This one tops them all, because it is actually the world I live in…

You might be a photo geek if you dream you processed some images, and then wake up only to find that you didn’t actually process them…

And the inverse: You might be a photo geek who needs serious help if you also ACTUALLY do process images in your sleep…

Seriously, this is about the third or fourth time. I need more sleep…

…this laptop is ice cold!

“What the…?” you might think? Oh, nothing, I just stood outside in about 40 degree weather for over an hour, to do a 1,967 second exposure on the D300…

Gotta test the camera, ya know? Make sure it can stand up to some, well maybe not extreme, but DIFFERENT conditions? I can’t just buy a weather sealed camera and lens and not put it to good use, right? (There was fog on the polarizer by the end of the exposure. Mmmm.)

I set long exposure NR (noise reduction) on, to remove any “christmas light” noise that can appear even when you’re shooting at ISO 100, and any thermal noise that might come from a hot spot on the sensor. (Major thermal noise on the D70, for example) With long exposure NR on however, the camera has to double the sensing time, so another 1,966 seconds after the shutter closes, the camera keeps sensing so that it can determine what is noise and what is not.

So the camera was sensing for a grand total of 3,934 seconds, or 65 minutes, not counting the half dozen 30 second exposures I made to gauge the perfect long exposure.

Surprisingly, The D300′s high-tech battery meter reads out that it’s still at 57%. WOW! Even a 20 minute exposure on my D70 (40 mins of sensing) would completely exhaust the battery. And that was at 6 megapixels compressed RAW, not 12 megapixels loss-less compressed RAW!

Next I’ll have to test shoot without long exposure NR, since I hear rumors that thermal noise is non-existent with the D300, and then also in a nice warm situation where the battery isn’t taxed so much… Given the right conditions, I might be able to expose for over an hour with a DSLR!!! Wow, how far we’ve come with digital.

Oh, you wanna see the picture? I thought you’d never ask:

Moving on to the real exciting results of the test, here’s a 100% crop from the original 12 MP image:

And next for the jaw-dropper, here’s one of the shots at ISO 1600 that I used to help calculate the exposure for ISO 100:

SHARP and CLEAN! (Disclaimer: Yes, I used noise reduction. But both images received the same exact NR, which is the important part. And NR is pretty much a given when it’s just one click away in Bridge / Lightroom. I practically leave chroma noise reduction at 25-35 all the time since it’s so non-destructive. I hardly ever touch the luminance NR, though I did a tiny bit in this case. Again, this is not a sterile lab test, this is a REAL WORLD test, and in the real world I use NR… And yes, I also used sharpening in BR. Sharpening is also a given in the real world.)

But wait! The discerning eye will see more sharpness in the ISO 1600 image, even though they have been processed EXACTLY the same. Why? ESPECIALLY when the ISO 1600 image was shot wide open at f/2.8?

Diffraction. The ISO 100 image was shot at f/16, cause it’s so dang BRIGHT in suburbia!!! Stopping down to f/16 causes light diffraction and softens the image a little bit. (don’t ask how, the answer involves confusion, literally!) Stopping down to f/22 would have been slightly worse. The sweet spot of a lens on DX is usually f/8 and f/11, FYI… A full-frame 35mm sensor can do f/16 with much less diffraction, since the pixels are like twice as big, BTW…

(No, the softness is NOT at all affected by the fact that ISO 100 on the D300 is “LO 1″. This was another thing I tested extensively. The only thing you lose by dropping to ISO 100 is a tiny bit of highlight range, which was not an issue in this image…)

Hopefully sometime I’ll be able to get away from suburbia, and put the “f/8 and be there” saying to good use… Although heck if I don’t need the DOF I could shoot a lot closer to wide open, like maybe f/5.6 or f/4 even, if f/2.8 on this lens is already THAT tack sharp!

So, there you have it, a tiny peek into nocturnal, long-exposure photography! Hopefully I’ve sparked your curiosity for more?

I’m just itching to get together with some fellow photographers who are interested in pushing the “limits” of their cameras!

=Matt=

Hey, I want one of these for my birthday, okay?

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0801/08010804pretec48gb.asp

DAYUM!!!

Actually, I’d never put THAT big of a card into my camera, I would be so afraid of the entire thing corrupting and losing ALL my photos… (It would hold what, TEN to TWENTY THOUSAND 12 megapixel JPG files?)

HOWEVER, what that kind of card would be GREAT for would be a pocket backup. You could back up your entire portfolio and a dozen recent weddings, and keep it in your wallet or your car or a safe deposit box, anywhere.

Now I’ve just told you all my top-secret backup idea!

=Matt=

In the beginning, the internet was void of color management, and it was bad. Very bad.

Then there was Safari, and a few other browsers, and they tried their best but only made things more complicated and confusing.

Soon there will be Firefox 3, and it will have color management, and it will be good. Very good. You should download it, my friends. No more IE, no more Safari.

To read more and download Firefox 3 while it’s still in beta testing, go here:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0b2/releasenotes/

To read how to turn on color management, go here:

http://www.fotohacker.com/2007/12/04/modify-firefox-3-to-support-color-management/

LOL! The beta has some pretty powerful, complex stuff going on behind the scenes, and for now you have to delve into it to turn on the color management, but I’m assuming they’ll work it into a more user-friendly preferences menu before the final release…

I am extremely excited because I can finally view my images online PERFECTLY IDENTICAL to how I viewed them in Photoshop! Huzzah!

In a few year’s time, sRGB may no longer be the “universal” internet color… Now if only my labs of choice would allow adobe RGB and prophoto RGB, my life would become immeasurably easier!

=Matt=

Hey photographers, do you travel? Do you FLY?

If so, I must ask, do you have a battery grip that accepts AA batteries? You BETTER! Why in the world, you ask?

Because the TSA / FAA just got some new harebrained idea- place restrictions on traveling with lithium-ion batteries. Yep, that’s right, ALL those proprietary batteries that go in your DSLR, video camera, some P&S cameras, etc. etc… You can now pack a grand total of ZERO in your checked luggage, and aside from the ones already in your camera you can only bring TWO spares! They have to be “protected against a short-out”, by the way, which means the whole ziploc baggie routine. Well, my Nikon batteries have little snap-on terminal covers, I dunno about everybody else.

But, DANG, talk about sucky! This means I’ll either have to MAIL my batteries ahead of time, which is impossible for some back-to-back events. Or, BUY MORE spares at EVERY travel wedding I shoot. I COULD try and bring my charger to the wedding and figure out how to work that out, but charging batteries WHILE shooting is never a good situation to be in… And that’s not even considering travel adventure photography, where you could be away from civilization completely for days / weeks on end…

My only real option is to get a battery grip that accepts AA batteries, and stock up on those. Ugh! I already have enough AA’s for my flash units, now I’m going to have like THREE DOZEN AA batteries! But seriously, I mean it’s either that, or buy a couple beat up D70 bodies with the cheapo 3rd-party battery grips, and just use those to hold extra “in-camera” batteries. Which is a very stupid workaround for a very lame rule. Not to mention the fact that I don’t have either of my D70′s anymore…

Okay end rant… Any other travel photographers out there have some suggestions? I guess if I got a battery grip for both my D200 and my D300 that would be four batteries total, and then two spares is 6 total. I might be able to survive a weekend / week on 6 total without having to re-charge… That’s roughly 3-4K JPG exposures, if I’m not using VR all the time… Dooable if I have a hotel to re-charge at every night.

=Matt=