Nikon – Kyle Clements

Photography Tips: Working the Scene

Photography discussions online tend to focus almost exclusively on gear, but rather than posting more technical tests or reviews, I’d like to talk about working the scene – being on location, and making little decisions that make a photo better.

I like to go out and challenge myself – I pick a location, then pick a lens that seems entirely inappropriate for that environment, and try to find a way to make it work. In this case, I went to Mount Pleasant cemetery armed with a 14mm prime.

I don’t really show these photos or do anything with them, I mostly just review them, take notes, and hopefully learn something that I can use later on.

Continue reading Photography Tips: Working the Scene

D70 vs. D600 ISO Comparison

(Note: It’s 7am as of my writing this, and I have things to do this afternoon, so I’m going to declare this post a work in progress for now and go to bed. more details to come.)

My recent YouTube video comparing the nine year old Nikon D70 to the 9-months old full frame Nikon D600 has received a lot of attention. And it has also received a lot of criticism for being a very sloppy, uncontrolled test. The intention of the last batch of tests was to show the differences you get when you just pick up the camera and go. The output was neutral profile Jpegs, no sharpening or noise reduction. Each of the cameras exposed the shots differently, rendered colours differently, and handled noise differently.

This second batch of tests was a lot more strict. Auto white balance was the only area where the camera got to think for itself.
I used manual exposure mode, and used the exact same settings between cameras.
I shot RAW, not JPEG, to ensure the cameras weren’t doing anything sneaky to the images.
I took screenshots from inside Darktable, my RAW editor of choice, showing each of the images zoomed in to 100%, along with the camera settings.
The results were saved as PNG files, so there would be no softening as the images were compressed.

I’ll go from worst to best, starting with the D600. Click on the image to see the original, full size PNG screenshot.

Continue reading D70 vs. D600 ISO Comparison

New Lens: Samyang 14mm f/2.8. Correcting the Moustache Distortion

(Warning: Extreme levels of photo-nerd talk below)

With the acquisition of my Nikon D600 several months ago, the world of ultra wide angle photography opened up to me. At first, I thought I could make due with my excellent Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 DX wide angle lens. No – I’m not crazy, I really was using a DX lens on an FX body. The image circle projected by the 11-16mm when it is zoomed all the way out is large enough to cover a full frame sensor.

The Baldwin Steps, Toronto, ON. Image taken with a Nikon D600 and a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8

The problem is that edge sharpness takes a nose dive, and the vignetting is terrible. And while the 11-16mm gave me beautiful images on my-6 megapixel D70, on a 24-megapixel D600, the limitations of this lens were apparent. It’s just not as sharp as I would want a lens to be. Since wide angle photography is something I enjoy, and I really want something sharp and wide. The old phrase “go big or go home” came to mind. Looks like it was time to buy a new lens.

Immediately, there were 3 options on my radar:

Tokina AT-X 16-28mm f2.8 Pro FX for Nikon
Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 G IF ED
Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 G IF ED

Continue reading New Lens: Samyang 14mm f/2.8. Correcting the Moustache Distortion

D600 Sensor Dust Timelapse Part 4.

After having the camera serviced by Nikon, my D600 is still suffering from an accumulation of dust, even after 5000 shutter releases.

The spots that are appearing now are a lot more faint, the accumulation of new spots has slowed, but it’s still happening. If I shot above F8 (which is 90% of the time) it’s not a problem at all, the spots are invisible, but if I stop it down any more than that, a few faint spots are visible on clear, bright flat areas.

Nikon D600 Sensor Dust Timelapse part 3

I just realized I never posted part 3 of my D600 sensor dust test to my blog:

Part 3 of this video is another timelapse sequence combining 1000 photographs using the camera’s built-in intervalometer. The shots in this series range from #2681 to #3680, so I’ve broken that magic 3000 shots threshold that seems to be where things start to clear up for the D600.

In the comments to my previous videos, a number of people mentioned that the problem is oil/lubricant spatter, not dust (which explains why the spots will not blow away). And that this is a problem with new cameras, one that will go away after taking several thousand shots. So I figured, why not do a third sequence of 1000 shots and post the results?

Same setup as the first video:
I set up a time lapse sequence of 1000 shots with my 50mm 1.8D lens on my D600 body
I did not change lenses throughout this video.

I did use a hand pump blower to blast away any loose dust that had build up, and that did eliminate several spots, but the vast majority of them remain stuck to the sensor, and a DIY wet cleaning would void the warranty, which I am not prepared to do on a piece of equipment that is only one week old.

As you can see, while there is much less dust and oil landing on the sensor this time around, there are still a few new spots appearing. These look more like dust than oil spots.
I can deal with dust with a blower, it’s a minor annoyance, not a deal-breaker.

The camera was dropped off in person at a Nikon service centre on November 27th, and I am waiting for a call from them to let me know it’s time to pick it up. Then I will be able to see if the dust and oil problem has really worked itself out, if they have removed the excess lubrication, or if they’ve just spent two weeks doing a wet clean on my sensor.

Nikon D600 Sensor Dust Timelapse Part 2

Wow! What an incredible response to my first video. I wasn’t expecting any of this. Thank you to all for your comments and ideas.

As I was browsing the blogs who had picked up this story, and reading the viewer feedback, I was given several ideas that were too good to pass up. One was to try another set of 1000 shots, only this time, have the camera pointing downwards, so dust or oil will have a more difficult time reaching the sensor. So that’s just what I did!

Shutter Speed: 1/60
Aperture: F22
ISO 1600
Time between shots: 2 seconds.

A review of the Nikon D600’s Dust Problem.

Picked up a new toy; thought I’d do a boring technical review for you.

The Nikon D600 should be the perfect enthusiast camera with it’s fantastic specs, great low light performance, and an affordable price point for a full frame sensor. However, many reviewers and blogs have been raising concerns over a severe dust issue. Dust has reportedly been collecting on the upper left corner of the sensor at an unusually high rate.

Continue reading A review of the Nikon D600’s Dust Problem.

Shooting my First Wedding.

Last month, I shot my first wedding.

I wanted to use this as an opportunity to write up a three-part series, starting with an instructional post about how to prepare for a big photo shoot. The second post was going to be a raw, stream-of-consciousness reflection written the day after the shoot. The final follow-up post explaining what I had learned was going to come a month later, when the job had settled in and behind me.

But, things didn’t quite work out that way. It’s a month later now and that first post was never written. Instead, you are stuck with one long, meandering, disorganized post covering everything.

Before I begin, I will give you some of the relevant details:

1. Some of my very close friends were getting married.
2. I’ve never shoot a wedding before, and I don’t have all the fancy gear.

Because of these two factors, I’m obviously going to cut them a deal.

A meeting between myself and the Bride is arranged.
I talk with several other wedding photographers about rates, work-flow, gear, expectations, etc. So I can walk into the meeting with honest industry rates in my area.
Weeks before the big day, The Bride and I work out the details: The shoot is going to be done for next-to-nothing, but the prints will be sold at the regular rate.
In addition to prints, I will design a wedding photobook, and make it available through a print-on-demand service. Information about the book will be given to all of the guests. Hopefully, all of them will buy 300 copies each and I can retire.
We have a deal we are both happy with.

As the wedding draws nearer, I realize that having some sort of plan is probably a good idea. Ignoring my own advice, I make plans going forwards, rather than backwards (meaning I started with ‘step 1’ and worked my way forward. Planning backwards, starting with the final step and asking “what do I need for that to happen?” always seems to give me far more reliable and realistic results).

The Plan:

Research “how do I shoot a wedding” (1 day)
Shoot wedding (1 day)
Sort photos. (1-2 days)
Edit photos (3 days)
Design book (1 day)
Estimated turnaround: one week

I’ve got my plan! I’m all set.

“This is going to be easy.”

I will take this opportunity to make a little digression: Whenever the phrase “this is going to be easy” is uttered, that person is just minutes away from being spectacularly wrong.

“This is going to be easy…”

Continue reading Shooting my First Wedding.

Painting with Light

As someone who is primarily a painter, some aspects of photography can be quite frustrating. In March of 2010, I had an idea for a photo shoot: take a bunch of multi-coloured LEDs, throw them around a snow covered forest, and take a bunch of pictures. The coloured light should bounce off the snow and create some interesting effects. This sounded like a cool idea.

The only problem was that I had this idea in March, after the winter snow had melted. I had to wait for winter to come again before I could try out this idea. When I’m painting, the time of year doesn’t matter so much. Winter scenes in summer, summer scenes in winter; if I can imagine it, I can paint it. This isn’t the case with photography. Photography is all about patience. I had to wait for nature to play along before I could try out this idea.

Two nights ago, I finally had my chance to head out on this photo shoot.

Brad had recently picked up a new camera, so I thought this could be a good opportunity for a ‘Brad vs. Kyle’ thing, introducing some friendly competition into the shoot.
Continue reading Painting with Light

New Lens!

In my last post, I mentioned that I picked up a new lens.

I tried to tone-down my giddy excitement in that last post. I will be letting it all out in this post.

My 18-70mm 3.5-4.5G DX was sharp enough, it was fast enough, it was almost even enough; but damn! 50mm 1.8D prime, you make me so happy!

This is the most inexpensive lens Nikon makes. It is not a cheap lens. It is an inexpensive lens. It doesnâ€™t cost very much, but it takes fantastic pictures.

It opens wide, all the way up to f/1.8, which is about 2 and a half stops better than any of my other lenses. The shallow depth of field this allows has given me a whole new world to explore.
Continue reading New Lens!