Tom Bol Photo Blog

I’m in Ireland right now, I have been teaching a workshop for Strabo Tours.  We have toured the green Irish countryside, sampled pub life, and even had a day of horse racing.  I decided to make the D800 my primary travel camera and put it through the paces..slow hand held shooting, high ISO indoor shooting, and maybe even some sports shooting.  D800 and sports shooting?  Read on!

One concern I had was hearing you needed to use a tripod all the time with this camera due to the high resolution which amplified shaky hand held shooting. All the images shown here were hand held, no tripods used.  In fact I rarely used a tripod and never had an issue with blurry photos other than when I was wobbling in the wind (wouldn’t have mattered what camera I was using).  It felt like I was using a D700, except the files were 36MP.  The sheep/fence shot was taken at 1/160, F5.6 at ISO250.

We had some overcast days which had me shooting under 1/125 and hand holding my shots…I could have used a tripod, but wanted to be more mobile in my shooting and work the whole beach.  This beach rock was shot at 1/60, F8 at ISO200.

Another big question is how good can the ISO performance be with all those pixels packed into that sensor.  The image of the musician was shot at ISO3200, 1/160 at F1.4.  The D800 does very well with noise at  ISO 1600 and 3200, similar to the D7000.  Sure, this camera is not the D4 or  D3 at high ISOs like 6400, but what I learned very quickly is I can shoot at ISO3200 and get nice, publishable images.  I reduced noise just slightly in this image via Photoshop.

The D800 as a sports camera?  Well, you’re right, the 4FPS frame rate is not going to compete with a D3 or D4.  But the large files and nice ISO performance allowed me to capture these racing horses with a 24-120mm lens and crop down to a tighter shot, and still have a large file to use.  1/1250, F5.6 at ISO 1000.  And remember you can shoot in DX crop mode at a faster frame rate and still have large files to use.

I roamed around the track and shot detail images of the horses and riders between races.  1/320, F5 at ISO 640.

Overall I have come to find that the D800 does a lot of things better than any other camera I’ve owned before. Large file size, very good ISO performance, low light focusing ability (imagine those dark interiors on your travels), in camera quick time movie production..this camera is really a huge step up.  And of course the D800 has  amazing video performance which will be the subject of another post.  For shooting fast action sports, I’ll grab a D4. But for many of my shoots, the D800 will be in my hand.

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I have one thing to say about the D800…incredible!  I have been shooting one  for 10 days, and I’m impressed.  Why? 36MP and very good noise performance at 1600, generally about as high as I shoot.  But what I have really enjoyed is using one lens, my 24-120mm, and cropping down images if needed to produce an image similar if I was using a telephoto…the narrow angle of view is like using a 1.5x sensor camera with a long lens.

Here is an example.  I was recently in the Smokies, and these turkeys were just a little to far away for my 24-120mm lens.  But I cropped down to a much closer shot, and still had a 16mb file.

Here is the cropped image.  Still lots of detail.  I am finding I switch lenses less because I know I can crop down later if I want a tighter shot.

The camera files do take up a lots of card space, but I’m using Sandisk 16 and 32GB cards which give me hundreds of images per card.  I’m en route to Ireland right now, and will show in my next post the ISO performance of this great camera.  I was looking for a new light, smaller camera for travel, and the D800 fits the bill.  Stay tuned for more performance news shortly!

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Recently I had the chance to see a new iPhone app in action, and knew I needed to get it.  Elinchrom makes an app for both the iPhone and iPad that can control Elinchrom Quadras and other RX heads from the device.  The cool part of this is you use the Elinchrom wifi transmitter to create your own portable wifi network.  You open the app on your phone, choose the Elinchrom wifi network, and you are ready to go.  You can adjust all the necessary controls on the Quadra including power to Quadras in different groups, modeling light, test firing, slave eye, sound, auto-off…way more than what you can do with a normal Skyport.  I just did a editorial shoot the other day, and for a portrait we tried out this new system.  It works great!

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Camera technology is advancing at a rapid pace, and doesn’t seem to be slowing down.  Just look at Nikon’s latest releases, one camera that can focus almost in the dark and shoot 10FPS(D4), and another camera that is 36MP (D800).  Not to mention their incredible video abilities.  I was reminded of this on a recent trip to Death Valley with friends.  One thing I always felt digital cameras lacked was the ability to shoot long exposures and get a decent image.  The noise was just to much.  But that is not the case anymore.  The image above was a 45 minute exposure on a D3, and I did zero noise reduction on the image you see.  Just remember, if you want any real streaks you have to leave the shutter open for 45 minutes or longer using a wide angle sky.  I use a locking cable release, set my shutter to Bulb and aperture wide open.  Turn off your autofocus, manually focus to infinity and back off just a touch, and make sure you have your in camera noise reduction on.  And fresh batteries.  A 45 minute exposure takes an additional 45 minutes to process with your in camera noise reduction on.

Death valley is the largest national park in the lower 48, and offers many desert landscapes to photograph.  Mesquite dunes shoots well both at sunrise and sunset.

My trip there felt like an experiment in photographing color.  Cool blue starry nights, warm sunsets and stunning red sunrises.  Remember to watch your red channel when photographing red skies.  You will get some clipping, but be careful not to clip the red channel to much or you will get blocked out colors.

I finally broke down and bought an iPhone.  One feature I was very interested in trying out was the 8 MP camera.  This image of the salt flats was taken with the phone.  The quality was quite good, a little noisy as one would expect with such a small sensor but very usable.  I reduced  noise in CS5 and added some contrast and saturation.  The file is 72dpi 22MB size out of the phone.  iPhone images are being published everyday, take a look at Scott Kelby and Terry White’s book The iPhone Book to really learn what this camera can do.  To download iPhone photos to your computer, plug your phone into your computer and open iTunes, the program will give you options to download.

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