January, 2009

Post Production — No Comments
26
Jan 09

ISO 3200 works – does it?

Another glory Sunday morning – where I managed to get out of my bed and got – yes! – got out there!

This day I chose the Wildlife Refuge in Poing close to Munich as my destination, because the weather report on at least one channel had announced the chance for fresh snow – and I am still dreaming of making some images of Lynxes and Wolves while it’s snowing. Why “still”? That story is kept for another day…

Arriving at the parking lot at exactly 9am – which is when they officially open the park to visitors on weekends – I was of course the only visitor at this time. So here is my tip for everybody wanting to go there in order to take photos: Go there early. Leave when the children invade, usually two hours later.

So this morning I was the only nature photographer on site, which was a first for me, normally you meet other photogs. Guess I was the only one who left without checking the weather report again – no sign of new snow, much to the contrary at 11am the sun came out and it got really “warm”.

But before that happened, I had a quiet happy two hours alone with the Lynx family – they have actually seven Lynxes of different ages there, all one big (mostly) happy familiy, and the three “teenagers” are usually good for some fun. Now, it was not only cold in this forest, but the Lynx enclosure is also in a pretty shady and thus dark corner of the park. As the sun still hid behind clouds, exposure was actually at about 1/40s at f/4 with ISO 400. Good enough with the lens on the tripod to shoot a sitting Lynx. Or three of them!

lynxes

So I could actually try out another new gear of mine – a folding chair that cost me 7€. Well spend money, because I could sit comfortably (not in the stricter sense of the word) next to the fence (get close to shoot through the wire mesh!) and monitor the action. And action it was, indeed – after some 20 minutes of mutual fur grooming the three youngsters decided that was enough idyll and it was time to hunt – fir cones.

Trying to capture that, I quickly recognized that I would get nowhere with my ISO 400 1/40s exposure time, and it was the moment to go the full nine meters and give the D300 a try at ISO 3200. Did it work? Kind of.

First of all, the exposure time went down to 1/1000s at f/4 and ISO 3200. So far so good, quick enough to catch a Lynx. And looking at the images in the Nikon View NX application I use for presorting and pretagging, I was pleasantly surprised by the level of detail and color retained in the ISO 3200 images.

Disaster struck when I opened the RAW in Adobe Camera Raw to load it into Photoshop for post production – image noise everywhere, and to an extend I had last seen from my D70 at ISO 1600. I had thought the D300 to outperform the D70 easily, even despite the smaller pixels. It does, but seemingly only in terms of noise reduction software algorithms.

iso3200_comparison

Now I struggled and tried all available noise reduction methods easily discoverable in Photoshop, but I still don’t like the result. Quality is certainly good enough after resizing the image down to Web/Monitor viewing friendly dimensions, but thoughts about printing need to be dismissed immediately. This might explain why Noise Ninja and Neat Image still make money. My conclusion: Photoshop – at least CS3 – doesn’t solve the problem. The additional tools might, and definitely the Nikon software does. I should review my assessment of Nikon Capture NX. Such a pity, I still own a license to Capture 4.4, but that is discontinued and doesn’t support the D300′s files.

But judge for yourself if the image is usable at Web resolution, this is the best I could do with CS3 alone:

iso_lynx

As a bonus, when I already were packing my things I could spot two male fallow deers – please be gentle with me if I got this wrong – practicing with each other. I was able to sneak in on them on get a shot from close between two trees, which makes the whole composition look, well, interesting. I kind of like it.

fallows

Needless to say the moment their heads merged they were not within my viewing window. That would have been perfect, but as usual – keep trying.

On my way out at about 11:15am I met three Canon photogs with their big white guns having just arrived, and couldn’t help but cheer them a friendly “Guten Morgen” when they were coming in together with approx 100 Bugaboos :-)

Gear — No Comments
21
Jan 09

New gear message: Binoculars!

Having been out birding lately much more often, I recognized the limits of my old Tasco 8×21 pocket binoculars. Now, I had made the mistake during the nature photography days in Fürstenfeldbruck last year to have a look through a nice pair of Zeiss Victory FL glasses! We know since Voltaire that the better is the enemy of the good – those were absolutely positively spectacular. Much more to my liking than the equally priced Swarovskis and Leicas. But completely outside of my budget. Sigh.

So, back to the Internet. What to buy? How much to spend? What are the parameters?

  • Magnification – Ok, there are birders who insist on 10x magnification, but this comes at a price: Loss of brightness, and field of view (viewing angle). I think I can stick with 8x for now.
  • Weight – It adds to the overall backback weight, right? So it better be light. After taking some pairs in my hands and comparing them in terms of weight, I decided that there are some who I find too heavy. “Ok” were those between 500 to 600 grams.
  • Bulkiness – while there are recommendations not to buy roof prism glass in the lower price ranges, I found the porro prism ones (“Traditional style”) to be just too bulky (and usually heavy, too).
  • Handling – as I am wearing glasses, it was important that it has turnable eye caps (not those rubber “flipping” ones) because I want to use it with and without glasses (pushing the glasses up on my head).
  • Price – I set myself the limit of 300€. I had also tested the Zeiss Conquest series, and can confirm that you get more when you pay more, but again those were twice as expensive.

First of all, I was awestruck by the variety of binoculars out there, and the number of manufacturers, each producing a huge array of different models. Quite overwhelming. The demand in binoculars by far outmatched my expectations… :-)

I quickly stumbled upon the Birders of the Cornell University, who did a much better job than me to summarize the parameters and explain what is important on their website – and who actually did really test a large number of models back in 2005 and published the results of their extensive binocular test.

Now, this is an US American test and many of these manufacturers are unknown or hard to get here in Germany, but one model I had already tested and liked myself: The Nikon Monarch series. I had noticed those becaue they not only have the “standard” 8×42 and 10×42 sizes, but also a smaller model 8×36, which saves length (not so much the other dimensions), and more importantly weight.

The German Vögel (“Birds”) magazine had a test of binoculars including the Nikon Monarch in their 01 2009 issue (how convenient!). They claim the resolution of the Monarch is on the lower side compared to the competition, but apart from that attested a high usability and utility. I must admit I didn’t look much further than that, having – invited by the test – also tried an Eschenbach Trophy and found it to be much too heavy.

The real push to buy point was when I found that the street price of the 8×36 Monarch was more like 180€ than the 300€ list price, making it look much more of a bargain in comparison! Decision made, order placed online last Sunday.

The package arrived today, the Monarch is working fine, and I am really looking forward to next weekend to give it a try! The waxwings are in the city, I have heard…

Landscapes — No Comments
19
Jan 09

Image selection for alpine moods

You might have wondered by now why I didn’t comment further on my new printer – mostly, because I have not yet spent as much time with it as I wanted to. But as indicated earlier I had already one very productive and satisfying weekend with it.

What was the mission? To select a set of images suited to be hung in a one-room condo right in the alps. Now, there is not excessive wall space available, but still, as my largest print size was restricted by my printer to about 48 cm x 32 cm, I figured I could do something worthwhile.

Looking at the placement and type of furniture in the room, I quickly decided that I would need 6 prints. Three large ones, framed nicely, for each of the three walls (in a decidedly non-symmetric hanging!), and three small ones, maybe only A4 size, that are suited to be viewed at close range for the nice Alpine corner bench at the table.

Here is the result of my selection.

[svgallery name="chiemgau"]

  1. The first image features a traditional (but actually quite new) chapel. This place is in the Zahmer Kaiser mountain range in Austria close to the city of Kufstein at about 1200m altitude.
  2. The second image, and I am really fond of this one as it easily sends my imagination drifting into medieval times, is near the castle of Hochenaschau, in the Bavarian region of Chiemgau.
  3. The third one you know already from my blog’s introductory posts :-)
  4. The next one was taken on the same day and time as the chapel, from a vantage point about 10 meters into the opposite direction of the chapel. It shows the view of the Kaiser Valley with the Wilder Kaiser mountain range as backdrop.
  5. Part of the German Nationalpark Berchtesgaden is the Klausbachtal, a long narrow valley winding up to a pass into Austria. Conveniently, you can take a bus up there and walk down which is what we did last fall. Image number five shows a view of the Reiteralp mountain range.
  6. Back into Austria, here in Winter, I took this image in the wonderful region south of the Dachstein mountains near Ramsau.

The first three images, showing man-made structures somehow embedded in the scenery, were the ones I selected for the small image size and closer viewing, while the more scenic landscape images were printed in the large size.

For the first time, I also bought frames and high quality photo-mounts, and frames all six pictures myself. Phew! One weekend work, but I am absolutely positive about the result!

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