The Advantage of Manual Focus

It's been almost a week (only) since I began playing with manual focusing, and I am beginning to realize one key advantage of shooting manual - faster response time to capture what you really want, without the need to wait for AF to do her job first.

Of course, the downside is a constant need to adjust ISO and shutter speed but my first full manual lens - Lensbaby Muse, seems to answer that call pretty well! The fast and loose tilt/pull/push concept is really silky smooth and quick!

To increase my chance of a take-home image with the Muse, I now shoot exclusively at 4.5 FPS JPEGs.

First Step in Manual Photography

Of course, the first motivating step to delve into manual photography should originate from one primary factor - fun. Without which, it will not be sustainable. Imagine turning your AF mode of the Nikon D90 to full manual with my existing Nikkor lenses.

Boy, it will be a let down immediately! Why? All because your brain has already accustomed itself to the sharp images produced by these glasses. Any errors you amateurishly make will stick out like a sore thumb in your attempt to focus manually. And yes, it will be a day filled with giant despair.

But wait! There's a solution after all! Here it is - First, go get an inferior optical lens to lower your brain's expectation and standards. You decide. Next, the lens you look for should be fun by itself! Example, tilt control. Lastly, turn the shutter release mode of your Nikon D90 to CH and keep shooting (and I mean really shoot a lot!). Ignore how people will look at you. Ignore your dinner for a moment. Ignore your kids for another few moments.

Manual Focus = Tiring Eye

Perhaps, it's fun to begin with. But as it turns out, you will soon find that manual focus can lead to a very tiring eye and body, especially after a consecutive 350 shots cycle.

Manual photography also dictate manual setting of ISO, and shutter speed. So, don't expect to go into a scene with your mind still thinking about your day or the food you just ate. You will be in a pack of trouble. Manual focusing also mean using a big view finder to achieve easier focus with your naked eye. So, drop that magnifier eye piece that provides magnification at the expense of bigger view area. It's worth it.

Lastly, manual photography also implies the manual toggling of the lens aperture size, which basically determine your room for focusing error. Well, that's what I found after shooting manual today, over my TGIF dinner.

Manual Focus Techniques Explored on Nikon D90

Today I declare a special day on my calendar - Manual Focus day. On this day, any photos I take must be taken on full manual mode, regardless. Since manual focus is something not many of us are keen in, you can say most of us are poorly trained to do it well anyway.

It actually involves a series of familiarization and even training before you can get away with handling a manual lens or shoot manual. No easy feat as I realized today. You can count it a small miracle when you actually take a tack-sharp image with this technique. And what better incentives than to do so with the legendary Zeiss 50mm F/1.4 Planar! No, I did not buy one.

But as it turns out, focusing soon became a nightmare even for the Zeiss specialist of the store. Out of twenty shots he took, none were proper. When it was my turn to shoot, nothing came out fine on 1/50, 1/60, 1/100 second! Hold on! We were all shooting at F/16! Metering was tuned to Spot metering as the Zeiss lens could not provide any metering information to the camera. Each shot now takes tens of seconds as opposed to split second to shoot.

Go on, laugh it out loud! I know its my first step but I am pretty determined to ultimately do this right.

Soft Portraits Appeal

Sharpness is not everything in photography, and rings especially true when it comes to human portraits. As lens and camera technologies evolves, sharper lens tend to expose (especially adults) that facial imperfection one wish to conceal.

I prefer a soft blurry shot sometimes, and it tends to be easily overshadowed by what I take higher priority in - facial expression of the subject.

Impact of 8330K on The Sun

To really get the camera to capture what the eyes see, we are sometimes forced to correct the AWB of the Nikon D90, hence resulting in an amazing display of sun's short light spectrum during a sunset.

Insert is a shot taken with such an approach.

More Discovery About Flashing with Nikon SB-900 Speedlight

A flash is still a flash when it comes to her primary role, spreading an even, center-weighted, or standard beam of white light to anything in her path when fired. I found both the use of the filter pack (TN-A1) or direct flashing, having an equal effect of whitening the whole scene up.

That is far from ideal when our intention is still to retain the orangey warm ambience when the shot is taken. Hence, we are faced with two options - shoot on a tripod without a flash or shoot at WB above 7000K, with a flash. I often choose the latter while manually zooming in my strobe to 200mm.

This experiment pleasantly resulted in my subject being lighted up in a modest array of orange tint while the background's incandescent ambience is wonderfully preserved. I don't really like white light when shooting any night indoor scene unless I am in a hospital.

Just thought this can come in handy at some point in time.

Prerequisites on Manual Focus Technique - Practice on Nikon D90 Now!

Perhaps we are a pampered lot, and has never bothered with anything manual. But in pursuit of a slightly different perspective of photography, I think manual focus can be an entirely new dimension altogether.

So, I will attempt to shoot manual for the next 100 shots on my Nikon D90 and see how easy or difficult it will turn out to be! Is it after all, really more fulfilling, as some claim to experience?

Only time will tell.

In addition, you can also refer to my previous article about manual focus [here].

Tough Lightings Demands Tough Measures to Deal With Them

I am not sure how many of you have already hit the glass ceiling of using one Speedlight in photography, but I am being confronted with an increasing number of scenes that hinted for multiple strobes to be used to nail the scene.

It's usually one of those indoor group photos taken at night, where the available light is often weak and tricky to the Nikon D90's AWB. This is where I will recommend a more aggressive approach to dealing with the ideal white balance, by grabbing the belt buckle of temperature kelvin manually.

With multiple, small, warm light sources littering the boundary of the whole dining area, the central area is totally devoid of good available lights, hence fooling the camera's i-TTL to fire full with cold white diffused beams on each default shot (see above initial shot). This looks bad and time is running short! Without a moment to lose, I pulled the WB away from "A" to "K" and stick "8330" in the Nikon D90 to bring back my non-existent warm light.

It worked! The whites faded away and the whole scene came back to life.

SOS! Nikon Speedlight Shutting Away My Background!

It was one of those puzzling shot that took me quite a while to figure out, where the subject was well lit at the expense of the entire background. I am sure you've been there too. Bear in mind, we are talking about dusk lighting condition here...

So, to overcome this problem and pull some details back from the background again, I decided to stop down my flash shutter speed to 1/15 second on the Nikon D90 (Menu E1) before retaking my subject. Well, at least, I am beginning to see something back from the dead.

Interesting catch for the week!

The Last Few Pill Boxes That Was Never Used

As history is being recorded, the Japanese force never did invade Singapore from where the British thought they would - South. And the huge artillery howitzers erected preemptively along the south-facing beaches serve only as a reminder today, of a war that never really started.

The English surrender was swift against the bicycle-equipped Japanese infantry that came from the North. Not a single round was fired from those south-facing machine guns or howitzers. Well, at least from the bright side of things, some of them are beautifully preserved as a national monument today for all.

Nikkor 18-200mm lens with off-camera SB-900 on the left of camera.

Underexposing Image is Always Better than Overexposing Them

As my guru always bark at me, underexposing our shots beats overexposing them during shutter release. Reason? Details are still preserved during an underexposed shot but not the latter, where blowout destroys details.

Based on my limited experience, each camera behave different with contrast management, and its up to the owner to understand this characteristics. I have recently been tuning down 1EV for each of my shot in very bright day shoot. This helps preserve details which may be blown away otherwise.

Try it!

High ISO Woes? No Problem!

No matter how radical lens vibration reduction technology ultimately evolves into, you can never beat the stability offered by a good tripod. Of course, this statement readily applies to stationary subjects and scenes, come sun or darkness.

And in my experience of shooting with a tripod, the ISO 100 image quality derived from the Nikon D90 soon turned additive. Every of those shots turn out so crisp and well balanced, despite the ridiculously low ambient lights available. And when you really resume your shoot handheld, every shot mysteriously resume that grainy (assuming you let the Nikon D90 take control of ISO management) look like before!

Well, at least that's how I am learning to appreciate my tripod only few weeks ago...

NEF Overlay Technique in Nikon D90

Really cool technique I played with today on my Nikon D90 - Image overlay. O yes, it only works with NEF files and only two images can be overlaid each time round. But here's the magic I discover - overlaying two images that's been AE bracketed 0/-2 EV can improves the dynamic range of the resultant shot!

Now, this is a very useful technique for taking stationary subjects while yielding greater professional results. ISO, in my case, has been set to 100, while the Nikon D90 is mounted on the tripod. Exposure delay mode is set to ON. Self-timer of two seconds is also used to eliminate any possible vibrations.

Well, the work flow can be fully accomplished within the camera, after the in-camera automatic distortion control is applied to each completed shot. Honestly, I have not seen such superb image quality produced from my camera (in my incandescent lit room) for a long, long while.

To put the icing on the cake, I did a color balance adjustment to true blue on the Nikon D90. Just check out how that turns my micro-fiber cleaning cloth to a beautiful blue hue!!

Try this technique and you too will be amply rewarded!

Macro Photography Ideal for Product Shoot!

Maybe, I am stating the obvious, but isn't this something additional we can use our macro lens with? So, I tried some and then some more.

It sure is amazing! Nikon SB-900 fired off camera from the left.

Macro Shoot Prerequisites - Nikon Speedlight

Don't say you have not been warned! The built-in flash can still fire with the Nikkor 60mm F/2.8D on our Nikon D90 but will, if angled improperly, create a shadow arc on your subject. Now, if you insist not to shoot with a tripod, my advice is to shoot solely in automatic macro mode.

Doing focus hunting manually is just too tedious on the lens barrel. Likewise, if you so decide to move your lens physically in and out of the subject, I conclude this technique is also not for the faint of heart. Thankfully, I have already bought the DK-21M magnifier view finder attachment, and this accessory suddenly become very valuable when I now start shooting macro.

Lastly, I am also very thankful that my Nikon SB-900 partner is just sitting there, ready to roll into action when I need that extra light source to lift my subject out of the ISO 800 and above range! What a life saver when you shoot such close up subjects!

Adobe TV Teaches Color Grading Videos!

Thought you never ask! Here's the deal how its done.

Color Grading Nikon D90 HD Video

Armed with Photoshop CS3, you simply open up the video as a picture file. Thereby, you begin the tedious task of using numerous adjustment layers to create a totally new appeal to your video files.

Landscape Photography Cheat Sheet

So that's how it's done! For a moment, I was wondering how Scott Kelby actually managed to churn out those color-rich, tone gradient landscape of Tuscany from his Nikon D5000. Its actually shot with the following conditions met

• Shoot all landscape at either dawn or dusk time window
• Shoot with F/11 upwards
• Use a Tiffen ND Gradient card filter in front of the lens when shooting
• Use a tripod. No handheld photography allowed

Lastly, a good composition eye is still required...that, is what none of us can help you with.

New Teaching Videos from Nikon

Need more videos to brush up your techniques? Look no further than a new list of videos that is hot off the Nikon oven!

Point [here] to start immediately!