Ok, well, another night of insomnia... since its a school night, we got the kids in bed early... cant sleep, so I grab the D70, shoes and the keys...

 

Great pics.I found a new place to do some pics of Poco today.Won't be night shots,but will show where I live.

 

Very nice pics! Almost makes me glad I'm still awake! LMAO!!!


Clo/Wanda

 

Thanks... I have been staying up later and later... I figured its about time to get out and be productive :smile:

 

 

I guess so... it all started with hafid. He is an inspiration!

 

Some of those look like they could use a white balance adjustment.

Of the all the pictures, the one with the moon is my favorite composition wise, but it's overexposed (both the moon and the headlights).

Do you have the shooting data? Also, did you shoot these RAW?

I'm finding it's best to do night photography in RAW if available since it lets you adjust the white balance after the fact.

 

Good Tip DiD. I over exposed it on purpose... I was trying to make it look like a crazy "day" shot... like this...



shooting data:

F-11
25 sec
ISO 200
WB auto

I am going to try RAW next time... I shot this on fine jpg...

 

I gather you haven't shot RAW yet?

If not, here are my recommendations.

Shoot RAW+JPG Basic. That automatically gives you a jpg if you just want to do quick edits to throw something up, and it doesn't eat that much additional memory (compared to RAW alone). Then you also have the RAW file to edit more extensively.

My preference is Nikon Capture for RAW editing (versus photoshop CS). Then I export a jpg from Nikon Capture and open that in photoshop to further edits/picture formatting (size, borders, text).

You can download a 30 day Trial Version of Nikon Capture and a Trial Version of Photoshop CS, give both a try and then decide which product you want to purchase.

 

Thanks for the info. I already have Photoshop 7.0. I think I have the Nikon software with the stuff that came with my D70.. however I have not installed it. I do most of the stuff through Photoshop anyways. I have not shot anything in RAW form, except the dog eating at the table last night, but I have not went through that to see what needs to be edited.

thanks for the info though... The MINI is a great subject to take photos of!!!

 

Photoshop 7 won't edit RAW, you need either Capture or Photoshop CS.

The software that came bundled with your camera (Nikon Picture Project) is terrible. I would recommend you skip installing it. There isn't much functionality to it (Nikon View is about 100x better than Picture Project).

 

good to know... Isnt the RAW images TIFFs????

Well, just tried it.. You're right. I thought they were TIFF. I guess thats just with the Nikon D100???

 

TIFF and RAW aren't the same thing.

This is a pretty good explanation of the differences

Basically RAW is the recorded values straight of the CCD. RAW doesn't have any white balance, saturation, sharpness, or contrast information. All of that information may be recorded too, but you have the option of selecting each of those items and modifying them again in post processing.

A TIFF file may be lossless, but it has all of those camera settings already overlayed on your image and you can't go back and edit those again.

 

That is a good explanation... I think the D100 "raw" format is in TIFF. I dont remember though because I dont have much experience behind the lense of a D100.

 

I know on the Nikon 4300 basic, normal, and fine were jpeg, but if you switched over to manual mode "enhanced" is TIFF.

According to DPreview, the D100 shoots uncompressed in RAW and TIFF, and then compressed in jpg. The D70 does not have a TIFF option.

You learn something every day. I had no idea the D100 supported TIFF. That's a little odd to me. Why would you shoot TIFF instead of RAW? They are both large files memory wise and RAW is so much more flexible. Strange.

 

I wouldn't mind a TIFF option for the D70, but oh well... a little too late now huh??

 

Try shooting RAW or RAW + jpg and I bet you'll never miss TIFF. :smile:

RAW is the most flexible format and jpg gets you the compressed results with all the camera settings overlayed. The RAW + jpeg mode seems to be the best of both worlds (at least if you have the memory card space to be doing that).

 

Thanks DiD. I will try that next... thats a good question, what size cards are you working with. I have 2 256 and one mini (64). That will hold me over until I get the 1GB card... ah, dreams!

 

Yeah, that's what I'm working with too - one 256 MB 12x card and one 256 MB 40x

With 256 MB you can shoot 21 RAW images or 20 RAW + JPEG, so you're really only missing out on one extra image per card to get a jpeg copy of everything you shoot included with the RAW files.

Most of the time I'm shooting JPG, but ALL of my night pictures are shot RAW, mostly for white balance flexibility.

 

That's true, but I think there are certain instances where having the ability to shoot an uncompressed image (well TIFF is normally compressed with a lossless LZW compression), unlike JPEG which is lossy, is all you need. PShop works with TIFF's, but not directly with RAW, as I understand it, and that may be reason enough to stick with TIFF.

I've found that shooting anything for the web, or even digital 4x5 printing, TIFF is just over kill. I don't see any perceptible difference between a high quality JPEG and a TIFF print, unless you are cropping and zooming into the picture.

 

As you said octaneguy... its good to be able to shoot uncompressed image. As I said in another post... it would be nice to have the TIFF option on the D70. Im pretty sure that the D100 has that option...