Notes from Nikon School: Digital Workflow 201

Class was held Sunday, Nov 2, 2003, in San Francisco

These notes were what I took; obviously, I didn't write down stuff that I knew, so lots of stuff was covered that's not listed here. Similarly, there were a couple of things, particularly related to color management, that I just didn't get, so of course was unable to take notes on those, either.

Instructors

Bill Durrence: www.billdurrence.com
www.bluepixel.net

Nick Didlick: www.pixelzone.com
www.didlick.ca

General Hints

RAW Question

I was puzzled about exactly what goes on in RAW mode, so I asked Bill Durrence.

My question was basically this: When you take a photo, certain things affect the little voltages on the pixels of the CCD and how those voltages are read off into the digital memory. Obviously the shutter speed, lens settings, et cetera affect the amount of light that arrives at a pixel, and obviously the ISO setting is just a sort of amplifier for the voltage in the CCD before it is converted to digital.

I assume that once these voltages are converted to digital data, that's what's in the RAW format file, together with a listing of the other settings (white balance, sharpening, tone compensation ...) that were in effect when the photo was taken. What I wanted to know was: are these things like white balance, exposure compensation, et cetera, completely flexible, or do the camera settings change the RAW data.

For example, if I set up a test situation with the camera locked in a tripod, unchanging light, and so on, and take two photos -- one with exposure compensation 0 and the other with exposure compensation of +1, then if I import those two into Photoshop or the Nikon editor but tell it to go back to 0 on the one exposed at +1, will they be identical? My crude experiments indicate that they are not, and thus that RAW mode is not completely flexible on these things.

The answer as that yes, some of the RAW results do depend on the settings, and which ones and by how much are proprietary information. Durrence said that the white balance, however, was completely flexible.

D100 Settings

Generally, under-do things -- it's easier to add later than to take off. For example, you can add contrast in Photoshop later; it's hard to remove it.

Sharpening

Auto or normal (never high, never none, rarely low)

Contrast

less (never more)

ISO

Stay low: close to 200 -- worry at 640 or more. This disagrees with some tests I read on the web that indicated that relatively high ISOs like 500 or so did not have much effect on quality.

White balance

Didlick uses 3 settings: cloudy (for outside), incandescent (for inside with tungsten lights), or (ideally) WB set. He never uses fluorescent, shade, direct sun, auto, or flash. Of course you need to carry a gray card to do WB set correctly, and when you do it, make sure the exposure is correct.

Long exposure

Use on exposures 1/8 sec or longer. Remember that this doubles time, since the camera has to take a dark exposure of the same length as the regular exposure.

Software worth looking at

Books

Here are three books that were recommended:

Magazines

Hardware

Lexar cards are good, but now Belkin Pro are OK as well as SanDisk. Both instructors just seemed to use Lexar, however, and there's some Lexar software to recover/repair damaged Lexar cards that doesn't work with other brands. I'd use Lexar.

Get a firewire card reader to speed up transfer to your computer.

Eye-one "hockey puck" to get color profile of screen. It's about $300, but to get color profile of paper, you're talking $1400 ... By Gretag Macbeth. Make sure the one you get works on an LCD as well as a regular screen.

Smartdisk Flashtrax: This is a little stand-alone system with 30 or 40 gigs of storage that will read a compact flash, and display the images on a little screen.

Ipod + Belkin reader: same as above, but no preview of the photos.

All printers are about equal quality -- cost gives more speed, larger print, printing from a roll, et cetera. Good printers are Epson 1280 ~$400 and Epson 2200 ~$600. The 1280 is a Dye sub printer and the 2200 is a pigment printer. Pigment printers have a 100 year display life; dye sub printers, 25 year.

Photoshop Hints

Hold alt while using the Levels or adjustment Levels command to see what's going to get blown out.

For embedded color profile management when Photoshop asks, the right answer is usually "Don't color manage".

Use Adobe RGB for both screen and printing. If you know you're doing only screen stuff or only printing, consider the other two settings.

Use USPrepress defaults.

Convert to sRGB for web photos.

I don't understand this yet: Didlick says: "Use Image->Mode->Assign Profile" first, then "Image->Mode->convert Profile". Has to do with the assignments of RGB-triplets and actual colors. The second command actually changes the RGB numbers.

To get white point: Image->Levels, then double-click eyebropper for "white", and click on a white thing in the image (whites of eyes are good). Then, in Lab Color, set a = b = 0 to whiten. Alternatively, after clicking on a white (or gray) object, look at the RGB color and set all to the highest of the three values.

Info box: Use K (Black), RGB, XY, and WH for the four displayed values (unless you need CMYK for something).


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