and inch too long. Worst offenders are blue eyes in dark room lighting. i The real way to void red-eye is to never cause it in the first place. An external flash unit will avoid it, and bounced light will look much more natural than a camera-direct flash. The next way to avoid red-eye is to scrub it out of your images. Wouldnt you know, an iNovaFX filter makes this easy to do. Simply select the red area with the Photoshop Oval tool (press the shift key for multiple selections), and click on the iXRedEyeSetup or iXRedEyeFast filter. They are designed to remove the red part only, leaving highlights and most eye color intact.

HOW DO I SHOOT IN INFRARED?


Lurking below our sensitivity to red is the spectrum of the infrared; light that pretends it is heat. IR is light made of longer wavelengths than the ones our eyes see, and it bounces around the environment a little differently than visible light. The sky doesnt scatter IR, or even visible red light for that matter (hence that characteristic blue color except for certain days here in Los Angeles, but I digress). Green leaves, while absorbing visible red for energy, turn IR away so they wont overheat. i Just as materials exhibit a full-color spectrum over a short range of light frequencies (blue light isnt even one octave higher in frequency from the deepest red), the changing spectrum below and above our vision continues to absorb or reflect light in great variety that is very wavelength-specific. To a camera sensitive to IR, the world looks dramatically different. How do we shoot pictures in IR? We use the talking dog trick. (It isnt fabulously articulate; the wonder of it is that it can talk at all.)

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The Nikon 775 and 950s imaging chip has just enough IR sensitivity to be useful and not enough to contaminate normal colors. In bright sun, you can filter out the visible photons and see the world in that strange light that turns dark green leaves snowy white and the sky jet black. The required Wratten glass #89B, #88A, #87, or #87C filters in the inexpensive 52mm size can cost over fifty dollars. Cough, cough. If you can only find one, the #89B filter is likely the best since it lets in more of the higher frequency IR than the #87C while blocking all visible light. The filters are more easily found as gelatin filters and can be held in place by a Cokin filter holder or the oddly engineered Kodak gelatin filter holder. In either case, the 28-37mm adapter ring plus step-up rings to accommodate the filter holder will be required. In gelatin, Wratten IR filters will likely cost about $25 for a 3 x 3 inch square. Even less for a two-inch square. Of course, if you are really into it, you could cut a 26mm circle of this material and sandwich it between the lens and any accessory lenses. Careful. Got plastic tweezers? An infrared fisheye image is very compelling. A 52mm Schott 830 glass filter from B&H Photo will cost around $40 including shipping. It matches the #87C in infrared transmission and causes very IR-looking shots complete with strange skies and white trees. I recommend it for the 950. Exposures are typically 1/8 and 1/4 sec or longer in bright daylight at noon. Edmund Scientific sells an optical plastic visible light blocking filter for around $5.25 in a one-inch round version, and it is part number H43-948. It works quite well, and you can sandwich it between the step-up ring and the front element of the lens. It is what I would call a mild IR filter, and it gives an interesting cross between infrared and color photography. i You will probably need a tripod for most infrared-filtered shots. The sensitivity, even at boosted ISO settings will be just a fraction of the cameras normal response to light, and wide open daylight shots will be from 1/4 to 1/60 sec, depending on the filter used on the 775 or 950, and the 990 and 995 cameras may need 1 to 4 sec with the same filter!

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Fortunately, the monitor screen will show you what the camera sees. The image on the screen will look black and white in both color and B&W camera modes. IR light focuses a bit closer than visible light, but the cameras autofocus sorts this out for you. i You may wish to shoot using the Self-Timer since the shutter speeds are so low. i Manually focusing closer for an IR image is a bit more involved. Try this to get an approximate IR focus on the 99x (not for the 950): First, manually focus without the IR filter in place. Use the digital tele as a focusing magnifier. Two or three focus clicks may appear to be nearly equally focused in sunlight. Choose the more distant setting. Now click seven or eight closer focus distances. (eight clicks take you to infinity from the six-foot, IR infinity position, for instance.) Then make the shot. You may have to bracket focus as well as exposure. If you are shooting vegetation youll see lots of shots that are blurred not due to focus but due to long exposures, gentle breezes and moving leaves.

THE BEST FOR LAST

For the least expensive infrared filter, get a piece of 35mm slide The old Piece of 35mm Slide Film as an Infrared Filter trick in action (950). Selectively the blue sky stays a transparency film that was never exposed but was developed normally. deep blue but nearly all vegetation turns white. (This Sure, its just black film to your eyes, but slide projectors are hot, and the image is NOT manipulated.) dyes used in slides are infrared-transparent to let the heat pass through without burning up the film. Put a clean piece of this black film over your lens, and suddenly you have a pretty good infrared filter. Whats more, the exposures are much shorter than with most dedicated IR filters, and the cameras autofocus system will have no trouble with daylight subjects. i The less infrared-sensitive Nikon 88x and 99x are several stops less sensitive to IR light, but with a two-layer slide film gel over the lens, decent and convincing IR images can be captured in full daylight with an exposure of about 2 sec wide open, while shooting B&W at ISO 400. The amount of light reaching the sensor is so small that the autofocus will not operate. Manual focus is called for, but the IR light will focus at a very different distance than visible light. To be in focus at infinity, set the camera to 6 ft. (1.7 meters).

HOW DO I SHOOT IN 3D?


The phenomenon of 3D depends on two images, each shot next to the other. This mimics the displacement of our two eyes, each next to the other. For action shots, you would definitely need either a two-lens camera that makes two shots at once, or two cameras that could be triggered at the same instant. Forget those, were talking about the kind of pictures you can take with a single camera such as your handy Nikon. i Non-moving objects make good single-camera subjects. A sleeping cat is about as animated as you can get. ANY subject movement will disrupt the effect! What you will do is shoot a picture, maintain the framing while you shift the camera sideways, then immediately shoot a second picture. If you displace the camera between shots the 2.25 inches (65mm) your pupils are apart, then the pair of images will be accurate, but the depth effect will be minimal and limited to subjects that are within 15 feet of the camera. That might be fine for an interior shot of a small room, but the greater the shot-to-shot displacement, the more dramatic the result.

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The images can be displayed on a print with the left eye image on the right side and the right eye image on the left. The most convenient way of seeing them is to lightly cross your eyes, superimposing the images on top of each other in your brain. It may help to hold a finger about 7 inches in front of your nose, and focus on your finger tip while observing this page at 150% scale on the computer screen. Bring your finger up over the images until you see what looks like three images in a row behind your finger. Then try to focus through your finger to the center image. In practice, most people can learn to do it in less than a minute. i You can shoot 3D cloudscapes by simply taking two shots in succession out the window of an airplane using the Continuous mode. The plane moves so much between exposures that even distant clouds get dimensional. With faster shot-toshot time, you may get better images by shooting a string of three or four and selecting the two that work the best for your eyes. Now its time to bring up the idea of the viewing plane. With a 3D image there will be the choice of where the depth of the image should be; in front of the page, behind the page, or somewhere in between, with some elements seeming to protrude and others seeming to sink behind it. Any object that is exactly the same distance from one side of the picture in both shots will appear to be at the depth of the page. To the degree that an object is farther from one side of the picture in successive shots, it will appear to be in front of, or behind, the page. You can fix this in your post production of the image in the computer if you crop the two images with the exact framing and lateral placement. The easy way to do

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this is to layer one image over the other, and make the top layer 50% transparent with the Opacity Slider in the Layers window. Slide the top layer until it matches up with the unmoving bottom layer. Some details will match perfectly, others wont. The ones that you make match perfectly will be at the plane of your image after you crop the two layers at once. After cropping the pair so both images occupy the same frame, make the top layer 100% opaque, and double the canvas size horizontally with the Canvas tool. Now slide one layer to the left, one to the right, and use the viewing technique to see if you got it right. Flatten the image, and print it out, or store it for viewing on your computer.

HOW DO I SHOOT PANORAMICS?


Panoramics and full circular Virtual Reality scenes must be made from more than one exposure. The process of combining images into larger vistas is generally called stitching. A number of programs let you stitch pictures together. One of the most flexible is free in the public domain, Panorama Tools by Helmut Dersch. On the CD. Photoshop allows you to manipulate images in ways that permit stitching, as do PhotoVista from MGI, VR PanoWorx from VRToolbox, Pixmaker from Pixaround, and QuickStitch from Enroute. Some of these are even bundled with various printers. For interactive Virtual Reality images, you will need a viewing utility to interact with the stitched image. Quicktime VR, PanoMagic from VRTools, and several other programs for Macintosh and Windows machines can be found on the Web. Check the www.digitalsecrets.net site for current details. Shooting for VR pictures takes some understanding. It also takes some money to do it right. The basic principle is this: Shoot a series of overlapping images. For the best work, the angle of change from one picture to the next will be identical. A special vertical camera mount called the Kaidan KiWi is available for the Nikon Coolpix digital cameras. They costs about $160, and pivot around the nodal point of the camera lens in equal increments. For a bit over double that price, check out the Manfrotto 302 or 302 Plus VR panheads. They are miniature optical benches with adjustments for any small camera, past, present or future, but the full system can cost $400. For under $60 you can purchase The Wing from EagleEye, which is a bracket that permits the mounting of heavy telephoto optical converters on either camera without over-twisting the camera pivot. At my request, early in the design process, EagleEye added a tripod attach point at the average nodal point just under the lens of a horizontally mounted camera. Their original design passed within millimeters of this spot anyhow.

The four images above were shot hand-held at full telephoto zoom with a CP950. In my haste I forgot to lock the exposure. Fortunately the Matrix meter kept all four shots within 0.3-stop. The generous overlap from shot to shot helped the stitching process greatly.

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(The Wing does other things, too. It accepts a cable release arm, mounts a monitor viewer/magnifier, and allows the mounting of a flash shoe arm.) Completing the system is a special bracket, left, that facilitates vertical panoramic images, too. Modest panoramic images is what most people want to shoot, so they can make superwide vistas that no single lens could achieve. Here, three or more images can be stitched together creating a single shot. With Photoshop and some guidance, the results can be indistinguishable from single-lens images. The amount of needed overlap rises as the angle of view goes wider. With a WC-E24 or WC-E63 adapter, overlap shots at least 33-50%. Telephoto shots can have as little as 10% overlap if you prepare the shot carefully. Experience has shown that with the camera zoom at wide, and a 25% overlap between segments, most images can be gathered with enough grace to steer around problems. Problems usually show up as visible elements in the overlap area that dont appear in the matching area of an adjacent segment. One must steer around these. Interesting panoramic images can be stitched together even from hand-held shots. A large picture made out of different exposures or color balances would look really bad. The Manual Rec menu system has a special exposure mode to help. Called AE Lock, this feature lets you shoot a string of images with exactly the same exposure and white balance. The first exposure made with AE Lock becomes the master exposure and determines the exposure for any that follow. With Auto White Balance chosen, whatever the camera decides is right for the first shot is carried through for all following exposures until the system is turned off or reset. i To stitch images together, they must be free of barrel distortion. Your new iBC filters from the CD will help. Eliminating this distortion from all shots should be your first step.

SEW WHAT

When you make your first panoramic, set some boundaries for yourself. Limit the number of images yourre combining and shoot straight out from the axis of camera rotation. You will be avoiding a whole bunch of variables that can complicate a panoramic shot.

i Start gaining experience by making a three-segment image using a tripod. Give the three shots a generous overlap. You might shoot with the zoom lens at the Fisheye 2 lens setting. This will assure you of a mid-range (no barrel distortion), repeatable zoom position. Choose a subject over 15 feet (4.5 meters) away. Level the tripod carefully, aiming the camera straight out horizontally. Set up the AE Lock feature. Now the challenge begins. (The Diner subject on the CD was shot in wide zoom which was corrected for barrel distortion using the iBCZoom@Wide990+Pano3 Action Filter, which corrects three stacked layers at once. Practice with the small files before attempting this will the full-size ones.) Pan the camera to center your subject. Thats right, the middle of the image will likely be the first exposure (unless, for some reason, it makes a lousy exposure target). Take a test exposure, and study it on the monitor screen to see if it is acceptable. On the 880/990/995, check its histogram for exposure clues.

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to AE Lock to select the Reset menu option preparing the next exposure to become the master. i With a 99x in Full Manual exposure mode, plus any white balance setting except Auto, you achieve the same effect as you would with AE Lock. Its easier to readjust than Exposure Lock. i A null-point pivot series of segments wont be noticed on subjects farther than about 20 ft. (6 m) from the camera and beyond. A precision panhead is only necessary for closer subjects. Before panning the camera to the next segment, it is very important to note the details in the picture that lie close to the corners and sides of the shot. Study the image in the viewfinder or on the monitor screen until you are confident you can pan off this framing, and back on to it, with a fair degree of repeatability. The 880/885/990/995s five-part focus bracket graphic is especially useful for gauging left/right indexing. Pan the image so a detail shifts from one bracket to the same visual relationship in the bracket on the opposite side of the screen, and you will be accomplishing a nice 50% overlap. Its not critical that you get this perfect. Practice panning over to the left and right sectors of the image while keeping a full third or more of the center shot as an overlap area in the side shots. This usually reveals something unexpected such as: the left side gets crowded with details, and the right side seems to be missing worthy subject matter. Adjust the center framing if need be. Repeat the left/right practice until you are confident of the series of framings it will take to make the final shots. Frame the center image and follow it with the left and right images in fairly quick succession. If the scene is full of people, this rapid acquisition of shots will help keep folks in their own frames. Alternatively, you can shoot the left, center, and right shots in clockwise or counterclockwise order. Now take the camera off the tripod, and make the same string of shots hand-held. The practice you have just acquired by doing the shot on the tripod will immediately help you to do the shot with nothing more than your hands. For a real test, do this with the optical viewfinder. i Later, when you study the two trios of images on your computer, you will see how little drift vertically there was in the tripod series and how much there was when you shot the series hand-held. This is a factor that will be with you always when shooting panoramics by hand. With practice and awareness, it can be minimized, but it will not disappear. A little extra-wide framing will help. Many of the panoramic stitching programs create a curvilinear perspective as if the image were created on the inside of a cylinder or sphere. Thats fine for VR use, but it looks warped in a print and straight lines display as curves. For architectural images you want straight lines. Rectilinear perspective is needed. Now we will stitch these three images and keep the perspective straight. If you are using Photoshop to stitch the pictures together, the following steps will guide you through the process. Photoshop is an excellent choice for manipulating images in the ways you need for precise rectilinear perspective. Open all three sections at the same time in Photoshop. Display them at 25% size or smaller for easy reference. Arrange them side by side on the screen so you get a rough idea of how they relate to each other. Select the center shot and expand its Canvas size to at least 300% wide by 175% tall. You are going to need some room to work. Select the left shot. Drag and drop it onto the larger center shot. It will land as a separate layer that can easily be slid into place. Do the same with the right section.

i This means a hood or magnifier for outdoor shooting. If the exposure isnt right you must go back

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The center file is now the only thing you need to keep open. Rename it, and save it. The others can be closed unaltered. Starting with the left section, change its Opacity to 50%. This will let you see how the details are lining up. Carefully position the left image so that the vertical center of its right edge exactly overlays the same detail on the center image. You will probably have to shift the whole left panel up or down to achieve this, but it is the foundation to all that follows. Using the Transform tool in the next steps, a habit must be learned. You will adjust the left image first as Perspective, then as Scale. Going back and forth between these two modes is critical, for as the perspective of the outer images is adjusted, horizontal scale within the image changes. You will need to correct both aspects of the image to see how much more correction will be needed for the next step as you get closer to perfect. Initially you can work at 33% or 50% of full image size, but as you get closer First, use the Perspective Transform mode to get the perspecto perfect, you will enlarge the image to 66% or 100%. tive about right. Dont worry that the proportions in the overlap Using Perspective Transform, move the upper right adjustment ping area dont look right yet. box of the left image downward until the size of the detail at the right edge matches to the center panel. Be exact. If it seems to be the right size, but not centered, lift or drop the whole panel with the keyboard arrow keys until it fits. Now grab the upper left Perspective transform box, and move it upward until perspective features look right. The Diner picture above shows how much to expect. Notice that the perspective lines of the original subject have now extended straight into the very distorted left panel. When perspective lines arent present, make any image details match the size and spacing of the corresponding ones in the center. Notice how details inside the diner are offset only left or right of their counterparts. Using Scale Transform, pull the left side of the left image out about 30%. Squeezed details in the overlap area become much closer to correct size and shape. Using the arrow keys, you can re-center the images over each other by small increments. Repeat these paired transformations, Perspective and Scale, until the images seem to be well aligned. Pay particular attention to perspective clues in the overlap area, and let them guide your next tweak. With practice, you can do it in one pair of moves. i If you need to make fine adjustments to one corner, you can only do so in Scale mode. After you get the perspective right, stretching the image out to the side will pull the image in the overlap into the correct size. When the overlap area looks right, the i If one side seems to be the right size but amount of stretch is correct. A generous overlap guides better than a small one. is above or below where it should be, lift that side with the center edge Transform box. You may have to move both sides to maintain perspective. The stretched image, above, shows how close you can get on a first try after youve done this a few times. After the left side is done, the right side will go faster. Your experience is showing already.

4 -42 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

When you feel that you have aligned it about as closely as you can, select the Eraser tool, and give it a big soft brush of 200-400 pixels. A 200 pixel brush was used for the small Diner example here. Plan a route down through the part of the overlap area that seems to be the best aligned. The overlap area may show some flaws, but you are about to stitch around them. Once the blend is made, the image is stitched together. You could leave it like this but youll probably want to crop it. Once you are satisfied that a blendable area goes from top to bottom, make the left image 100% Opaque, and paint the eraser effect down through the left image in a continuous stroke. You may have to try this several times before you get it right, so be prepared for fast undos. Notice that the brush needs to be offset to the right as you paint the eraser effect. The swath of invisibility you are cutting through the left image may leave some parts of its

right edge unerased, and you will have to clean that up when the main stitching blend stroke is to your liking. Turn off the bottom layer temporarily to see the unerased details. After both sides are done, you can collapse the layers and crop the image into a rectangle. Save it under a new name. The Diner example demonstrates several things. Notice that the type in the sign looks proportionally correct, but the man at the right edge seems stretched a bit compared to the original image of him. This would be the exact same effect youd get from a superwide lens. Objects parallel to the image plane read proportionally correct, but three-dimensional images near the edges are progressively distorted. Its not an artifact of the process, its an artifact of rectilinear perspective in extreme wide-angle shots. Panoramic images made this way enlarge the image detail at the right and left sides. It represents a certain amount of lost resolution, and its unavoidable, but it does yield an extremely wide shot. This shot is equivalent to an 18mm lens on a 35mm camera. In hand-held panoramics, extra corrections will be needed due to slight rotations the side images have acquired during shooting. Often these can be corrected with small Skew Transform adjustments. Sometimes you just have to slightly rotate the whole panel before stitching can begin. i Not all panoramic images are shot with the camera pointing straight out from its axis of rotation. This is a requirement for 360 panoramics but not for three- and five-shot panoramics covering less than 130. These are harder to correct. Do ten easy ones before trying these more difficult ones.

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head that rotates the camera around the lens nodal point (optical center) is better. Many architectural images will be shot from street level at a pronounced upward angle. The Skew Transform effect will help here immensely by pre-distorting side images into a rough correspondence before applying Perspective and Scale Transforms. i Often with complex images, you will have made so many tweaks that the image feels like it will never come together. It happens to everybody. This is a good reason to go into Photoshops History file and start over at an earlier stage. It is amazing how fast a correction can be made by starting over and how much time can be lost by trying to finesse a panel after several mistakes creep into the process. i If memory use becomes an issueand it can easily bite you with three or more full size pictures in the same fileyou may have to minimize the number of steps it takes to achieve a Perspective and Scale Transform. Jumping backwards in the History file lets you redo a series of tweaks as a single, more accurate first adjustment. This practice will save scratch disk space for other operations.

i The tripod alone worked well for the Diner shot, but with subjects nearer to the camera, a pan

HOW DO I ADD FOUR VITAL ACCESSORIES THAT NIKON FORGOT?


The Nikon CP950 comes with a rudimentary belt pouch, a neck strap, and a lens cap. That will get you started. They really want you to buy accessory lenses, off-camera flashes, and AC power supplies from them. The first thing you want to do is tie a short piece of limp fishing line to that lens cap, or you will lose it. The design of the cap such that it will flip out of your fingers fifty times out of two hundred grabs, but only if you are standing on a boat deck or over a grating in a sidewalk where dropping it means immediate loss. The other end of the line can be looped under the external flash socket cover which will easily screw down tight enough to secure the line. i If you havent secured the cap yet, quick, stop reading this, and secure it with a very short length of dental floss until you can find some nice black nylon string. The floss is so thin that you can poke it into the flash socket and screw the cover down without binding the threads. (Cinnamon floss is red!) What Nikon didnt include in the box were a lightweight portable camera support, access to the world of screw-on accessories, filters and lenses, a means for daylight viewing of the monitor screen, and camera-sized security for the hand-held, dropable camera.
ITEM
Cobra Q-Pod Step-up Ring

NAME/SOURCE
ckcpower.com ckcpower.com (or) filters4sure.com ckcpower.com Hama slide viewer DIA-3641 Do it yourself 1/4 Nylon strap

COST
$ 8.00 23.00 18.00 3.00 3.75 .15

WEIGHT
50 grams (1.75 oz.) 4 grams (0.12 oz.) 8.972 grams (.029 oz.) 19 grams (0.60 oz.) 5 grams (0.15 oz.)

37mm Pinch Lens Cap Viewing Hood Wrist strap

That last item would be a wrist strap. The cameras have a perfect attachment point, but they furnish a shoulder strap of stiff nylon and apparently missed the wrist strap concept completely. For very few dollars, you can have it all. My cost, to date, for ALL of these accessories is less than $40.00. Heres how it breaks down. i The Q-Pod also keeps your fragile CP950 CF memory chip door closed. Anything in the tripod socket would do the same. The step-up ring allows you access to the world of filters, auxiliary lenses, microscope and telescope mounts, and special effects. With the step-up ring, I discovered new uses for a collection of old Cokin

4 -44 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

graduated filters and special effects lenses. A Cokin filter holder can hold square filters and gels as well. You might want to get a Sima lens cap-keeper to control the Nikon lens cap, and these can be found for as little as $1.50. Fabric and craft stores have all sorts of thick cords with which you can make a camera cap loop. Just make sure it isnt too thick and isnt too thin. I even found one in non-metallic silver that was a convenient match to the Millennium model. Another good thing to do is to have a spare lens cap in your bag. Theyre cheap enough. The daylight-viewing hood/magnifier made from an appropriate slide viewer, can be modified to fit your camera. The one Ive listed will fit over the viewscreen of most digital cameras because it was made large enough for the largest slides mounted in a 2 x 2 frame. The boxy shape works well, avoids covering the buttons near the monitor, costs little, and is worth the effort to shape, contour, grind, and fit onto your camera. The Hama slide viewer I found, right, has the right boxy shape. Thin 1/8-inch strips of the gentle side of Velcro frame three sides of the monitor. The full width of the Velcro hook material is bent around the sides of the viewers edges. Only the few hooks at the bend are active, and the hood will have just enough grip to stay put but will release easily. Cant find the Hama? Other designs will work. One, an A-P slide viewer from Porter Camera in Oregon (www.porters.com) has been used by me and others with success. And its only $2 (plus delivery). I found one exactly like theirs, left, gathering dust in an older camera store for $3 with no shipping and handling. Grinding it into shape with a medium tooth sandpaper sheet took about ten minutes. i Nikons own similar TID-1 LCD monitor viewing hood may become available in the US soon, although at this date it is only available in Japan. i Then there are the ready-made hoods. The JAR hood, right, attaches to the camera with Velcro and folds flat for storage in your camera bag or belt pouch. Its less than ten dollars and models are available for the 950 and 990. Hoodman makes a padded hood for digital cameras that is held in place with an elastic strap. Its about $20. The Wrist Strap you see on cameras in this eBook is a piece of 1/4-inch wide nylon strapping from a marine supply or mountaineering supply department. Make a square knot on the loop going through the Nikons strap bracket near the body, and leave a five-inch tail on the upper side. This becomes part of a double square knot that will ride above your hand as you grasp the rig. Make the length just tight enough to have a bit of positive tension as you use The Grip. The 995s dual attach points allow you to create a loop that rides directly over the back of the hand. i Or, use a shoelace. Anything is better than no wrist strap at all.

Chapter 4

...How Do I?

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HOW DO I TAKE IT ON VACATION?


Digital photography is the Free Film medium. Downloading the pictures lets you reformat the memory card and take new shots. Traveling with just acquisition capability is guaranteed to frustrate you to the bone. Unless you are ready to fill hundreds, if not thousands of dollars worth of CompactFlash cards full of vacation shots, you need to take the other half of the formula with you. If not a full-fledged computer, then its counterparts: a disk drive or a palmtop. I have no problem with this issue since I travel with a lightweight laptop that has a PCMCIA card slot built into it. My traveling darkroom doesnt print, but it does make slide shows, organizes images in several different ways and even creates back up files on Zip disks wherever I land. As I move around, I am certain what the shots look like, what might need better coverage, problems Im discovering or creating, and whats working and whats not. Ive even had the experience of landing in a city the night before the big presentation, shooting a bunch of shots at several locations, making a PowerPoint show in my hotel room that night, and showing it to enthusiastic viewers the next morning. These days I use a Macintosh PowerBook G4 with enough disk space to park thousands of shots, and Zip disks can be found around the world. But not all people are as nuts as I am, and one persons solution couldnt possibly fit all. Here are some alternatives.

VACATION PHOTOS WITHOUT DOWNLOADING

You will need lots of storage capacity. On a vacation you will want to shoot many pictures without worrying about running out of room. This could be the excuse you were waiting for to buy that high capacity CF chip youve been coveting. You and your camera (plus batteries and charger) are all it takes. Since images will be coming at you at an accelerated pace, your battery use will increase, and your mean-time-to-next-charging-opportunity will go down. Plan ahead. Turn the monitor off every chance you get. Upsides: Light. Small. Simple. Downsides: Bigger card needed. No backing up your shots until you successfully return home. There is the slight but non-zero chance of accidentally formatting your CF card in the camera while moving through the menus, thus losing every shot.

4 -46 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Insured? What happens to your shots when the camera goes missing? Storage strategies fall into two camps: 1. You can buy more storage cards and offload your images upon returning, or 2. You can shoot smaller images. Capture pictures at the size you feel is best for the experience, or accept the fact that the smaller pictures are higher quality, pixel for pixel, and increase your quantity by saving them in these smaller sizes. XGA shots at 1024 x 768 pixels are quite decent and will easily make 5 x 7 prints or smaller. If your pictures are only for the computer screen or posting on the internet, the VGA (640 x 480) size may be just fine. A single 128-megabyte card will hold only about 270 full-size images at Normal compression in the 950 (and about 190 in the 880/990/995). Assuming the same compression, that would translate into 665 shots at XGA resolution and a whopping 1700 shots in VGAs 640 x 480 resolution. Now theres a vacation! Of course, you could increase the quantity substantially by saving shots in the Basic compression setting. At sensible image magnifications the compression effects are marginally noticeable. It is worth testing on your computer screen, your TV set, and your printer to see the effect. Nikons compression scheme is extremely well executed, and even the smallest files may suit you. The 995 takes images with 1600 x 1200 and 1280 x 960 pixels. Called UXGA and SXGA, they become 61% and 39% of the storage space needed for a full size shot. You will probably want to edit each days work in the camera. The Play mode lets you zoom into the display for a closer inspection. When you find images not worth keeping, delete them in the camera, and free up the extra card space for tomorrows pictures. Its a shame that the in-camera editing features dont let you move shots from folder to folder, but at least you can tag shots in the camera to protect them from erasure (except by a formatting accident or a childs prying fingers).

VACATION PHOTOS WITH DOWNLOADING

The ultimate download device is, of course, the portable digital darkroom: a laptop computer. A PCMCIA (aka PC card) adapter for the CompactFlash card will reduce the entire transfer operation to less than one minute! Dont even think of using the 950 via a serial data connection. Way too slow. Youll do it once and quickly lose interest. CF card readers are available in USB, SCSI, and serial connection formats, and theyre relatively inexpensive. The more recent cameras USB connections are much kinder. One ultra-portable solution is the Digital Wallet. Its a USB hard drive with six (currently) gigabytes of storage space that includes its own card reader and transfer system. Insert CF card, download images, view them on your computer when you get home. About the size of a real wallet and is self-contained. Simas Image Bank is less expensive, connects directly to your CF card, currently contains a 3 gigabyte drive, and comes with car and AC power options. The capabilities, storage capacity, and speed these solutions offer are available to the dedicated photographer today, for a price. As time goes on, more and less expensive options will be opening up every month. To see whats current, check out the Breaking News and Portable Darkroom pages on our Website at http://www.digitalsecrets.net.

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HOW DO I TAKE IT ABROAD?


No matter where you start out in the world, as you travel from your home to another country, it seems they change the voltage on you. Now your home voltage isnt what they have in this new land, and all your accessories dont work any more. The only thing that seems to stay constant is the voltage in cars. Then there is the thing about video standards. Rule Number One: If you are going to have a car, take car cords with you. These are the adapters that plug into the car cigarette lighter sockets. Take one for the computer and one for the battery charger. NiMH AA cells and EN-EL1s charge up much faster with the car cord than they do with the AC adapter! Rule Number Two: Purchase voltage converters and adapter plugs before you leave. For a list of world-wide adapter plugs, visit www.interconfig.thomasregister.com/. Some power supplies are smart enough to work with several voltages. They are marked with words like, AC Input 100~240V, and they will help you almost anywhere. The ones that say, AC Input 110V will be destroyed spectacularly, and probably dangerously, in 220-volt countries. Even the dual voltage EH-51 for your EN-EL1s will need proper plug adapters. Rule Number Three: Unless you bring a TV set of some sort with you, and I cant imagine your doing that if you pack light and move fast, there is a very good chance you wont be able to watch the output of your camera on a video screen unless you have the dual-system 880/990/995. Video standards, and there are dozens of them, fall into two main camps: European PAL and American NTSC. PAL is found in many places around the world and NTSC is found in the USA, Japan, parts of Asia, Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean, and most of South America. In those places you may be able to watch your days shooting on the TV in your hotel room if you have the 950. If your 950 is made for PAL viewing, you will be able to see it on your hotel TV in Europe, Africa, India, Australia, and points east.

4 -48 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

I took my 950 vacationing to Oz. Along with the right power supply and AC plug converter...

Chapter 5

Learning Digital Photography

5-1

Chapter 5 Learning Digital Photography


YOU MAY THINK ITS A CAMERA, BUT THAT THING IN YOUR HAND IS A COMPUTER WITH AN EYE. WITH NO FILM TO BUY AND NO WAITING FOR DEVELOPED IMAGES, ERRORS CAN BE HEADED OFF BEFORE THE SITUATION FADES, AND THE ENTIRE PROCESS OF LEARNING HOW TO TAKE PICTURES IS NEW.

You have the camera. You have the knowledge to make it operate. Now lets get some experience and practice under your belt. The first thing you do is make new images from old. (Well get to the new pictures soon enough.)

i=

BECOME A CROPAHOLIC
Armed with your new found appreciation of the center of interest rule, look at some of your old images and fool around with cropping them to better fit that rule. No matter which program you use, if it can crop your pictures, it will help. Remember to do this only with duplicates, not originals.

InfoBite

The image in your camera starts out with a 3:4 or 2:3 aspect. Nobody said it had to stay that way.

After doing this twenty times, you will begin to develop a feeling for clustering important elements in your croppings, and you will notice that many images actually get a whole lot better by concentrating on LESS of the original than you captured with the lens. Architect Mies VanDer Rhoe always used to say, Less is more. It came from his diet coach, but he found that it applied to the field of design as well. Pretty soon his students were chanting it as if it were a mantra on the Zen of composition, and in the field of retail discount stores, it found a permanent home. In photography, cropping is the first level of post-production.

As you are cropping the bad parts out of your old images, a voice will soon be whispering in your ear, Hey, if you had been thinking like this when you were taking that picture, you wouldnt have to do this now. The louder that voice whispers, the more you WILL be shooting bettercropped images right in the camera.

GET OUT
Now we push you out the door and into the surrounding neighborhood. A flower here, a puppy thereget them out of your system. Ah, theres someone who will be only too glad to pose for your new camera. Clickity beep.

5-2 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

FIRST EXERCISE, A PORTRAIT


Now fully aware of light, shadow, composition, cropping and framing, you shoot at least ten images of their head and shoulders. Some fairly straight, some to the side, perhaps even a profile. As you shoot, tell them how good they look (in the new camerasomehow different, somehow special), how the digital camera actually makes them look younger, slimmer, or prettier. Interestingly enough, although it may seem like the least sincere thing you could say, you are not lying. You are predicting. The more you tell people this, the younger, slimmer, and prettier they begin to BE for you. After as little as two minutes of this you can get them to work with me trying for a really nice picture, (you know, something like you see in print. Something with character.) Now it is time to collaborate. Find some shade or any good place to review the last few images. Heres a good one, this didnt workI was too far back, this would have been the best if you had been looking here and your chin had been lower. Analyze the images with them and before the light changes, shoot twenty more. When the pose gets stale or too forced, back off, tell your subject to relax. Lets try it a different way. You are not just getting them to freshen up, you are getting YOU to freshen up. Walk around them looking for angles, changes in the light or changes in the background. Set the camera on single focus in manual mode so the background doesnt steal focus from your subject and ruin the shots. 990/995: Menu > Page 2 > Focus > Single AF 950: Menu > Set Up > LCD In/Out > On&S-AF 775: Monitor Off Some of the best portraits are done with a slightly telephoto lens. In 35mm photography many photographers prefer 105mm and 135mm lenses for head shots. You have both, approximately. Stay at the upper range of the zoom, and try to shoot verticals at least half of the time. This is easier with the optical viewfinder than with the monitor. By the time you have spent thirty* shots on your subject, you will have probably shot at least two very good pictures and half a dozen pretty good ones. Obviously the camera is the reason. Stifle that chuckle and keep moving.

*Yes, thirty shots. And make each one slightly different, somehow. The first secret to getting progressively better and better images is doing what photography does best, capture the moment. The more moments you capture, the better your odds of getting the Best Moment. When you look back at your images, some will be very good. Others will be excellent. Those wont often be your first three or five. Shoot thirty shots!

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NEXT EXERCISE, GEOMETRY


Now you are looking for one thing and one thing only. Interesting shapes. The curve of a railing, the abstract nock of a tree limb, the pattern of brick, the legs and feet of somebody sitting, a reflection, the texture of peeled paint, a bunch of birds on a wire, a leaf, a row of books, a cats ear, a cars grill There has been more than one award-winning photo of each of these ideas and you may find a billion other interesting shapes in nature, the city, people, and things around you. If you must shoot a flower, shoot for the radial symmetry, if you must shoot something square, find an angle on it that lends a certain abstraction of its form to the photo. Capture twenty subjects. Keep thinking Form. Shape. Pattern, repeating this mantra over and over in your mind. When you review the shots, separate them into three groups, Junk, Hmm, and Okay. Then go out and repeat the exercise. This time the review will have about 50% improvement in the Okay category. Quality, quantity, or both will have gone up. When you feel stale, do the geometry exercise. The film is free, the shapes dont need coaxing and often the results are rewarding.

5-4 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

NEXT EXERCISE, THE SKY


Most inspiring at dawn and dusk, the sky can be interesting at any time. Dont just think of the sky as a cloudy thing. Think of it as a light or a backdrop. How does the sky interact with trees, buildings, windows, light poles, clouds, horizons, mountains and people? At noon you might have to get real low to put people up into the sky. At sunset, you might have to get up high to see how the sun casts shadows across the ground. With flowers, you might just have to put them against clouds or vast expanses of blue. The more you look, the more often you will see an oddly shaped cloud, a blotch, a wisp, or a plume that might someday be useful. Shoot it now, use it later. And on those days when the sky dresses up and just begs to be photographed, take out the Nikon and oblige her.

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NEXT EXERCISE, ROUND


Things that are round. Things that suggest roundness. Circles, semi-circles, ovals, curves, round things against jagged things, round things inside square things. Christmas ornaments, round flowers, watches, bowls of food, wheels, eyes, signs, architectural features, roseate windows, grapes, baseballs, and knobswhatever works. Now advance the lesson. Shoot them in such a way that if you were to dissolve from one to the next, the round would carry concentrically from shot to shot. This, like the geometry exercise, is a good refreshing activity for times when you need a cup of photo java.

5-6 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

NEXT EXERCISE, BUILDINGS


As subjects rather than elements, buildings are full of opportunity, inside and out. Their architecture has form that compels us to enter, run away, love, hate, or ignore them. They try to look appealing, professional, industrious, graceful, practical, bold, comfortable, utilitarian, and secure. They are ornate, simple, weathered, exotic, misleading, and stunning. Whatever impression a building makes on you, try to find the time, lighting, weather, angle, and composition that causes your image of the building to convey its impression to others through your photograph. You are going to go back to this building several times in the course of the next year, and each time you are going to find something new about it to reveal in an image. If the whole building doesnt fit, make shots of it into a montage. A good way to start is to have a straight-on flat symmetrical shot of the entrance. Good, you got that out of your system. Now find the ways of interpreting the building that cause it to have character. Notice, at no time did I say you had to have the WHOLE thing in each shot. If straight lines become a barreldistorted problem, the iBC Photoshop Action filters on this disk will help. One did for the top shot, below.

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NEXT EXERCISE, PANORAMIC VISTAS


The specific form of this image will most likely be wide. Vertical vistas are possible, just not terribly vista-like. In order to make the image you will stitch several overlapping images together, so you will have to shoot all of the segments within a few moments of each other from the same point of view.

Now you get to use your Nikons Exposure Lock feature. Once set up, the first exposure determines the setting for all the following exposures. Two- and three-panel panoramics are common. Five and up are downright challenging. You may wish to shoot the center panel first, noting on the monitor, or in the view finder, where the edges of the picture fall on the subject. This will help you slide the view to the left and right catching matching side framings. As you shoot, give a generous overlap to the pictures. A third of an image-width is good. Twenty percent of an image-width is skating on thinner ice. Rectilinear wide-angle images make straight lines look straight, but objects at the edge of the picture are now size-distorted by perspective. The more shots you have available for stitching with major overlaps, the greater your chances of stitching them together in ways people wont detect.

Telephoto vistas are particularly interesting; if you shoot enough segments you have a super-detailed wide angle shot. The longer the lens (more tele), the lower the perspective distortion. Yes, a tripod will help here, too. So will careful study of the topic in Chapter 4. Back at the computer you can use any of a number of panoramic stitching programs to marry the shots together. (After you apply the appropriate iNovaFx iBC Action Filter, of course.) As you work, you will become aware that features often dont line up just right from panel to panel, and double images

5-8 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

in the overlaps are becoming obvious. The trick is to make them go away completely while maintaining apparently correct perspective across the blended seams. If you have Photoshop, the Transform function will give you control of rotation, size, perspective distortion, corner pinning, skew, keystoning, and position all within one control. By applying this single

tool to the images adjacent to your central image, all sorts of geometric flaws can be finessed into place to not just make an overlap area work, but to make the side images into true extensions of the central image. Again, explicit details on how to use this tool are in Chapter 4. If a panoramic isnt quite making sense today, put the originals away and approach it with fresh eyes later. Finessing a panoramic isnt always easy, and starting over can often be better than endless tweaking. A good way to work is to put the adjacent images into layers over a single starting image. One layer is turned off, the working layer is set to 50% transparency, and the Transform tool is used to manipulate it into place. Often, the side image wont fit perfectly, but you will be able to get a vertical-column area of it to match the underlying image quite well. It helps if a feature like a tree, or any strong vertical linear object, dwells in this area. If a straight-line object like a building or street cuts through the seam, you must pay quite a bit of attention to correcting or minimizing perspective changes from panel to panel. When a panel just doesnt fit or shows disproportional stretching (top and bottom details work, but whoa, the middle details arent a linear fit) occurs, use the Photoshop History control to start over.

Your first attempts will guide you into seeing how easy it is to make mistakes. Your second attempts will be better. If you do this ten times, you will start teaching other people how to do it.

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NEXT EXERCISE, REPETITION


Here you are combining experiences gained from a number of previous exercises and adding a new foo-factor. Repeating similar elements are the target. There must be three or more similar objects in a creative relationship to each other. They can be as similar as fence staves, windows of nearly identical shape, palm trees all in a row, uniformed people, feet, whatever. There is no limit on things like having them all face in the same direction or be in the same light. Points are subtracted for factors like too dissimilar and too far apart to connect the similarity. All boys doesnt count. A good thing to try for is dramatic direction. All the flags were blowing straight out, all the cops were looking at the same thing, all the birds were pecking at once, all the palm trees were the same shape, etc. Then there is the special factor. The counter point. All the cops were looking at the same three-yearold in the red dress, all the birds were pecking the same eight inches of birdseed; all the windows were the same except for the one with a person sitting in it. Symmetries of repetition are many. Certainly the things-all-in-a-row idea is easier to find than the things-all-radiating-from-a-point is. But in photography, odd relationships can form symmetries of balance in which birds of a feather flock together is counter balanced by theres one in every crowd. As you move through this exercise, try to resist lapsing back into other exercises. Part of what you are learning here is the hunt, the safari that has a single-minded goal. If you come back with a bunch of nice images, but theyre not particularly tangled up in the idea of repetition, go out and do it again.

5-10 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

NEXT EXERCISE, MICROVISTAS


The Nikon digital compacts are very comfortable in the world of the very small. Big images of small vistas, microvistas, are easier to acquire with a Nikon digital than any film camera I know. Now it is your turn to become comfortable with very little. The Autofocus system in automatic mode will focus down to about nine inches. Two focus regimes can be selected using the M-Focus button on the top or back of the camera. The first one prevents the camera from focusing on near objects and puts a little double mountain icon onto the view screen and also on the LCD display. This is the icon you dont want to see. A second press on the same button gives you the small flower icon and this is the one that causes the camera to hunt for a nearby object. This is the micro focus regime. Nikon calls the control Macro Close-up just to satisfy all those who, over the years, have gotten into the habit of calling the very small, macro. Microvistas can be any subject, but the area you are going to shoot is 2-1/2 inches wide or smaller. Do try to avoid clichs. If you must shoot a flower, catch one with a bee in it. If you have to take a picture of a telephone keypad, get a real grubby or real beautiful finger into the shot. If its the contents of a pocket tossed on a table, include clues to a crime. If you shoot an eye, make sure it was projecting an attitude.

This one is cheating. It was shot some 30+ feet (9 meters) away from the subject using a rather large Meade telescope. But then, the exercise didnt say what kind of lens to use...

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Learning Digital Photography

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NEXT EXERCISE, AVAILABLE DARKNESS


With the ISO of your camera set to maximum, the electronic film is working within the realm of available light photography. Knowing that you can drop images in the computer and manipulate the exposure upward there, dont be shy of underexposing. The iNovaFX iISO2Taste filters will allow you to recover two or more stops of detail in many cases, so your available range is higher than your camera may think. Manual focus will help when the light level is low. Street light offers plenty of usable lumens. Candle-light will work if the candle is close enough to the subject. Night shopping areas are lit well enough to shoot. You have the option to make black and white images. Your subject will be the darkness of the environment and how only available light could have made them possible. Include the glare of background lights; go for the signs, the deep shadows, the half-revealed surfaces, and the unseen faces. Night is kind of spooky, and your pictures may show this. The blur of movement will become a treasured dynamic element adding to the effectiveness of the shot. Dont be surprised when you find yourself not only lightening the images in the computer, but also darkening some to accentuate the effect.

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NEXT EXERCISE, THE CHARACTER OF...


Pick a character-filled entity. Here is your chance to portray that character in a series of images. Dog, cat, mother-in-law, stranger, tree, city, team, whatever. It will end up as a layout on a single page or spread, as in a magazine, and must contain from four to eight images. The character of the piece must be easily perceived by casual viewers once they hear its title. Some subjects beg to be shot over great expanses of time. This Tree Throughout the Seasons, for instance. Try for something more immediate. Heres my own one day take on Midtown Manhattan.

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NEXT EXERCISE, INFRA-RED


Here you are doing one of the See Differently exercises. The scene in front of you and the scene you end up with are radically different. For this exercise you will need, at minimum, a piece of black slide film to use as an IR filter. Of course, you could use a commercial glass or gelatin Wratten filter, and you could sandwich the gel material between a converter lens or use it in front of the lens, thats up to you. You will be looking for situations in which the unusual black sky, white vegetation, or both play a part in the composition of the image. Outdoors, a viewing hood for the monitor will be needed so you can see the IR picture live. Remember elevated ISO will only get you into the 1/60 sec shutter range on a beach with a 950 or 775 and much longer exposures with an 88x or 99x, so a tripod is a good thing to have along. The B part of this exercise is for Photoshop manipulation. Lab color has a luminance channel and two color-difference channels. IR photos are quite B&W in content. What happens to a shot you make in both color and IR when you substitute the luminance channel of the color shot with the IR grayscale image? Of course, you will need that tripod, and both pictures must be taken in-register with each other. No moving, now.

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NEXT EXERCISE, BLACK AND WHITE


Set the camera to manual, and invoke the B&W option from the menu. The color is gone. White balance cant even be accessed. If you have a 950, set the Img Adjust menu selection to Less Contrast. Now goose the sensitivity of the camera up to ISO 320/400. Almost finished; set the EV +/- to +0.3. Youre shooting with Tri-X, and the world is a rich gray-scale of tones and shadings. Go outside into the daylight where the great photon generator is doing her job. The things you will be shooting are the things that will teach you the most about contrast, long gray-scale, and exposure. Bracket some shots. That means shoot them a bit under- and a bit overexposed, as well as at the exposure the meter picks. With the 990 or 995 you can invoke Auto Bracketing from the Exposure menu on Menu Page 2. If the shots blow out due to overexposure from the elevated ISO, you can bring the camera sensitivity down to better acquire the image. Back at the computer, the realities of B&W will become obvious as you look at the images on screen at 600 x 800 pixels. It is a whole different world. Paul Simon to the contrary, not everything looks worse in black and white. If you have a shot with drama, smears, depth of field effects, and/or long gray tonal range, add a noticeable level of noise to the shot. Part B of this exercise happens when you make B&W images from shots that started in color. The iNovaFX filters that create monochrome, film-response images from color shots will help.

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Learning Digital Photography

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NEXT EXERCISE, FOUND OBJECTS


Things that are small but not microvistasas-is without digital darkrooming. A bracelet in close-up. The reflection off of a teapot. A jar of preserves. Things you might never in your life have considered to be photo-worthy are now your subject, and you must make these photos worthy of existence by their composition, unmanipulated lighting, pose, silliness, seriousness, scale, drama, juxtaposition, or by the attention you have called to the objects by photographing them. For inspiration, visit Hiro Kamakuras excellent web portfolio at http://www.kamakurart.com/.

5-16 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

NEXT EXERCISE, SKEW


Heres a new twist! Every subject in this exercise will be non-level. Either the camera is twisted, or the subject itself will be in a physical orientation that isnt a normal, expected angle. People lying down doesnt count. People upside down or oddly slanted does count. The goal here is to portray the world in a way that causes it to be seen both from and with a new angle. Photographs are usually viewed level, cameras are not nearly so formal. Your mission is to move through a situation (city, country lane, garden, family reunion), gathering at least a dozen good skewed pictures that force the viewer into a new appreciation of the subject because of its non-level presentation.

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NEXT EXERCISE, PICTURE IN A PICTURE


Sometimes the world conspires to give you an image inside a larger image. You are looking for pictures in frames that are made of reality. An alley frames a distant skyline. A public mural is all the more poignant because of the people or events surrounding it. Find a half-dozen of these in the next week. Look back on the situations that presented the PIPs as they change with the time of day or seasons. Keep trying to improve on the first shots you make by topping your previous shots. Someday you may want to bring a special subject to a particularly good PIP site and use it as an environment.

5-18 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

NEXT EXERCISE, INTENTIONALLY BAD PICTURES


Get trees to grow out of peoples heads. Arrow signs to stick out of their ears, poles to start at the bottom and stop exactly at the borders of the image. Make too much head room or crop people at the eyes. Crop out the dogs face, just get his feet. Twist the camera two degrees on a sunset that is dead center without a cloud in the sky. Make some nice blurred shots from too-long exposures. Shoot pictures that are too dark, too light, and completely uninteresting. Now look at your stuff. It looks like lots of images you have seen other people produce, doesnt it? If you can do it on purpose, you can undo it on purpose. The weird thing issome of them actually arent bad. Hey! Ponder this as you drift off to sleep tonight. Then go out tomorrow and shoot a bunch of intentionally action-smeared images.

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NEXT EXERCISE, IMPROVEMENT


As shot, it was a picture, all right. But now its about to become something more than the camera could have ever envisioned it. Where the perspective was ordinary, the new perspective is assertive. Where the original subject was nice enough, now its art. Your arsenal consists of everything you can do to make this image into something that transcends its humble beginnings. A casual viewer should be able to look at these results and feel like something new has definitely taken place here, especially if presented with the before version. Special effects, filter treatments, distortions, crops, color changesall that stuff is fair game here. The more oohs and aahs you get from people, once they see how far you have taken it, the more points you acquire. Top: Perspective correction as with a 4x5 view camera. Middle: QuickMask allowing fake long shadows to dramatize the situation. Bottom: Abstraction of an already very abstract still life using a thirdparty filter in Photoshop; Kais Powertools Version 6.

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NEXT EXERCISE, LIFES STORIES.


The world is full of stories. They are playing out in front of you every day. Some are simple, others complex. Some are laced with tragedy, others with humor. Often the juxtaposition of polar extremes come together in a single frame or within a single subject. You will be lucky to find an image that connects opposing forces in a single shot, but you know it can be done as you study the work of photographers. Now it is up to you. Find the situation, or allow it to find you. Open mindedness is the subtext. Then shoot for the single image and/or the story telling sequencewhichever is right.

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NEXT EXERCISE, IMMERSION.


Surrounded-ness. We started this chapter by shoving you out into the world. Now dive into the subject. Get into the middle of something and allow it to seem all around you in the shot. It could be a bush, a bunch of tangles, a cluster of items, anything that seems to surround the camera or some innocent bystander. Sure, you could try a fisheye lens, but they naturally make you feel surrounded. Something special about the shot should make it seem that the camera is on the inside looking out, or something else is.

5-22 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

NEXT EXERCISE, FORMAL EDUCATION.


Now you are to shoot an art piece that might have been a high-end catalog image. Not that the two are indelibly linked, but that much of our photographic experience these days is in the very tight world of objects intentionally composed and lit to convey the interesting qualities of their presence. Can you turn your cell phone into a thing of beauty, the way the catalog cover or advertisement for it would have shown it? Can you take a piece of fruit and tell a visual story about perfection, taste, and desire? What if you were to arrange a number of very different objects in a scene that suggested an illustration for some non-existent story? What might look like? The limits for this exercise are that you must organize small things on some sort of background, light them intentionally to bring out features, textures, surfaces, and mass, and with a single exposure create a rather formal image of the object(s) that has a story-telling or illustrative subtext or context.

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NEXT EXERCISE, PORTRAIT


Say, didnt we start here? Not exactly. Now you are more experienced, wiser and capable of greater things. Because youve changed, this has become a different exercise. Get the same or another friend to pose for another portrait. The lighting you choose this time will be more interesting. The background more controlled, the pose more a part of a composition. Things you applied to simple objects, vistas, night shadows, geometric shapesall will be in your head competing for a place in this portrait. Now shoot twenty shots and review. You are getting better, arent you! By now you are ready to make your first gallery, maybe even your first digital portfolio.

5-24 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

NEXT EXERCISE, PORTFOLIO


Are you ready for an on-line portfolio? Photoshops features will help you prepare files of thumbnails that link to files of full-size images ready for the Web (File > Automate > Web Photo Gallery). Other programs perform this function, too. And this is as far as most people take the idea. But the core of an on-line portfolio has much more to do with the content and showing it in a good setting, than with the simple mechanics of allowing access to a collection of images. With a print portfolio, the context is fixed. Its a book. Pages can be arranged and composed and the book itself can be quite impressive and customized. Sequences of images can be arrayed over several pages creating a scene-to-scene reveal, but it wont have the interactive flexibility of a Web page. To show ones best work on the Internet, a new approach will help. The cluster of images below would not make a good portfolio page, its too busy. But it might make a good table-of-contents page in which a click to a picture causes a jump to a larger image or series of images. The exercise is this; create an on-line portfolio of your best images. Animation, flash, and dazzle are optional. It should become a good, solid review of images in a form that readily communicates a particular style, eclecticism, broad or narrow range, vision, and/or competence in the type of photography you enjoy most. (From the example below, it might become apparent to the casual observer that my two chief photographic concerns are fisheye palm tree images and women holding things like newspapers. But a title on the page might have created a different impression, Curves.) This portfolio can be seen on the Internet at a location known only to readers of this text. Check it out at http://www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/zcurves/portfolio.html.

Chapter 6

Printing Digital Photographs

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Chapter 6 Printing Digital Photographs


THE DIGITAL DARKROOM NEEDS NO PLUMBING, BUT JUST LIKE A CHEMICAL DARKROOM, IT NEEDS UNDERSTANDING, TECHNIQUE, AND EXPERIENCE. THAT LAST ITEM YOULL HAVE TO GET ON YOUR OWN. HERES SOME HELP WITH THE OTHER TWO.
Ergonomics is about things that work. Effort spent. Ergs are measures of effort, and I suppose nomics are things you spend. Ergonomics is the study and application of things that fit human-scale activities and needs in logical, even effortless ways. Small, one-hour photo prints fit our scales of low-cost, easyto-put-in-an-album, and minor-importance. Eight by ten prints fit our human scales of easy-to-look-at and moderately-important at the same time. Substantially larger photos fit our scales of this-is-so-veryimportant, to-be-viewed-at-a-distance, and ready-for-framing-as-art. The Nikon 2 and 3 megapixel cameras certainly conquer the first two domains and have a well-defined role in the third.

i=

The ergonomics of prints begs the question of what is the right size print? For most people, the 4 by 6-inch, one-hour photo print is what their film camera produces, end of story. Many people accept a panoramic blow up from an APS film camera that is about ten inches wide and think of it as big. These images are relatively sharp and colorful and widely accepted even though they are The standard 4 x 6-inch (100 x 150 mm) print. It takes up a nice chunk of space on a page and fits our hands viewed at a distance that is way out of scale to the angle of well. A small amount of top and bottom had to be view of the taking lens. trimmed to fit it into this aspect ratio.

InfoBite

SIZE MATTERS AGAIN

6 -2 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Out of scale? What could that mean? Try this (even if only as a thought experiment): Shoot a picture from the comfort of your favorite chair and have it printed into the regular 4 x 6-inch print. Later, sit in the same chair and look at the print the way you would normally. Your eye/brain system will compensate for the discrepancies between reality and photography, and no doubt everything will seem just fine. The fact that a 45-wide field of view is sitting in your hand occupying 12 of your field of view wont seem odd. We are used to it. Now hold the print up to one eye until it matches in size with the view you shot. Close to your face isnt it? Is that a comfortable viewing distance? It will float five to eight inches from your face if you used a normal or wide-angle lens on the original picture. Can you comfortably focus that closely? A 5 x 7 print of the same shot will line up further from your eye and an 8 x 10 print will feel downright comfortable, being quite close to your normal reading distance. Under a magnifying glass, the 8 x 10 will reveal surprisingly little extra detail when closely compared to the 4 x 6, so why bother making the blowup? We like the larger prints because they meet our need for easy viewing. Sharpness isnt the ergonomic issue, comfort is. But, large prints cost more. A dozen times more expensive than the one-hour print 30% of their size, and the wait is much longer for the 8 x 10 to be produced photographically. Oops! Waiting, spending extra money, and not being able to control the process feel a lot like nonergonomic qualities. What if you could have the 8 x 10 print delivered to your desktop in three and a half minutes for about 95? With the combination of the right digital camera, computer, and photo-quality printer, you can.

DIRTY PICTURES

Another factor adds to the enjoyment and usefulness of digital images. Gradue. Schmutz. Dirt, dust, fingerprints, scratches, and emulsion flaws. They dont add, they detract! But you cant find them on images from the Nikons. If you have ever photographically printed 8 x 10s, you know that it is almost impossible to get the negative COMPLETELY dust free. With a digital image, you wont even have a chance to get the image dirty unless you put the dirt there for effect. Digital cameras do, however, show a new kind of flaw: digital artifacts. Noise hanging around high contrast details, color banding, non-continuous blends of colors, steppy edges, video-like halos surrounding bright point sources of light, artificial sharpening effects. Maybe even a blown pixel. Fortunately, the camera designers are learning how to minimize or mask these flaws below the threshold of being noticed. Ergonomic factors drive the inThe compression direction. These 1:1 images show the difference from the camera capture on the left camera processing of and the worst-case compression example on the right. Notice how sharp detail breaks down, causing alternating zones of contrast, as contours extend out into surrounding areas. Yet, when you back away an image and the from the images far enough, (or shrink them on your monitor to 50%) they look virtually identical. compression scheme Compression is all about balancing storage space with the ergonomics of human perception. that reduces its size for storage.

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Nikons engineers have hit on a balance of factors with these cameras that consistently puts the compression schemes found in other digital cameras to varying degrees of shame. As you create images, you will be able to do things that optimize your storage space, print size, costs of printing, and appropriateness for later use.

IF YOU PRINT IT, THEY WILL COME

Computer color printers complete the digital photography cycle by producing the hard copy people can handle. Fortunately, printers have been moving toward truly photographic-appearing results, and today you can get surprisingly good color prints from several different kinds of printers, most notably the photo-quality inkjets from Epson, Canon, and HP. New models are appearing almost every month, and the new ones always seem to surpass the older ones. Inkjet images are produced with micro droplets of liquid color that have nothing to do with the chemistry of photographic printing paper or the dot screen techniques of magazine photos. Theoretically, inks and dyes may create a wider range of reflected colors than light-sensitive chemicals can produce. Stunning results can be achieved with printers costing well below $300.00.

Where were you on New Years 2000? I was here in Hobart, Tasmania, with the official Aussi Party Reference Team establishing a benchmark of panoramic celebration that led directly to this panoramic Epson print. Do they know how to party in Oz?

For example, today I regularly print digital images up to 22 inches long on panoramic stock (8.3 x 23.4 inches) in six colors of ink at 1440 microscopic printing dots per inch. This particular printer is an Epson EX, 1998 technology, yet it is still running and making lovely images. (New models capable of page size photorealistic images cost as little as $99US.) Magenta, cyan, yellow, and black inks are joined by two extra colors, light magenta and light cyan, to produce greater subtlety. Total cost: around $2.50 for each panoramic print including ink and paper. For the largest images, I make 11 x 17-inch prints on the same printer for around the same cost. Letter-size prints, roughly the equivalent of 8 x 10s, cost only about a dollar or so and can often beat twenty dollar custom prints once you gain the right combination of skills and experience. Years ago, when I used a chemical darkroom, my color prints maxed out at 11 x 14 inches, and the cost of each of these was in the range of $5.00 for the one-shot chemicals and paper. The process was labor intensive, smelly, wet, and uncertain. A considerable dread factor built up before each printing session. What a bunch of Work. Making a test print for exposure and color was just as hard as making a final print, and a whole days effort would result in very few finished images.

6 -4 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

PORTABLE DIGITAL DARKROOM

Now I prepare my images in Adobe Photoshop in my laptop Macintosh. Its not a darkroom, just a dimroom, but it never spills anything on me. Here I add a bit of electronic enhancement to the color, contrast, brightness, and/or sharpness and my prints look predictably close to the screen images. i Recent portables have millions of colors screen images. I cant recommend trying this on a thousands of colors viewing screen and a CRT monitor is much better than the portables active-matrix LCD screen. The printer is much more consistent than chemicals ever were, so prints made months apart look like they were made at the same time.

THE FIX IS IN

The digital darkroom gives you wide ranging control over brightness, contrast, and finesses of color that would have been incredibly difficult to achieve in chemical photography. With experience, you can look at a picture and decide to add chroma and emphasize the greens while de-emphasizing cyan. But green and cyan are right next to each other on the color wheel, yet with Photoshop, they can be manipulated separately. Changing the exposure and color balance is definable over a wide range. You can stretch the highlights and compress the shadows while preserving the middle tones of an image faster than you can read this sentence. Images on letter-size paper printed at 170+ camera pixels per inch often look better than chemical-print 8 x 10s. To fool everybody all the time, you can use premium glossy print papers, producing photographic results that look and feel like double weight glossy photos.

The computer image will never exactly match your experience of the print. The trick is to have them close enough to serve as a basis for relative adjustments. If the print seems to need a tiny bit more red, the computer image should look like it needs a tiny bit more red, too.

PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE SPEED OF LIFE

The time from camera to print has shrunk to mere moments in some cases. Click, download, print. On a video shoot, I photographed eight actors playing characters from the year 3000 using the existing cinematic lighting. Each player received a handsome glossy print before they left the building, and each was amazed with the image quality and speed of the experience. I probably spoiled them forever. Im still waiting for the system that downloads all your shots wirelessly, spits out the prints, then stuffs them into an envelope, but Im sure somebody has it in the works. With these tools, a threshold has been crossed forever. The paradigm has shifted. The Great Convergence has greatly converged. An inflection point has been achieved.

Actor Rick Fitts took a moment on the set to pose for a still photograph shot with a CP 950. A page-size print was in his hands before the makup came off. KinoFlo 3200 K lighting.

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From here on, it will only get better-faster-cheaper. The word photograph has changed its meaning. The photo is wherein the computer or on the paper? Access to it is wherethe file or the print? Does the term photographic reproduction include the inkjet print the photographer considers to be her master reference image? Our desire to have a print in our hand immediately was initially answered with the Polaroid cameras. Printers are being delivered today that let you take the memory chip out of your camera and plunk it into the printer for immediate results. Polaroid cameras must use film the size of the prints they make, future cameras may have a secure data link to the nearby printer, and as soon as you finish shooting your session, you will go over and take a look at all the 8 x 10 glossies. The kind of ink you choose to put in your printer should be limited to the inks that wont clog it, and that generally means the inks sold only by the manufacturer. When you bend that rule, you are risking the health of a finely tuned electromechanical-hydraulic system, and when it gums up, dont go running around complaining. A very few places are reliable sources for alternative inks, and the Internet is a good place to find up-to-date information about this. See the Appendix for details. My own experience has been excellent with the printers, papers, and inks from Epson, Canon, and HP. Ive owned four different models of the Epsons and each has been better than the last. Print quality on the latest models has achieved results well above the threshold of photographic, and speed has increased to the point that the best quality color images take only a few minutes to make. i Epson manufactures papers that are ideally suited to their inks, and their own heavy glossy photo paper gives the best results. I recommend spending the extra money (usually about $100 more) and getting a model that will make images up to tabloid size (11 x 17 inches) or larger. Most of your prints will be smaller, but the oohs and aahs that big images generate are worth it. The HP PhotoSmart printers seem to work with a wider variety of paper formulas, including many that dont work nearly as well with the Epson printers and inks. i Red River Paper makes a paper that has the double-weight feel of high quality color prints. They even make a very heavy paper with glossy printing surfaces on both sides! Check the Appendix for details. For daily use, Epson Photo Quality Inkjet paper does well and is available in a variety of sizes. With this paper 8 x 10s will be quite inexpensive, around The Red River papers come in a variety of surface treatments, materials, and weights. Their inexpensive sample pack with two sheets of each type is a very 50. handy way for you to discover how they work for your prints.

PAPER CHASE

6 -6 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Inkjet papers, when you think about it, are designed for water-based inks. What other kinds of paper might work well in these devices? Copier paper? No, it is designed to accommodate powdered toner heat-fused into its surface. i Would you believe art paper for watercolors? This can be found in 12 x 18 pads in art supply stores, and the Strathmore Cold Press Watercolor 140 lb. paper works well in straight-path Epson printers. The textured surface accepts the inkjet images with good contrast and subtlety. If you treat your photo to have a watercolor look before printing, the effect is quite charming. i The inkjet papers from Red River include a number of similar style papers including woven cloth-like and several toothy surfaces. If you have an inkjet printer, their sample pack costs very little and gives you some preliminary experience using all of their paper formulas.

PANORAMASCOPE i For large panoramic images you need large pan-

oramic paper. Its available, but why not make some yourself? You could print tiled images and cut them together, but here is a better way. Take two sheets and lay them face down on a clean flat surface. Carefully butt them together, and weigh them down as you tape the seam that will hold them together through the printer. The precise cut of the sheets lets them line up, and weights will hold them in place as a 3/4-inch-wide strip of frosty tape is dropped carefully over the seam. Burnish the tape into the back of the paper sheets after laying it in place so the sheets dont separate during printing. The microscopic seam created this way will probably not be very visible in your print, but the result can be stunning. Until people put their faces almost on top of the picture, they wont see anything but a huge image. A carefully prepared mosaic panoramic of a cityscape or QuickTime VR image can be printed nearly four feet long with this method on Epson printers (some have a 44-inch limit). Other brands of printers may allow longer prints.

PAPER CUTS

Suspend your sense of right and wrong, good and evil, appropriate and inappropriate, and start looking at different kinds of paper for special images. What kind of effect would printing on tracing paper produce? What if I printed on paper ripped from a yellow pad? An image on butcher paper? An image on a Post-It? (Stick it onto a larger sheet of paper first, and feed it into the printer with the sticky seam going in first.)

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Wrapping paper and anything fragile like a paper towel could jam in your printer. Experiment, but with caution. Some of these may work. I actually got a cheap hand-towel from a paper towel dispenser to feed through the straight path of an Epson printer. Once. Paper towels off of a roll dont seem to work at all. Too flexible. Once you start playing with the idea, you will be in uncharted territory and may create completely original results. If you look for odd papers, dont overlook the special papers that let iron-on transfers roll out of your printer. Images here must be printed backwards with the image flipped left to right. After printing, a white or very light T-shirt (or any compatible cloth) is laid on an ironing board, and the print is placed facedown on the fabric. An iron is used to heat the image, and it transfers to the cloth taking the picture (and the waxy carrier layer) with it. Most people use the process for personal images. You could be the first person on your block to wear an art photograph, a panoramic, a photo montage or a self-portrait with eyes looking up from your chest at your own (real) chin. Faux hole. The authors tummy isnt any cooler than normal in this picture. Its an iron-on transfer featuring the It might be a good idea to take a picture of the intended image of what lies beneath. If you wish to duplicate the wearer wearing the blank shirt before making the print. On idea, the original BellyButtons picture file is on the CD. this image you can drop a miniature copy of the photo under consideration to preview what it will look like in place. The ultimate version would be a picture of the person wearing the shirt with a picture of him or her on the shirt wearing the shirt with a picture on it, ad infinitum. You can think of the shirt transfer paper in original ways, too. It really isnt about shirts, after all, it is about cloth printing. The transfer sheet can be used for more than one item. You can put logos, images, graphics, textures, and patterns on the same print, and cut the elements apart before ironing. Turn the entire family into a string of little faces that band around the chest-line of the shirt. Shoot a belly button, and frame the shot with a jagged edge and inner shadow so it looks like it is being seen through a rip at life size. Add the images of exaggerated zippers all over the shirt in impossible places and configurations. And it doesnt even need to be a shirt. How about a handkerchief with a hand on it? There is a lot of untapped territory here. What could be simpler? Just take the card out of the camera, slip it into the slot on the printer, and punch in the size and number of images you want. Some printers actually have this sort of interface, and for their owners, they deliver a steady stream of 4 x 6, 5 x 7, and 8 x 10 prints with just a few button pushes. Yes, they hook up to your computer, too. Look for the HP 1218xi, or older 1100 (pictured) and Epson 785EPX and 875DCS printers with their completely borderless printing on print-size paper. Youre gonna love em. For those of you who might aspire to custom-print quality, the road from lens to print is a little bumpier, but like any drive through the countryside, the views make it all worthwhile. You shot the images and sent them into folders in your computer; now its time to make prints that raise eyebrows.

INSTA-PRINTERS?

6 -8 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

PREPARATION SEPARATION i First, you cull the bad images out of your file by looking at them large on your computer monitor.

Anything marginal or better should be kept, at least for the time being. Future generations may come back to these files, scrub through them and wonder why you hung on to so many turkeys, but sometimes a piece of an image is useful. i You might want to start a separate collection of seconds. Everybody produces a lot of junk. Its how we get to the good parts. Rodin, Picasso, Congressall have produced garbage they later retracted, why should you be any different? i Once you have a folder full of images that you wish to keep, you can use Photoshops handy multi-print feature to create a quick reference page. It is found under File > Automate > Contact Sheet II in Photoshop 6.x, and it gathers the images, sizes and spaces them according to your choices, prints them out in any quantity you wish, and even allows you to save the sheet as an image file. With a little planning, you can make vertical or horizontal sheets. The cropped image above gives you an idea of how the page looks with seven shots across by 8 shots deep. Any file name you have given an image will be on the sheet if you choose. Without names on the sheet, the images can be 30% larger. I rotated vertical images before running this folder through Contact Sheet II, but if you dont, you end up with a page of all horizontal printed thumbnails. Just like a film contact sheet.

QC ON THE QT

Now you know the shots you want to see in print. Open them in Photoshop (or your favorite editing program), and let the manipulations begin. Study the image on the computer monitor. You did calibrate your monitor, didnt you? This is more important the closer you get to printing. Windows and Macintosh computers have their own special techniques for calibrating the monitor/print results. Some programs, like the Monaco Systems software, can take advantage of a hardware component that lets you set up the monitor to absolute, perfect color and density. Their system connects a special color meter to the screen that coordinates software tests in an automated process which then delivers calibrated results. Other aspects of their system will calibrate scanners and printers as well. i With a calibrated monitor, you can predict the behavior of the printer and see the results on screen in high fidelity before touching the print button. If you dont have a sophisticated setup, you can still get into general alignment by printing out some images without altering them in the computer, then using the prints to guide you as you make monitor adjustments that bring its look more in line with the prints. This is a tail wagging the dog approach, but if it is all you can do for the moment, it will help until a more sophisticated procedure can be applied.

Chapter 6

Printing Digital Photographs

6 -9

IMAGE CONDITION

The image on your screen will likely be imperfect. No image, on any film negative, transparency, or digital file Ive ever experienced, was literally perfect, but the vast majority of them were filled with opportunity. My tastes and your tastes arent the same. Nor are our retinas, our aesthetic sensibilities, or our fondness for contrast. Thats why each of us would make a print differently. Its our chance for self-expression. i What does that image look like to you after you stare at it for thirty seconds? Is it too bright or dim? Are the colors the best imaginable? Is anything pulling your attention to the wrong part of the shot? Now the image manipulation tools you learned on Page 2-5 will find their place in your work. Careful testing with Photoshops Levels, Curves, Hue and Saturation, Variations, Color Balance, and Cropping tools will allow you to chop, dice, and renovate the image to taste. i If you are uncertain as to how the image will hit the page, a test print would be a good thing to make. Fortunately, a software plug-in for Photoshop called, appropriately enough, Test Strip, will take you right to the point of being able to judge results in one fast, easy step. The program is slightly miraculous and extremely flexible. It lets you home-in on color and density adjustments by very broad or fine degrees, and with every print you make, you will be learning more and more about the behavior of color on paper and how it differs from color on a computer monitor. Test Strip prints out your image as horizontal strips, vertical strips, or multiple reduced variations, each with a specific amount of correction. i Once you have a segment or small print version of your shot in hand, that looks right to you and meets your criteria, Test Strip lets you save the image with all the code hooks it takes to print it later with the same improvements. Your original is not altered, and you can print it differently later if you wish, but the master print qualities of tonality and colorimetry are there for you, preserved for the future. In this series of images we can see the steps of preparation for printing that is typical for the custom-print look your camera and printer can achieve. The original is at the top. Its a bit underexposed and was shot with the camera set to Low Sharpening. The middle image shows basic Photoshop Levels adjustment that brought the white point down and moved the gamma to about 1.1. Because the original was too soft, an application of Unsharp Mask with a radius of 0.3 at an intensity of 220 with a threshold of 0 brought up eyelashes and fine detail. Due to the Levels shift, some chroma was compromised, but here it has been brought back +10%. The bottom image was first Unsharp Masked at a radius of 60 pixels using an intensity of 14, then burned and dodged to bring out subtle things like the defining line of his right shoulder, hair detail, eye values, and lowering the glare on the back of his hand.

6 -10 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

THE ARTFUL DODGER

Photos prepared in a darkroom are produced with time, filtration, and physical manipulations of the stream of photons flowing from the enlarger to the photo sensitive paper. Photos prepared in the digital dimroom are not physical but are very precise. The same sorts of tools appear in both, and Photoshop gives you the physical touch with its Burn and Dodge tools. You met them in Chapter 2, now its time to play for keeps. Dodging involves holding back enlarger light in some area, and that lightens the area. Its icon is a paddle. Just like the darkroom tool that does the same thing except in Photoshop you can see the effect instantly, and if you dont like what you see, you can undo it. If you dodge a number of areas with a series of gestures, you can back up several steps at once using the History palette. Burning does the opposite. Here, one adds light, thus darkening the local area of the print. Photoshop lets you attack the highlights, midtones, or shadows of the image with either command for control you could never get in the chemical darkroom. In the example at the right, the excessive glare on the back of his hand has been slightly reduced by burning. These tools are so much fun that you will likely get lost for a whole Saturday afternoon just playing with them while filling your mind with experience and ahas. But wait, theres more. Adjacent to these controls is another one that looks like a hand-size sponge. This control lets you do a different type of burn and dodge; saturating and desaturating. With this tool you can heighten the color here and drain it there.

CROP CIRCLES

Cropping the image can be done before or after color and tonal adjustments, its up to you. Sometimes, the very core of the composition of an image changes due to these adjustments, so waiting until after they have been revealed has its benefits. But simple cropping is more flexible these days. No longer need it be simply trimming the edges of the picture, it becomes an opportunity to apply a more advanced concept: print framing. Not the physical ones, the technique ones. One of the most basic framing techniques is to fade the edge of the image. Photoshop offers

6 -12 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

PROTECTION MONEY

Inkjet images are made with water-based inks sprayed onto paper. Water droplets falling on a print can be fatal. Some paper and ink combinations work well to avoid problems like this, but all of them will smear, blend, or smudge unless protected. Mounted prints behind glass will last for years, depending on the paper/ink combinations archival qualities. Images displayed next to a soda fountain need definite help. Waterproofing techniques used by fine artists to protect watercolor paintings work here as well, for the same reasons. Krylon Crystal Clear Acrylic sprays, fixatif, lamination varnisheach has its advantages and drawbacks. Sprays that permeate the upper surface of the paper will usually change the color of the printed sheet. Often this actually enhances the contrast of the print. But, as they dry, the surface could shrink causing the paper to curl. Thick papers and prints that are already bonded to a stiff backing can avoid some of these symptoms, but you will need to run tests before settling into the right printer/ink/mounting technique/protective spray combination. Krylon, long regarded as an appropriate source for protective spray materials used with artwork, has several glossy, satin, and matte surface products. The UV-Clear spray, Item #1305, is particularly good for photographs. Lamination has advantages. It generally makes the print look more like a print on glossy stock, and the surrounding laminate curls the page in both directions equally, resulting in a flat sheet. The laminator and materials arent cheap. Some of the best photo quality printers cost less than lamination presses. On the plus side, laminated prints are extremely durable and well protected. You can make very fine looking prints that are almost bullet proof. Ive used laminated prints as photo place mats. The Ibico pictured here, heats as it presses, fusing the lamination material surrounding the print. The one trouble this can cause arises from moisture in the print or its ink. That can create bubbles. Heat-free laminators from other manufacturers such as the Cool Laminator system from Brother are less expensive and also give good results with their own pressure-sensitive materials.

Chapter 7

Special Effects

7-1

Chapter 7 Special Effects


SPECIAL EFFECTS SEEM SO ORDINARY THESE DAYS. EVERY TIME YOU OPEN AN IMAGE FOR MANIPULATION, THE BOUNDARY DIVIDING NORMAL FROM SPECIAL CAN BE CROSSED. DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY IS THE SPECIAL EFFECTS MEDIUM, SO HERES HOW TO GET YOUR DIGITAL FX FEET WET.
George Lucas considers the digital medium to be vastly superior to film, so what does he do? What any sane producer these days should do. He makes films digitally. The level of special effects production in the digital arena is limitless, and by starting with a digital image right from the camera, his next Star Wars films will be digital from beginning to end. The problems for motion picture special effects are the same ones for still image special effects, plus the added problems of movement and animation. For chemical film images to enter into this realm they = must be digitized into it. Fortunately, the Nikon cameras do this directly. InfoBite Once digitized, exposure, contrast, and color correction are only starting places. They all are mere density management exercises. Digital special effects include the ability to blur, sharpen, distort, morph, tile, derive, overlay, tint, matte, double expose, stack, pixelate, stylize, texture, frame, and combine images. Access to Photoshop will give you the tools to do all this and more. i The Photoshop Tryout program on this eBooks CD will help you experience some of the concepts here. If you find that you enjoy making pictures into more than they were in the camera, I recommend that you start saving your quarters to acquire the full version of Photoshop. This frame and several others are on the CD. i I wonder whats on eBay tonight.

IVE BEEN FRAMED

Printing a photo onto a page is fine. Adding a frame around the image signals people that the picture is special. Even a simple drop shadow under your image sets it apart from an ordinary print. A border that looks like a bevel-cut matte board is surprisingly effective. When people notice that the attractive matte board is the image of a matte board they will think you are capable indeed. You will hear this a lot: Can you do that with my picture? Printing is a form of expression, and there are a number of border-generating techniques available as plug-ins, shape modifiers, and standard pre-generated edge and frame images made for this, plus an infinite number you can dream up on your own. i Several unique Photoshop frames are on the CD. To inspire. Colorizing a black and white image has been a special effect since the dawn of photographs. Today it is an interesting way to make images refreshing while testing your basic kindergarten skills of coloring within the lines. With a paintbrush loaded with

7-2 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

color, you can paint over a black and white image using the transfer selection called, appropriately enough, Color. Anything under the brush picks up the color without being painted over. Conveniently, only middle tones take on the color, so highlights and shadows are preserved. Use a low opacity (c. 10~15%) to build up color slowly. Photoshop also allows you to de-colorize selectively (Desaturation tool), and you can easily generate the image of a full-color person in a completely black and white world. Turning an image into a retro version of photography by sepia toning or fading back the color to a 1950s look will allow you to fill your walls with neo-history. Remember that old cat we used to have? Heres an old sepia print of him made way back, oh, I dunno, maybe two months ago. i A few moments playing with the Colorize controls in Photoshops Hue and Saturation tool will make you expert at achieving sepia (and other color) variations.

BLUR FOR SHARPNESS

Many images look more effective when the background is slightly out of focus. The Japanese photo word for this is bokeh. It doesnt mean flowers. Bokeh happens naturally with wide apertures and long lenses or with modest apertures in extreme close-ups. It doesnt happen much in photography of people-size objects. With about 10 minutes work you can change all this. The person in this shot was goofing with me over lunch. Can you tell? The out of focus background was created days later by isolating the silhouette of the guy with Photoshops Quick Mask feature, followed by a blur filter. The framing treatment locks in the whimsey.

Chapter 7

Special Effects

7-3

With a 35mm camera you can shoot an image while zooming the lens for a streaking effect, but the zoom lens controls on the Nikons are locked-out during exposure. Yet here is a shot of a toy with a much better controlled version of that sort of effect. The image was copied into a new layer and zoomed with Photoshops Radial Blur filter, then made 66% opaque, allowing the sharper, underlying layer to mix into the shot. Now the image has dynamics and detail in the same frame. Not all images need to depend on clarity. Blowing away the sharp focus of parts of images creates a form of directed composition that tonality, geometry, cropping, and color intensity cant achieve. Selective blur lets you direct the viewers attention just where you want it to be. Advertising photography uses this technique to direct the emotional content of images and you can, too. Its almost quicker to do than to talk about. For a directed-focus image, Lassoselect an area around the subject you wish to keep in focus, invert the selection and feather the selection edge 10, 20, or more pixels. This selects the balance of the image and makes the edge of your selection notably soft. Blow this area a little out of focus. Gaussian blur at a radius of three pixels should do it. Now select a wider area farther away from the subject and repeat the process. After three to five iterations, the blown-focus effect should look smooth and increase with distance from the sharp area. Heres a DeLorean shot that only took two minutes to treat. With this treatment a surreal quality enters the picture. It would be hard to distinguish it from a miniature or model instead of the real thing. i Other effects that destroy clarity can add mega-doses of interest. The entire filter set within Photoshop that is labeled Artistic is good for hours and hours of investigation and play. Try to establish this habit: open an image and immediately save it under a new name (to avoid accidentally saving over the original), then copy it to a new layer. Perform the filter operation on this new layer. Not only does this let you get back to your unaltered original when an experiment goes sour, it lets you immediately use the upper layer in combination with the original so you can try out lots of overlay blending methods such as Screen, Soft and Hard Light, Color Dodge, and Exclusion.

7-4 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

DOUBLE VISION

A very large part of film special effects depend on layering things over other things. The general process here is achieving a matte, or selectively transparent means to isolate one part of a photo, then place another image into or around the matte. Blue sky is an especially good matte target. If you have an image of a relatively simple object against a nice rich blue sky, you can start playing with this idea right away. See the CD for my shot of the Las Vegas Venetian Hotel tower if another shot isnt handy. (This image has been tweaked to make it especially easy to work with the sky.) In Photoshop, use the Select > Color Range window. It presents you with a miniature of the photo and an array of tools and adjustments. Set the Fuzziness control to about 40, and use the eyedropper that has a + symbol next to it. Now anything you touch will be added to the selection of colors making the matte. Often, the image looks like something was selected before you opened it, so use the unmarked eyedropper to touch into the sky of your shot, and that should get things started. With the + tool, run the tip over the blues of the sky. On the Venetian shot this easily can be done up the through the range of blues on the right side of the tower. The goal is to achieve an image that looks very much like this silhouette. Once this effect is approximated, a whole world of possibilities opens up. The sky alone is selected, and anything can be pasted into it using the Paste Into command. A new sky can be substituted, the original sky can be lightened or darkened. Forget your polarizer? Never mind, you can darken the sky later (lower left). Or add other sky images until you find one that suits your subject (lower right). If you get a halo around a subject, you may have to retouch the boundaries of the matte using the stamp tool. Since halos are generally lighter, consider using the Darken blending mode with a small brush. Now anything being picked up by the stamp will only darken the lighter part of the matte boundary, and detail wont be covered over.

Chapter 7

Special Effects

7-5

Telephoto images are an in-camera special effect. Our eyes dont see that way, and images from long lenses rarely feel like the views we get from binoculars. How could we add long telephoto capability to the Nikon Coolpix? The monocular-like 5X EagleEye OpticZoom lenses and the Kenko 8 x 32 monoculars are small enough for belt, bag, and backpack. Once you pre-focus, using the digital zoom on the camera monitor, they give very good images, especially at the middle to high f-numbers. i As with all accessory lenses, the monitor must become the viewfinder. A focusing magnifier or shade will usually be needed. i High shutter speeds are necessary for successful images. When thats not an option, a cable release or electronic remote, such as the DigiSnap 2000 from Harbortronics or the Nikon MC-EU1, will also help. The 950 swivel wont support heavier converter optics, and the EagleEye Wing bracket provides a complete solution to heavy lenses, cable release attachment, monitor magnifier, flash shoe holder, and even a panoramic attach point. The picture above was made through a 42mm eyepiece on an 8-inch Meade LX200 telescope using the ScopeTronix digital camera mount. i When working with long optics and no tripod, try a small bean-bag. It will fit the contours of the camera, permit small adjustments, and perhaps give you the needed stability. Of course, you may have to put up with, "Hey cmon, gimme back my Beanie Babies!"

TELL A FRIEND OR TELEPHOTO

The system of lenses, support bracket, and attach-point accessories that EagleEye has developed for the Nikon 990 and 950 cameras is especially helpful. The system includes support for a monitor-viewing module, a flash bracket, and the cable release positioning attachment.

7-6 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

TWIN PEEKS

Special effects fall into two basic camps: Those done to disguise their presence and those done to be strikingly obvious. Erasing a shadow, covering a flaw, smoothing a texture, and covering a thumb that made its way into the side of your shot are examples of disguised special effects. They simply will never be noticed or appreciated by the viewer. Included in this category are the image finesses most people call retouching. Creating artistic textures, combining matted elements, and manipulating isolated elements can be visually obvious techniques that strengthen images. All three of these images share this quality. A popular technique (top) is to stack blurred and sharp images together and combine their percentage of representation. It creates an effect similar to using a fog filter on the enlarger lens during a portion of the exposure when printing from negatives. Contrast manipulation of the sky and shirt were emphasized. The motorcycle was masked while the backand foreground were blurred (right). Below, five shots were layered in alignment and blended by erasing image material on the right side of each shot with a soft brush. Retouching by using the Stamp tool removed the images of redundant silverware, replacing it with plausible table texture.

Chapter 7

Special Effects

7-7

SPECIAL EFFECTS LA MODE

Original without any treatment.

iAngledStrokesPainting

iCanvasPainting

iColorDream

iContrast(UM)2

iColorPencilSketch

iFilmGrain2

iPlasticWrap

Photoshop is, among other things, Special Effects City. Its filter complement is extensive. Also perhaps dauntingly wide in scope. Newcomers to Photoshop may have a hard time coming to grips with the meaning and purpose of the full range of filters and effects that are available. Never fear, iNovaFX has come to the rescue. The iNovaFX Photoshop Action Filters include nearly a hundred iPSFilters for Windows and Macintosh computers. These must be used with Photoshop 5.0 or above. Some only work with the newer Photoshop 6 and are in marked folders. They load into the Actions palette, not the plug-in Filters list. These filters have only one purpose, to widen your ability to use the various artistic effects on your photos using Photoshops own filters. Many are merely our tested and helpful settings for various Photoshop plugin filters. Those are already included with the full version of the program. They may help you avoid a lot of trial and error and generally produce good results with a variety of original images. Some have several degrees of variation representing a light, modest, or strong version of the filter. The names on each of these includes the name of the Photoshop filter being employed marked with a leading lowercase i. All of the iNovaFX versions are of plugin filters that have a number of variables. Once you see what choices the iVersion has produced, you can use the History Palette to jump back to the original state of your image so you can play with new settings for that filter. Some of the iNovaFX iPSFilters are more complex. These produce orchestrated adjustments that employ not just filters, but a fuller array of Photoshop adjustments, to achieve a particular effect. All of the images on this and the next page were made by applying some of these iPSFilters to the same image. The label on each steers you to the filter in question.

iPoster

iSponge

7-8 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

iWaterColor2

iAccentedEdges

iSpatter

iTwist-90

iGlassRipple

iRipple

iZigOut

iExtrude3

iBasReliefColorReverse

iCraquelure2

iContCrayonColor

iChalkNCharcoalColor

iPhotoCopyColor

iEmbossColor

iChromeChroma

Chapter 8

Vexing FAQs

8-1

Chapter 8 Vexing FAQs


FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ARE FREQUENT BECAUSE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFTEN IS NOT INTUITIVE AND DOESNT FIT PRIOR EXPERIENCES. WHEN THAT HAPPENS, ITS GOOD TO HAVE A PEEK AT SOME OF THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES. HERE IS A BIT OF HELP.
Getting stuck on a basic idea can be frustrating. Anything fundamental that hangs you up can be embarrassing if the solution turns out to be, "First, plug it in," but in all-electronic, digital photography things pop up that arent in our habit structures yet. When this happens, the forums on the Internet are the first level of help, because a whole community of interested people at all levels of discovery and expertise hang out there and will willingly answer your questions. Better yet, go to the Internet and open up http://www.digitalsecrets.net/ for a list of recent issues that people are discussing plus their answers and/or links to answers. Take comfort in knowing that youre not the only one who ever raised this question. Here are a few of the most frequent.

i=

InfoBite

There isnt one. There are three. Manual, macro, and assisted. The 950 will manually focus to 0.1 meter which shows also as 0.33 feet. Decimal feet may be strange to those of you who think in inches, but one third of a foot is four inches. At that distance you are capable of making an image that fills the frame with a subject about 1-1/4 inches wide. You could copy slides at this size and fill the frame with them. This tight framing happens at full tele zoom only, and at mid zoom the autofocus can get closer. The 990 and 995 dont do quite the same in manual focus at full tele zoom. Their focusing steps are more precise, but at full telephoto the closest you can get is 0.63 or 0.7 feet which An ancient Roman denarius is about will give a field of view that is about 2-3/8 or 2 inches wide, respectively. the size of a dime. These cameras can But, pull back from full zoom by one very small increment, and the lens get closer than this, but the zoom lens gains a lot nearer focus allowing shots significantly under two inches wide. permits the flexibility of choosing your One more fast press of the zoom will bring th range down angle and distance. dramatically, and now you can achieve the sort of framing the 950 gets at its full tele position. i Interestingly, the actual focal length of the 950s lens at full wide is slightly shorter than the lens on the larger 990/995 because the imaging chip itself is about 9% smaller. They all achieve the same field of view at wide positions, but Nikons lens designers had to trim a very tiny bit of close focus performance from the tele positions of the 990 and 995 to achieve their physical size. In autofocus, the macro focus option shows on the camera monitor and LCD screen as the flower icon. Both cameras achieve closer and closer focus capability as the

WHATS THE BEST WAY TO FOCUS THE VERY CLOSEST?

8-2 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

lens is zoomed to its mid point where the flower changes color to a pale yellow. i This mid-zoom position can be forced by setting the camera to the Fisheye 2 lens setting, coincidentally. Here the 950 will autofocus to within 1.5 cm, about the width of a finger or less, from the subject. The field of view will be nearly equal to this distance as well. In Continuous AF, the camera may have to be coaxed to this close position by moving it closer to the subject slowly. In Single AF, the camera will take much longer to find the subject, since the autofocus system starts far away and searches closer before deciding on the right target. Also, the single autofocus can become confused when it sees another subject at a nearby distance, and it could mistakenly focus on that. The 990 and 995 will perform a bit better than the 950 with macro autofocus, but two systems in the camera will help avoid missing shots. The five focus zones let you chose a single or continuous focus area, and the camera will be obedient in both with fewer errors. But the 99x cameras have fully manual focus all the way down to the very closest point the lens can achieve. At the manual setting of 0.06 feet the subject is about 3/4-inch (19mm) from the lens and under 3/4 inch wide. Thats much closer than you are likely to need very often. At these distances an 8 x 10 print will represent a 13 X blowup!

ARE SOME CARDS BETTER? FASTER? CHEAPER?

Memory cards are not all exactly alike. But most are close. CompactFlash cards are designed to be compatible with each other since they must fit into the same devices. Still, manufacturers are always looking for ways to make them perform better, hold more data and have unique features. The Lexar USB Enabled cards are a representative case in point. The memory capacities and speeds of the card are close to those of their competitors, but they have added circuitry that lets them plug right into a USB port on a computer for fast downloading through a simple adapter. The cable to do this is often given away with the card. 990/995 owners get a coupon for one in the box. Transfer speeds are a selling point. Cards boasting speeds of 8x, 10,x 12x, and beyond do run faster in the camera and during downloads. They dont run eight or more times as fast as most cards, however, because the number has to do with a benchmark operation compared to some of the very earliest CF cards several generations ago. Still, they do represent relative increases in speed. i One very notable effect of their speed comes when you reformat them in the camera to clear off old images, thus creating a fresh card. A fast, high capacity card will format in just a few seconds, and older, slower cards might take ten seconds to achieve formatting. i Each memory cell in the card can be rewritten 300,000 times. (Thats right, once a day for the better part of a thousand years.) If one memory cell does hit this wall, its address is logically replaced by one of many spare cells reserved for this purpose! (Source: SanDisk). In other words: Dont sweat it.

Chapter 8

Vexing FAQs

8-3

Vivitar 285

CAN I USE OTHER FLASHES?

A great wave of fear swept through the Nikon owners in 1999 when the concept of non-Nikon brand flash units met Nikons own recommendation that using other flash units could damage the 950. There is truth to this, but it isnt anywhere near as problematic as it sounds. As noted in Chapter 3, Nikon Mike Rubin, Senior Product Manager of the compact digital cameras said, Yes you can use studio strobes with the AS-E900 or with the SK-E900 bracket (which incorporates the AS-E900) plus an AS-15 Hot shoe to PC Sync adapter. Keep in mind that if the trigger voltage is greater than 250 Volts you CANNOT use your studio strobes with the 990 or 950. This holds true for the 995 as well.

Nikon Flash Sync Cords and Adapters


Nikon Product
AS-E900 SK-E900 AS-17 AS-18 AS-19 AS-10 AS-15

Performs this operation

Camera to hot shoe cord. Passes camera sensor to flash unit as do all but AS-15. Multi flashbracket. Includes SC-E900 cord. 5-foot coiled extension cord with hot shoe socket on one end and hot shoe on other end. 5-foot (1.5m) non coiled cord with camera sync plug on each end. 10-foot (3m) non coiled cord with camera sync plug on each end. Hot shoe with no cord. Plugs into AS-18 or AS-19. Hot shoe to PC sync socket adapter. No camera sensor connection is passed to flash.

The 250-volt figure surprised even me. One can measure the voltage across a flash units trigger cord or hot shoe with a simple DC volt meter. I havent found one with a voltage higher than 15 volts. The bottom line on this concept is this: With the right cords, you can hook to anything. A very few brutal, older flash units from the deep past may be harmful, but now you know how to test them to put your mind at ease.

WILL MY PRINTS FADE?

Sure they will. In time. But it might be measured in decades, centuries, or eons. Light is the great killer of the dyes and pigments in photo prints. Ultraviolet light is particularly effective in promoting fading. i Keep the UV off the print, and even the least faderesistant inks may last for years. Hollywood films have a similar problem. Old color movies are fading. Several organizations are spending megadollars to preserve them, and their first defense is the one already built into your camera; digitization. Once the image exists as digital data, it will never fade. Of course, this puts the burden on you to effectively preserve it. Load it onto a CD-R or a DVD-R disk, and its awfully safe. As long as the disk isnt scratched, melted, or used as a hockey puck. i For critical image collections, make more than one disk, and store them in different places.

8-4 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

DO CONVERTER LENSES LOSE LIGHT?

Some do, some dont. There is a general formula that will guide you to the ones that dont: buy the Nikon Converters. Okay, thats the short form, but the real formula shows why you can say it that way. The entrance pupil of the 9xx cameras is about 20mm in diameter. The converters that have the most difficulty maintaining brightness are the tele converters, and their job is to squeeze as much light into this entrance pupil as they can achieve. If their front element diameter were smaller than their magnification power times the 20mm, then they would have to be losing light. The TC-E2 converter has a front element that is over 53mm in diameter. Plenty large enough to cover the minimum needed for its two-power enlargement. Conceivably light-lossless enlargement could be achieved with glass as small as 40mm in diameter for a 2X converter, but the Nikon formula allows a bit of zoom back, and the larger objective lens helps avoid vignetting at wider zoom settings. The front element of the TC-E3ED converter is about 63mm in diameter. Locked exposures on these cameras, with and without a converter, should be within a few percent of each others exposure if no loss is happening. This is confirmed with all of the Nikon converters, and a few of those from other brands, but the long tele converters from other sources do lose some light. i All the Nikon converters have a generously large front element, and light loss is kept to an absolute minimum with anti-reflection coatings. Thats why I recommend that you buy the Nikon converters. They cost a bit more, but you achieve more with them in terms of speed and sharpness. The Kenko 8 x 32 monocular and the EagleEye OpticZoom 5X tele converters objective lens diameters show that light is lost. An 8X converter would need at least a 160mm lens up front to gather lossless light, and a 5X converter would need its foremost glass to be 100mm in diameter. Instead they have 32mm objectives, so they lose light compared to the cameras built-in zoom.

CAN I SHOOT AT HIGHER FILM SPEEDS?

Would you like ISO 800? No problem. ISO 1600? Fairly easy. ISO 3200? Thats a little more difficult. One of the great features in the 9xx cameras is their useful depth of shadow detail. As the sensitivity is boosted, and this means literally amplified the way you would turn up a quiet passage of music, the only place that extra brightness comes from is the shadow detail of the lower ISO image. i As ISO rises, so does grain, noise, and color uncertainty. Just like it does in high speed film. This would never happen to your images but if you accidentally shot a picture way underexposed, how Fortunately, the 9xx cameras can achieve ISO numbers upwards would you fix it? of 5 times their top marked number. Sure, you will see grain and loss of quality, but the image will be perhaps even artistic. Shooting at high ISO is easy. Just tell the camera to underexpose one, two, or more stops. On the CP 950 you can simply set the camera to its hightest sensitivity, then adjust the EV to 1.0 for ISO 640 or 2.0 for ISO 1280. Dial in Image Adjust Brightness + and you will effectively pass ISO 1600.

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point of unreadable, but the appropriate ISO boosting iNovaFX filter in Photoshop will bring the picture back to nearer where you wanted. The only thing you lose is the ability to judge the image in the camera. With the 990/995 you can go farther. A special filter called iISO2Taste is included for experimentation with even higher realms of ISO boost. See Chapter 9s filter operation instructions for details. I rather like the grainy, crushed colors of ISO boosted images. They have a fairly painterly quality, and, like super speed color films, the character of the image can be somewhat abstract and Pushing the limits of ISO boost, the image was recovered with the iNovaFX ISO2Taste Tone and Color filter. artistic. Thats what I tell myself when there is no other choice. i Shooting in B&W may be preferred once you start into the higher ISO realms. The iNovaFX filters work only on RGB files, but the camera saves B&W images in this format anyhow.

i The picture on the camera monitor will be dark to the

Several on-line photographic digital print services have appeared to address exactly this question, so the answer is, yes! Ofoto, ShutterFly, DotPhoto. Print Room, and others all want you to send your images to them over the Internet, so they can make photo-paper prints and mail them back to you. The cost of prints is quite reasonable, and some will print a number of your images free, just to show you how good they make them. Not as fast as local photo finishers, they do deliver the pictures to your door, and the images look exactly like photos from film cameras. A few, like EZPrints, make crowdpleasing enlargements as big as 20 x 30 inches (at about $20 US!!). I feel a poster coming on. All over the land, digital photography is becoming a normal part of your local photo finishers service mix. If the ones in your area arent hip yet, start the rumor with A bunch of prints from Ofoto and Shutterfly. While theyre not the level of custom tweak you can make for yourself and print each one that the other guy, their competition, is putting individually, theyre extremely good and often better than the in a digital line. Within six months youll have two or one-hour photolabs results with film. more to choose from.

CAN I MAKE PHOTO PRINTS?

CAN I MAKE GIANT PRINTS AT HOME?

If you have a large format ink-jet printer, learn how to use the Photoshop Plug-In, Genuine Fractals. A demo copy is on this CD for you to experiment with. This program does an amazing thing. It scrutinizes the image and stores it in a new format on your computer. When you open the image, and are asked how you wish to print it, the GF program creates a new rendering of the image to your specifications. You might not notice any difference at 8 x 10, but from 11 x 14 on up, the Genuine Fractals versions will look better and better. i What the program does is reinterpret the image as a fractal-based object, not as a stream of pixels laid out on a grid. When you want a 200 dpi image that is 16 x 20 inches, the GF program works hard at preserving edges, contours, detail, graphic trends, and colors in a way no mere Photoshop

8-6 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

blowup could create. In side by side comparisons, the GF images are clearly superior in large prints. On very close inspection, the enlarged image seems to be made out of shards of detail, not soft blobs of enlarged pixels. It has been reinterpreted as a field of fractal shapes that preserve the photographic visual cues our eye/brain system locks onto readily.
WHATS THE BEST WAY TO LIGHT

Lighting is a subject worthy of a whole book. Ive picked a few examples here that are widely different, and each brings up a consideration that shows an unusual series of problems to be solved.
A PORTRAIT?

People look good with key light from the front, head high, and slightly to one side, plus back-light that catches their hair, shoulders, cheeks, and contours, plus a little fill to keep the front light from looking too contrasty. People also look best at mild telephoto settings. A TC-E2 tele converter is very helpful for portraits. Thats an over generalization, but it is the basis for finding the framing and light for your subjects. Outdoors the sun can act as a back light, a flash can become the key (main) light, and the sky and surrounding reflected light can act as the fill. When the sun becomes the key light, which is the way too many images are shot, the people often look too contrasty. Worse, they squint! Indoors, the diagramed sort of lighting setup (above) is almost formulaic, but it does work. This is a good place to use the IR flash trick with slave flash units. Direct flash is almost always too direct and harsh. If you can, point the key flash at a large chunk of white foam core board, white poster board, or a nearby wall to create a big, soft bounce light. Backlight and rim light from the back and/or sides can be aimed directly about 45 from the rear, giving a crisp edge of light to the head and shoulders of your subject. The picture here used four small inexpensive slave units and one major flash unit, all triggered invisibly by the camera. i For a dramatic image, you can use side light and color gels on back and rim lights. Sometimes, eliminating the fill light will enhance a sense of drama by creating unlit, negative space in the image. In all portraits the background is important. Outdoors it can easily become too detailed and distracting. The Japanese word bokeh, bor-

The basic three light system using the camera as a wireless IR trigger. The main light here is bounced for softness while the backlight is direct. Set lights or rim lights can be soft or direct as needed.

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rowed from the French bouquet, refers to the arrangement of out of focus elements behind the sharply focused subject in a photo. When you are aware that the blobs of background detail are important to the look of the scene, you can start using them as helpful elements in your shot.
A ROOM?

Sometimes hand-held in natural light is the only option. The iNovaFX iBCWC-E24@Widest.950 filter straightened the wide angle image here.

All rooms are different. Some need to be shot using ambient light, and this probably means a tripod and longish exposures. Some may look quite good if you bounce a bright flash unit off a side wall or the ceiling above the camera. When windows let in a lot of exterior light, you will need to be aware that interior and exterior light make a warm/cool combination. Perform a manual white balance on a piece of white paper equally illuminated from these opposite sources to help you record the actual colors in the room. With wide-angle lenses, youll need to run the iNovaFX barrel distortion correction filter to straighten the myriad architectural lines. Often rooms have a wide range of contrast. Windows show the outside, and the difference from outside to inside can be easily many more stops than the camera can capture. Your eye, with its 30,000:1 sensitivity, sees things the 450:1 range of the camera simply cant. See the Dynamic Range enhancing technique (Chapter 9) for the method of tripod shooting that achieves a wider dynamic range.
A PAINTING?

Any flat graphic surface can be captured with these cameras. Instant scans. Big objects, like paintings on a wall, are best scanned with a digital camera. Photographs in scrapbooks or notes on whiteboards can be captured more easily with your Nikon. Flat surfaces can glare, so the camera flash is useless much of the time. Sometimes you must use it, however, and Photoshop offers a work around. If you shoot a painting or flat graphic object with the camera flashbut do it at an angle to avoid glare reflectionsyou will have an image of the painting at a perspective angle. i Photoshop has a Transform tool that will allow you to correct the perspective and Only one chance to snap this image under available light. straighten up the image. Many images in a museum, or large permanent wall graphics, Photoshops Transform tool in would have to be photographed from opportunistic positions. With available light and a Perspective mode rescued it. skewed point of view, this tool will help. i Classic lighting for flat objects uses two symmetrically placed lights, either flash units or incandescent lights, that are along the 45 line extending from the center of the subject on each side. This angle has some flexibility. In cramped quarters, polarization filters can cover the lights and can be rotated to stop the glare before it starts. Another polarizer on the camera will eliminate any residual glare at the edges of your flat subject. Here you will wish to use fairly long zoom settings, and the farther back you can move the lights, the more even and glare free the image will appear.
AN AQUARIUM?

Here the questions are how the flash affects the fish, how to control glare from the glass on the camera side of the tank, focusing on moving fish in dim light, and how the tanks structure may create shadows that cant be seen until the flash goes off.

8-8 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

coming together. But with flash you will have to learn several things through a series of test exposures. The good news: test exposures are free. The fish: try a flash out on them. They probably wont dart around too much or theyll probably get used to it fairly quickly if they do. Theyre used to glints of sunlight from the surface. Wrangling them into position might be a tougher problem. i Have a laser pointer handy. Theyll follow it around. Many respond like its an egg or food. The glare: Make sure the camera itself isnt being illuminated by external lighting units, thus causing its own reflection. Control the light, and keep it in the aquarium. Dont use the camera flash at all, not even as an IR trigger, as mentioned in Chapter 4; any light from the camera will bounce off the glass into your lens and ruin the shot. External flash units, incandescent, or fluorescent lights would be your best bets. If you can, try to pump as much light directly down into the tank from the top with all the upper top-of-tank equipment cleared away. i The option of lighting this at 45 angles from the front is not particularly good because the seams at the edge of the front window will now cast shadows into the fish. Side lighting and top lighting will be better approaches.

i With halogen or fluorescent lights, some problems disappear because you can see the lighting

WHATS WITH A POLARIZER?

Polarizers are filters that look gray to the eye but have the extra physical attribute of being able to darken light that is polarized at a 90 angle different from the filters own angle. Light becomes polarized as it glints off of water, polished surfaces, glass, leaves, graphics, ceramicsanything that can create glare except for one thing: metal surfaces. Blue sky also polarizes light, and the portion of the sky that is 90 from the sun is quite responsive to a polarizing filter. Polarized sunglasses may be tinted, but polarizing filters are neutral gray and tend to make colors look more vivid when the glossy reflection from surfaces is canceled. The way you use it is straightforward. You must be able to see the camera monitor well, otherwise the effect may be lost to your eye. Outdoors, that means being in deep shade or having a viewing hood or focusing magnifier accessory on the camera. The filter is attached normally and rotated in its freewheeling mount. Glare reflections and sky color will brighten and dim as you turn the filter. Turn it to where the image of the sky looks darkest, and you will have the effect in your shot. If you are shooting into water at a steep angle, about 45, you can erase the reflection of the sky to a marked degree by turning the filter until the water looks clearer. Both but i Circular polarizers are filters that have a special mate- angle images are exactly the same exposure90. the of the polarizing filter has changed by rial on the camera side of the filter called a retarder plate. It tumbles the emerging photons in a way that cant be seen with your eye, but which is helpful inside the camera. Two linear polarizers can be crossed to extinguish the light flowing through them, but two circular polarizers behave differently. In fact, a single linear polarizer held up to a mirror will look merely gray to your eye as you look through it at its own reflection, but a circular polarizer will look gray only when observed from behind. Turn the filter over and the reflection will darken the way two crossed regular polarizing filters do. Amazing but true.

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A good coated filter, like this 28mm Marumi, will show a glare reflection that is darker than the reflection from an uncoated surface. The reflection is slightly darker because more light is entering the camera instead of being bounced off the glass.

A UV and/or Skylight filter is a clear pane of ultraviolet light-absorbing glass that prevents ultraviolet light from entering the camera. Thats nice, but the glass on the front of the camera already does this and it is built in. However, a UV filter offers an additional feature: protection. If you are in an environment that throws sand, tree limbs, dog noses, and unexpected fingers towards your camera, a UV filter is cheap protection for your cameras lens. i Uncoated UV filters lose about 8% of the light by reflecting it away from each air/glass surface. Coated filters lose less light and wont create reflections when pointed at bright lights. Try to get a coated UV or Skylight filter if you can. These filters add no particular color quality to the image. With film cameras they slightly warm the image. Of course, film is locked into its white balance by its chemistry, and your digital Nikon isnt. UV filters are good protection for that built-in front glass surface.

DO I NEED A UV FILTER?

High precision mechanics and electronics will likely outlast your use of them. It seems that well-designed digital gear doesnt break very often until it gets dropped very hard. As with most high tech tools, if it doesnt break in the first few months of heavy use, it probably will run longer than you will. i If your camera is functioning well right now, dont be afraid of wearing it out. Some very minor physical issues occurred with the 950 only. The rubber grip came free from the camera for a number of people. I replaced one with some Barge cement and havent had a problem since. Other 950 cameras never developed the problem. For a small percentage of owners, the camera will develop a problem mechanically or electronically simply because of wear or a singlepoint component failure. A switch can wear, a tiny component can fail, and at times like these you will get to know Nikons excellent repair service. Most repairs are made in less than two weeks, and some happen in mere days.

HOW LONG WILL THIS CAMERA LAST?

One of the first 950s is still going strong after around 22,000 shots. At any realistic evaluation, the cost per image works out to a few pennies and it is showing no signs of deterioration other than a cosmetic scratch here and there. Like many good high tech items, they last.

Oddly enough, it is NOT the 3:1 that Nikon claims. The EXIF data you see on one of the data screens in playback shows a zoom setting that ranges from 8.2mm at full wide to 23.4mm at full telephoto on the 990. Egad! That would mean a zoom range of only, lets see now, 2.82:1! Have I been robbed? Maybe not. Focal length expresssed as millimeters isnt the whole story: 3:1 could mean how wide is a

WHAT IS THE REAL ZOOM RANGE?

8-10 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

subject from wide to tele position, so lets check it that way. i Oh. My. Gosh. When focused on a real world object, like a ruler, the zoom ratio becomes 2.97:1. Well, in my book thats close enough to 3:1.

CAN I SHOOT A COMPUTER OR TV?

Computer and TV CRT images have a frame rate. They scan a tiny intense electron spot from left to right, top to bottom, in a small fraction of a second, scribing a picture onto glowing phosphors. LCD screens, like you find on laptop computers, dont do this. You can shoot those at any speed you wish because instead of a frame rate, they have an update rate, meaning that their pixels are on all the time until told to transform into something new. TV in the USA is in the NTSC format, and that means 30 frames per second. Computer monitors display anywhere from about 60 to over a hundred frames per second, depending on the setting from the computer and the ability of the monitor. An exposure that is too short can fail to get a whole frame (see inset) and have a dark bar across the image where the electron beam couldnt catch up to where it started during the exposure. An exposure just a hair larger than the frame rate may produce a slight overlap of the scan and cause a light bar across the shot. i The best way to get a clear image is to acquire several frames in the exposure and let the light average out so no bar can show. This means setting the shutter speed to Shutter Priority mode and gathering images at 1/15 or 1/8 sec. i White balancing off a TV must be done manually. The cameras have no native TV color setting, and each TV has slightly different color. So how can you make a good white balance from a color TV? 1. Turn the color to zero. Drain it out. Now you have a Black and White TV image. 2. Do the white balance on the Black and White image. Thats all there is to it. You dont need a pure white image to do a white balance, just a neutral gray image. Restore the color and shoot. Same thing for a computer except there you can control the image on the screen so you can open a white sheet of paper in Photoshop or a word processor page, and use that for white balancing.

WHAT IS THE BEST GENERAL SETTING?

If there is one, it would be the fully automatic mode. Point and shoot. Most of the time your images will be just fine.

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Contrast (880/885/990/995), or no Img Adjust (950), Program exposure, ISO 100, and Auto Sharpening (880/885/990/995/775) will do the trick. Other considerations are strictly personal. Which Focus type, continuous or single? Which things are memorized when the camera is shut off? Do you really want the camera to start up with your last EV compensation in place? Since there is no best general photographer, except you, you will have to answer these yourself.

i In manual mode, Matrix meter, Auto White Balance, Single exposure, Auto

Here is how you fix it so it doesnt keep popping open: Notice the small friction-fit post that goes into the hole nearest the tripod socket? On close viewing, this post is actually split into two halves of a cylinder. If you open the slot in the post a little, with a thin fingernail, you could put a sliver of paper or tape into the crack causing it to have more friction in its mated socket. But that might fall off in the socket. (Often, just flexing it apart helps.) i Or you can put a bead of Super Glue on it before the plastic relaxes back to normal. Dont close the CF door! Wait for the glue to dry overnight before closing the door. You do NOT want to get wet or semi-wet Super Glue in your camera. You just want to make the tip of that post a little wider.

MY 950 CF DOOR WONT STAY SHUT.

A small accessory called the Happenstance Slide Copier facilitates this for less than $40. It is a simple slide holder on a frame that rests on an upturned lens. Being loose, it rotates and has enough freedom to let you copy a slide without any great preparation at all. Place the camera under a lamp, slide the image around in the holder and shoot in macro focus mode for instant high quality slide transfers. Nikon makes the ES-E28 slide and negative copier for under $100. See it on page 3C-20. i Negatives are another story. A paper slide mount can hold the negative strip without scratching it. Film negatives are low contrast. They are designed to print on very much higher contrast papers to achieve good results. The best general starting place is to shoot using auto exposure, autofocus, and auto sharpness. The one non-auto control you will want to set is the White Balance Preset sampled from a negative that seems to have a rather dark area (light on the negative) near its center. Since you will be probably doing several Photoshop operations on the image, shoot it in full size Fine compression. See Chapter 3C for special 995 notes. i The iCNegRough filter will get you in the ballpark with an initial series of operations to bring out the contrast, chroma, hue and tonalities of the original shot. Be forewarned that a camera transfer like this will not achieve exceptionally high quality results, but you can use it for moderate quality results. With a bit of extra work you can achieve a pretty fair match to the A color negative, above, is captured with a very negatives original color print, but just like the results from differwide range of tonalities. Reversing and color tweaks ent photo labs, be prepared for surprises. in Photoshop produced the bottom image. The cloud
detail in the resulting print was far better than the original photographic print!

CAN I COPY SLIDES? NEGATIVES?

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WHAT ACCESSORIES ARE AVAILABLE?

Every day somebody comes up with a new accessory for these cameras. At press time the list includes:

Item
Monitor Hoods Monitor Protector Sheets Filters, 28mm Filters, Special Effect Lens Cleaning Device NiMH Batteries Step Up Rings 28 > 37+ Flash Sync Cords Camera Bags Slave Flash Units Wing Multi-Bracket Converter Optics
Tele / Wide / Fisheye (protective film overlay for PDAs)

Source/Manufacturer
Jar Sun Shield Hoodman Fellows WriteRight Nikon Kenko, Hoya, Marumi+ 2filter.com CKC Power Cokin (over 140 exist) LensPen Thomas-Distributing SmallPower CKC Power 2filter Nikon Nikon, etc. Cobra Ritz Camera EagleEyeUK Nikon Wide WC-E24/WC-E63 Nikon Fisheye FC-E8 Nikon 2 X TC-E2 Nikon 3 X TC-E3ED Kenko 8 x 32 CKC Power EagleEyeUK 5 X 32 Marexar Ultrawidar ScopeTronix Happenstance Products Nikon Happenstance Products Nikon CKC Power TheRollBar VersaTech HarborTronics DigiSnap 1000 Nikon MC-EU1 Nikon Others This is it

Approximate cost
$ 8 ~ 16 $ 12 $ 8 ~ 40

$ 6 ~ $30 ea. $ 10 $ 26 Maha MH204F charger $ 30 Three sets of NiMH cells $ 26+ $ 9 ~ $40 $ 30 ~ $50 $ 20 ~ $150 $ 16 ~ $50+ $ 60 $ 90/150 $ 160 $ 120 $ 260 $ 160+ $ 220+ < $100 used $ 50 $ 40 $ 98 $ 40 $ 20 ~ $75

Converter Optics

High magnification

Converter Optics Fisheye Telescope Mounts Slide Copier Small Object Copy Stage Flash Brackets

Remote ElectronicTrigger Belt Pouch for 990/995 eBook w/CD full of stuff

$ 100 $ 130 $ 20 $ 12 ~ $25 $ 50

i In general you can take the suppliers name and add .com to bring up a Web page or use the entry here in an Internet search engine. I suggest using www.Google.com as your first Internet search engine to find a supplier.

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WILL MY RUBBER GRIP LOOSEN?

It may. The grip on the 950 can lose adhesion due to heat, hand sweat or a combination of the two. I lost one on my first 950 but used Barge cement to replace it and it has not been loose since. The more recent cameras seem immune.

It does, but not as much as you may think. Yes, every time you recompress an image it grows less detailed and contains more artifacts. In Photoshop you can save any image as a TIFF, a Native Photoshop .psd file, or as an uncompressed PICT all of which do NOT degrade with subsequent re-saves. I tested an image by opening, re-saving, opening again, etc. ten times. Each time I made changes to the image to see how multiple sessions would damage it. Interestingly, the biggest damage came early, and subsequent generations showed less accumulated artifacts. In the test detail shown at the left, the image was saved initially at the 70% compression level using Photoshops excellent Save For Web system. Generations 2 to 10 were saved at 60% quality to supposedly accelerate compression artifact build up. No changes were made to the image between saved generations. As you can see in this blowup, the Generations two and ten of a compression save/open/ resave/reopen sequence. No changes were made between artifact build-up is minor, if not invisible, even over the nine generations. Which is the earlier generation #2? Without testgenerations of 60% quality. ing I could not tell, could you? ( ) Excuse me, isnt each generation only 60% of the last? At that rate generation #10 should be only 1.6% of the quality of the original. Clearly, it is not. A print from each file would be nearly impossible to perceive as being different. So what is really happening? Compression is rigidly consistent. Without new differences in pixel values to re-compute from one generation to the next, the compression engine puts pixel values right back into the same place with only very minor mathematical rounding errors. Generations 2 and 10 have stayed virtually identical. Layer two identical images. Make the top one negative (Image > Adjust > Invert) and use the Opacity slider to make it 50% transparent. The monitor image turns pure 50% gray. But, with the original and compressed copies layered instead, any differences show immediately as tonal changes from the medium gray result. When tested this way, generations two and ten above show almost no differences. i The moral to the story: If you make changes with each save, artifacts build up. Any crop, color or density change, geometric transformation, or retouch provides an opportunity for re-saves to increase JPEG artifacts. If you just add a touch up here and there, only the new areas are susceptible to recompression artifacts. Changes ARE present from generation to generation, but they are nearly always invisible. As you can see in the example above, each generations cumulative loss is minor. i The iNovaFX filters on the CD include a special filter, iDeJPEG, for reducing the effect of JPEG artifacts, but using this filter will not solve the recompression artifacts. Its purpose is more for preparing a highly compressed image prior to either printing or conversion to a Genuine Fractals file and only for pronounced artifact suppression.
Its on the left.

DOES RE-COMPRESSION HURT THE PICTURE?

8-14 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

IS THAT SWIVEL GOING TO BREAK?

A 950 owner, D. Warner, wanted to know this and he tested the swivel mechanism to death. At a pull of 36 pounds, the support arms of the swivel began to bend, but it supported around 51 pounds before it started to fail. No, if you use the camera normally, it is not going to break. The swivel on the 990 is even more durable. And the 995 swivel is the strongest of them all.

Any photographic store will have lens cleaner and lens cleaning tissue. These work well. Some industrial supply places may have lint-free linen cloth pads about three inches square. Eyeglass stores have lens cleaners and these are generally less expensive than the photographic version but do just as good a job. In a pinch, use Windex. i Never squirt or spray anything onto the camera directly. i The lens is a special case. Never scrub the lens hard, never use repeated wet/dry operations to clean tough fingerprints and uncooperative smears from the glass. A recommended device called the LensPen (Sima) costs more than lens cleaning fluid but cleans up fingerprints (the biggest offender) easily and reliably without fluids. Use it only on the lens.

CAN I CLEAN THE LENS? MONITOR?

HOW BIG IS THE IMAGING CHIP?

In the 950 the image chip is called a 1/2-inch chip by manufacturers and specification writers. Most people assume this means it is about half an inch across, or in its diagonal measurement. When the 990 came out, its chip was described as a 1/1.8-inch chip and that led to mass confusion. The first would supposedly be 0.5 inches and the latter would be 0.556 inches. Neither is the case. i The measurement used here has nearly nothing to do with the actual size of the imaging surface area except in the broadest way. The term half-inch chip is a derivation of a measurement used by older tube-type video cameras that existed before the dawn of imaging chips. In those video cameras, a 1/2-inch diameter glass vidicon imaging tube would invariably have a photosensitive patch that was 8mm from corner to opposite corner. When imaging chips replaced tubes, the nomenclature didnt change. Go figure. Your 950 camera makes its entire image on a 6.4 x 4.8mm area of silicon and your 880/885/990/995 camera uses only 7.1 x 5.3mm. Imagine, with the CP 99x you have a camera that produces about 3/4 of the image detail of a 35mm film frame, which is 864 square millimeters of chemical imaging material, from a small slab of silicon that has only 37.63 square millimeters of active imaging circuitry. The digital camera is producing a picture about 17 times more acutely than the film camera!

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CAN I TRIGGER THE CAMERA REMOTELY?

Nikon has a wired electronic remote control, the MC-EU1, that will trigger the camera without finger intervention on the camera. It also zooms the lens, and does timelapse and intervalometer exposures. A button on the unit behaves exactly like the shutter button on the camera itself, having a half-press and full-press position that focus-locks the camera, then exposes the shot remotely. The small LCD screen even has a back-light for use in the dark. i In order to use it with the 990 (sorry, 950) one must have the camera firmware version 1.1 or higher installed. If your camera is one of the first group manufactured, you will have to download the firmware update over the Internet from Nikons own Website and follow the easy instructions that transfer the new software into it from your computer. i Another company, HarborTronics, makes a remote DigiSnap 2000 exposure and timelapse device that triggers the 950 or 990 (separate versions) through its data input/output connector. Ive tried it on both cameras and it works exactly as advertised. Its four buttons allow you to zoom, create time-lapse intervals in the field, and trigger the camera remotely.

Some do, and others make you think they do, but dont. When you half-press the shutter button on the 950, a meter and focus reading are locked in. The camera imposes an artificial time limit of eight seconds before the monitor suddenly brightens. Has the camera timed out? No, it has simply relaxed a bit from its most-ready configuration. A follow through with the shutter button will perform a normal exposure with all exposure settings intact. i When in Aperture or Shutter Priority mode on the 950, the Command Dial plus the middle button under the monitor selects the Mode, and for the next eight seconds turning the Command Dial changes the shutter speed or aperture. After eight seconds, no amount of turning the Command Dial will affect aperture or shutter speed until a momentary press of the center button is made again. i The 990 and 995 are a little kinder. When it is in Aperture or Shutter Priority mode, the Command Dial is the means to change the priority setting, staying active until the cows come home, or forever, whichever comes first (power permitting). This active condition survives sleep cycles, on/off cycles, playback cycles, and intervening uses of the Command Dial for other purposes. The half-press of the 990s shutter release will hold the exposure computation forever, but in all modes, the camera will compute the exposure and hold the aperture closed at its shooting f/number for only 10 seconds. Then the iris will open up to full, the image on the monitor screen will become brighter, and/or suddenly lose depth of field, and you may think the exposure computation has been discarded or lost. Not true. If you follow through with the rest of the shutter press, the exposure will happen, and the correct f-stop will be in place. The camera may fool you into thinking that it has timed out, but it will simply be reminding you that youve been holding the shutter button for ten seconds, nothing more. Of course, all Coolpix cameras have time-out settings for their awake states and all but the 775 let you select different awake timings for record and playback modes.

DO SOME FUNCTIONS TIME OUT?

8-16 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

CAN I PUT MY IMAGES ON THE WEB?

There are a number of ways of getting your images into the Internet. You can post them on any of a number of services such as NikonNet, PhotoPoint, Webshots, and FotoTime (all found by adding .com) that allow you to upload them to the host site and immediately see them as collections of images under uniquely named portfolios. Check for features like public and private albums, quick upload, unrestricted number of images allowed, indefinite storage, and tracking of hits that the photographer can reset at any time. Digital on-line photo finishers like NikonNet, Ofoto, and Shutterfly also will let you store and display your images from their site. They also want you to order more prints, and most will allow friends and family to order prints of the shots on display. i For the greatest control, you can make your own page in Photoshop. Use the File > Automate > Web Photo Gallery function. It will read every image in a folder, make a thumbnail of it, reduce the original to some appropriate size, and generate all the web pages with captions, interactive controls, and easily browsed folders of organized images, all in one step! In order to prepare to use it, you simply create a new folder full of images, give the images names for captions, run the Automate Web Photo Gallery function, and stand back from your computer for a few moments while it creates everything neatly organized into a single folder. Then place that folder on your own Website in the normal manner. An interesting series of Web page images prepared exactly this way can be found at www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/autowebgallery/.

MY PRINTS DONT LOOK JUST LIKE THEY DO ON THE COMPUTER

Nor will they ever. Glowing phosphors can only approximate the look of ink on a piece of paper, but getting the estimated image on the screen to be close enough to work with is the first step. While nothing can fully replace the idea of accurate monitor and printer calibration, most people simply dont have the time, equipment, software, and experience resources to achieve this. Most technologists will have you calibrate your monitor to a standard, then apply the corrections to your printing process that bring it in alignment with that standard. There is a more practical way of creating consensus. Its not as accurate, but it helps. Principle #1: The camera (unless it is broken) will generate files that look like Very Nice Photos under bright light or direct sunlight. Good color, good shading, good contrast, and good brightness can be achieved readily. Especially from a non-challenging item like a colorful reflective piece of art. The color pattern test file under this eBooks dust jacket is a good example. A photo of it should look just one jump duller (on a scale of ten, for example) than the original when viewed next to the original file on your monitor. But since the monitor may be lying, first print the file on your printer; shoot that print as a photo; print it; then compare the two. Now some real evaluation can begin. The difference between the two is the sum of all factors from camera to print. Some images are just right from the camera Principle #2: Photorealistic printers these days can make a good file needing no manipulation before printing. Prints into a good print unless something between input and output messes from these can help you setup your monitor. it up.

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Chances are good that the overall look of the print of the test image will be close, but not perfect. It will have nice gray scale containing a general tint, but the white will be darker and the black part of the gray scale wont be fully black. The colors, while colorful, will be not as vivid or well delineated. Typically, the magenta will be less distinguished and the yellow, duller. Remind yourself that this is a photo of a print, not the original file that spans the full brightness and color range the computer can produce. Note the image on the left. Its one picture of the test pattern along with a print of the test pattern all in one shot. The top test pattern is live while the print is what I refer to as looking a full step duller. The print contains a blue tinge overall and looked that way to my eye. Since the image here is a secondgeneration image, the tint shows here about double the strength it contained live. Remember that the degree of inaccuracy seen in the print represents the cumulative total of camera, computer, printer driver, ink, and paper. If you can shoot a picture, put it into your printer via your computer, and make a high quality photograph pop out of your printer, all while your monitor looks very different from the picture, dont fix the input and dont fix the output. Theyre probably fine. The chief offender is either your computer monitor or software that somehow is re-interpreting the image before it is displayed. The computer monitor, its drivers, or the displaying software are either set to the wrong brightness, contrast, gamma, or color settings. Possibly a bit of each of these. If it is the software, you will have to dig into that to neutralize the effect. Photoshop contains a set-up utility called Adobe Gamma that should get your display much closer. For the example shown, the original image with the slightly blue/cyan tinge should look too blue by about that much on the screen. It did on mine. The top image above the print should have no overall tint. If it has a color tint in its gray areas on your monitor, then your monitor is producing it.
CONFUSED ABOUT PHOTOSHOPS COLOR CONVERSIONS?

Photoshop 5 and above can confuse you about color setup. Here is how you get back to a level playing field: In Photoshop 4.0, 5.0, and 5.5 under the File > Color Settings > RGB Setup. This window should be filled out with these entries:
RGB: Gamma: White Point: Primaries: Adobe RGB 2.20 6500K Adobe RGB (D65) (1998) (1998)

(Monitor compensation box should be unchecked.)

Close the window. There is more. Now open File > Color Settings > Profile Setup. This window should be filled out like this:
Embed Profiles: Assumed Profiles: (all unchecked) RGB CMYK Grayscale Profile Mismatch Handling: RGB CMYK Grayscale none none none Ignore Ignore Ignore

Close the window and open a new image on the screen. Photoshop will no longer convert files upon opening. It will not compensate for the monitors set-up file either. If it looks different from before, it may look closer to correct. This would be a good sign. But the monitor itself still may not resemble the

8-18 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

tonalities and colors you are seeing on that reference print. At least you will have confidence that the variables from Photoshop have been neutralized. Your options are several. 1. You can carefully use Photoshops own setup procedures to recalibrate your monitor. 2. You can use a third party calibration system like the one from Monaco Systems to zero in on the color. 3. You can use the iNova Approximation Method to simply get close enough to judge some things.
INOVA APPROXIMETHOD

Simply stated: Use whatever means you can to make the computer monitor agree with the print. Most higher quality monitors have a degree of color finesse that will get you closer using the controls of the monitor alone. Photoshops own basic setup program, Adobe Gamma, may benefit from this manual intervention tweak, too. (Providing it helps.) If your computer will allow you to have several setup files for the look of your monitor, name this new one Photo. If you are using lots of photos in a program like PowerPoint, the Photo file may be useful here, too. If the process of changing your monitors setup file is too complex or does strange things to the look of other programs, go back to the Photoshop Files > Color Settings > RGB Setup window and try different Gamma, White Point and Primaries settings. Were desperate here, but it is only approximate. i Get lost? Take it from the top. Photoshops Adobe Gamma program followed by manual tweaks, compare to prints in hand (Try to match the print viewing light color to the white point of your monitor. Indirect daylight or desk fluorescent lamps are approximately correct. Halogens are the worst thing you could judge prints under; they are too warm.) Then try the Photoshop color calibration controls (File->Color settings>RGB Setup) to see if you can get closer. Pay special attention to the gamma number. Principle #3: The first print is almost never the final. Ansel Adams said that, a print is never done. Okay, its not really a principle, its more like a theory, but it seems to hold true. If you can get comfortable with making a small print first to test the picture, you may be saving yourself lots of ink and paper in the long run. i An exceedingly helpful program, Test Stripnow in its third generationis a Photoshop Plug-in for Color Correction, Proofing, and Calibration, made by Vivid Details. It is THE program to use when attempting custom results and it will allow you to make strips and multiple small prints that show you exactly what this or that variation in color or density will look like. It will give you more experience in a weekend of printing than a college-level course in the subject (except that the cool schools use it, too). i Version 3 of Test Strips tryout version is on this CD! Not only that, but it is fully functional for 30 days!! After a while, even if your monitor always shows a tad too much contrast or imperfect gamma, you will begin to anticipate how the print will look anyhow and your judgements will improve. Many images will be just fine in the first print with minimal post production. You will rarely, if ever, get it perfect at first. i You will know that you have passed a threshold when you look at a shot and immediately see that it was made in the shade and has a subtle layer of bluishness on it that a quick touch-up will fix up before printing. Most of your viewing audience wont be as sensitive to the colors the camera produced and would look at a straight print and say fine. When you show the print with the minor fix, they will naturally prefer it, but most folks are used to seeing what the one-hour photo store produces and subtle corrections just wont be on their horizon.

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MY PICTURES ARE TOO THIS OR TOO THAT

Welcome to the club. Mine are always too this or that. Too blue, too warm, too contrasty, too dark, too tilted. So I crop, change the white balance and tonal curve (Curves), or change the gamma (Levels), punch up or down an area of color (Saturate/Desaturate sponge), sharpen an area (Unsharp Mask filter), blur an area (Quickmask followed by Gaussian Blur), or shift the color of shadows, midtones, or highlights (Variations or Color Balance windows). Often the most useful tool is the one that punches up the color (Hue/Saturation). Here you can attack individual zones of color or the color of the entire image at once. Shifting Hue in the + direction will turn yellows greener, blues more magenta and magentas redder. Boosting chroma can go as high as +40 in some shots, and you might want to drop chroma to zero to preview shots as B&W images. Some may even look more dramatic this way.
HOME IN ON THE RANGE

As I work through these operations I am asking a digital image to do things that have an analog result. It is all too easy to go beyond the limits of digital manipulations, and often some aspect of a shot simply cant be saved. Fortunately most offcolor corrections are minor. i One of the most common is the slightly blue image usually shot in shadow. This too often fools the Auto White Balance into missing the color. Heres how it is easily fixed: Open the image in Photoshop and open the Image > Adjust > Color Balance window. This is the color control that lets you treat highlights, shadows, and midtones separately with three numerical sliders for each domain. If you enter a number sequence of 20, 0, -20 the picture will warm those blues away. You thought it was supposed to be totally computerized, thus perfect? When that truly happens, science fiction movies will come true, and the computers wont need you or me any more. If you feel that your camera just isnt producing good color due to a failure of some sort, try to find another Coolpix 9xx owner, and team up shooting several things at the exact same settings. Compare shots, and if your camera is still deficient, call up Nikon. (The chances of two cameras being screwed up exactly the same way is almost nil.) Not every camera that rolled off the assembly line was perfect, and since camera and film are the same device, it will be up to them to get it right.
COLOR SPACE: THE INFINITE FRONTIER

Your eye has about a billion-to-one brightness range, and the print you are making has only about 250:1 from darkest to brightest as displayed on a sheet of paper under ideal conditions. In order to push good results into this narrow range, you must be aware of how changes can pile up on each other. Each type of change is easy to manipulate on its own. Sometimes, too easy. As these 256 levels of available range in each of the Red, Green, or Blue channels of the image are lifted, contrasted, darkened, distorted, blurred, and sharpened, the relationships between the values becomes non-linear. The potential 16,777,216 different variations of tonality and color will begin to have gaps due to multiple rounding errors. We can understand that an image which is made to have a contrastier look must do so by stretching its gray scale. In a typical case, a 50% increase in contrast, values from 0 to 170 are reassigned and

8-20 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

redistributed from 0 to 255. Original values 120 and 121 now become values 180 and 181.5. Of course, there is no such thing as value 181.5, so this one jumps to 182. The original range of some numerical values are now separated by 2/255 , nearly one percent. This is about as far as you can push the values in an image before your eye starts noticing artifacts. Higher compression starts making itself obvious, and fully saturated solid blues and reds are the first to suffer. Going further really hurts the image. At 2.5% separation between values, the entire gray scale has been reduced to just 40 steps, and the color palate has dropped to 0.38% of the original images range, just 64,000 colors. With fewer tonal steps, each color channel becomes less capable of fine discrimination. i Fortunately, for many operations Photoshop has the ability to work internally with a range of more than 8-bit, 256 gray levels. A menu choice allows you to adjust grayscale sensitive operations as 16-bit changes instead. Check the Image > Mode > 16-bits/channel option before doing heavy changes to a picture. Now when gamma, contrast, curves, or color changes are made, the original values are being shuffled up and down a scale with not just 256, but 65,536 gray levels between the darkest and lightest values. As a last step, after several manipulations, these 16-bit images are resolved to their closest 8-bit equivalents for storage and printing. In doing so, you are imposing only a single instance of rounding error, not the total of many. Not all images are to be representations of exactly what the camera saw. By violating the rules of "good" image handling, very interesting effects can appear. I would encourage you to chew up images as much as you can, making test after test to see what you can get away with and what you cant. Photoshop can be a sort of playground if you let it, and you will develop valuable experience as you play.

MY PICTURES ARENT SHARP

Question number one: How are you viewing the image? A 100% scale image on a computer monitor? Is each pixel of the original displayed as a pixel of the monitor image? A 66.7% scaled image in Photoshop? A print that was made at 72 dpi? There are lots of ways of diminishing sharpness. Unstable cameras are common, faulty optics and focus mechanisms are less common. Viewing conditions are very, very common. Often, unsharpness is a result of misfocus. Something is sharp, just not the thing you wanted. Other times, the autofocus hadnt finished the job, but the shutter button went all the way to exposure. If the camera isnt in focus, then practicing achieving good focus is a remedy. Remember, its a two-stage process; try to pre-focus before the decisive moment comes along. i Manual focus may be needed for situations where the autofocus isnt efficient, like dark and uncontrasty situations. Twenty minutes of fooling around with a yardstick and a tape measure can do wonders for your ability to estimate short distances. Or let the camera teach you. Setting the camera on 3 ft. or 10 ft. and watching the monitor will show you what the camera is looking for and the tolerance it has. Move in and out from a subject until it is equally out of focus this distance and that. Then put the camera in the middle of that range and shoot a test shot. Question number two: What are you looking through? A JPEG viewing utility with limited capability or a well-scaled display program that carefully interpolates the image into place? With 33% and 67% images, even Photoshop does a poorer job of showing a computer screen image. At 50% and 25%, the images are much better looking on screen. Exact divisions of 2 are easier to display. At 66.7%, three pixels of the original are trying to squeeze into two pixels of your monitors display, and the fast display scaling routine wont do it perfectly, so you will see jagged detail to a certain extent.

The gradient on the left is made of 256 steps each of Red, Green, and Blue. The one on the right has been squashed and unsquashed several symetrical ways. The bands in each color are places where data has developed missing continuity. It is easier to do this in a photo than you may think. And if your display shows both sides with banding, then youre not seeing the full 24-bit, 16-million colors available.

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When you first open an image on your computer screen and view it at 100%, left, the image seems soft. No wonder, its a detail from an image 28.4 inches wide or tall. If it were a print of the whole image, youd probably stand back from it to take it all in. The reduced image on the right has more detail per displayed pixel because it was downconverted. Both are 72 ppi on this page.

Question number three: How close is your nose to the picture? Are you observing the image at a position that makes sense (see the portable world scale measuring device, discussed earlier)? Are you trying to look at a tabloid-sized print at normal reading distance? If all of these questions reveal answers that indicate you are doing everything just right and the picture itself doesnt seem sharp you may need some Sharpness Helper.
FOCUS POKUS

At full-size on the computer monitor you are witnessing the pixels directly as the largest image your camera can make. Unless you have a monitor that displays 1600 x 1200 pixels (somewhat rare and with very small pixels), or 2048 x 1536 pixels (almost unheard of and larger than HDTVs best), some of the picture is off the screen. If you look at it half-size (800 x 600 pixels for Nikon 950 images, 1024 x 768 for 990 shots) theyll look much sharper. Millions of colors only, please. Photoshop has a filter called "Unsharp Mask," and although it may sound like something for creating unsharpness, it really is correctly named, for what it does is masks the effect of unsharpness. For images on the border of sharp, it can be just what the doctor ordered. For whacked-out, blurry pictures, it simply wont help. Used too strongly, it can exacerbate grain. So using it becomes a balancing act. i Select the image and set the filter to give you a 100% to 180% effect over an image area of only 0.3 to 0.4 pixels. Use this number as a starting point. Rarely will you need to go over a pixel radius of 1.2 at an effect strength of 120%, but you can always go too far on purpose. For fine work, try small radius numbers and large strengths. 0.2 pixel at 300%, for instance.

8-22 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Because the image chip in a digital camera is doing the work of all three primary colors, the images wont be as sharp as a high quality scanners version of a photographic original. So what are these images good for if theyre not the absolute maximum sharpness? At 160 dpi on a printed page, the Nikon 950 and 775 images look like presentable 8 x 10s right out of the camera. The 880/885/990/995 cameras can achieve similar results at nearly 11 x 14 inches. With images this size and larger, the Genuine Fractals program (on the CD) will help preserve sharpness.

WHATS WITH THIS PIXELS PER INCH/DOTS PER INCH THING?

Confusion often sets in with three little letters: dpi. In inkjet printer language, it means dots per inch or, more realistically, indexable points per inch that the printer could fill with a dot if it needed to. As a measure of printer precision it carries weight and meaning. As a measure of how sharp your picture will look, it means less. The number of printer dots is nowhere near large enough to perfectly portray each pixel. In Photoshop, the Image Size control not only lets you scale the image by enlarging or reducing the number of pixels, it lets you scale the output by changing the number of pixels per inch the output will use to print the image. These pixels per inch, Ppi, are completely independent of the printers dots per inch, Dpi. A shot with 144 pixels per inch that is fed to a 1440 x 720 dpi Epson printer will be interpreted on the page with only 50 total dots available to define the color of each original camera pixel. To be completely faithful to the original, it would need a minimum of 256 dots per pixel to cover the 256 levels of brightness for that color. It is short by a factor of five. So the printer has to cleverly interpret the shot in order for the print to survive. It dithers the pixels pseudo-randomly to cause your eye to see, in effect, what really isnt there. It works so well that over 99% of the people who see this kind of print will immediDots vs. Pixels. The dots per inch are the ones that look like dots. Book and ately take it to be a photograph with- magazine prints use variable size dots to deliver ink to page. The inkjet printer uses tiny dots but varys the number of them statistically. Either way, the dots interpret the out question. underlying pixels of the image. More pixels=better image. Unless there are too few dots. For the full effect of this image, view it at 300%. Photoshops Image Size window also lets you resample the image if you wish. With the Resample check box activated, changes to the image size are also changes in the number of pixels the image will become. With the Resample check box unchecked, any changes made to the size of the image will only change the pixels per inch inversely. Larger prints will have fewer ppi, smaller prints will have greater ppi. In other words, ppi is a distribution or scaling number, not a file size number as in, Bigger pictures = bigger files, which, as we can see, isnt always the case. i At 177 ppi in Photoshop, a full-size Nikon 950/775 shot will be almost exactly 9 x 6.75 inches in size. On a letter-size piece of paper it will be surrounded by a generous border of white, and with the right printer and paper, people will naturally call it an 8 by 10 print.

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I NEED TO DOWNLOAD THROUGH THE SERIAL CABLE

You poor thing! With the 950, this is a download of last resort. The only time you will ever need to do this is when your card reader has been stolen or is broken. You dont want to download pictures this way because a full card can take tens of minutes to perform the operation, and you are running on batteries. Dont dawdle. In a Macintosh or Windows machine, a control panel called Nikon View must be opened. Press the button labeled Mount Camera Now. The system will think about this for a moment. A special icon will appear on the desktop. It is really a folder, and opening it will reveal the picture files. They can be dragged to other folders or dragged to the icons of programs like Photoshop, JPEGView or any compatible application. In the Nikon View mounting window you have the option of setting the communications speed of the connection. Auto will select the fastest. By design, Windows machines will communicate at 115,200 kb/sec. Macs typically transfer at twice this speed, and they still feel painfully slow. It can take a minute or more to download a single Fine compressed full-size image. Brr. i When you are finished, turn the camera off. Then disconnect the cables. With USB equipped computers and the USB cable on the newer Nikons, the story changes. Now downloading is quite rapid. The most recent Nikon View 4 facilitates rapid download, archiving and sorting. Notice that as soon as you hook up the camera USB cable, the camera appears on your desktop just as if it were a new hard drive full of images. See the camera manual for details.

Now youre cooking. Card readers come in a variety of sizes, costs, cable connectors, and compatible types. If your laptop has a PCMCIA card slot (also called a PC card slot) youre 92.4% of the way home. The CompactFlash cards fit into inexpensive (under $10) carriers that simply insert into these slots and magically show the CF card on your desk top as a new disk drive. Copying things out of this drive is just like moving any other data file around. Desk computers and more sophisticated workstations usually dont have these handy card slots built in, so you must attach one. Card reader models are made to work with USB connections, Windows and Mac serial connections; even SCSI connections. Costs of these are plumeting.

I NEED TO DOWNLOAD THROUGH A CARD READER

HOW BIG DO THESE PICTURES PRINT IN A MAGAZINE?

In the dot-screen world of magazine reproduction, different sized screens are used to deliver ink to the page. Newspapers often use screens as coarse as 85 ~ 100 dpi, and high quality reproduction rarely is made with screens finer than 180 dpi. Screens of 133 dpi are common for magazine and book reproduction. If your image has more detail than the dot screen can reproduce, the effect of oversampling kicks in and the image quickly rises to the maximum quality that particular screen could ever reproduce. Factor in the idea that the immediate output of these cameras isnt pixel-perfect, and the maximum size for a 133 dpi image might be only around 7 inches to appear at maximum sharpness. Now look through some magazines and ask yourself how many of the images are maximum sharpness? A recent walk through several magazines showed me that over 90% of the reproduced editorial content was smaller than 5 x 7 inches, and of those, only about 75% were at or near maximum dot screen limits of portraying sharpness. Large images were often less sharp in general. Even in the ads. i Those are the numbers, the practical answer is this: as big as they can.

8-24 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

CAN I USE THIS CAMERA PROFESSIONALLY?

If you were a client and heard, No really, these things are nearly as good as 35! coming from your photographer, would you buy into it? If you show a portfolio of resultsprints with depth and color and interesting images to a client and then say, ...and your stuff is going to be just like this, you stand a chance. The upside to these digital cameras is infiltrating clients less rapidly than its seeping into photographers. If you know that this is the right camera for a particular job then it may be right to suggest it to the client. Usually you have to prove things to clientsthey are not in the business of breakthrough new technologies, nor should they be. From their perspective, they are abandoning the Proven Solution for a New Thing, and to them that translates to the New Thing Which May Or May Not Work. i Sell carefully. Stock agencies are passing digital images around more and more. If the only thing they see from you are Genuine Fractal files of compelling images, the question may never arise. Exemplary 35mm images can be reproduced up to about tabloid-size, and exemplary 3 megapixel Nikon compact camera shots can be reproduced up to perhaps 70% of that size.

I NEED TO SHOOT THROUGH A TELESCOPE OR MICROSCOPE

Telescopes fall into a broad range of different sizes, powers and qualities. If you wish to play with telescopic images informally, a monocular placed in front of the lens and stabilized into place with tape may start you out. The Kenko 8 x 32 monocular and EagleEye OpticZoom lenses have been discussed here, and they represent about the best monocular images you are likely to achieve with pocket-sized tele converters. Nikons own 3 X TC-E3ED converter takes the 3:1 zoom cameras to the equivalent of a 345mm lens and the 8 X Kenko takes you to about 920mm. The 995 takes these 33% farther. Then, there are the big scopes. These are the sturdy extraterrestrial telescopes usually reserved for the moon and stars. You can hold the camera up to the eyepiece and shoot through the telescope by Hand held using a 28mm + T-mount adapter ring as a lens to simply squeezing off an exposureif the scope is stable eyepiece spacer for a 42mm eyepiece. Meade LX200 8 scope. enough and the subject is bright enough. Low power, high focal length eyepiece optics work the best. Tele- and microscopes have optical systems designed to place all the light onto a viewers retina. At some small distance back from the eyepiece, the rays converge in a cone small enough to pass through an eyes iris unimpeded. For casual work with a scope, you still need something to space the cameras optic back from the telescope eyepiece in the path of that cone of light. A 28mm > T-Mount step up ring works well, provides a surface you can rest against many large diameter eyepieces, and rests the camera perpendicular to the optical path. Several camera mount designs, such as EagleEyes DigiMount adapter, have appeared on the Internet. They

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Mars meteorite seen in polarized light through a Leica microscope at 100 power with a Nikon 950. Hand held!

grab the eyepiece and support the camera at the correct distance and alignment, causing the lens to hover right over the eyepiece. Remote or self-timer triggering of the exposure is called for. i Microscopes have nearly the same issues that telescopes have, and their eyepieces are nearly identical in principle. Fortunately, the barrel and subject of a microscope are locked together and this makes the hand-held images straightforward. The autofocus of the camera can get in the way with microscope images and may shift focus away from some feature you wished to preserve in focus. Set the focus manually or to infinity, and focus the microscope via the camera monitor for best results. Adapters that lock the camera to the microscope will be appreciated by anybody who has to shoot more than ten images. If the design of your microscope is similar to the eyepiece configuration of a telescope, the DigiMount may work for it, as well.

I WANT FAST BATCH COLOR FIXES

Changing the color and brightness dynamics of an image can be done with several different kinds of tool. Photoshop lets you do amazing things to a picture, but it is worth looking for other programs that approach the idea of image manipulation from a different slant. Photogenetics from QBeo (formerly Q-Research) is one of these. Photogenetics doesnt actually change the values of pixels in your shot, it changes the way the shot displays on screen. They call it visual DNA. DNA, you may remember, is the basic molecule of life in animals and plants. Small changes in DNA determine if you are a person or an oak. Small changes in Photogenetics affect the entire picture. With this program you can try all sorts of things until you achieve a look that pleases you. Then you can save all the parameters of that look into a file and apply it to numerous other pictures as well. A demo version of Photogenetics is enclosed on the CD for your image massaging enjoyment.

I WANT TO TURN PHOTOS INTO ART

View this at a 300% blow up to see the canvas texture and brush stroke detail. What began as a digital photo now feels very painterly. iNovaFX iCanvasPainting3 filter in the iComplexArtFX Filters file.

Who among us hasnt looked a particularly appealing photo and suddenly realized that it would look very much better as a painting? Sometimes we can see this shaping up right in the viewfinder. Some of the artistic tools in Photoshop will help and turning an image into a sketch, water color or painting is a fun way to learn how various filters affect the image. Beyond Photoshop, a specialty program is helpful. On the Web you can find a demo version of a program called Artist which is designed to turn any sort of image into natural media artistic renderings. Suddenly photos become chalk drawings, paintings, line art, crayon, airbrush or sketch art as rough or finished as you can make. (www.synthetik.com) It is a lot of fun to play with, especially when applied to portraits, vistas, small objects, flowers and things best seen somewhat abstracted. The range is great, the demo is free to play with and who knows, it may unleash hidden talents within you. As you experiment with it you will find that not all images work the way you think they would. Combined with the creative resources of Photoshop, you will develop skills of perception and image manipulation that produce more pleasing results.

8-26 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Filters, one group of which, the iPS filters, have variations that make a range of art and painting versions of your photos.

i Also on the CD are the iNovaFX Photoshop Action

I MUST SHOOT A LOT OF SMALL OBJECTS

Are you in luck. The clever designers at Happenstance have struck again. Now they make another product that combines simple design, clean engineering, low cost, intelligent operation, and ease of use in a small object stage. It is similar in manufacturing techniqes to their slide copier and it costs the same. i You simply set up your object, something smaller than a fifty cent piece, position the light diffuser around the object any way you wish, drop the main tablelike structure over it, rest the camera into place where it will sit perfectly level at optimum macro shooting distance; then light and shoot. It almost takes longer to write about it than it takes to use it. Separate models exist for the 950 and 990.

With less than 500 of these you can get one of those. The image here was made by the camera up there.

Chapter 9

iNovaFX Filter Operation

9-1

Chapter 9 iNovaFX Filter Operation


PHOTOSHOP ALLOWS YOU TO MAKE ACTION FILTERS THAT ARE STRINGS OF PHOTOSHOP OPERATIONS AND SETTINGS. THEYRE LIKE MACROS ON A WORD PROCESSOR. HOURS OF TRIAL AND ERROR, OR INSPIRATION AND TWEAKING, CAN HIDE BENEATH A SINGLE BUTTON PRESS.
The filters offered here are tools I use all the time. Some grew out of curiosity and others grew from immediate need. In general, you should have as much memory allocated to the full current version of Photoshop as you can spare, and you will have to load the filters into the Action Filters window before you start (see pg. 9-16). Then open the image you wish to work on and immediately save it under a new name so you wont cover over your original. Some, the Extreme Noise Reduction and Deep Dynamic Range filters, require you to layer images in a particular way before running the filter. i These filters do a number of memory-intensive steps. If you have several images open at once, the computer may not have enough memory to function smoothly. You might purge the memory Photoshop is using before running a complex filter. The control for this is Image > Purge > All. The iPurge filter does this for you, and in general the filters clean up after themselves by purging the History file of steps they have left in their wake. See the Photoshop manuals for performance tips.

i=

InfoBite

BARREL DISTORTION Correction


These are the iBC series and there are special ones for full-size 950/775 images and a parallel group for the 88x/99x cameras. Use the right ones or you will get a mess. They work on HORIZONTAL FULL-SIZE IMAGES ONLY, so if you have turned your picture vertical, put it back to horizontal before filtering. i You choose the correct filter for the conditions of your image and simply run the filter. The image will do a series of operations on the screen of your computer, then suddenly drop back to where it started with the correction in place. It will be slightly smaller than before because barrel distortion involves pinching it the opposite way it was originally, and the trim keeps the maximum number of pixels available, throwing away the distorted corners or sides. Note that the middle of the top, bottom, and sides lose only about a pixel of information, but some detail in the very Before and after running the iBCFish@Tele filter on the naturally barrel distorted Fisheye lens. If the process can fix corners of the original will inevitably be lost.
this, it can fix anything.

9-2 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

iNovaFX Barrel Correction Filters (iBC950/990.atn) 950 FOR 775 990 FOR 880/885/995 16 Filters Total
The filters are:
iBC24@W iBC63@W

For use in shots made with:

. . . . . . . . . . . . WC-E24 at widest zoom . . . . . . . . . . . . WC-E63 at widest zoom

iBCZ@W . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zoom alone at widest iBCZ@T . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zoom alone at full tele iBCT2@T . . . . . . . . . . . . . TC-E2 at zoom tele iBCT3@T . . . . . . . . . . . . . TC-E3ED at full zoom iBCFish@T . . . . . . . . . . . FC-E8 Fisheye at full tele zoom iBC2Taste . . . . . . . . . . . . A convenient setup that lets you dial in the amount of pinch or expansion for your specific image. You will have to crop the resulting image yourself with the crop tool. NOTE: Make sure you are using the iBC950 or iBC990 folder to start with. The filters within each folder have the same names except for the model noted in their suffix, e.g. iBC24@W.990. iCrAb effects (next item) are built-in to a select group of separately labeled combination filters.

CHROMATIC ABERRATION REPAIR


Chromatic aberration happens when a red or blue or both color channels are graphically too large or too small. (The green channel is assumed to be correct.) Its caused by focusing different parts of the spectrum at different distances behind the lenssomething you cant control directly. The filters slightly enlarge or shrink the color channel that is out of size and trim the picture by one or two pixels cropping it to its new continuous size. These are the iCrAb filter series, and they are made specifically for the 950/775 and 880/885/990/995 cameras. Theyre fine-tuned to the characteristics of each. Simply click on the appropriate filter, and in a few seconds your image will be much better. i These filters work on horizontal FULL SIZE IMAGES Detail blow-up from the corner of a 990 image shot with ONLY so if you have turned your picture vertical, put it a WC-E24 wide converter. Before and after running the back to horizontal before starting. iCrAb24.990 filter on the image.

iNovaFX Chromatic Aberration Filters (iCrAbs)


The filters are:

For use in shots made with:

10 Filters

iCrAbWide.950 . . . . . . . . . . . . 950 zoomed full wide. iCrAb24.950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 950 + WC-E24 zoomed full wide. iCrAb63.950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 950 + WC-E63 zoomed full wide. iCrAbWide.990 . . . . . . . . . . . . 990 zoomed full wide. iCrAb24.990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 990 + WC-E24 zoomed full wide. iCrAb63.990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 950 + WC-E63 zoomed full wide. iCrAbFish.950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 950 + FC-E8@ full tele. iCrAbFish.990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 990 + FC-E8@ full tele. The above filters do not address the purple fringe effect. iCrAbPurpX1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reduces Purple Fringe chroma effect. Works on any size. iCrAbPurpX2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reduces Magenta Fringe chroma effect. Works on any size.

Check the Nikon eBook website for the latest in these interesting iNovaFX Filters. www.digitalsecrets.net

Chapter 9

iNovaFX Filter Operation

9-3

COLOR CORRECTION 911


A friend and good photographer was lamenting that he had shot a bunch of images outdoors not noticing that he had left the camera (a 950) in Incandescent white balance. The all-blue and cyan images looked hopeless, but it turned out that they were salvageable with the right series of Photoshop steps. These filters are the memory of those steps. The iCC filters have names that tell you what went wrong. IncanShotSun means incandescent lighting was shot as Sunny white balance. Images end up too gold. Putting the image through this filter is like putting an 80A (blue) filter on a camera loaded with outdoor film, then shooting indoors. Except with the Nikon Compacts, you get to put the filter on after the shot was made. i The filters arent perfect, but theyre way ahead of looking like mistakes. You may have to tweak the image into perfection after running the filter. The Color Balance window will help. On the left, the light you shot in, on the right, the errant camera setting. Pick your error and click your mistake away. Some are very subtle. Sunny shot Flash achieves a metered dose of cooling that would probably not be noticed, but its there if you know you need it. i If your shot has a neutral gray object in it, you can often fix much of the color with the neutrality eyedropper in Photoshop Levels or Curves by simply clicking on the target gray object. These filters work on any size image at any orientation.

iNovaFX Chromatic Correction Filters (iCCs)*


The filters are: Image shot in -- light:
iCCIncanShotSunny iCCIncanShotCloudy iCCIncanShotFlash . iCCIncanShotFluor . iCCFluorShotSunny . iCCFluorShotCloudy iCCFluorShotFlash . iCCFluorShotIncan . iCCFlashShotSunny iCCFlashShotCloudy iCCFlashShotFluor . iCCFlashShotIncan . iCCCloudyShotSunny iCCCloudyShotFlash iCCCloudyShotFluor iCCCloudyShotIncan iCCSunnyShotCloudy iCCSunnyShotFlash iCCSunnyShotFluor . iCCSunnyShotIncan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Incandescent Quartz light Incandescent Quartz light Incandescent Quartz light Incandescent Quartz light Fluorescent (FL1 on 990) Fluorescent (FL1 on 990) Fluorescent (FL1 on 990) Fluorescent (FL1 on 990) Flash/Speedlight Flash/Speedlight Flash/Speedlight Flash/Speedlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Camera set to:

40+ Filters Total

Sunny (Fine on 990) Cloudy Flash Fluorescent (FL1 on 990) Sunny (Fine on 990) Cloudy Flash Incandescent Sunny (Fine on 990) Cloudy Fluorescent (FL1 on 990) Incandescent Sunny (Fine on 990) Flash Fluorescent (FL1 on 990) Incandescent Cloudy Flash (subtle difference) Fluorescent (FL1 on 990) Incandescent

Cloudy Overcast / Shade Cloudy Overcast / Shade Cloudy Overcast / Shade Cloudy Overcast / Shade Direct Sun Direct Sun Direct Sun Direct Sun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

*Separate series are labeled for 950 and 990 cameras. The 990 filters also work for the 880/885/995 and the 950 filers also work wih the 775. Special filters exist to vector FL1 and FL3 results to look like FL2 shots on the 990s iCC filters. Once resolved this way, the iCCFluorShot -Sunny, -Cloudy, -Flash, and -Incan filters complete the correction. You will also find alternate filters that address unusually tough corrections.

9-4 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

ISO PUSH-PROCESSING
These create the effect of high ISO exposures from what normally would be perceived as greatly underexposed images. i To shoot in ISO 800 on cameras without this setting, set the camera to ISO 400 (or +2 on the 950), and intentionally expose with an EV correction of 1.0. The shot will be one stop darker than a normal exposure and will look very dark on the camera monitor, but metering will be consistent. To shoot ISO 1600, set the camera to EV 2.0. For good looking final images (and I realize how subjective good looking can be), this represents the practical limit of electronic push processing. But when did we ever stop at the mere practical? i The very lowest tones in the dark end of the scale have trouble tracking accurate blue, red, and magenta hues. Grain will build up. But unlike film that has been push-processed, the darkest part of the image will remain perfectly black. i To shoot low-contrast subjects at ISO 2000 to 3200, you will have to use the Full Manual mode on the 990/995/880/885. Find the appropriate exposure with the graphic on-screen light meter, and then click three full stops of faster shutter speed (or combined three-stops of less light including adjusted aperture). The indicator on top of the camera will show [ -3 ] for a few seconds before reverting to its number-of-shots-left display. The image on is a CP i The images in the camera will look very, very dark. Only when mixed light. The the top ondirectly from is the 950 in image the bottom result you run these filters on them will they perk up into useful shots. Since of running the iISO2Taste filter which allows tunable color detail is first to be lost, very high ISO images actually benefit brightness and color recovery. from being made as B&W, either as theyre being exposed or later by using Photoshops Hue and Saturation control to drain the color out by moving the Saturation slider to zero. For such high ISO images, the iNovaFX B&W filters offer near zero advantage. With high ISO, more grain and contrast appears. ISO 3200 may not be the absolute limit, but it represents a practical limit for images that will please. Just so you can experiment, a special filter called ISO To Taste will tell you right on the Photoshop screen how to manipulate it for best effect. One filter, the iSO+1, can be used to bring an image into normal values even though it has been shot up to one stop overexposed. This represents about the upper limit on overexposure recovery. i It is better to slightly underexpose than overexpose a Coolpix digital image. These filters work on any size image at any orientation. The iSO Recover.atn folder holds more filters than are listed here. A number of variations are provided for your experimentation.

iNovaFX ISO Boost Filters (iSO Recover.atn)


The filters are:

For use in shots made with:

*most often effective

9 Filters

iSO2Taste* . . . . . . . . . . . Any underexposure. Allows color adjustment. Tunable. Photoshop 5.0/5.5. iSO2TastePS6 . . . . . . . . . . Any underexposure. Special for Photoshop 6.0. Tunable. iSO800 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EV set to -1.0. One stop underexposed. Photoshop 5.0/5.5. iSO800 a . . . . . . . . . . . . EV set to -1.0. Variation. Photoshop 5.0/5.5. iSO1600 . . . . . . . . . . . . . EV set to -2.0. Two stops underexposed. Photoshop 5.0/5.5. iSO1600 a . . . . . . . . . . . . EV set to -2.0. Variation. Photoshop 5.0/5.5. iSO3200 . . . . . . . . . . . . . EV set to -3.0. Three stops underexposed. iSO3200Fast . . . . . . . . . . EV set to -3.0. Variation. Optimized for speed. iSODark2Taste . . . . . . . . . Any overexposure up to one stop too bright. Tunable.

Chapter 9

iNovaFX Filter Operation

9-5

1 click cooler

Normal

1 click warmer

COOLER/WARMER
iCF Cooler/Warmer.atn folder. This is just a pair of utilities that slightly cool (bluer) or slightly warm (golder) the image with each application. They can be applied several times, if need be, to perfect the color of mixed lighting conditions. The images show cooler on the left, normal in the center, and warmer on the right.

EXTREME NOISE REDUCTION


Now you can subtract noise from long exposures using a Flaw Frame. i NR in 995/885 does this in the camera, but you can use this with them for added control. i The Flaw Frame is a blank image of the exact same shutter speed made with the lens cap ON. Of course, this picture has no picture to it, just a record of all the noisy and/or flawed pixels. The imaging chip in the camera changes its noise characteristics with heat. A few degrees warmer or cooler will produce a different image of the flaws. It is recommended that you shoot this image within a few moments of the image to be repaired. You must stack the Flaw Frame over the original image in Photoshop before you run the filter. This produces a stack with the original as the background layer and the Flaw Frame in the Layer 1 position. There are a number of techniques involved and different iFF filters use them to get different results. Try them all to see which ones give you the results you prefer. i These filters work on any size image at any orientation, but note that the flaw frame and original image MUST be at the The noisy urban nightscape on the left looks like it was being attacked by fireflies, snow, and noise all at the same moment. Two filters were used to fix the exact same rotation. If you run the filter image, iFFLum2, for smoothness, and iFFRGB2 for a few problem color pixels. without results, the flaw frame may be 180 rotated. With eight to choose from, one of them will likely be your friend. Results vary with image content.

iNovaFX Noise-Correcting Flaw Frame Filters (iFlawFix.atn)


The filters are: Descriptive guide:

*most recommended

8 Filters

iFFLum 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . Basic luminance technique. iFFLum 2* . . . . . . . . . . . . Smooth grained exaggerated luminance technique. iFFLum 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . Aggressive luminance technique. iFFRGB 1 iFFTGB 2* iFFRGB 3 iFFRGB 4 iFFXTreme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Basic RGB technique. Each channel handled separately. Stronger RGB technique. Separate Channels. For problem pixels. Aggressive RGB technique. More aggressive RGB technique.

. . . . . . . . . . . Most aggressive technique. Some sharpness lost.

9-6 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

ceptible to noise from heat. A very warm camera will produce extremely noisy, grainy images. If you shoot at over 85 F (30 C), grab a flaw frame just in case you need to fix the images later.

i Note: The 990s imager is particularly sus-

Original

iGF4

GLARE FLARE ENHANCEMENT


You may have noticed that the tiny spectral white highlights of digital images can look a little strange. Sometimes the in-camera sharpening puts a contrast line around them giving the look of a thin black border around the very bright white highlight. In many images this isnt a problem, but for some, it looks simply wrong. Seven different iGF, Glare Flare filters are available. They each give a slightly different effect so you should try each of them out on several photos and see which ones suit you best. Primarily they add a bit of soft expansion to the trapped highlights that camera sharpening produces without affecting the lower tonalities at all. The strongest versions give the appearance of a low-value fog filter and produce an ethereal soft highlight effect. The highest filter actually goes the extra distance and produces a halo effect similar to the more exotic diffusion filters used in cinematography. These filters work on any size image at any orientation. The tunable filters permit another type of flexibility. They not only can be changed in opacity, but you have access to their gamma and tonal curves without affecting the original scene. You could even colorize each layered element individually.

iGF6

iGF7 + layer manipulation

iNovaFX Glare Flare Filters (iGFGlareFlare.atn)


The filters are: Practical effect:
iGF1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Precise removal of surrounding dark line. iGF2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Small amount of flare extends past highlight. iGF3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Modest flare passes boundary of original highlight. iGF4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Definite flare, slight fog.

7 Filters

iGF5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Bloom of fog flare beyond original highlight. Amplifies highlight. iGF6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Large bloom of fog flare beyond original highlight. Tunable. iGF7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Strong halo flare surrounds original highlight. Tunable.

Chapter 9

iNovaFX Filter Operation

9-7

COLOR RESCUE AND RECOVERY


Theyre called CRV for Color ReVector. They steer the colors back to a more natural, less-distorted result. Perhaps the most often used version is the red eye fixers, the iXRedEyeSetup and iXRedEyeFast filters. Simply open up any image with a red eye effect in the subjects eyes, and run the iXRedEyeSetup filter. It will guide you through your first steps and may even complete your whole photo. i The iXRedEyeFast filter can be used when you dont need to setup the mode. With it you can select one eye at a time for fixing. i Certain colors can fool the Nikon 990 and iRescueFadedTrans at work iXRedEye at work 950 sensors. Blue sky fill shadows can look too saturated on the 950, certain magenta/purple and border-line teal colors are portrayed slightly differently in prints. These filters give you a choice of corrections that move the colors closer to where your eyes saw them. i iCRVs arent for every photo, to be sure. Images with strong, high chroma bright colors from nature, such as flowers, can benefit from them. You may have to test run these filters on a photo to find the one that best suits your shot. Fortunately they are fast. Be prepared to Undo or back up in the History window when they dont quite achieve the results you seek, then try another. Two other revectors are here. iSodium1-3 causes images shot under sodium streetlights and area lights (as are often found on iSodium at work airport tarmacs and parking areas) to look more natural. iRescueFadedTrans variations may help revive old, faded transparencies. You may need to tweak rescued images and not all faded images will improve with this filter, but if it helps, it helps.

iNovaFX Color ReVector Filters (iColorReVector/XRed-Eye.atn)


The filters are: Practical effect:

12 Filters

iXRedEyeSetup . . . . . Initiates red-eye removal mode. You must Oval Tool select eye, re-run filter. iXRedEyeFast . . . . . . Quickly pulls the red out of any already selected eye(s). iCRV950 . . . . . . . . . Revectors normal image to more accurate result. iCRV990 . . . . . . . . . Revectors normal image to more accurate result. iCRV950>990 iCRV990>950 iSodium1 iSodium2 iSodium3 . . . . . . Revectors normal 950 image to look like normal 990 image. . . . . . . Revectors normal 990 image to look like normal 950 image.

. . . . . . . . Revectors image shot under Sodium (yellow) street/area lighting. . . . . . . . . Revectors image shot under Sodium (yellow) street/area lighting. Variation. . . . . . . . . Revectors image shot under Sodium (yellow) street/area lighting. Variation.

iRescueFadedTrans1 . . Rescues faded transparencies. Pinkish original variation. iRescueFadedTrans2 . . Rescues faded transparencies. Magenta original. Higher contrast variation. iRescueFadedTrans3 . . Rescues faded transparencies. Magenta original. Lower contrast variation.

9-8 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

JPEG ARTIFACT REDUCTION & CHANNEL DENOISE


Artifacts are the undesired side effects from some other, desirable operation; the negative consequences from doing something good. JPEG compression produces artifacts. In these cameras it is well-controlled becoming readily visible only in the Basic compression mode. In other modes, it is more obvious in the red and blue channels as are other build-ups of noise. i The first three filters let you selectively reduce noise in the blue and red. You might have to run these more than once in extreme cases. i The iDeJPEG filter does a good job on Basic compressed images. If you find that you are running low on camera memory, and you feel that you might need to shoot many more images, put the camera in Basic Compression mode and keep shooting, then run this filter on your shots later. Remember that JPEG artifacts tend to get lost on prints. You probably wont even see them on Basic images printed at 5 x 7 size and smaller. And Basic images that are reduced before printing lose artifacts naturally in the down-conversion process. Original

iNovaFX JPEG Artifact Reduction Filters (iDeNoise/DeJPEG.atn)


The filters are: Practical effect:

7 Filters

iColorDeNoisePS6a, b, c . . . . . Degrees of color noise improvement for Photoshop 6x. iBlueDeNoiseSevere . . . . . . . More aggressive blue channel noise reduction Photoshop 5. iRedDeNoise . . . . . . . . . . . Selectively reduces noise on the red channel only in Photoshop 5. iDeJPEG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JPEG artifact reduction/grain replacement. Roughly equivalent to removing Basic compressions artifacts to Normals level.

AERIAL IMAGE RECOVERY (AerialShotCorrection.atn)


Images shot from an airplane often have as much sky between camera and scenery as we see in the canopy of sky from the ground, hence all that extra blue. These two filters, both tunable, recover a much more normal view of the ground. Since the contents of the atmosphere change from hour to hour, you must decide how much correction to keep or discard. i Use the opacity slider on the upper layer to dial-in the amount of correction needed. It is often best to leave in some of the sky effect to create the suggestion of a high aerial viewpoint.

Original

iNovaFX Aerial(AerialShotCorrection.atn)
The filters are:

Practical effect:

2 Filters

iAerial2Taste . . . . . . . . . . . Recovers ground colors from high aerial images shot over 12,000 ft (3,500m). iAerial2TasteLow . . . . . . . . . Recovers ground colors from lower aerial shots.

Chapter 9

iNovaFX Filter Operation

9-9

DYNAMIC RANGE EXTENSION


With the DDR series, a new kind of image can be built. I say built because it is created from three separate exposures, each two stops apart from each other. The camera must be absolutely rigid from shot to shot, so a solid tripod will be required. The subject must be non-moving over the span of exposures. Slow moving clouds are okay, but fast moving features like vehicles, animals, or kids will likely give poor results. The trick, in any case, is to shoot all three images very close together in time. While there is no need to shoot the string of images in any specific order, the best results are usually those from -2, 0, and +2 EV, with the 0 exposure being normal for the matrix meter. Original center exposure i With the 990, the fully manual mode makes this process go quickly and efficiently. i The Auto Bracket feature in some cameras will greatly simplify the image gathering process. The three shots are then brought into Photoshop and stacked over each other with the darkest on top and the lightest on the bottom. At that point, simply run the filter and wait for the result. The normal dynamic range of the middle image is now extended two stops upward and two stops downward by the action of the underexposed and overexposed elements. iDDR3 filter There are seven variations. With such a wide range of visual dynamics available, these give you choices, but be aware that you may wish to manipulate the final images Curves in Photoshop after the filter is finished. In general, they will lack the contrasty snap of most images you are used to. This is because a 12-stop range is occupying an 8-stop visual display. i As you add contrast to taste, notice that the color becomes more vivid. Filter variation iDDR7 is a more finished image with its color boosted and its final tones more contrasty in both highlights and shadows. As you can see in the example, the normal, centered exposure on a contrasty iDDR7 filter scene will lose highlight and shadow detail. In this case, the sky has lost nearly all color beyond the clouds and the foreground appears to be in deep shadow, much darker than your eyes perceive. Yet the immediate result from the iDDR7, while lower in overall contrast, maintains a wealth of detail in both of these extremes.

iNovaFX Deep Dynamic Range Filters (iDynamicRangers.atn)


The filters are:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Practical effect:

*best for general work.

7 Filters

iDDR1 iDDR2 iDDR3 iDDR4 iDDR5 iDDR6 iDDR7*

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

.Combines -2, 0, +2 EV exposures into deep dynamic range image. Tunable. .Creates an overall brighter result. .Favors contrastier highlights. .Flatter, long scale image. .Flatter with bright shadow detail. Mid values compressed. .Similar to #2 with deeper, contrastier highlights. .Brighter shadows. Deeper highlights.

9-10 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

SPECIAL EFFECTS PRODUCTION


If there is one thing that Photoshop is good at, its special effects. An entire cosmos of filters is built into the full version, and they cover a wide range of manipulation. But isnt that the problem? You open a filter for the first time, and several adjustable controls are staring you in the face with control names like Brush Size, Length, Radius, Balance, Sharpness, Edge Simplicity, Range, Detail, Grout Width, Threshold, Scaling, Cell Size, Glow Amount, Paper Brightness, Highlight Area, Magnitude, Definition and many others. i Weaving yourself through this maze can be daunting. Many filters here simply represent sane choices through this maze. You can always undo and re-perform the filter with new adjustments. Each iPS folder of actions is based on the folder of filters in Photoshop. Not all Photoshop filters are represented, just the ones that have variables that need to be selected. Many iPS filters include extra steps, combinations of other controls, and/or marriage with other filters to achieve their effects. They can be run in Button mode, an option you can select from the upper right pointer of the Actions window, or in list mode which allows you to puzzle through the steps of each filter. i As you get more adept at special effects manipulations, you will be able to make your own Action Filters. Details on this are in the Photoshop manual. i Nearly all of them clean up after themselves by purging the memory-hungry History file. If memory becomes a problem as you are working in Photoshop, try Edit > Purge > Histories to free up memory space.

iNovaFX Special Effects Filters (iPS series)


The filter folders are:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Practical effect:

8 Folders with 96 Filter Variations


Many Undo-able. Most Undo-able. Many Undo-able. Both Undo-able. Both Undo-able. Most Undo-able. Some Undo-able. Most Undo-able.

iPSArtistic . . iPSBrushStroke iPSDistort . . . iPSNoise . . . iPSPixelate . . iPSSketch . . . iPSStylize . . . iPSTexture . .

. . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

19 Filter presets from the Artistic Filters collection. 7 Filter presets from the Brush Stroke Filters collection. 22 Filter presets from the Distort Filters collection. 2 Filter presets from the Noise Filters collection. 2 Filter presets from the Pixelate Filters collection. 28 Filter presets from the Pixelate Filters collection. 11 Filter presets from the Pixelate Filters collection. 5 Filter presets from the Pixelate Filters collection.

COLOR NEGATIVE DEVELOPMENT


If you have one of the Nikon or Happenstance slide copiers, you will eventually ask yourself, Hmm, I wonder if I can shoot a color negative into the camera and then get a good looking color picture from it with a few post production steps? There is a trick to this along with a warning, of sorts. The trick is to get the white balance right. Auto white balance works fairly well, and white balancing from a dark (therefore mostly clear orange) image works a little better. White balancing off the image of a gray card works best. Be aware that it will take just as much post-processing effort to finish the shot digitally as it would to print a color negative. Except that on your computer you can see it coming together at every stage. Curves, Levels, Color Balance, and Hue and Saturation controls are needed to finish every shot. The filters here are the major tools for working with a negative image. Theyll get you roughly into shape, but you will have to finish the job on your own. You may notice that strong colors are exaggerated in the image coming from an inverted negative. Thats why the iNegHighCrReduce filter exists. It attacks ONLY very high chroma areas of the image.

Chapter 9

iNovaFX Filter Operation

9-11

iNovaFX Film Negative Development (iColorNegProcess.atn)


The filters are: Practical effect:
iNegRoughConvert iNegLowContrast . iNegPerkContrast iNegHighCrReduce
Original

4 Filters

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. Inverts and roughly corrects image from color negative. . Lowers the contrast of the result. . Heightens the contrast of the result. . Reduces chroma of high-chroma areas of the image only.

COLOR TO B&W FILM CONVERSION


The first B&W films were blue sensitive and red blind. Thats why old, old photos can look so odd in their tonalities. The early photos often made people look perpetually sunburned. Panchromatic film improved the look of B&W film by including a fuller spectrum of color response, but all B&W film has its signature response to the color world. Your camera can suppress its color and give you B&W images, but it doesnt respond to the world exactly the way B&W film does. i Photoshop will let you drain the color from your image in the Hue and Saturation control. The Lab color mode will let you isolate the L, luminance, channel which looks similar to a B&W photo. But neither of these have the substantial look of B&W film images because their spectral response is so very flat, and films is not. These filters change all that. Six filters give you variations of color response the way B&W film formulas do. They are not tied to specific matched film emulsion characteristics the way some B&W conversion filters are, but they give plausible and pleasing results that are a definite improvement over simpler methods. iBWFilmFX4+Curves To use them, prepare your color image in the standard way. Then run the iBW filter of choice. Note that some are fine for people colors and others simply are not. iBWFilmFX2 works best with scenics, for instance. i If you wish to simulate the look of a color filter on a camera loaded with B&W film, tint the color image before conversion. The iBWColorGel filter facilitates this. After conversion, you still have the opportunity to change Levels and Curves, Burn, Dodge, or manipulate the image any way you wish.

Saturation Drained

iNovaFX Black and White Film Spectral Conversion (iB&WFilmEffects.atn) 7 Filters


The filters are: Practical effect: *best for people pictures
iBWFilmFX1 . . . . . . . . . . . . Converts color image to B&W with blue/green emphasis. For landscapes. iBWFilmFX2 . . . . . . . . . . . . Converts color image to B&W similar to high ISO, contrasty, grainy film. iBWFilmFX3* . . . . iBWFilmFX4* . . . . iBWFilmFX4g* . . . iBWFilmFX5* . . . . iBWColorGel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Converts . Converts . Converts . Converts color color color color image image image image to to to to B&W B&W B&W B&W similar to average panchromatic film. similar to Tri-X. Grain free. similar to Tri-X. Adds grain to shadows. red brightening. Lab mode.

. . . . . . . . . . . Sets up a color effect as if the camera had a filter on it during exposure.

9-12 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

ORIGINAL DIMROOM EFFECTS


So it isnt a darkroom any more. Its a dim room that doesnt glare on your computer monitor. But it easily does some things that are difficult to do in a darkroom. Take these, for instance. i The LumiBloom filters seem innocent enough, until we discover that they are multi-layered effects that produce artificial fog or pull detail out of highlights without affecting shadows. Then there are the variations on the Bloom Art effect. A graphic technique that turns a photo into a somewhat abstracted graphic. Several variations are provided. In the contemporary world of B&W photography, a midtone-emphasizing technique has become iBloomArt2 somewhat popular for pictures of personalities appearing in advertising and illustration photos. The FleshTona filter orchestrates this effect for your images. All of these filters can be manipulated after the fact to your exacting standards.

iFleshTona

iBloomArtInteractive

iNovaFX DimRoom Art Conversion (iDimRoomArt.atn)


The filters are: Practical effect:

7 Filters

iLumiBloom1 . . . . . . . . . . . Creates low contrast fog-like effect. For landscapes. iLumiBloom2 . . . . . . . . . . . Fog filter that does not affect shadows. Removes wrinkles. Tunable. iLumiBloom3 . . . . . . . . . . . Fog filter that does not affect shadows. Blooms upper tones. Tunable. iBloomArt1 iBloomArt2 . . . . . . . . . . . . Bloom Art effect mixes photo with graphic lines. Tunable. . . . . . . . . . . . . Bloom Art effect mixes photo with graphic lines. Curves adjustable.

iBloomArtInterActive . . . . . . . Complex Bloom Art effect. Multi-tunable. Self-explanatory. BWFleshtona . . . . . . . . . . . Complex B&W effect emphasizing mid tones. Multi-tunable.

Chapter 9

iNovaFX Filter Operation

9-13

COMPLEX ART EFFECTS


Digital photos are immediately available for artistic interpretation. These filters orchestrate a series of steps that result in images that are often mistaken for art, painting, and illustration. Some are tools to be applied before or after running others. Not all photos work well with all filters, so a sense of experimentation and discovery is often helpful. If the texture-rich images look odd on your monitor, view at 200% or 300%.

iNovaFX Very Complex Art Tools (iComplexArtFX.atn)


The filters are: Practical effect:
iAngledStrokes . . . . . . . . PS Angled Strokes effect basis. Creates basic painting. iAngledStrokesPainting . . . Angled Strokes Painting with bolder brushstrokes. iHighlightTexturizer . . . . . Tool that adds color grain into highlights only. iHighlightTexturizerLite . . . Tool that adds color grain into highlights only. Lower effect.

16 Filters

iCanvasPainting1 . . . . . . . Strokes, Canvas, and Cont Crayon in concert. Tunable. iCanvasPainting2 . . . . . . . Strokes, Canvas, and Cont Crayon in concert. Starts w/lower posterization. iCanvasPainting2 . . . . . . . Strokes, Canvas, and Cont Crayon in concert. Brushstrokes+ in highlights. iWaterColorPainting . . . . . High-technique watercolor effect. Completely surprise finish! iWaterColorPaintingEQ . . . High-technique watercolor effect. Special low-contrast result. iWaterColorIllusration . . . . High-technique watercolor effect. Illustrative balance. iColorDream! . . . . . . . . . Sudden Tropical Warming trend. Tunable. iColorBlast . . . . . . . . . . Color expands out of its boundaries. Sharpness unaffected. Tunable. iContrast(UM)1 . . . . . . . . Tool to increase local contrast areas. Uses Unsharp Masking. Undoable. iContrast(UM)2 . . . . . . . . Tool to increase local contrast areas. More aggressive effect. Undoable. iPencilSketch . . . . . . . . . Pencil Art version of image. Not for people images! iKodaChrome54 . . . . . . . What if you had shot this on Kodachrome film in 1954? No fading.

9-14 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

EXOTIC EFFECTS
Beyond complex lies the realm of the truly exotic. These include things that you have every right to believe simply could not be created in a Photoshop Action Filter. But as this group of iNovaFX filters shows, Photoshop can rise to some pretty exotic extremes.

Framed Again!
iFilmFrames.atn contains a whole category of filters that drape a graphic border around your image in a way that produces the effect of an isolated frame of film. Many photographers like to show the 35mm, 2-1/4, or 4x5 film frame intact with the imagea sort of proof that they got the image onto film exactly the way they wanted. No cropping or darkrooming was needed. But in this digital age, this practice has a different way of coming into being. Take a 3:2 cropped shot, either from an enlarged 2 megapixel or native 3 megapixel imageits not criticalrun the iBorder35+.990 iNovaFX Photoshop Action Filter from the iFilmBorders.atn group, and in very short order you will have surrounded your image with sprocket holes and edge markings that look unambiguously like 35mm film. With 2-35mm variations, a 2-1/4 roll film series, and even a 4x5 sheet film version, hours of play and printing await you as you create images that give new meaning to the words, digital film. Theres even a roll film group that adds plausible edge fog!

Help Stamp Out Digital Photos


iStampBorders.atn creates the perforations around your image that it would have as a paper stamp. You need to start with a horizontal image, but the filter will automatically size, border, perforate, and flatten your image into an appropriate drop shadow. Three sizes are available. Dont forget to add the type that will complete the faux stamp effect. Do NOT try to fake the Post Office out. They wont be amused.

iNovaFX Exotic Effects (iFilmFrame.atn & iStamp Borders.atn)


The filters are: Practical effect:
film film film film border border border border iFilmBorders.atn: iFilmBorder2.25x3.25.990 . . . iFilmBorder+Data.990/950 . . . iFilmBorder+Data+Fog.990/950 iFilmBorderUniversal . . . . . . Roll . Roll . Roll . Roll

14 Filters

like 60 x 85 mm film. For horizontal 3 megapixel images. with data type line that you can modify. with modifiable type and edge fog effect. with many options.

iBorder4x5Horiz.990/950 . . . . . Sheet film border. Sizes for 2 and 3 megapixel originals. Horizontal only. iBorder4x5Vert.990 . . . . . . . . Sheet film border for 3 megapixel images in vertical format. Notches at top. iBorder35.990 . . . . . . . . . . . 35mm film border. Type editable. Frame is cut between sprocket holes. iBorder35+.990 . . . . . . . . . . 35mm film border. Type editable. Frame is cut through sprocket holes. iStampBorders.atn: iStampBorderSmall . . . . . . . 10 x 13 perfs. Horizontal only. Image forced to 2048 wide automatically. iStampBorderMedium . . . . . . 15 x 20 perfs. Horizontal only. Image forced to 2048 x 1536 automatically. iStampBorderLarge . . . . . . . 22 x 28 perfs. Horizontal only. Image forced to 2048 wide automatically.

Chapter 9

iNovaFX Filter Operation

9-15

THE MISCELLANEOUS GROUP


These are single-concept filters that have occasional uses. Here you will find the faded, ancient photo effect that goes beyond simple sepia toning. Here, too, the ability to polarize blue skies that were shot without a polarizing filter can be found. Want a grain free image? Combine a stack of 3 to 6 exposures made in-register and all noise will cancel out. Need that over-processed, digitally rescued look for effect? Try the RetNarRator and stand back. Need a panacea? Its here. Wouldnt it be nice to print out four images on a single letter-size piece of photo paper? The iFourPrint.atn series does it with verticals and horizontals. But remember, you must open the four images in A, B, C, D order (unless you plan to cut them apart after printing). Separate versions for 3 megapixel and 2 megapixel originals. The iColorDeNoise.atn filters in both Photoshop 5 and 6 versions can be found on this CD as well. They do a very good job of smoothing out color grain, but be aware that they slightly reduce the fine detail of narrow colored objects. Added to the iNovaFX filter clusters are new variations that didnt make it into print. Goodies buried in the files without fanfare or introduction. Every time the printing master for this eBook is updated, the newest iNovaFX filters have an opportunity to join the fray. Check the www.digitalsecrets.net website from time to time to see if any new ones are available for you to download.

iNovaFX Miscellaneous Effects (Photoshop 6 only)


The filters are: Practical effect:
iFourPrint.atn: (full size images)

36 Filters

iVertX4-3meg &-2meg . . . . . . Combines 4 vertical shots onto one letter (US & A4) page for print out. iHorizX4-3meg &-2meg . . . . . Combines 4 horizontal shots onto one letter (US & A4) page for print out. iFX.atn: * iRetNar1Lg . . . . . iRetNar2Lg . . . . . iRetNarHaze1Lg . . iRetNarHaze2Lg . . iRetnART . . . . . . iOldTymie . . . . . . iOldTymieDistressed iMprove1 . . . . . . iFrmAverage-6 iFrmAverage-5 iFrmAverage-4 iFrmAverage-3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overprocessed digital effect similar to Retinex. 2 or 3 meg image. . Overprocessed digital effect similar to Retinex. 2 or 3 meg image. . Super haze/smoke reduction similar to Retinex. 2 or 3 meg image. . Strong haze/smoke reduction similar to Retinex. 2 or 3 meg image. . Tunable iRetNarHaze effect with soft bloom. . Extremely abused old B&W image + paper discoloration. Any size. . Adds texture. Needs extra time and memory. . Panacea filter. Try it. . Stack . Stack . Stack . Stack of of of of 6 5 4 3 in-register in-register in-register in-register shots shots shots shots averaged. Reduces averaged. Reduces averaged. Reduces averaged. Reduces noise/grain noise/grain noise/grain noise/grain like crazy. extremely well. very well. fairly well.

iFrameAveragePS6.atn: (in-register images from tripod + remote trigger only) **

iPolarizeSkyFX6.atn: iPolar1, -2, -3, -4, -5 . . . . . . . . Turns sky darker and more dramatic. iPolar5 is strongest. iPolarPale . . . . . . . . . . . . . Turns sky darker and more dramatic. Works on palest skies & around clouds. iPolar2Taste . . . . . . . . . . . . Turns sky darker and more dramatic. You tweak to your liking. i775ColorFix.atn: (new Summer 2001) *** i775IncanWBshotSunny . . . . . WB set to Incandescent. Shot was made in sunlight. i775SunnyWBShotIncan . . . . . WB was set to Fine (sun) but the shot was made under incandescent light. iSharpPS6.atn: iSharp...(11 variations) . . . . . . Multiple ways to sharpen images with low artifacts. * Retinex is a patented process. This merely simulates most of its look using Photoshops built-in tools. You will need to tweak most images further for final results. Look for http://dragon.larc.nasa.gov/viplab/retinex/ ** You may find that images shot in sequence do NOT fall in-register due to small movements that offset the shots a pixel or so. If you need 6, shoot 10. Just to be sure. *** The small Coolpix 775 responds very much like the 950. Try those iNovaFX color correction filters, too.

9-16 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Notes On Filters:
These Photoshop Action Filters were developed during the course of my work in the graphic and photographic arts. They were designed and executed originally in Photoshop 5.5 and work right up through Photoshop 6.0 with few exceptions. Many recent ones work in PS 6 only. LOADING FILTERS: At the right you see the menu that drops down from the triangle on the Actions Palette (arrow). Click Load Actions. Like loading anything from within a program, you may have to hunt for the filters, but once you find them they load quickly. Once in Photoshop, they save with the program when you Quit. You only need to load them once. If you alter an Actions settings and Quit, the change is kept. To reset the action, you must reload it. Actions with the same name can join the list. That could confuse you. FILTERS DONT RUN SMOOTHLY: One of the basic settings in the Actions palette is Playback Options. Step by Step shows you each and every step during the running of a filter. Dont use it! Select Accelerated before attempting to run any of the iNovaFX Action filters. STOP OR CONTINUE: Within many filters dialog boxes appear at certain times. These guide you through operations or inform you of specific conditions that are present either before, during, or after the filter has been run. Often you have the option to Stop or Continue. In general, stopping a filter quits at the current state while continuing completes the filters effect and causes it to clean up after itself by purging the History file of all the intermediate stages of the filters execution. i Note that the Stop command has a graphic of a dotted box to its left in the list view of the Actions Palette. If this graphic is toggled offand clicking the similar icon at the head of each filter or collection of filters will do this as wellthe filter will run, but the desired stop wont happen and you will not encounter the options it represents. For some filters this is fatal. Trash groups that dont work, then reload them from the CD. BUTTON MODE: After you load the filters you need, you can select Button mode. Now each individual filter shows up as a button. Clicking it starts it on its journey. In this mode you cant accidentally modify a filter or its Stop icons, and filters are no longer organized into folders. THE HISTORY FILE: The History File is like a string of graphic Undos laid out by activity over time. A number of options exist for this palette, too, and it is possible to turn the History feature down to a minimum of one Undo-able state. While this saves memory, it interferes with the operation of a few of the iNovaFX filters. If you are experiencing difficulty with a filter, a History state of 20 or more steps may help. See the Photoshop documentation for more about the History file and how to get the most out of it. MEMORY PURGES: The History file and intermediate computations build up invisible temporary files that consume disk space and live memory in your computer. Photoshop has a control that purges the History or all memorized stages of all open documents on demand. The reason you dont want to purge everything is to allow graceful recovery of earlier steps should something go terribly wrong. As humans, we make more mistakes than we wish to admit, and Photoshop is just looking out for us. But as memory is consumed, operations can run out of operating room and things can come to a grinding halt. The Edit > Purge > Histories command is issued by nearly all iNovaFX filters as they complete operations. None of them purge the histories of other open files. SPECIAL CONDITIONS: Some filters warn you of special conditions they need to operate right at the beginning of their run. You might have to stack images in a special order or have only the image in question open on your computer for them to execute correctly, for instance. If you havent set the image up correctly, click Stop, fix the setup, and start over. FILTER FLAWS: All of the filters in this collection work correctly on their development machines and have been tested for compatibility on Windows and Macintosh machines with Photoshop 5.5. Initial tests show that they work with Photoshop 6.0, but no warranty or guarantee is claimed about their suitability to your images or your version of Photoshop or your hardware configuration. If any filter shows an error message, check the www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/nikon.html page for information on updates, new functions, and modifications to filters. i A special iSO2Taste-PS6 filter provides the tunable ISO improvement within Photoshop 6.0. It is on the CD. i New filters are being added all the time. Some very cool late additions are already in the filter folder on this CD. Instructions are on the Web and this very eBook is the codebook that gives you access to owners-only downloads.

Appendix

A-1

Appendix Resources, Links, Suppliers, Fun, Tools


AN EBOOK IS NOT CAST IN SHEETS OF FIBER THAT SIT ON YOUR SHELF AND NEVER CHANGE. LINKS AND RESOURCES HERE ARE IN CONSTANT TRANSITION. WHAT WORKS TODAY MAY NOT, TOMORROW. AT LEAST YOUR EXPERIENCE CAN START WITH THESE...
By purchasing or receiving this eBook as a gift, you have a three-part experience in your hands. The eBook itself, the software included on the CD, and the connection to the wider idea of whats current, interesting, and new via the Internet. Go to this page right away and bookmark it; http://www.digitalsecrets.net/. It will give you access to the wider question of whats new this instant.

SUPPLIERS

You would think that a digital camera with its lack of need for film was just about complete in every way right out of the box. But these Nikon cameras are system cameras, conceived from the beginning to be the anchors for add-on lenses, filters, tripods, cases, unique accessories, computers, printers, printing supplies, books, and all the other peripheral resources that surround film photography. While no list of these things will ever be complete, this list of suppliers will get you started on your journey beyond these pages.

CAMERA EQUIPMENT / FACTORY ACCESSORIES


Accessories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Presences Nikon USA . . . . . . . . . . Nikon Canada . . . . . . . . Nikon Australia . . . . . . . Nikon UK . . . . . . . . . . Nikon Sweden . . . . . . . . Nikon Germany . . . . . . . Nikon Austria . . . . . . . . Nikon Schweiz (Switzerland) Nikon France . . . . . . . . . Nikon Czech Republic . . . . Nikon Espania (Spain) . . . . Nikon Italy . . . . . . . . . . Nikon Greece . . . . . . . . Nikon Japan . . . . . . . . . Nikon Hong Kong . . . . . . Nikon History . . . . . . . . . . . Nikon Links . . . . . . . . . . . . Nikon Photo World (course) . . . Nikon Mall On-Line Store . . . .

. . . . . . http://www.klt.co.jp/Nikon/Digital_Cameras/accessories/index.htm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.nikonusa.com . . . . http://www.nikon.ca/ . . . . http://www.maxwell.com.au/ . . . . http://www.nikon.co.uk/index.htm . . . . http://www.nikon.se/ . . . . http://www.nikon.de/ . . . . http://www.nikon.at/ . . . . http://www.nikon.ch/ . . . . . . http://www.nikon.fr/ . . . . http://www.nikon.cz/ . . . . http://www.nikon-dpi.com . . . . http://www.nital.it/ . . . . http://www.damkalidis.gr/ . . . . http://www.nikon.co.jp/ . . . . http://www.nikon.com.hk/ . . . . http://www.nikon.co.jp/main/eng/portfolio/history.htm . . . . http://www.nikonlinks.com http://www.nikon.co.jp/main/eng/photo_world/ . . . . . . . . . . http://www.thenikonmall.com/

A-2 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

THIRD-PARTY ACCESSORIES

Lenses Wide Angle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WC-E24, WC-E63, FC-E8 fisheye . . . . . . . Telephoto Eagle (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . Kenko (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . Lens Cap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cases Tenba . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Targus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tamrac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Monitor Viewing enhancements Hoodman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JAR Sunshield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Remote Harbortronics Digisnap Remotes (versions for each) Slide Copier / Small Object Stage Happenstance Products (highly recommended) . . . Filters 28mm (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . . . Mounting Hardware Telescope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Panoramic Kaidan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Manfroto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eagle Wing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Underwater Case Ikelite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ocean Brite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tripods Q-Pod (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . . . Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Computers Macintosh (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Monitor Alignment Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Review of Monaco EZ color . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . Nikons only recommended. . . . . . . Various suppliers . . . . . . http://www.eagleeyeuk.com . . . . . . http://www.ckcpower.com . . . . . . various (about $3.00) get two . . . . . . http://www.tenba.com/camera.htm . . . . . . http://www.targus.com/ . . . . . . http://www.tamrac.com/5694.htm . . . . . . http://www.hoodmanusa.com . . . . . . http://hometown.aol.com/esc2000/SunshieldNikon.htm . . . . . . http://www.harbortronics.com . . . . . . http://www.happenstanceproducts.com . . . . . . http://www.2filter.com . . . . . . http://www.scopetronix.com . . . . . . http://home.att.net/~scopetronix/digitalcam.html . . . . . . http://www.kaidan.com . . . . . . http://www.manfrotto.com . . . . . . http://www.eagleeyeuk.com . . . . . . http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/coolpix.html . . . . . . http://www.oceanbrite.com/prosum2.htm . . . . . . http://www.ckcpower.com . . . . . . Various photographic suppliers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.apple.com Various suppliers http://www.thelawlers.com/essays.html#anchor289319 http://www.quiknet.com/~frcn/EZcolor.html

Appendix

A-3

Batteries NiMH AA Cells [LR 6 cells] (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chargers (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1000 mAH EN-EL1 for 775/885/995/5000 . . . . . . . Cleaning Supplies LensPen (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . . . . General Nikon Compact Digital Camera Information 950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Memory CF Card Suppliers Sandisk (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . . Lexar (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . . . Portable storage suppliers Minds @Work Digital Wallet . . . . . . . . . . . . iOmega FotoShow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Slave Flash Units (small) Quantaray MS-1 (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . Cobra FlashMate (very inexpensive) . . . . . . . . . . . Flash Brackets The Wing + flash arm (system) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Rollbar (recommended) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Home-made Equipment Outside the Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Printers Epson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2000P inkjet pigment printer (highly recommended) 8.5 inch wide and 13-inch wide versions PCMCIA-card direct printing HP Ink jet printers (highly recommended) . . . . . . . CF-card direct printers Exceptionally photographic results Canon (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8200 printer Lexmark (high value) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ink jet printers Printing Paper Red River (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . . . Pictorico Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

http://www.thomas-distributing.com http://www.4gdo.com/nexcellaa.htm http://www.nimhbattery.com/maha-mh-c204f.htm http://www.batterybarn.com/enel1.htm

. . . . http://www.lenspen.com . . . . http://www.cswnet.com/~nford//cp950/ . . . . http://www.cifrancis.com/mycp990/

. . . . http://www.sandisk.com . . . . http://www.lexarmedia.com . . . . http://www.mindsatwork.net/index.htm . . . . http://www.iomega.com . . . . http://www.ritzcamera.com . . . . http://www.ckcpower.com . . . . http://www.eagleeyeuk.com . . . . http://www.therollbar.com . . . . http://www.outsidethelines.com/MakeHW.html . . . . http://www.epson.com

. . . . http://www.hp.com

. . . . http://www.canon.com . . . . http://www.lexmark.com

. . . . http://www.redriverpaper.com . . . . http://www.pictorico.com

A-4 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Software [Note: All software mentioned here is for both Mac and Windows] Viewers/Browsers Adobe Acrobat Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html Panoramic Manipulation Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/ Panavue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.panavue.com/index.htm Photovista . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.mgisoft.com SceneWorx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.vrtoolbox.com Quicktime Toolbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtvr/authoringstudio/ Editing Software Adobe Photoshop (THE world standard) . . . . . . . . . . http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/main.html Studio Artist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.synthetik.com Photogenetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.qbeo.com Digital Darkroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.microfrontier.com/products/digital_darkroom10/index.html Photographic Prints via Internet Ofoto (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.ofoto.com NikonNet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.nikonnet.com Shutterfly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.shutterfly.com DotPhoto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.dotphoto.com Spector (Belgium, Austria, So. Africa)(highly recommended) . http://www.spector.be FotoFun (Belgium) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.fotofun.be/ AgfaNet (Europe) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.agfanet.com/en/ Large Photographic Prints (they do small ones too) 11 x 14 up to 20 x 30 EZ Prints (highly recommended) . . . . . http://www.ezprints.com Slides from Digital Files Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.agfaphoto.com/magazin/9605/output_article.html Integrated Imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.integratedphoto.com/slides.htm University of Alberta, Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.ualberta.ca/~creative/imaging/photo6.htm Flash-Back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.flash-back.com/pptsfo.htm Digital Camera Web Sites / Books Digital Photography Review (highly recommended) . . . . . . http://www.dpreview.com Steves Digicams (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.steves-digicams.com Imaging Resource (highly recommended) . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.imaging-resource.com Lonestar Digital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.lonestardigital.com Digital Camera Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.dcresource.com Digital Photography Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.dp-now.com/ Thom Hogan (eBooks, too) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.bythom.com/ Short Courses (books, too) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.shortcourses.com Digital Photo Corner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.dpcorner.com Baron Sekiya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.mediabaron.net Belgium Digital (in English) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.belgiumdigital.com Megapixel (English/French) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.megapixel.net Digital Secrets (extremely highly recommended) . . . . . . . . http://www.digitalsecrets.net

Appendix

A-5

FUN LINKS
Must-See Photographers Hiroshi Kamakura . Misha Gordin . . . . Taki Bibelas . . . . . Aeternus . . . . . .

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http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/hiroshik/default.html . . . . . . . . . . http://bsimple.com/newcrowd.htm . . . . . . . . . . http://www.takibibelas.com . . . . . . . . . . http://www.aeternus.com/foyer.html . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.atsf.co.uk/ilight/index.html . . . . . . . . . http://tedfelix.com/IR/ . . . . . . . . . http://vr.albury.net.au/~kathyw/PanoTools/tutorials/ . . . . . . . . . http://members.tripod.com/KLComer/Astro001.htm http://webpages.charter.net/bbiggers/DCExperiments/index.html

Infrared Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Panorama Tools Tutorial . . . . Astronomy Tips and Techniques Experiments . . . . . . . . . . .

A Personal Website (Japanese/English) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.digitalcamera.gr.jp/index-e.htm Personal Camera Guides 950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/User-Guide/950/index.html 990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/User-Guide/990/index.html 995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/User-Guide/995/index.html Color Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.ProfileHelp.com/ Test Strip Demo Download . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.vividdetails.com/Download.html Digital Journalists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://digitaljournalist.org/feature.html Epson Ink-jet Prints Up Close . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.tssphoto.com/sp/dg/news/dot_comp.html Digital Camera Discussion Forum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://forum.coolconnect.com/forum/20/list.pl

Cant find it? I didnt include it? I missed it?


Best Search Engine on the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.google.com

Once again, the Internet Site that extends this eBook experience
Digital Secrets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.digitalsecrets.net
Be sure to check the Breaking News page for special announcements. New iNovaFX Photoshop Action Filters appear from time to time. The Accessories Page is always being updated. Bookmark it in your Web browser.

A-6 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Occasionally the camera freezes, the lens makes a strange sound, the image wont save, or the CF door pops open on its own. The CF door issue is covered in Chapter 8. But the rest of the problems stem from the nature of the beast in hand: a computer that thinks its a camera. Inside the camera there is a hidden, not-replaceable battery. It charges from the AA cells that power the camera, but until it is fully charged, certain functions can get lost. A computer without power is a chunk of sand. It isnt much use beyond the paperweight function. But when the power internally isnt enough to carry the computers various memory states beyond the momentary power off/on cycle of even changing from Auto to Manual Rec modes, issues can arise. Nikon says to expect that internal battery to be fully charged in a day or so, but a lot of use, changing the AAs, and frequent changes of record and play modes can produce error or odd conditions. The camera can display error messages, not function, and even enter a state that wont allow it to turn off! This suggests that the Off mode is really the initiator of a shut down sequence, not a disconnection of power. Then there are the lens growls. In unusual circumstances it is possible to cause the zoom or focus motor to enter a state in which it sounds like it is growling. This is a distinct, loud, low frequency growl. Apparently it does the camera no harm, at least if caught soon enough. The focus and zoom motors in these cameras are digitally controlled, and I suspect they are being given conflicting digital signals when this condition arises. The general fix for both low-battery and lens growl conditions is the same: simply open the battery compartment and disconnect the internal computer from its power. The Off switch wont do it, so you must intervene. Upon power-up, the camera starts its internal booting in the same way that a computer that has crashed re-awakens. It starts from scratch. Since everything it needs to know on start-up is in either firmware or hard-wired memory (ROM), startup is only a few seconds. If either of these problems dont go away in a matter of days, the camera is due for a visit to the doctors back at the Nikon ER.

PROBLEMS/RECOVERIES

DUST AND SCRATCHES

Under the permanent front element of the Nikkor Zoom lens you can see the moving elements change position as the zoom setting is operated. In rare instances, a mote of dust can appear behind this glass. The chances are great that it will not affect your images, even when the aperture is closed down to the absolute minimum, but it can be worrisome. Before you ship it off to Nikon for a de-dusting, try to dislodge it. It will probably be stuck in place by static electricity. Static electricity may be exacerbated by the actions of lens tissues or cloths on the outer surface of the front element and that may be what is keeping the mote in place. Commercial antistatic sprays are no help, theyll merely coat the lens with undesirable residue or get into the camera. Remember, never spray anything onto the camera. Not sneezes, not lens cleanernothing. In the days of LP records, a number of handy anti-static devices were sold. One product that may help was marketed under the Zerostat brand. It looks like a small pistol and generates a field of ions from its muzzle. Overuse can inversely charge surfaces, so if you try one of these, go lightly. The static from one wont hurt your camera or its CF card, but use it cautiously. It also tends to neutralize a CD that has picked up static cling. Scratches on the top element are a genuine problem. Theyll never go away, and since the lens cant be changed, Nikon Repair is your only option. The best fix is to never scratch that surface. That means cleaning it and protecting it. While the LensPen (See Chapter 8) and lint-free cloth are your friend in this regard, the use of a UV filter cannot be ignored. Its simply inexpensive insurance for optical trauma.

Appendix

A-7

DROPPING THE CAMERA

The magnesium body of these cameras is rugged. The swivel is rugged. Still, they get dropped and people have residual concerns about the central bearing. The swivel on the first design of the series, the Coolpix 900, was a tad delicate. From the 950 to the 990 the entire mechanism was increasingly ruggedized and should not be of concern. If a physical hard knock dents the case, the chances are greatly increased that the inner mechanisms may have suffered damage. Immediately check the camera for these things: Zoom function. Does it hang or encounter slow areas throughout the zoom? Focus accuracy. Does the wide open lens, as seen via Aperture Priority, not focus where it used to? Use the digital zoom function to check at full telephoto and test the camera with full-size images. Swivel smoothness. Is there a new friction spot in the swivels twist? Aperture action. On the 990, you can see the aperture change in Manual mode by peering into the lens from the front of the camera as you rotate the Command Dial. You can also see the effect on the monitor as a high brightness, relatively blank subject is observed while changing aperture. On the 950, the plate with the three aperture holes can similarly be seen to change through the lens. Shutter action. Probably not affected since the shutter is 95% electronic. But if the exposures are no longer correct, the mechanical parts of the shutter may be involved in some sort of malfunction. Very high speed shutter settings should be checked. Optical Viewfinder. Does it center the way it used to? Compare it to the monitor image of a locked down camera. The optical viewfinder is often only approximate but everything you see through it should be there in the monitor image. Flash. Does the camera speedlight behave normally? Are the exposures what you would expect from prior experience? Auto Rec mode. Since the Auto mode is fully coordinated, it may reveal problems that the other modes may not. Erratic behavior. Is the camera failing to easily perform a function such as changing modes, pressing certain buttons, achieving focus lock, writing to the CF card, etc.? Control malfunction. Does one particular control fail to operate as expected? A switch, button or rotating wheel can sprout irregularities. Does the Command Dial always work correctly? New sounds. Experience will tell you if the camera doesnt sound quite right. Reset. If the camera seems to have problems, try fresh batteries or even a complete software Reset. If all is well, your camera will have earned a Purple Heart and you can continue shooting in confidence. This is the most likely scenario. Professional cameras collect knocks all the time and Nikon has spent much effort to make these cameras rugged, durable, and reliable, but they can be destroyed or crippled by traumatic events. Fortunately, they are modular, and Nikons repair facility is generally a less-than two week turn. If the camera receives a hard blow, make sure the repair people understand this. Forcing them to play guess the disease is a good way to have your camera away from home for an extended hospital stay. If you have not attached, and more importantly, if you dont use, a wrist strap, then the moment of anxiety you will experience when you drop the camera will have been well earned. It may never have an air-bag, but at least you can install a seat belt. And if you are using this camera professionally, make sure it is on your insurance policy.

A-8 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

INCLUDED ITEMS FOR V. 3.0


INOVAFX PHOTOSHOP ACTION FILTERS

New filters appear with this version. Some for specific use with the new 995/775 cameras, others that work more generally. All the most recent ones are written for Photoshop 6.x. If you havent upgraded to six, you dont know what you are missing. Better color engines, for instance.
PRACTICE IMAGES

On the CD you will find a folder full of practice images called Practice/Demo_Images. These include several of the shots found in the book and include images referred to in the text that are used for certain examples. The Las Vegas Venetian Tower image and several sky shots are available for you to practice matting techniques with, for instance. A very underexposed images is here, too, for you to practice high-ISO recovery techniques with.
FRAMES

Several frames are in a Frames folder. These are images of frames that fit images of a particular size but which are more detailed than procedural frames. New for Version 2.0 are the iFilmBorder iNovaFX Filters. These only work in Photoshop 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0 but simulate roll film, 4 x 5 sheet film, and 35mm single frame borders.
CURVES

For Photoshops Curves function only, these are saved curves that do a lot for something so simple. A Digital Secrets Web page provides a tutorial in their use.
MODEL RELEASES

Included on the CD is a folder of Model Releases. In it you will find PDF and EPS files labeled ModelRelease2000.0 M and ModelRelease2000.1 F. The first with the M at the end is written to the neutral gender standard of the assumed male pronoun context, so every reference back to the photographer is expressed as his or he. Fine for guys, and probably wouldnt even cause a question in the minds of most. But what if that isnt your personal gender? Ladies, look at the second one, ModelRelease2000.1F. That second one is for female photographers and its pronouns (her, she) are amended to be appropriate. You can print these out and trim them to fit in the CD package. The best way of sealing the bargain is to give the model a minimum monetary payment. In the US, one of the new gold dollar coins is a good idea. It becomes an inexpensive souvenir to the model. As you hand it over, let the model know that, This is your lucky day, and that coin will become a lucky coin.
TEST CHARTS

The iNovaFX color white balance filters on the package are included as a file which will allow you to print out the image on matte paper, if you wish. A printed version can also be folded and tucked away in a camera case. Try to resist printing them out for all your digital photographer friends. They took a lot of effort to make. Suggest that your friends buy their own copy of this eBook, please. You will note that your printer wont exactly match the cover version. Different paper, different inks, different printernot too surprising, when you think about it. Still, theyll work quite well. You may wish to experiment before using the filters for critical images.
SHOOTING FOR EFFECT

The booklet inside the CD case explains how to shoot for iNovaFX filter use. It exists also as a PDF file, so you can print it out if the original is lost.
DIGITAL VISIONS: A GALLERY OF COOLPIX PHOTOGRAPHY

Here are images from half a dozen photographers who have embraced the digital medium for its strengths and abilities. There is genuine art here along with examples from many different mindsets. Your mindset will vary, and thank goodness for that.

Index

I-1

YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT BUT YOU DONT KNOW WHERE IT IS HIDDEN.
Topic Chapter header page number additional page additional inclusive page range

Index Cross-Linked Ideas

Folders . . . . . . . 3A-6 -15 -20>23,

3:1 Zoom 3:2 Size . 3D . 4:1 Zoom

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. . . . . . 3B-18, 3D-11 3B-1 -19 -35, 3C-5, 9-14 . . . . . . . . . . . 4-36 . . . . . . . . . . . 3C-1

Available Darkness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-22 Available Darkness Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-11

B
Back Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-16 Barrel Distortion . . 3B-34>35, 4-27 -31, 5-6, 8-7, 9-1 Batteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3C-2, 3D-2, 4-2>3 Black and White . . . 3A-10 -14, 3B-8 -21, 4-12 -32 -36 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-14, 8-5 -19, 9-4 -11 Black and White Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-14 Blue Spill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-19 BSS . 3A-9, 3B-2 -18, 3C-17 -24, 3D-1 -8 -19, 4-32 Buildings Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-6 Bulb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-10

A
AA Batteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-2 Accessories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-43 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Action Filters . . . . . . 1-19, 2-2, 3B-24, 3C-21, 4-23, . . . . . . 9-1 -16, Shooting for Effect Booklet AE Lock . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-16, 3B-23, 3C-22, 4-39 All Images Delete . . . . . 3A-20, 3B-30, 3C-29, 3D-15 Anamorphic Converter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-26 Aperture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see F-stop Aperture Priority Mode . . . . . . . 3A-8, 3B-9, 3C-13 Architecture Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-6 Artifacts . . . . . . . . 2-12, 3A-2 -3 -7, 3B-2 -17- 21, . . . . . . . . . . 3C-2 -6 -24, 3D-4, 4-16 -42, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-2, 8-13 -20, 9-8 15 AS-E900 Cord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-24, 8-3 Aspect Ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-1 -25, 4-31, 6-1 Auto Bracketing . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-23, 3C-1 -24 Auto Exposure 3A-4, 3B-3, 3C-5, 3D-12>19, 4-12, 8-11 Auto Flash . . . . . . . . . . 3A-4, 3B-4 -28, 3D-10 -17 Auto Off . . . . . . . . . . 3A-6 -18 -21, 3B-6 -28 -31, . . . . . . . . . . 3C-11 -27 -30, 3D-9 -19, 4-4 Auto Rec . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-4, 3B-3, 3C-5, 3D-3 Autofocus . . . . . . 3A-1 -17, 3B-3>5 -16 -23>25 -27, . . . . . . . . . . 3C-5 -9>10, 3D-11, 4-12 -30 Automatic Mode . . . . . . . 3A-4, 3B-3, 3C-5, 3D-3 Menu Settings . . . . . . . 3A-6, 3B-6, 3C-11, 3D-4

C
Cable Release . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-25 -39, 7-5 Camera Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-6>12 Camera Operation 950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-1 990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-1 995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3C-1 775 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3D-1 Center-Weight Meter . . . . . 1-13, 3A-12 -15, 3B-16, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3C-15 -19, 4-11 -16 CF Cards . . . . . 3A-21, 3B-10 -17, 3C-4 -6 -11 -17, . . . . . . . . 3D-5 -7 -9 -15, 4-45>46, 8-2 -23 CF Door Fix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-11 Character Of Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-12 Charger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3C-2, 3D-2, 4-2 Cheese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-17

I-2 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Chromatic Aberration . . . . . . . . . . . 4-28>29, 9-2 Cleaning the Lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-14 Close Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see Macro Color Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-1>2 Color Matrix System . . . . . . . . 1-7, 3B-14, 3C-14 Color Negative . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-8, 3C-20>21 Command Dial . . . viii, ix, 3B-1 -5 -8>12 -23 -28>29, 3C-12 -15 -21 -23 -25 -28, 4-14 -16 -21 -31, 8-15 Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-8 Compression . . . . . . . . . . 3A-1, 3B-2, 3C-5, 3D-3 Continuous Mode . . . . . 3A-12, 3B-16, 3C-16, 3D-7 Contrast Adjust . . . . . . . . . . 3A-13, 3B-20, 3C-18 Controls Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii, ix ISO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-7, 3B-8, 3C-8 Master Switch . . . . . . viii, ix, 3A-4, 3B-3, 3C-12 Memorize . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-16, 3B-22, 3C-21 Zoom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii, ix Converter Optics . . . . see Tele, Wide, Fisheye Lenses Coolpix 900 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-1 Coolpix 950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii, 3A Coolpix 990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii, 3B Coolpix 995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix, 3C Coolpix 775 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix, 3D Copyright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii Crop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-1

E
EagleEye Products . . . . . 4-25 -38, 7-5, 8-4 -12 -24 EN-EL1 battery . . . . . . . . . . 2-2, 2-3, 3C-2, 3D-3 Erase Folder . . . . . . . . 3A-20>21, 3B-2 -30, 3C-29 EV +/- 1-11, 3A-4>5 -18, 3B-5 -8 -11 -20 -23 -26 -28, . . . . . . . . 3C-2 -18 -20 -23>27, 3D-8 -16, . . . . . . . . . 4-12>13 -23 -33, 5-14, 8-4 -11 EXIF Data . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-19, 3B-18 -25 -29, . . . . . . . . . . 3C-14 -23 -27>28, 4-16, 8-9 Exposure . . . . . . . . 1-10>17 -20 -23>24, 2-10>11, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-4>8 -12>13 -16, . . . . . 3B-4>5 -8>14 -16>17 -20 -23>24 -28, . . . . . . . . . . . 3C-3 -6 -8 -12>18 -22>27, . . . . . . . . . . . 3D-4 -7>8 -11 -13 -16>20, . . . . . . . . . . 4-10>16 -22>25 -32 -35>40, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-4 -15, 9-4>5 -9 Exposure Compensation . . . . . . . . . . . see EV+/ External Flash . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-4 -11 -13 -15 -18, . . . . . . . . . . 3B-4 -8 -11 -15 -18 -26 -31 . . . . . . . . 3C-10 -15>17 -27, 4-33>34, 8-8 External Power In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii, ix

F
Fast Review (Preview Only) . . . 3A-17, 3B-27, 3C-25 F-stop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-11 Fill Flash . . . . . . . . . 3A-4, 3B-4 -26, 3C-9, 3D-10 Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see Polarizer, UV Fish Eye Lens Converter . . 1-3, 3A-15, 3B-19, 3C-19, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-26>27 -29 -33 -35 Fixed Aperture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-26, 3C-26 Flash Adjustment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-26, 3C-27 Flash Bracket/Cords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-3 Flash Fill . . . . . . . . . 3A-4, 3B-4 -26, 3C-9, 3D-10 Flash Modes . . . . . . . . . 3B-4 -11 -26, 3C-8, 3D-10 Flash Sensor . . . . . . . . . . . viii, ix, 3B-5 -31, 4-24 Flash Sync Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-3 Flaw Frame . . . . . . . . 3B-10>11, 3C-25, 4-22, 9-5 Flexible Program Mode . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-9, 3C-12 Focus Confirm . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-17 -24>25, 3C-23 Focus Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . see Manual Focus Focus Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-16, 3C-16

D
Date . . . . . . . . . 3A-18 21, 3B-7, 3C-11, 3D-9 Delete Image . . . . . . . 3A-20, 3B-30, 3C-29, 3D-15 Digital Darkroom . . . . . . 2-3 -12, 3B-33, 3C-18 -21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3D-1, 4-8 -46, 6-1 -4 Digital Magnification (Playback) . . 3A-19, 3B-18 -29, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3C-29, 3D-14 Digital Zoom . . . . 3A-14, 3B-25, 3C-26, 3D-12, 4-30 Distance Feet/Meters . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-25, 3C-23 Distance Selector . . . . 3A-5, 3B-5 -28, 3C-25, 3D-12 Dominant Eye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-7 Down-sampling 3A-3 -14, 3B-3 -21, 3C-6>7, 3D-5 -12 DPI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-5 -20 -22>23

Index

I-3

Folders . . . . . 3A-6 -15 -20>21, 3B-6>7 -17 -30>31, . . . . . . . . 3C-6 -11 -17 -27 -29>30, 3D-18 Forced Flash . . . 3A-4, 3B-4 -26 -28, 3C-9, 3D-10 -18 Formal Education Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-22 Format CF Card . . . . . . . . . . see CF Card Format Found Object Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-15 Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-11, 7-1>2 Framing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-8>10, 5-1 -18 Func 1/2 . . . . . . . . viii, ix, 3B-9 -28, 3C-12>13 -23 Function Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii, ix

Internet Page Production . . . . . . . . . see Portfolio Iris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see Aperture ISO . . . . . 1-11 -15, 3A-4 -7>8, 3B-4 -8>11 -28, . . . . . . . . . . . . 3C-8>9, 3D-10, 4-12 -16 ISO Boost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-4

J
JPEG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see Compression

K
Kenko 8 x 32 Tele Converter . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-25

G
Geometry Exercise . . . . . . . . Genuine Fractals Program . . . . Getting the Most from this eBook Giant Prints . . . . . . . . . . . . Gray Card . . . . . . . . . . . . . Grip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-3 . . . 8-5 . . . . iv . . . 8-5 . . 3A-11 viii, ix, 8-9

L
Laminated Print Language . . . Laptop . . . . LCD Brightness Lens Cap . . . Lens Converters Lighting . . . . LR6 Batteries . Long Exposure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-12 . . . 3A-18, 3B-28, 3C-27, 3D-9 . . . . . . see Portable Computer . . . 3A-6 -17, 3B-6, 3C-11, 3D-9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-44 . . . . . . . . . . . 4-25>29, 7-5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-6>8 see AA Batteries, NiMH Batteries . . . . . . see Flaw Frame, Bulb

H
Half-Press . . . . . 3A-9 -12 -17, 3B-4 -12 -23>24 -27, . . . 3C-8>9 -11 -16 -23, 3D-2 -7 -11 -13 -20, . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-4 -10>11 -16 -21, 8-15 Happenstance Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-11 -26 Hide Image . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-21, 3B-31, 3C-29 Histogram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-29, 3C-28

M
Macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-5 -16, 3B-5 -19 Magnify . . . . . . . . . . . . see Digital Magnification Magnifying Hood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-44 Maha MH-204F Charger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-2 Manual Focus . . . . . 3A-9, 3B-11>12 -18 -24, 3C-23 . . . . . . . . . . . 4-20 -25, 5-11, 8-1>2 -20 Manual Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-7, 3B-8, 3C-12 Matrix Color Meter . . . . . . . see Color Matrix Meter Matrix Meter . . . . 1-12, 3A-4 -12, 3B-4 -15>16 -20 . . . . . . . . . . . . 3C-14>15 -26, 4-11 -38 Matte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-11. 7-1 -4 -6 Matte Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-27 Meet the Cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii, ix Menu Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-21 Menu System . . . . . . . 3A-9, 3B-6, 3C-12 -29, 3D-4 Microscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-24 Microvista Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-10 Millennium Edition 950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-4

I
Image Adjust . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-13, 3B-20, 3C-18 Image Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-29, 3C-28 Image Sharpening . . . . . . 2-12, 3B-21, 3C-2 -23>24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3D-4 -8, 9-6 -15 Image Size . . . . 3A-2, 3B-1 -19 -35, 3C-5, 3D-5, 9-14 Imaging Chip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-5 -8, 8-14 Improvement Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-19 Infinity . . . . . . 3A-5, 3B-5 -25, 3C-10, 3D-12, 4-16 InfoBites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . all over the place Infrared Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-13 Infrared Photography . . . . . . 3B-36, 3D-20, 4-24 -34 Ink-jet Printers . . . . . . . . 2-2, 3C-6, 6-3 -5>6, 8-5 iNovaFX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see Action Filters Intentionally Bad Pictures Exercise . . . . . . . . . 5-18

I-4 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

Mode Selection . . . . . . . . . . . 1-17, 3B-9, 3C-12 Model Release Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii, ix Calibration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-8 Monitor Hood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-44 Monitor Options . . . . . . 3A-6 -17, 3B-6, 3C-11, 3D-9 Motor Drive Mode . . . . . . . . see Continuous Mode Movie Mode . . 3B-16>18 -25, 3C-5 -17 -22>23, 3D-16 Multi-Flash Technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-3 -6 Multi-Review . . . . . . . 3A-19, 3B-29, 3C-29, 3D-14 Multi Selector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii, ix, 64 Multi-Shot 16 . . . . . . . 3A-13, 3B-17, 3C-16, 3D-8

N
Nikon Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix Nikon Software . . . . . . 3C-27 -29>30, 3D-9 -14 -18 NiMH Batteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-2>3 Note to Film Photographers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi

O
On&C-AF . . . . . On&S-AF . . . . . Optical Accessories Optical Viewfinder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-17, 5-2 3A-17, 4-21, 5-2 . . . . . 4-26>27 . . . . . . viii, ix

P
Panoramic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-38>43, 5-7>8 Prints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-3 -6 Panoramic Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-7>8 Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 6 PCMCIA Cards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-23 Photogenetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-25 Photons . . . . . . . 1-8 -11 -16, 4-22>23 -33 -35, 8-8 Photo Prints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-5 Photoshop Blending Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-22, 7-3>4 Color Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-17 Controls Brightness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-5>7 Burning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-10>11, 6-10 Color Balance . . . . . . . . . . . 2-7, 6-9 -19 Contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-5>6, 8-20

Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-6>7 -12, 4-23 Dodging . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-10>11, 6-10 Gamma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-5, 4-23, 6-9 Hue and Saturation . . . . . . . . . . 2-8, 4-29 Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-5 Saturation/Desaturation Sponge . . . . . . 2-12 Unsharp Mask Filter . . . 2-9 -12, 3A-3, 3B-21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-9, 8-21, 9-13 Variations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-8 Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-5>12 Picture In A Picture Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-17 Pincushion Distortion . . . . . . . see Barrel Distortion Play Mode . . . . . . . . . 3A-19, 3B-29, 3C-27, 3D-13 Polarizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-7>8, 9-15 Portable Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-3 Portfolio Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-24 Portrait Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-2 -23 Portrait Lighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-6 PPI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-5 -20 -22>23 Preview Only . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-17, 3B-27, 3C-25 Print Fading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-3 Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 6 Print Set . . . . . . . . . . 3A-20, 3B-31, 3C-30, 3D-15 Print Set Delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50, 82 Program Mode . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-7, 3B-9, 3C-12 Protect Image . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-21, 3B-30, 3C-29 Pseudo Fish Eye Converter . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-26

Q
Q-Pod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-43>44, 8-12 Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see Compression

R
Ready Light Flash . . . . . Focus . . . . . Red-Eye Reduction Remote Controls . Repetition Exercise Reset All . . . . . . Review Only . . . Round Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii, ix . . . . . . . . viii, ix . . see Flash Modes . . . . . . 4-25, 8-15 . . . . . . . . . 5-9 3A-17, 3B-26. 3C-25 3A-18, 3B-27, 3C-25 . . . . . . . . . 5-5

Index

I-5

Rules of Thumb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-14>19

T
Telephoto Lens Converters . . . . 3A-15, 3B-18 -34>35 . . . . . . . . . 3C-11 -19, 4-25>26, 7-5, 8-4 Telescope Mount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7-5, 8-12 Test Strip Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-9, 8-18 The Grip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-15, 4-4 -44 TIFF . . . . . . . . . . 3A-1>2, 3B-2, 3C-5>8, 8-13 Time Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-15 Tone Compensation . . . . . . . . . . see Image Adjust Transfer Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-11 Tripods, Uses . . . . . . . . 4-5>6 -15 -25 -35 -39, 5-7 Tripod Socket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii, ix TV Display . . . . . . vi, 1-18, 3A-3, 3B-3 -28, 3C-27, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3D-13, 4-31 -46>47

SB-22 Speedlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-31 Self-Timer . . . . . . . . 3A-5, 3B-5, 3C-10 -25, 3D-12 Sepia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7-2 Seq. Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-6, 3C-11, 3D-9 Seq. Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-6 Serial Data Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii, ix, 4-46 Serial Data USB . . . . . . . . . . . 3C-29, 3D-9, 4-46 Set Language for Menus . 3A-18, 3B-28, 3C-27, 3D-9 Set Time/Date . . . . . . 3A-18 21, 3B-7, 3C-11, 3D-9 Set-Up Menu . . . . . . . 3A-17, 3B-27, 3C-25, 3D-9 Sharpness Control . . . . . . . . . 3B-21, 3C-23, 3D-8 Shot Confirm Lamp . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-28, 3C-27 Shots Per Storage Size . . . . 3A-2, 3B-2, 3C-6, 3D-7 Shutter Priority Mode . . . . . . . . 3A-7, 3B-9, 3C-12 Shutter Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-6, 3B-6, 3C-11 Shutter Sync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-17 Single Image Mode . . . . 3A-12, 3B-16, 3C-16, 3D-7 SK-E900 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-15, 8-3 Skew Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-16 Sky Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-4 Slave Flash Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-23 Slave Flash IR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-24 Slide Copier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3C-20, 8-11 Slide Show . . . . . . . . 3A-20, 3B-30, 3C-29, 3D-15 Slide Film for IR Shooting . . . 3D-19, 4-24 -36, 5-13 Slow Flash . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-5, 3B-5, 3C-9, 3D-11 Small Object Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-26 Special Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 7 Special Effects Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7-7>8 Speedlight Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-23 Spot Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-12, 3B-16, 3C-15 Startup Zoom Position . . . . . . . . . . 3B-25, 3C-26 Step-Up Rings . . . . . . . . . . . 4-25 -29 -34>35 -43 Superstitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-14 Swivel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-14

U
Ultra High Speed Mode Ultra Wider . . . . . . Unsharp Mask Filter . . . . . . . . . USB . . . . . . . . User Sets . . . . . . . UV Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-17, 3C-17, 3D-16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-26 . . . . 2-9 -12, 3A-3, 3B-21 . . . . . . . 6-9, 8-21, 9-13 3C-29>30, 3D-1 -9 -14, 4-46 . . . . 3A-16, 3B-22, 3C-21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-9

V
Vacation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-45 Variable Flash Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-24 VGA . 3A-2>3, 3B-2 -17 -35, 3C-5>7 -28, 3D-5 -12 VGA Sequence Mode . . . . . 3A-12>13, 3B-17, 3C-16 Video Out . . . . . . . vi, 1-18, 3A-3, 3B-3 -28, 3C-27, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3D-13, 4-31 -46>47 Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-9, 3B-32, 4-34

I-6 Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

W
Web Images . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-2, 3D-9, 5-24, 8-16 White Balance Auto . . . . . . . . . . 3A-10, 3B-13, 3C-14, 3D-5 Cloudy . . . . . . . . 3A-10, 3B-13, 3C-14, 3D-6 Exotic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-32>33 Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-33>34 Flash . . . . . . . . . 3A-10, 3B-13, 3C-14, 3D-7 Fluorescent (950) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-10 FL1, FL2, FL3 (990/995) . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-13 Incandescent . . . . . 3A-10, 3B-13, 3C-14, 3D-6 Mixed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-32 Preset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-10, 3B-13 -32 Sunny / Fine . . . . . 3A-10, 3B-13, 3C-14, 3D-6 Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-32 Tricks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3B-33>34, 3D-7 Wide Angle Lens . . . . . . . . . 3A-15, 3B-18 -34>35 . . . . . . . . . . . . 3C-11 -19, 4-25>26, 8-4 Wing Bracket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-38>39, 7-5 Wrist Strap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-43>44

X
XGA . . . . . . . . . . . 3A-2, 3B-2, 3C-6, 3D-5 -7

Z
Zone System . . . . . 1-12, Shooting for Effect Booklet Zoom Ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-9

Shooting For Effect


Or The Fine Art of Planning to FX it Later.

A Guide to Anticipating iNovaFX Filter Results


only an element of the result. The rest of it exists as a vague vision that will be completed through some other means. Like a filter. Let the record show that by filter Im describing the intervention of somethinga process or devicethrough which the image must pass before completion. The iNovaFX filters are an example of where this is headed. When you know that the image will be re-interpreted as an oil painting, you dont capture the original shot in quite the same way. This guide will help you plan your darkroom technique before the shutter is pressed.

sually we spend our photographic moments catching things that we observe and pretty much thinking that if the result is close enough to what we saw, weve done our job. But every once in a while we see something in literally a new lightthe light of possibility rather than fact. Now the thing in front of our lens is destined to become something new, later in the digital darkroom when the clock is ticking slower and our brain is consumed with that conspiratorial feeling of sneaky creativity. At moments like these the thing in front of the lens has become

By Peter iNova

Shooting for Effect

Previsualization

As you practice with the special effects techniques of any digital photo editing program, you will begin to realize the greater potentials of the technique. A whisper in the back of your head will suggest that if you had been shooting with this technique in mind to begin with, your editing session might have been able to achieve more because you would have been able to previsualize the results of the whole process. Perhaps you would have changed something as you shot the picture. Aha! When Minor White and Ansel Adams, both photographic heros of the last century, were dreaming up the Zone System, an exposure & development & printing system of controlling tonalities in prints, they were using the previsualized final result as the driver of the steps that led up to it. Previsualization became technical steps. Now you can apply a certain previsualization to the results you seek to achieve in your digital images. To do this, you need three things: Experience in achieving the target result, an appreciation of the unique factors that lead to the best expression of that result, and the ability to orchestrate small to large changes in the original shot in order to prepare it for the final effect.
Experience

The iNovaFX filters give you immediate fixed results. They can be applied to any image with varying degrees of success. What makes them work with some images but not with others? Experience will guide you to finding this out on a visceral level. But that could take months. In a way, the iNovaFX filter is a fixed previsualization. It always responds the same way, so it can serve as a target to aim for with the original shot.
Unique Factors

Beneath each filter are the ways it interacts with an image to achieve its particular results. The tones it chooses to work with, the color, the contrast rangeall cause it to

iPinch+70

Shooting for Effect 3

behave in a particular way. And the behavior of each filter is not tied to others. While one can run more than one filter on an image, the order in which they are run is critical to the results achieved. Just like the order of chemicals in a wet darkroom. When you know that a particular filter works best with low contrast subjects, you will need to either gather a lower contrast original or perform a contrast reducing operation before running the filter. Similarly, lighting, angle of view, or time of day may dictate how the best original exposure should be gathered.
Camera Tools
iBWFilmFX4

Shooting Adjustments

Your tools at the moment of exposure are few. The only things you can control on the Nikon 990 camera (for instance) are iris, shutter speed, contrast, color balance, monochrome, and ISO sensitivity. Well, thats certainly not chicken feed, but you may have to adjust lighting, by adding some camera speedlight to an outdoor or back-lit shot, or you might have to change your choice of background by achieving a different shooting position relative to your subject.
Pre-Filter Edits

Assuming that you have gotten everything right in the camera and that these limits of manipulation have been optimized as much as is either possible, or more likely, practical, the next steps happen once the image is in the computer. You may wish to try the filter or technique on the image right away just to see how the image behaves with it. Chances are great that it will need more preparation, but now youll have an idea of how much. Controls in the computer parallel those on your camera. Levels, Curves, Hue and Saturation, Color Balance, and all the image manipulators can be used to prepare the image for the next stage. Keep in mind that the objective here is not to make a good-looking image, but an image that will pass through the filter and then look good. It is not uncommon to create an intermediate step image that looks like a photographic mistake.

Shooting for Effect

In Photoshop the History file will allow you access to the last number of steps you have performed. Setting this control to 30 operations or more will help. Keep in mind, though, that most iNovaFX filters clean up after themselves by throwing out the accumulated steps in the History file.
The Filter

With everything totally optimized for filter processing, the act of running the filter may come as an anti-climax. Often it will be the least time-consuming part of the edit, but it is the Moment of Truth in the process. Friends and relatives looking over your shoulder may ooh and aah, but you will know what everybody in the field of special effects knows; all is preparation. Play it for what its worth. This last step could get you a raise.
Guidelines

What follows are particular details to watch for as you shoot for specific filters. These are guidelines, not bronzed rules. Feel free to bend and break them when necessary, especially when you can predict the consequences. Barrel Filtering and Chromatic Aberration Repair Since these are geometry modifying operations, the thing that will help the most is doing them first before other processes. If there is a priority of sequence among them, it would favor doing the Chromatic Aberration corrections, iCrAb filters, first since the few pixels of image size they produce do not adversely affect the barrel distortion corrections made with the iBC filters. Color Tinting Color correction filtration with the iCF filter series isnt something you plan for, usually, being a road to recovery from errors. But they have the hidden qualities of color alteration that are often overlooked. For instance, when one applies a iCFCloudyShotSunny.9xx filter to a perfectly normal image, the immediate result is a visibly warmer color cast. Applying the iCFFlashShotSunny.9xx filter gives an even warmer effect. Run either of these on a mid-afternoon exposure and the added warmth combined with angled sunlight can often produce the look of golden hour images so popular in the travel magazines.

Shooting for Effect 5

Each of the iCF filters cause a very specific color trend over the entire image, and each is different. If you use them for their complex tints you need not stay with the filters that apply to your particular camera. On a correct-looking image they produce these effects:
iCFSunnyShotFlash . . . . iCFSunnyShotIncan . . . . iCFFlashShotSunny.950 . iCCFlashShotSunny.990 . iCFFlashShotFluor.950 . . iCCConvertFL3->FL2.990 iCFFlashShotIncan . . . . iCFIncanShotFlash . . . . iCFFluorShotSunny . . . . iCFFluorShotFlash . . . . iCFCloudyShotSunny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cooler, bluer extreme warm effect, super golden hour warm effect, mild golden hour pinkish warm effect yellowed but drab mild chilly cool result with green tinge warmest, extremely gold overall coldest, fantasy winter blue effect magenta tint purple tint slightly warm results

Push Processing

As noted in Chapter 9, the EV+/ controls in combination with maximum ISO will permit the camera to meter accurately to ISO 1280 (950) and 1600 (990+). The 990 can reach farther in Full Manual exposure mode, and the LCD on top of the camera will indicate how many full EV jumps you are from a centered, normal exposure. As ISO climbs, the camera loses the ability to portray contrast. High ISO with low contrast subjects makes for better iBloomArtInteractive recovery with the iSORecover filters, and the iSO2Taste filter will probably be your main choice.
Extreme Noise Reduction

Cameras with the NR function dont need this. The others do. Shooting long exposures that will later be reduced in noise using the iFF filters requires a Flaw Frame to be gathered at the same exposure shutter speed, but with the lens cap on, giving you a blank frame of isolated noise. If you forgot to take it when you shot the origi-

Shooting for Effect

nal, despair not. You can probably get nearly the same effect by shooting a 4 to 16-second flaw frame later. The main idea is to get the pattern of those flawed pixels to overlay the noisy original. Using a later-produced flaw frame is less optimum but may work fairly well.
Glare Flare

Enhancing glare effects with the iGF filters means that you need some glare to start with. Shooting with Contrast on contrasty, glossy, glare-filled surfaces is one way to accentuate the brightest highlights making them good candidates for the filter. Or you can switch to Contrast + and underexpose 0.7 EV. The iLumiBloom filters are a good alternate choice.
Aerial Image Recovery

When shooting for these iAerial2Taste filters, you will want to set the camera white balance to Sunny/Fine. Expect images that are extremely low contrast and quite bluish. Remember to leave a little atmosphere in the final image, it will only help people see that its an aerial image.
Dynamic Range Extension

Since this technique depends on three images shot at EV 2, 0, and +2, the real challenge comes after the images have been combined. Adjusting the Curve control in Photoshop to achieve a more contrasty S shape (right) will help most extended range images. Cameras with bracketing facilitate gathering the original shots. Shoot a bracket of 5 at 1.0 EV intervals. Discard #2 and #4. Use #1, #3 and #5.
Special Effects

Each of the Photoshop filters will have its own requirements. Test the ones you feel you wish to use on a variety of shotscontrasty, flat, colorful, dulluntil you gain a feeling for the specific qualities that best feed the filter. Then control the shooting of your original to fit these qualities.
Color to Black and White

When you know that your color image is destined for B&W results, you can use color filters on the camera in the same way you would use them with B&W film. Red filters reduce blemishes in light skinned portrait subjects, while deepening blue skies and vegetation. Green filters lighten vegetation and add contrast to light skin

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tones. In real life, photographically speaking, a deep color filter will see objects of its own color as white and objects of other colors as progressively darker. The iBWColorGel filter (a preset for the Photoshop Channel Mixer) works only on color images but can be manipulated to produce an effect like a colored glass or gel filter over the camera lens. Its three values in red, green, and blue are initially +34 each. As long as these three values add up to about 100, the exposure will remain constant, but you can completely subtract a color, reduce green to 0, for instance, and compensate with a boost from the Constant control. Negative color values are experimentation territory.
Original Dimroom Effects

These complex filters give artistic results. In general, the iLumiBloom act like fog filters and the iLumiBloom3 attacks only highlights. The iBloomArt filters produce stylized artistic/photographic effects that appear to combine line art and airbrushed color. Contrasty objects will take on a sketch quality but colors will remain artistically accurate. iBWFleshtona emulates a recently popular diffuse B&W print technique seen in advertising and illustrative photography. To get the best results from this filter adjust target tones (often flesh tones) to occupy the gray values from 50% to 70%. Use the Curves control to lift these tones to Output #150.
Complex Art Effects

The iComplexArtFX folder is a collection of tools and painting-like art filters. Because the effects produce broader-stroked results, you will experience a trade-off of detail in exchange for emotion. iAngledStrokes produces a basic paint effect and detail is lost. iAngledStrokesPainting tricks Photoshop into making a bolder effect by shrinking and re-enlarging the image along the way. It needs very bold features in the original subject because it is quite impressionistic.

Shooting for Effect

The iCanvasPainting series almost smells like oil paint. They all have the same painterly look, and iCanvasPainting3 has more stroke effect in lighter areas. All lose detail so portraits shot close tend to work best. When a watercolor painting effect is desired, the iWaterColorPainting series will produce jaw-dropping results. If the effect seems too finely detailed, reduce the image size and try it again. Bigger isnt always better. Watercolors are supposed to have a less-detailed, more artistic appearance. For complete expression, print on real artists heavy watercolor paper if your printer can handle the thicker stock. A very abstracted pencil effect can be obtained with the iPencilSketch filter on objects that have low detail. The texture of this effect works well with inanimate objects better than it does with people pictures.
Polarizing Filter Emulator

Polarizing filters can bring deeper tones to the parts of blue skies 90 from the sun. The iPolar- filter set simulates this with a range of blue sky images by locking on to the sky color and deepening its tonalities. Several variations bring control.
Extreme Recovery

The iRetNar set mimics a NASA patented filter idea called Retinex. It can bring some lost images back from the brink and may help cut through haze.
Grain-Free Images

If you can lock the camera down and trigger it remotely, you can gather several images of non-moving subjects in-register. Open these together, and use the iFrameAverage filter series to combine them into a single image that cancels the grain from shot to shot. Versions exist for 3 to 6 frames. Some frames may not register due to lens element shifts. If you need six shots in the final, shoot ten to begin with.
Super Sharp

The iSharp series attempts to bring high sharpness with lowered artifacts to images shot with less than full in-camera sharpening. Shoot originals in TIFF or Fine compression so the filter will avoid sharpening JPEG artifacts along with the subject. Enjoy the iNovaFX filters and play with them. I believe that some of the most valuable, experience-building time you can spend in digital photography is playtime. Thats when mistakes become fun and can lead to new discoveries.
2001 Peter iNova. All rights reserved. www.digitalsecrets.net

Digital Visions: A Gallery of Coolpix Photography


Vision. The sense that leaps across space, time, and emotion carried on the briefest of phenomena, immeasurably lighter than a whisper, yet forceful enough to prey on our imagination well past the day and into our dreams. As we watch the world knowing that it is posing for us moment to moment, we may stop to remember it in ways that eyes cannot. Then pass the memory on to another and another until the vision, now shared, becomes a familiar part of our collective dream. Beyond the object in our hands, a genie sleeps, ready to grant us photographic wishes. And when the light is right, poetry...
Nikon CP 990 + FC-E8 lens.

New York Salamander, Peter iNova. Notes and observations by Peter iNova

A Gallery of Coolpix Photography | 1

Peter iNova ...eclectic vision


Images My film cameras are gathering dust. Yet Ive acquired well over ten thousand exposures in a years time. The meaning of digital photography for me is this: If digital cameras didnt exist, I wouldnt be taking pictures. Sometimes I look at my work and see the undisciplined, opportunistic, scatter-visioned results. Other times I feel the need to try a little of everything... In other words, most of my images are for the fun of it. And the other 2% are for work.

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Ruth Happel ...eye to nature


Red Eft My aunt, Ruth Happel Smiley, spent her life observing and photographing nature, in her backyard and around the world. Early nature expeditions with her, including an annual spring peeper frog hunt in the swamps of upstate New York, inspired me to pursue my own interest in nature.

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Ruth Happel

4 | Digital Visions

Ruth Happel

I began taking wildlife photos seriously about 25 years ago, beginning with a single lens reflex (SLR) camera. Beginning in 1998, I migrated almost exclusively to digital cameras. Although they are still not up to the quality of SLR conventional film or slides, they have several advantages for nature photographers. Given the non-existent cost of digital film, it is possible to take the equivalent of a dozen or more rolls of film in a day to get just the right picture. Ruth Happel

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Taki Bibelas ...pushing the visual envelope

Fashion Images Taki Bibelas moves with equal grace from film to still photography to video and motion picture photography. I shoot about 20-30 magazine pages a month in the UK and Italy with digital. I own the 950, but rent the others. Just did a week trip to Cuba with the 950 (top, center, and below). I m the only one I know who does it, but I don t see much of a difference once published.

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Taki Bibelas

Taki gets more out of the fisheye lens than any photographer weve seen. But then, he gets more out of photography than almost any photographer weve seen. He brings a characteristic playful quality to his work in fashion photography that makes the images extremely compelling and accessible.
Nikon CP 950 + FC-E8 Fisheye Lens Converter.

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Tom Deagle ...embellishing the story

Nikon CP 950.

Max Zoom Driver Max Papis takes on fuel and rubber at the break-neck pace of a pit stop in the Michigan 500, in 1999, as Nikon Coolpix photographer Tom Deagle catches the action. Later Tom opens the image in Photoshop and adds the zoom transforming the image into a story. 8 | Digital Visions

Mitchell Silver ...discovering the world


Teapots On a visit to the Jade district of Hong Kong, world traveller Mitchell Silver found himself face to face with this display of teapots. Fortunately, he brought his Coolpix 990 so we could all share this National Geographic moment. Immediately, the owner of the shop offered to trade teapots for the Nikon 990.

Nikon CP 990.

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Rex Stayskal ...hunting large animals


Polar Bear Rex lives a stones throw from the Detroit zoo. He has found all the good places to catch the light and capture the shot. Here, a cooperative polar bear is demonstrating how late afternoon sun and a patient photographer can work together.

Nikon CP 950 + TC-E2 lens.

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Rex Stayskal

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Rex Stayskal

Wildlife photographers are known for their patience. This holds true even with subjects in the more easily accessible habitats that zoos provide. Rex uses a variety of lenses, including 5X and 8X telephoto converters on both Coolpix 950 and 990 cameras.

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Furrukh Khan ...finding the artists voice


Photographs Every medium reveals people who embrace it fluently because of a natural match between features of the medium and needs in the person who embraces it. Furrukh Khans days see him teaching as a professor of Electrical Engineering and Software Engineering at Ohio State, but his attraction to photography has been a constant since he was a graduate student. When he was very young, he won contests with oil paintings, and as a photographer he made his own black and white and Cibachrome color prints in a closet darkroom. One day he picked up a Nikon CP 900 and the match was made. Because of my technical background I am also interested in the technical aspects of photography, but once I pick up a camera, the oil painter in me emerges, and I completely forget about the technical aspects. Photography became a way of life for me. I trained myself to take at least one photograph a dayevery dayand carry it through the complete process, starting with the shutter release, going through post processing in Photoshop, and ending in a print. I discovered that like every other field, practice is needed in Photography. A digital camera lets you practice without worrying about the cost of film. And that, in my opinion is the strength of a digital camera. To be able to practice, and hone our skills. Just like an athlete, or a musician, we have to keep in shape. The images that follow show practiced his vision has become.

Carrots A Gallery of Coolpix Photography | 13

Furrukh Khan

Dead Butterfly 14 | Digital Visions

Furrukh Khan

Lamp A Gallery of Coolpix Photography | 15

Furrukh Khan

Autumn is Here 16 | Digital Visions

Furrukh Khan

Green Barns 1, 2, 3

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Furrukh Khan

Knot

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Furrukh Khan

Rice Field

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Furrukh Khan

Lighthouse

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Digital Visions? No single gallery can show the complete range of image possibilities a particular camera can achieve. Digital photography is in a stage of rapid technological development yet it already brings a wealth of abilities into our grasp. Perhaps the most striking aspect to these Digital Visions is that they are not particularly digital at all. They just happened to have been recorded that way in the camera and enhanced that way in the computer. But Visions they are. And your images should be here, too.

As you master your own senses of image, design, timing, composition, color, tonality, and artistry you will experience the same type of joy and satisfaction these photographers have felt as they created the images seen here. Creative moments may catch you by surprise or touch you every day, but they always give you something extra, a smile.

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