Local Press Photographer's Day - Part Four...

Some notes on cameras and settings...
My typical set-up:

A pair of company D300's, shooting Jpegs, Normal Quality (about 3.5Mb files), full size (12mp), Adobe RGB, Nikon's Picture Control on “Standard”, but with the contrast and saturation turned down and the sharpening up by one notch each. There was a point where I felt BigPaper’s processes weren’t putting enough unsharp mask on for the presses, hence the increased default sharpening. Both bodies have also got their default Matrix exposures increased by 0.3 stop using the fine-tuning. The D300 seems to be set slightly “dark” for my taste. I have the histogram and Highlight Warning blinkies set to On, and check these for exposure. A white collar, say, "blinking" is normally of no worry to me. A face doing it means trouble: adjustments are made...

Exposure is usually via aperture priority with compensation as needed, though I do swap modes occasionally if I want a particular shutter speed held; for example, I have been known to use Program in the summer - I use the auto-FP High Speed sync on my flashes by default, but if you need every last Watt of power (summer sun fill-flash), then Program mode won’t let the shutter speed rise over the “normal” max-sync 1/250th unless it absolutely has to, and it’s quicker to just click in and out of P than faff back and forth...

I usually try to work through the day on one body, so it keeps the downloading of the cards simple and jobs aren’t spread across multiple cards. If I need two, I’ll use two, though.

For sport, or if I know there is going to be bugger-all or very difficult lighting, I nearly always pick one of my personal pair of D3 bodies (I know, lucky ...!), set to shoot raw to one card and Normal Quality Jpeg to the other. Colour Space, file size and Picture Control are all set as the D300 bodies, though I usually use the raws so it’s really of no consequence. The D3 and D300 share the same AF hardware, but, like others have reported, I find it works better in the D3. It may have something to do with the extra processing power available to the D3, and also that the focus points don't extend so far into the darker "edges" of the frame.

Again, you might be interested to know that both D3 bodies have +0.16 stop exposure dialed in via the fine-tune. I usually don’t dial it out unless I get a lot of highlight warning blinkies, again because I normally go to the raw. This sometimes "sacrifices" the Jpeg, and I reckon I'll stop shooting those on D3 eventually. Both D3 bodies are typically on Manual for sport, with the actual exposure value being set by the excellent Auto-ISO, and usually Aperture Priority for anything else.

With Jpegs you can’t go too mad in post-processing, so the best practice of getting good basic exposure and framing in-camera still applies.  With raws there is scope to do more, which is why I will use my D3s when I know there is likely to be trouble. To be honest, I do it for practice too - I think the raw workflow will be one we all go to eventually. The advantage of raw is you can defer some of your shooting decisions until after the event, especially if you are working in a tearing hurry in difficult circumstances.  The downside of raw is bigger files that take longer to import, that all need adjusting, and then take longer to export as Jpegs.  

My normal workflow for raws is through Apple Aperture 3, so I skip the Photo Mechanic stage, doing tagging, captioning, cropping and adjusting in just the one program. I run through the images and ones I like get one star, then I look at the "one stars" and make a final selection, these getting upgraded to three stars, so they stand out. I sort out the captions, and then Adjust; I keep a set of Aperture presets that I know work for me, like curves, highlight recovery, sharpening and such, so I can hit a preset for quickness and then tweak it for the individual picture. Aperture exports the edited pics as Jpegs, again about 1.8 - 2.0 mb. Now I do go back into Photo Mechanic, but just to use its FTP facility to send the images out. I used to use Lightroom for the raws too, but I definitely believe Aperture 3 makes a much better job of rendering raw images the way I think they should look. I understand Adobe has improved its raw profiles in the latest ACR and Lightroom 3 but, for now, I haven’t coughed up for the upgrade from 2 to 3. 

Next: And finally, some of the pictures from the day...

Local Press Photographer's Day - Part Three...

Now I've shot them, time to finally do something with them...

In front of the MacBook, at home, shooting done:

My typical newspaper Jpeg workflow is: Cards out of camera, into card reader plugged into my Macbook, which automatically launches Photo Mechanic. Hit the button to ingest all the images shot.  Now, while I’ve been shooting, I’ve been taking a few seconds during and after the shoot to hit the “protect” button on the camera for images I like the look of.  When these pop up in Photo Mechanic, they are already tagged on the contact sheet, so I just hit the key to isolate them, recheck for focus, eyes open, best expression, exposure and, if I’ve got the selection right, they get a colour code (green) which gives a belt and braces selection. I will still look at the others in the shoot, in case I’ve missed any other good selects. Any that aren’t quite there I just untag and look either side on the contact sheet for an alternative.

Once I’ve made my selection, these are captioned according to BigPaper needs, job by job.  Trust me, captioning is a very nitpicky task! Once you have the blanket one in place, most images then need customising, as they will feature different people, actions, or other details - picture spreads, beloved of local newspapers, will usually need every last image customised...  I hit the key that isolates all “green” images and they are all then opened up in Lightroom, getting any small crops, exposure or tonal adjustments I think needed.  I’m not supposed to do this, but having gained a lot of digital experience over the last few years, I firmly believe there is no such thing as a print-ready image straight out of the camera. This isn’t an absolute, but I still want my images to look the best I can make them. Having seen the butchery sometimes carried out at the production stages, if it’s got my byline on it I at least want it to look its best before it then gets mullered…

Between me and the cameras, I don’t expect to change the exposure much – Once the images are in Lightroom I am disappointed if any need more than +/- 0.3 of a stop - but I will move the shadows, highlights and midtones around a little bit. I try not to crop too much, either, but it’s useful to be able to do a trim after the event. Jpegs otherwise don't get too much adjustment, nor will they put up with it. They get exported to a SEND folder as smaller file-size Jpegs, about 70 on the sliding scale, which gives between 1.4 - 2.0mb images, These are still plenty quality-wise but much easier and quicker to send.  Photo Mechanic is pointed at the SEND folder, and the FTP system built into PM used to send them over the ‘net.

If I’m in a tearing hurry to get a job away for deadline (usually a Tuesday for me) then that will be the job I edit in Photo Mechanic first, and then just that job goes over to Lightroom; crop, exposure, tone - again, with restraint - but these might get exported as even lower quality Jpegs - perhaps 60 - because they are often being sent from the car via 3G. Even these are still 1mb+ images. Just occasionally, for very quick transmission, I downsize the exports to 6 million pixel, 800kb pics.  The beauty of Lightroom (and Aperture) is that these are new versions of untouched originals. Need a bigger copy? Just export it larger next time.

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With a couple of brief halts to make drinks/tea and a quick snack (remember, nothing but a Latte and water during the day), I finally finish FTP’ing the last pic at 18.30...

That’s before I start charging batteries, cleaning lenses for the same again tomorrow.

I Shot 218 images across the 8 jobs, and actually filed 48 from these. This included the requested ‘Page of Pics” from one of the Junior School jobs and what I took to be another page+ request (“Get as many pix as possible”) from the Beer Festival. I’ve recently arrived at a rough estimate, that each image takes (a conservative) two minutes to select, caption and physically send – that doesn’t include my personal extra step into Lightroom, though I don’t faff much once I’m there for obvious reasons! – so 48 images takes 100 minutes to deal with. The sending could be run in the background as soon as the Lightroom export is finished but, once exported, it really does pay to try to run your eyes over the images again to make sure the data is OK before they go. If you're sending via 3G from the car, you're committed to sitting there whilst they copy over, anyway.

Additionally, my total mileage on that Friday was 62 miles.  The trip computer in the car shows my average speed as 23mph. The distance to the first job was about 10 miles. The distance home from the last job was about 16 miles, so a total mileage “between jobs” of 36 miles. Even in a small group of towns, at the average indicated that’s 90 minutes+ of my day just driving between locations...

So in a theoretical seven- hour shift (lunch, remember – haha), well over 3 hours is used up driving and editing what’s shot. That’s without actually physically shooting, in as creative and interesting ways as I can, eight jobs involving real, ordinary people, at seven different locations…


And the next, penultimate piece: a few notes about camera settings and why, even if time-stressed, I will sometimes shoot raw...