Thanks again. Actually lighting was low and I was using shutter speeds around 1000, not 300. I took numerous shots at around 2000-2500 because of wind, motion, etc. Great photos that were posted. I just got back and have not gone through all the photos yet. Alaska was amazing... Wish I had had more time...
As always, these discussions bring up many interesting points. I think that all of us would prefer low iso settings but in some situations you just need to push the limits. I was never quite sure how high to push my shutter speed but figured higher was better when doing hand held shots in conditions where I knew there would be camera movement (such as a photo of a moose with a 200 mm lens with a 20 mph wind). This led to a higher iso than I would like to use...
Thanks for the replies. It is pretty much what I have been thinking. As long as the exposure is ok, the shutter speed shouldn't really matter.
Greetings all. I have just returned from a great trip to Alaska. For better or worse, I found myself taking lots of photos in good light but either from a moving vehicle (train, boat) or using a handheld nikon 75-300 at the 200-300 range. I shoot in manual mode and would prefer high iso grain to blur. My question is whether a high shutter speed of 1000 to 2500 leads to any image deterioration in and of itself. Is there a sweet spot for shutter speed on a camera body akin to the optimal aperture on a lens? Thanks! I have a nikon d5300 and several nikon lenses.
I have used external hard drives and Carbonite for years. After my one fatal hard drive failure, I realized that my external hard drive back up was out of date but Carbonite saved the day. It is slow on initial backup then runs silently in the background.
Again, thanks for all the input. I think that I will stay put for now!
Greetings.
I see that most of you on the Hog use Lightroom for processing of your photo images. I have both ACDSee 8 (current version) and Lightroom 5. I have used both of these and just find Lightroom to be a little bit of a pain in the way that it handles files independently of windows and it's file structures. I do a lot of photo processing but rarely do any extensive graphic editing that would require powerpoint or an equivalent program. I really like the way that ACDSee handles the nondestructive photo editing as to me it seems much more intuitive especially the lighting equalizer that allows you to deal with lighting like a graphics audio equalizer from within the image. It is also extremely fast when looking through images and does not require images to be imported separately to a different catalog (great for when my family is importing images to the computer). It seems to be way faster than lightroom and I have a current computer.
I really can't see any difference in the photo developing / processing between these two programs yet everyone seems to feel that lightroom is better. So be gentle and fire away as to why I should switch over to light room. If it is really better in the way that it processes images and adjusts raw images, I want to know!
Thanks so much.
Wow, if that is correct then one can't really depend on LR as a program for viewing ones photos since most browsing is done in library mode!
I have LR , photoshop, and ACDSee 8. Clearly I can't make my mind up! However, I really prefer ACDSee to all the others. It may not have many of the graphic design capabilities of photo shop but as far as I can tell, it does everything that LR does but is much more user friendly. As a photo viewer and manager it is blazing fast and simple while I find LR slow and a bit tedious. I mainly do photo processing and really only use photoshop when manipulating objects and people in photos. For better or worse, other family members use my computer to look at photos and they do not know LR and can't figure it out. However, ACDSee is easy and they have no problems emailing and facebooking photos. All photos are automatically imported and catalogued. It has pixel editing, layers, and a very cool lighting equalizer that works like a graphic equalizer and is great if you don't understand curves. Anyway, my 2 cents. I would be curious to hear comments since nearly everyone on this forum seem to be diehard LR users!
Please take a look at my recent posting here on NEF vs DNG. I had the same problem when I got my new nikon and used NEF to DNG conversion exclusively. However, I recently happened to compare my DNG and NEF images and found a bit of difference, mainly in fringing and chronic aberration. Turns out there is some data that is removed during the conversion. This is all Nikon proprietary meta data but may include some in camera lens distortion correction. Also, the images that you see are actually jpegs and will look differently between the different raw images depending on your setup. Look at the prior thread if you will. I actually prefer DNG because there are no sidecar files but the images require more processing for chromic aberration than the NEF files. Also, the color rendition is slightly different and I think the NEF is truer. But hey, it is RAW and can be corrected.
One of the issues that has come up as I looked further into this is that the image viewed is dependent on the imbedded jpeg and these may be different between DNG AND NEF even if the raw files are the same! I experimented again and DNG images had some purple fringing on magnification while NEF did not. But, if I make any minor edit such as a 1 point saturation or exposure change, the fringing disappears. Go figure. I can only postulate that the minimal non destructive edit changes the jpeg rendition (which is set on the best setting in the DNG converter). When we look at raw images aren't we looking at a jpeg on the monitor anyway? That really messes up this whole discussion as it adds an entirety new variable... Oh well. I spoke to Nikon about this and their comment was that NEF = dng except for minimal metadata that has been stripped off. But they could not say what that was and if it included any distortion correction. They said call Adobe. Ugh...
Thanks for all the replies. I am viewing the images in lightroom and the latest ACD see. I was under the impression that RAW is RAW whether Dng or NEF but I now see that is incorrect! I like the comment about Russian translation. As I cannot seem to ever get the DNG to look quite as good as NEF, I guess I will ditch DNG. But now I have to deal with all the sidecar files...
Greetings as I have not posted here before but have followed many of the great discussions. My question is regarding RAW conversion. When I initially got my Nikon D5300, there were no NEF converters for it in Lightroom or ACDSee so I have been in the habit of converting all files to DNG via Adobe DNG converter and using that protocol. Of course, now NEF from that camera can be read in most programs. For the first time I actually compared the NEF and DNG files in Lightroom and ACDSee and see that they are a bit different with the DNG having a slightly different crop, more chromic aberations,more noise, and a subtly different histogram. I assume that the NEF file must have some processing unique to the camera and lens that does not come over to the DNG file. It seems to be more than just the JPEG rendition that is different. I suppose that I can correct all the DNG files to get them back to the NEF state but why bother? I think that the NEF file may make corrections for the particular lens but am not sure. I really can't quite get the DNG to match the NEF even with processing. Even with correction, the NEF files seem to look better. I had assumed that NEF and DNG would be identical RAW files but that is not correct. I have looked online and haven't found a satisfactory answer to this. I would prefer to use DNG and not be bothered with sidecars but I don't like the idea of having to correct chromic aberations on every image that I take. Should I just stay with NEF? Any help is appreciated!