I read a post that someone made in the group about their topic getting sensored and removed. They were talking about the T.s and C.s of the group and how it gave Nikon the rights to your images once you posted them there. Here is what the group rules say;

By submitting your photograph(s) into Nikon’s Digital Learning Center Group (“Group”), you certify that you have full right and authority to grant the rights and permissions following herein, including but not limited to having written authorization from all persons appearing in your photograph(s) and that all such persons appearing in your photograph(s) are over 13 years of age, and further, you agree that Nikon Inc. and its assigns shall have, without further obligation to you, the royalty free, fully paid up, non-exclusive right and permission to copy, publicly display, publicly perform and use, worldwide in any online media now known or hereafter developed, including but not limited to the World Wide Web, at any time or times, subject to the availability of your photographs(s) in the Group through March 31, 2009, your submitted photographs, Flickr username and titles to the photographs (if any) on the Group website, located at www.flickr.com/groups/nikondigitallearningcenter, unless prohibited by law.

Now, in professional photography school 101 you are told, NEVER NEVER NEVER sign or give the rights to your work away. Why you say? Because they are yours and you are giving the rights to ever make a penny from them when you post to these groups. The only saving grace in this is that they don’t say “exclusive” rights, how big of them, they only are requiring “non-exclusive” rights.

I don’t know if Nikon has it in their heads to create a huge database of stock images from users of their cameras or not, but they are sure not going to reap any benefits from my work for free.

Maybe if Nikon gives me the gear for free, but as long as I am paying for it, so will they!

My Nikon D50 was converted by Jim Chen and it has worked perfectly since then. Being able to shoot IRs at ISO200 and f5.6 at 1/400th or so is such a joy. No more tripods and guessing what the composition is, now you see it and shoot it, done.

If my Panasonic DMC-TZ5 had not been in the shop for repairs, I may not have taken the D50 along. Thank goodness I did, cuz I would never have had some much fun when I got back home!

Jim charges $200.00 to convert the D50 and a bit more for some Canon’s but I think if you are serious about shooting IRs, you need to have a camera dedicated.

My setup now is the D50 with a Nikkor 18-35mm lens. Not the top of the line lens, but more than sharp enough. I shoot RAW and process through Bridge and ACR, then into Photoshop and either leave them as black and whites or use the action for creating the false color IR look as you see on these. You can download that action from this website.

Happy IR shooting all!

I leaned this lesson after spending an extra hour spot cleaning over 85 images after a recent job. Consider this your wake up call…

I never bothered, or worried I should say, if I had cleaned my sensor or not on my D2X, or D1X, or D70, or…. you get the idea. I am a pretty careful shooter and don’t leave my stuff out in the open or camera bodies without lenses attatched, so I guess I have become lazy in the cleaning of sensors even though I have had to do it every now and then.

Enter the D3. Those days have changed. After a recent trip to my pro store, West Photo in Mpls, I was talking with one of the rental workers and he gave me a quick eductaional lesson… start cleaning your D3 sensor, often and frequently. He said that they are seeing a huge increase in the amount of time shooters are having to spend to clean these bad boys compared to older models. Why I am not sure, but it is something we are all going to have to do. Those of you who are already in the routine, luck you. Those of us who were not, START!

One thing that is making it difficult is the fact that the D3 doesn’t have a gutter of dead space around the pixel rim… in other words, when you clean the sensor, if you don’t get all the gunk off it you will see it all around the edge of the image frame. Here is an example:

(view larger image)

What you are looking at is the basic dirt test

• shoot a shot at a blank white wall out of focus so nothing of detail is visible
• open the shot in PS and do a Adjustmet/Auto Contrast
• view what a mess it is inside there…

The simple steps in doing this haven’t changed really since day one, blow out the sensor first, NOT WITH CANNED AIR but a bulb type. Then turn on the clean sensor setting in the menu and do your sensor swabbing with pad and cleaner. I have found that after the swab part I go back and hit it again with the air just to get any debris that might have fallen during the cleaning.

The message here is that for those of us who got lazy on this in the past it is time to get reacquainted with the cleaning steps and add them in to both our maintenance routine and our billing one… at $45.00 for a box of 12 swab tips, this is a cost that is going to have to get added into the bill and passed on to the customer as just part of doing the job.

Remember, you can spend the time now or you can spend the time behind the computer spotting… ha haha.

In springtime, the rekindled love of infrared photography blooms and the masses search out content in droves to satisfy this need.

I’ve been watching my stats and have seen a huge increase in traffic from websites all around the world where links to my infrared posts and info on the Nikon Coolpix 990 live, some as old as 8 years ago. All those trees getting ready to bud peek the interest in the age old technique and people feel driven to give it a try or perfect what they have done for years.

I sold my 990 years ago and have moved on with many different cameras, finally settling on the Nikon D50 that was modified to be an “ir-only” camera. That is done by removing the IR blocking glass that most if not all digicams have inside them to keep the IR light out, and replacing it with a custom sized IR filter. The huge upside of this is that it will allow you to shoot IR without a tripod.

WHAT you say, make a camera IR only?

Yes, by doing this you can shoot IR at speeds like 1/125th of a second at f4 or so, sometimes higher. It is great to have the freedom to shoot un-stuck to a tripod. I have even tried a Lens baby on it and shot some great artsy IRs that really added to the whole effect.

I have a thing about my Nikons… no, not that kind of thing! I just love the craftsmanship and the name and the history that comes with it. Since I got into photography back in 1983, Nikon has been to me what Mercedes is to a car buff.

The 50-300mm f4.5 zoom is one of those past beauties that still delivers today. Yes, it is not auto focus. So what, I can still work both my hands AND my eyes. The ED version is the cream of the this lens crop and if you keep your eyes out for one, you too might get lucky to.

I found my first one, a non ED, on ebay back in the mid 90′s. I sent it out to have the chip put in to bring it up to modern, metering days, but it was damaged in shipping and lost to sea as they say…

Now, 15 years later I happened upon another one, this time the ED one I wanted anyway, and wasted no time in snatching it up. I have yet to have a job to put it to the test, but I can’t wait for that day. Now I am just trying to get used to it and learn how it likes to be held… ok, enough of the sick over mushy equiptment talk.

Read some great reviews of the lens and see if you agree:

• MIR website
• Bjorn Rorslett

Since then, I have helped many folks get theirs up and running. I went so far as to call a chap back in Australia and walk him through it step by step (didn’t have file sharing on in his pref…DOH!). I am by no means a networking guru. I can barely keep my simple home/office setup going, but I put in the time and documented what worked, and soon started getting calls from others for help.

Though the document is dated it should still offer help or get you in the right direction for this with this gear. I’ve moved on to the Nikon D3 and will pick up the new WT-4A, but right now I don’t need it.

So, open the doc and have a go. If you need help go ahead and drop me a line or post a comment here and we can work through it out in the open so others can learn as well.

Infrastructure mode document – (850k .pdf)

]]> http://www.pixelagogo.com/56/nikon-wt-2a-setup-document-infrastructure-mode/feed/ 20 http://www.pixelagogo.com/25/new-client/ http://www.pixelagogo.com/25/new-client/#comments Sun, 03 Feb 2008 03:06:34 +0000 cory http://69.89.31.183/~pixelago/?p=25 Today was a good day. Good because it is a new year and that is always a good thing, but it was a good day because I started it with a new client.Great Northern Casket Co. is a dealer in, well, caskets. Not a subject most people like to think about, but when the time does come around, these are the folks that sell your casket to the funeral home that you buy to spend eternity in. Ok, maybe not if you have a different sort of religious belief, but let’s not go there…

Rob and Jeff set up a time to meet and go over their project. Shoot 51 caskets for catalog/web promotion. After all was said and done, we averaged one casket shot each three minutes. That is over three hours of constant shooting.

I used my Nikon D3 and a Nikkor 50mm f2 lens for this. Two Norman ML600s with Chimera Super Large soft-boxes did the heavy work, and the D3 was hardwired via USB into my MacBook. I used Nikon’s Camera Control Pro2 software to control and capture the images as well as offer a live preview which was helpful for the clients to check angle/wrinkles in fabric, etc.

Then I used Adobe Bridge to view the images as they downloaded to the MacBook. The images were all RAW NEFs and were later processed in Adobe LightRoom and then outlined in Adobe Photoshop CS3

I had the opportunity to learn a bit more about them as a profession whenI photographed a clinic of doctors for their new website and marketing push. OBGYN WEST has 9 doctors here in Minnesota with two clinics and who are about to open a third. What I found out was that these people have a good time and love what they do. Their concern for women and all the issues that women face is genuine and heartfelt.

I was called in to take some headshots of the doctors for marketing materials as well as the web. A few months later I was again asked to shoot them in a group setting as the other photographer they used just didn’t get the shot they wanted. We took care of that as well as a couple new headshots of a few doctors who wanted an updated look for their web pages.

This was the first job I did with my new Nikon D3. I was so happy to get it out of the box and into the field and it made the job very memorable for me. I was almost tempted to shoot all available light due to the D3′s low noise feature, but after a few tests decided to go with the tried but true Photek Softlighter and Norman monolight heads.