The search for (soft) proof...

As I've mentioned previously here, I shoot JPEG for work (mostly) but occasionally switch to raw for tricky conditions and almost always for sport. My personal work, such as it is, is also shot in raw.

Cricket, in overcast conditions (it's England...!). Nikon D3, 300mm f2.8 plus TC20E3 converter (= 600mm), 

1/1000sec @ f8, ISO 1800. This is the raw file, cropped to use and sharpened, but otherwise as rendered by

Aperture with no further processing. It looks "flat" here and when seen larger in Aperture, looks very 'flat". 

How you could leave this unadjusted, as some say they do with raws, is a puzzle. I wasn't putting in enough

contrast previously, but even then I knew this would have needed more...

For all the advantages of shooting in raw the biggest single disadvantage is that, if it allows you to process your own images, then obviously EVERY IMAGE YOU SHOOT NEEDS TO BE PROCESSED. There's no JPEG engine doing it for you, which means that decision have to be made on white balance, contrast, saturation, highlights and shadows etc etc etc.  Now, Adobe's ACR, Apple Aperture, Capture One and all sorts of other raw processors come with a set of default raw conversion settings, but what I've found is that these are really only a starting point. I certainly don't understand how anyone can say "they only check for dust spots and that's it for raws", since none of the raw converters really, really, make your files look like what was in front of the camera without you, the shooter, making some further decisions.

Indeed, although JPEGs are much-maligned by some, most decent modern DSLRs make a very good job indeed of rendering what the sensor saw as a useful JPEG - provided considerable care is taken at the shooting stage to get exposure and white balance correct. Most DSLRs also now let you change contrast, hue, saturation, sharpening and other settings for rendering JPEGs.

But there are still advantages to shooting raw, so it's worth knuckling down and learning what needs to be done.

More after the break...

Spitfire blue

A quickie post - again!

I was down at Whitstable yesterday, visiting my parents for  a very pleasant Sunday lunch, and the afternoon ritual of a walk with Small Dog around Long Rock, the shingle bank and open ground at Swalecliffe.

It was Whitstable Regatta weekend last weekend, and there's often a visit from aircraft which entertain the crowds on Tankerton slopes, looping and rolling out over the sea with fewer restrictions as to what they can do, especially height-wise. I picked up my gear as, although we we not going up to Tankerton, we might see something worth a picture from Swalecliffe.

As we left for the walk, a Spitfire arrived and displayed and I thought that was that, I'd missed it. However, as we were walking around Long Rock, both my dad and I realised we could hear a big aero-engine running, and I spotted a small but distinctive speck which looked like another Spitfire, orbiting overhead.

I grabbed out the works D7000, adding my TC20E3 and 70-200 f2.8, which gives an angle of view like a 600mm. It's best to try to keep some "spin" in the propellor blades, so I set 1/250 sec, VR on, +0.7 of a stop and fingers crossed. We still weren't sure if he was going to actually display, but he orbited back over land and we saw and heard him begin a shallow diving turn from the east.

And he went pretty much right overhead, which gave me the best picture - and certainly the closest - of the 10 minutes display.  I shot about 160 frames, and there's an awful lot that are lost because of trying to handhold an effective 600mm at 1/250th, even with VR, and there's a few dodgy framing, focus and exposure ones. But I've got five that I'm happy with, including one where I can read the registration, which allowed me to ID the 'plane and pilot for posterity.

But the best one was still from the sequence where he went right overhead to start his display...

Peter Teichman takes his Supermarine Spitfire PRXI, PL965, overhead to begin his display at Whitstable Regatta,
on Sunday 14th August 2011. This aircraft, a photo-reconnaissance version of the Spitfire, was built in 1944 and
is currently flown by Teichman from the former Battle of Britain RAF airfield at North Weald, Essex.
The image is uncropped: Nikon D7000, 70-200 f2.8 + TC20E3, 1/250th @ f11,
giving the angle of view of a 600mm.

I've deliberately left this uncropped, so you can see just how close I could get - there are two closer images; but in one the hint of blue sky has gone (damn!) and the other there's enough motion blur from dodgy panning that I haven't selected them as "top" versions. If I was to crop it I'd take a little from the left and bottom sides.