Original Manual DSLR Project: One Year Later

Hello all:

Just over one year ago I embarked on a new project called the Manual DSLR Project. Since it is now time to take the project to the next step I wanted to preserve the original purpose of the blog by moving it from the header of the page to a post. The blog description will be revised for the next chapter in the Manual DSLR project.

Thanks for reading and be sure to keep following my progress as I continue to grow as a photographer.

Best...Mike

Original Manual DSLR Project Description:

Hi, and welcome to my blog. I am an amateur photographer who occasionally takes some decent photos. However, most of the time I shoot in Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority. First of all, there is nothing wrong with shooting in "A" or "S" mode. However, I do not feel that I am using my camera to its fullest since I am not at all comfortable using Manual mode. Learning manual mode will also help me to do some artistic things that can't be done in Aperture priority.

So here's the deal...

Inspired in part by the movie Julie and Julia (my wife made me watch it) and professional photographers like David Ziser (who blogs on Digital Pro Talk six days a week), Kerry Garrison (of Camera Dojo fame), Gavin Seim (Pro Photo Show), and others, I am giving myself one year - 365 days - to learn to use manual mode on my Nikon D300. Rather than taking that journey alone, I am inviting you to join me in this journey. Learn from my mistakes. Celebrate with me as my fingers remember which wheel adjusts the shutter speed and which controls the aperture settings.

My goal is that in one year I be more familiar with the features of my camera than I am now. My goal is to be able to look at a scene and know what shutter speed, ISO, aperture setting, etc. to select.

While I am giving myself a year to work through this learning project, I do not expect to post to this blog every day. I work a full-time job and often work late hours. I am not David Ziser (though I would love to have a small portion of the knowledge and skill he possesses). I expect to post to this blog about once a week.

So join me in this journey. Let me hear from you. What I know right now I learned from some of the awesome photographers out there on the web and on podcasts. I am open to hearing your thoughts.

All the best...
Mike

Happy Valentine's Day! Thinking Spring!

Just a quick post today to wish you all a happy Valentine's day and to share springtime thoughts. What a gorgeous day it was today! I am seriously getting Spring fever. To share that Spring fever with you I dug back into the archives to find a photo of a tulip tree in our backyard, taken in March 2009.

This was well before I started the Manual DSLR Project, so I cannot explain why I shot this as I did. It's almost embarrassing. What was I thinking?

Anyway, this was shot at ISO 1600, f18, 1/160 sec. It was shot with a 300mm macro lens. Oh my!

How would I have approached this differently today? It was shot in the afternoon so I might use ISO 320 or 400 and maybe open up the aperture a bit (probably to f 6.3 on that lens) and use an appropriate shutter speed based on those settings. Oh well. That's why I started this journey almost  a year ago, so I could learn and be better today than I was then.

I did apply a develop preset in Lightroom 3 called PH Soft and Dreamy with a goal of softening it a little.

So happy Valentine's Day to you. All the best...Mike

North Head Lighthouse, Washington

While visiting the Pacific Northwest recently, we grew tired of the rain and decided to travel north until we found sunshine. We found that sunshine as we crossed into Washington. As I looked on Google Maps on my iPhone, I found that there was a state park called Cape Disappointment on the southern coast of Washington. Among its many great features, there are two lighthouses that are easily accessible. The first one that we visited is called the North Head Lighthouse.

Construction on this lighthouse began in 1896; it was lit for the first time on May 16, 1898. I really did not expect this to be one of my favorite photos of the lighthouse, but a combination of a "PH Dramatic Ocean" preset and a graduated filter both applied in Lightroom 3 gave me a pleasing result--or at least one that I like.

It had been an overcast day but the sun was starting to come out (for the first time all weekend). I selected an ISO of 100 to lessen the sensitivity of the sensor. I shot with my 18-135 Nikon lens at 18mm with an aperture of 7.1 and a shutter speed of 1/400 second. The result was a somewhat "blah" shot with a dark background and little contrast in the sky. However, there was a really nice cloud pattern in the sky which I thought could "pop" with just a little work in Lightroom. I first applied the preset, "PH Dramatic Ocean" which made the sky pop but toned down the brightness of the foreground. I then added a graduated filter to lighten and brighten the foreground, especially the bottom of the lighthouse. A little luminance smoothing finished it off. I hope you enjoy!

Just Having Fun

I haven't had much of a chance to take photos recently but I have had some time to think about what I could take pictures of. One of the ideas I had involved my 14-year-old son, Lane, and his sword. What... Your 14-year-old kid doesn't have a sword? Okay, that's a different story. Let's talk about the picture.

I was looking to do something edgy but I didn't have a clear vision for how it would look because I don't spend a lot of time hanging out in the woods. After some really bad poses initiated by me (not sure how we ever got him out of tree without hurting at least one of us), Lane suggested a spot in a thicket next to a tree. It looked good to me so I told him to pretend that he was all alone with only his sword with which to protect himself, and the bad guys are on the way. Here is the result. 

Lighting was provided from my pickup truck, parked about 75 feet away with the lights shining in from photo left. I simply asked Lane to step forward until his face came into the light. The dirty looking spots on his face and elsewhere are actually shadows. He isn't wearing a hat of any kind; the darkness is just from being outside the light. This was shot in manual mode at ISO 1600, f5.6 and 1/6 second. What you see here is what we got from the camera. I didn't do anything in post except to convert from RAW to JPG.

We experimented with using a small LED flashlight but found the light to be too white. The lighting from the pickup truck was quite warm, allowing it to look a bit more natural. My goal was to take a creepy-looking picture that is a little edgy. Though I probably won't hang a 60-inch canvas of this over our sofa, I deem the experience a success for five reasons:

1. I was able to translate a vague vision of what I wanted to do to an actual photo. All too often I take my camera out looking for something to shoot. This time however, I approached it a bit differently. 
2. I got to experiment with light, not in the traditional way of adding strobes or speedlights, but using available light and adjusting the scene. 
3. It was fun!
4. I got to hang out with Lane. 
5. And most importantly, it almost made the purchase of a sword sound legitimate. (Not really. #4 is by far the most important.)

And who knows, it might make a good Facebook profile picture for Halloween.

Until next time...Mike

Two Important Lessons

So we took a quick trip to New Orleans this week via Amtrak. Our train was delayed leaving Birmingham and flooding in Mississippi and Louisiana resulting in our going very slow on the way down. That was okay, since we had a nice quiet room and free meals in the dining car.

Lesson # 1 - On the way down, my wife (who usually shoots in Aperture priority or Automatic with her D80) asked how manual mode works. Of course the teacher in me came out so I explained how to use manual mode and the relationship between ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. Good news: She caught on very quickly. Bad news: By Tuesday she was shooting mostly in manual mode and nailing her exposures. Lesson learned: My wife is awesome and can kick my butt at almost anything. (Did I say almost?)

Lesson # 2 - I did get an opportunity to shoot a lot on this trip, so I started learning to adjust the camera on the fly without having to take it down from my eye. One little memory tool that I used was to decrease shutter speed turn the wheel toward the center of the camera body and to increase shutter speed I turn it away from the body. An easy way to remember that is to increase the amount of light (by slowing the shutter speed) you turn the wheel toward the hot shoe. To decrease light (by increasing shutter speed), you turn the wheel away from the hot shoe (away from the light). Okay, it's cheesy but just cheesy enough that it might just work. If you don't believe me, sing along with me as we sing "Conjunction Junction, what's your function" or "Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas..." or any of the memory tips that we used when we were kids.

Here are a couple of shots from this week. This first shot is an example of some of the great detail in the architecture in New Orleans. I thought this house (which was next door to the B&B where we stayed) told the story of New Orleans: The city has endured some rough times, but there is a beauty there--a sense of class--a city with a clear identity.

This was shot in manual mode at ISO 320, F7.1 and 1/800 sec.

The second shot is a bear (duh!) taken at the Audubon Zoo. It was shot at ISO 200, F5.6 at 1/40 sec. Both were shot with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 18-135 f3.5-6.3 AFS lens.

I was trying to travel light on this trip so I took only the D300, the 18-135 lens and an SB600 speedlight. I'll post more photos on this site and on Twitter as I get a chance.

The more I shoot in manual mode the more I see that it is not rocket science, but it does take practice, practice, practice until the adjustments become second nature. Look for a new post soon.

All the best...Mike

In Camera Metering

Hi, folks. Here's the April 5 edition of the Manual DSLR Project. There was still some sunlight available this afternoon when I got home so I took the opportunity to turn the knob to "M" and use another tool that I must admit I don't use like I should: the in-camera metering feature. The first shot you see is shot from my back deck with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 80-200 F2.8 AF lens with hood. I set the ISO to 200, and the aperture to 9. Using the in-camera meter as a visual guide of correct exposure, I dialed the shutter speed in at 1/200 sec and snapped the photo. As you can see, it was a little dark. Perhaps the exposure locked in on the bricks (which seem to be about right) instead of the flowers. On the photo on the right, I dialed the shutter speed down to 1/50 sec., which brightened up the flowers, but rendered the bricks a little bright. Next time, I should probably use AE lock to focus on the flowers for my exposure (another feature that I need to learn to use automatically.

Oh well, that's why this project is a year-long one and not just a week long. There is plenty for me to learn and remember. An excellent teacher one time told me that sometimes we don't suffer from a lack of education, but from a lack of application. That's what I hope to change in the next 359 days.

On a side note you'll see that I figured out how to change the copyright indicia on my images from 2009 to 2010. Also, you should know how I prepare these images for posting. I shoot in RAW, so I simply import the images into Lightroom, select the ones I want to use, and export them to another folder as JPEG files (70% quality, sRGB, 300 dpi, and 800 pixels along the longest edge). To maintain the integrity of this project, I will not make any adjustments in Lightroom unless I'm just posting a photo for fun and then I'll tell you what I did with it.

Until next time...MK

April 3, 2010 - Another flower photo

Here's another flower photo. Taken on a Nikon D300 with a Quantaray 70-300 Tele-macro at ISO 320, F5.6, 1/250 second.

April 3, 2010 - It's okay to cheat a little at first isn't it?

This is my first blog post and I must say it is difficult to know where to start...After a good deal of consideration, I decided to cheat, um.. I mean use all the resources available to me. In July, 2009 I was thinking of buying a light meter and visited Sekonic's web site. While there, I entered a contest and voila, I won a Sekonic L758-DR and an Exposure Profile Target II. http://www.sekonic.com/classroom/histogram_winners.asp
So, since the folks at Sekonic were kind enough to give me a great light meter, why shouldn't I start there?

So here's what I did. I went out in the front yard with my camera, tripod, and Quantaray 70-300 macro F4-5.6, along with my trusty Sekonic L758-DR and Portaflash 5 in 1 reflector system. I placed the black diffuser behind the subject, then took a reading at F5.6 and shot it at 1/250 sec. at ISO 320. It is sunny this afternoon, but the front of the house where I was shooting is in shade at this time of day. The result is shown in this photo.

So what did I learn? First, use all the tools that are available to me. The light meter made taking this photo very easy. The black diffuser gave me a good background so that attention is drawn to the subject. I also learned something about lens selection here. I also shot the same image with a Nikon 80-200 F2.8 lens and the result was not as good. This Quantaray lens was very inexpensive, takes forever to focus, and is not the best quality glass in my bag. However, it did a nice job with the extreme close-up--better than the much faster Nikon lens that cost much more.

Lesson number 1 - Use the right tool for the job. Your most expensive or "best" lens isn't always the best lens for the job. Think about what you are shooting then select the best lens and accessories for the job. As for using my D300 in manual mode...I'm working on remembering that the front dial changes aperture settings and the back one changes shutter speed. I think the biggest part of this project will be that repetition is the mother of learning. The more I use manual mode the more comfortable I'll be with it. At some point, I hope, I'll be able to look at a shot (sans light meter) and say, "I think I'll shoot this at ISO 320, F5.6 and set my shutter at 1/250 sec." Until then, thank you Sekonic.

Until next time...

MK

P.S. I may post some photos from time to time without any narrative. Also, I guess I have Lightroom set to mark exported photos with a copyright, but it looks like I need to change the date to 2010. I'll see if I can figure that out.