Rodney Campbell's Blog

Headed out with Gerry and Suren for an evening of light painting in a very interesting forest. This was a plantation of nice straight trees planted in very straight lines with fabulous tall straight silvery trunks without branches topped with a canopy of large leaved foliage at the top.

We had dinner in a nearby town (won’t bother with a rating :)) and then headed to the forest for a little sunset action before it got dark. The window for images at sunset was ridiculously short – Suren missed it setting up his camera!

The rows of trees were quite interesting but the ground level was often messy and I found it hard to create interesting compositions whilst it was still light. We all wandered separately through the forest of trees looking for something to catch our eye.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

This single image view is pretty much what the place looked like – although this was one of the nicer rows with nice trees, a good canopy and relatively even grass coverage across the bottom (in fact this is the row we came back to later for light painting)

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 2.50 sec at f/13, ISO 100

Whilst everyone (including me) was trying horizontal pano’s I decided to try something radical with a vertical pano – this is composed from 7 horizontal shots taken (at 16mm) from pointing downwards in front of the tripod and then moving upwards and over the top and back down behind me to the ground

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 8 sec at f/8, ISO 800

We’d finished shooting the trees at sunset and twilight and were heading back towards the car to grab our gear to do some lightpainting. There was a sporting field on the left which was very well lit by strong flood lights which spilled onto the closer trees but quickly fell off into the darkness of the rows. Tried a couple compositions but settled on this one with the swathe of white clover flowers covering the foreground which I selectively light painted from the same direction as the flood lit field using a torch and a long exposure to reveal the strong blue twilight sky.

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 16 mm, 30 sec at f/11, ISO 200

Finally one of the horizontal pano’s I’d taken on sunset – composed of 13 vertical frames taken at 30mm – admittedly it does look better larger (and it’s almost 30,000 pixels wide)

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 30 mm, 1/8 sec at f/13, ISO 400

Two of my daughters learn Dance (sort of modern, funky, jazz, etc) and each year they and many of their friends participate in an annual dance concert.

I took some shots from our seats on the floor (I was about 6 to 8 rows back from the stage) with the new D600 and two lenses (the Nikon 85/1.8G and the 70-200/2.8). Besides the annoying heads in the bottom of a number of the images I was really really impressed with how the shots all came out (I took many (500+) of course). This is about my fourth indoor/event type shoot with the D600 and I’m really liking how it performs.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

NIKON D600 + 85.0 mm f/1.8 @ 85 mm, 1/200 sec at f/2, ISO 125

The venue was indoors with lots of multicoloured stage lighting/spots but the D600 handled this with ease.

I had the camera setup in Aperture priority with AutoWB and AutoISO (set to min of 1 / 2 x focal length), single point focus with 9 point dynamic area AF and set to -1/3EV with image review off (so my LCD didn’t light up). In the end I had almost a 100% hit rate of exposure and critical focus. If I compare this to previous indoor event shoots I’d done with my D90 and D7000 a few things immediately became apparent when I was looking through my images in Lightroom afterwards

– there’s just so little noise – I had shots ranging from ISO 100 to ISO 12,800 (although the majority was from ISO 3200 down) and I didn’t bother applying any noise reduction in Lightroom – it’s not just the high ISO shots either – across all ISO ranges (even the lower ones like 100 to 1600) the images look noticeably cleaner and smoother
– my critical focus hit rate is much improved – pretty much all 500 shots are technically usable and focused where I actually wanted – now this may be a combination factor of a number of things – the new/better AF system in the D600, the fact that I’ve calibrated the AF fine tune of these two lenses with my D600 (using the very good Reikan Focal automated software), the fact that I changed my AF style a little – pretty much using the central area (centre or one or two off) AF points only and not using any of the far periphery ones, etc
– I did pretty much no post processing (I left all the shots as is as far as AutoWB, colour, contrast, etc is concerned – there’s lots of multicoloured lighting coming from everywhere but I was happy with them as is) – all I did was add a little sharpening and for some adjusted the exposure perhaps 1/3 to 3/4 of a stop but effectively the vast majority were essentially SOC
– the 85/1.8G is a chroma monster but the 70-200 is much better in this regard

If I sound enamoured with the D600 – I am :). I’ve yet to spend enough time with it to really find out how it performs as my Landscape camera (compared to say my trusty D7000) or for Sports but certainly for Indoor/Low Light/Event photography it kills the D7000.

A couple more images from the day…

NIKON D600 + 85.0 mm f/1.8 @ 85 mm, 1/200 sec at f/2, ISO 360

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NIKON D600 + 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm, 1/400 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1000

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NIKON D600 + 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm, 1/400 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1000

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NIKON D600 + 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm, 1/400 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1600

There has been quite a lot of chatter on the Internet regarding dust on the sensor of the D600 so I’d though I’d just add my little voice to the cacophony…

Firstly my D600 did come with quite a lot of spots on the sensor straight from the box. One of my very first shoots with the new camera (literally the day after I purchased it) was an evening landscape shoot with some long exposure work and using stopped down apertures (e.g. f/11, f/16, etc).

Looking at those shots now I can see a number of dust spots on the sensor which are easily seen at f/11 and they are mostly clustered around the top left corner of the frame.

Firstly I’m not the sort of photographer who’s incredibly anal about changing lenses in a dust free environment (e.g. lens change bag or inside the car and so on). I take reasonable normal care when changing lenses but I do change lenses often and I’ll change lenses any time I need to wherever I am (even in windy/dusty/etc conditions). Given that I do expect some material to accumulate over time (using zoom lenses also breathes dust in anyway) and this has proved to be the case with my previous cameras – however what I guess I’m looking at here is a matter of degrees – how quickly the dust accumulates and how much (in total).

Internet rumours appear to indicate that the D600:
– comes with dust spots on the sensor from the factory – I’d agree with that – I actually expect most cameras do but I think the D600 probably has more than “usual”
– accumulates dust more in the top left corner of the image frame (this is actually the bottom left corner of the sensor) – I’d also agree with that – the problem for me appears more there
– possibly has an issue either where the shutter blades or the shutter curtain inside rubs near that spot on the sensor each time you trigger the shutter and thus sends more fine dust onto the sensor (even in a “closed” environment – i.e. the dust is being created internally)
– the dust appears to be just that and not oil spots or mechanical fluid, etc – I’d also concur – so far I’ve only done rocket blower cleaning and it appears to have fixed the problem each time – I’ve yet to need to go to a wet clean (e.g. eclipse fluid on quick strips over a sensor swipe)
– the problem appears to go away after a couple thousand frames (presumably whatever was rubbing has finished rubbing off the black paint or whatever)

I’ve had to clean my sensor a couple times so far since the dust does seem to have re-accumulated quickly even after cleaning. Each time I clean it however with the rocket blower it appears to fix the problem and the vast majority of spots are removed (I use a LED lit sensor loupe to check my sensor).

I hadn’t cleaned my sensor in ages and I had a landscape shoot at around the 6,500 frame mark and I had an inordinate number of spots to clone (over 100?). However again cleaning the sensor with the rocket blower fixed the problem and removed the vast majority of the dust.

I’ve had two D-SLR’s so far (the D90 and D7000) and I can easily say that they had far less initial dust problem than the D600, also the D600 in it’s early days does seem to collect an inordinate amount of dust spots.

I cleaned again at around the 7,500 frame mark and will see how it goes from here. I may also do a wet clean sometime (I’ve ordered the wider sensor swipe and quickstrips to suit my FX sensor). I’ve wet cleaned a number of times in the past on my D7000 and it really cleans the sensor up. I may even try the Sensor Sweep (the statically charged brush) on the sensor next time to see how it goes (should be good for non gunked on stuff on the sensor – e.g. dust.

I attempted another mini project during the week. I didn’t have enough time to spare in one lunchtime to do it all on this occasion so I spread the time over two lunchtimes walking the streets near my office.

As with the last mini project I limited my time – this time to an hour in total – and I retained the limited equipment choices. Again I only shot with a single prime focal length (the 35mm f/2) and again no post shot cropping allowed and only a relatively simple conversion of each to monochrome.

For this mini project I started with the idea of “Signs” – at first I was taking this more literally (as in road signs :)) but eventually included other symbolism as other ideas came to mind (in fact I had many more I would have liked to have tried if only I could have found subjects or things to match the ideas). Time and locations however proved to be elusive but I still think the experience limiting options is good for photographic growth…

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

and onto the show – thoughts?

Follow the Signs

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/2.0 @ 35 mm, 1/80 sec at f/9, ISO 100

Signs of Life

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/2.0 @ 35 mm, 1/40 sec at f/7.1, ISO 160

Signs of Excess

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/2.0 @ 35 mm, 1/320 sec at f/2, ISO 100

Signs of Misdirection

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/2.0 @ 35 mm, 1/320 sec at f/2, ISO 100

Fancy Footwork

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/2.0 @ 35 mm, 1/160 sec at f/5, ISO 100

Riding on Signs

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/2.0 @ 35 mm, 1/2500 sec at f/2.2, ISO 100

Signs of Culture

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/2.0 @ 35 mm, 1/40 sec at f/4, ISO 200

Tagging Signs

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/2.0 @ 35 mm, 1/125 sec at f/2.8, ISO 100

I decided (not exactly sure why but hey, I’ll run with it :)) to give myself a mini shooting project on a theme. I had my camera with me at work so I gave myself 45 minutes at lunchtime to work on the theme of “Utilities” to come up with something hopefully vaguely meaningful which would loosely converge with my chosen topic. As if it wasn’t hard enough yet… I also decided to restrict myself to one focal length (35mm on full frame) and no cropping/zooming in post allowed – so what you see here is essentially straight out of camera converted to monochrome.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

So how did I go…

Gas

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/2.0 @ 35 mm, 1/40 sec at f/5, ISO 160

Garbage

NIKON D600 + @ 35 mm, 1/40 sec at f/2, ISO 125

Water

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/2.0 @ 35 mm, 1/640 sec at f/2, ISO 100

Post

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/2.0 @ 35 mm, 1/400 sec at f/2.8, ISO 100

Telecom

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/2.0 @ 35 mm, 1/2000 sec at f/2, ISO 100

Fire

NIKON D600 + 35.0 mm f/2.0 @ 35 mm, 1/400 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100

Sewer

NIKON D600 + @ 35 mm, 1/40 sec at f/4, ISO 200

Actually the restriction to just the 35/2 was probably a blessing in disguise – with just 45 minutes to roam the streets looking for things which met my brief there was no time to fluff about changing lenses, etc – just go small and light