Category Archives: Photography

The Nikon D800 outfit

Nikon bodies, Nikon lenses

At bargain basement prices.

Having returned to FF DSLRs with the Nikon D800 one year ago, I thought it might be of interest to show my outfit now.

When Nikon discontinued its DSLR range in favor of newer mirrorless bodies, with lenses to match, two things happened. The price of the latest gear shot up and that of the discontinued hardware crashed. As a result, if your psyche can tolerate a flapping mirror, just as most have these past 75 years, then look to keep your check book bruised but not battered as you acquire some of the finest photography hardware ever made.


The kit today.

  • D800 body, $475 with just 16,000 shutter actuations. Yes the later D850 comes with 45mp (you do not need that many) and costs three times as much. Your call. Need wi-fi and a fold out LCD screen? Try the D750 at the same price with a more than adequate 24mp.
  • 50mm f/1.4 AF-S G Nikkor, just overhauled by Nikon – $113. Front left. All prices include original Nikon hood and both caps.
  • 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-S G VR Nikkor, $415. Rear left.
  • 16-35mm f/4 AF-S G VR Nikkor, $315. Rear right.
  • 85mm f/1.8 AF-S G Nikkor, $238. Front right.
  • 60mm f/2.8 AF-S G Micro Nikkor, on the camera with film copying attachment – $267 + $60
  • MB-D12 vertical camera grip – $37. Front.
  • New Nikon battery, in the D800 – $60

There is nothing I can tell you about these lenses that is not already known – outstanding definition at any aperture, dead accurate and fast AF and robust but not heavy for what you get. Resale value? 100 cents on the dollar.

The Micro Nikkor will be sold when my film ‘scanning’ project is completed, making for a net kit cost of just $1,653. A Nikon Z8 mirrorless body runs some $3,800 and lenses are extra. Can you spell ‘Bargain’?

For all my Nikon lens articles click here.

Epson ET-8550 – ink use

Epson ET8550, Printing

In a word, frugal.

For an index of all articles about the Epson ET8550 printer, click here.

One of the claims made by Epson for its ET-8550 ink tank printer is that is uses ink frugally.

Here are some data from my early experience. Bear in mind that about 1/4 of each ink bottle is used to fill the feed tubes and print heads when the printer is new, so the actual ink use is even lower, and I allow for that in my calculations.


110 prints made from new.

All prints made have been 13″x19″ in size. In practice I made 31 monochrome prints, not 3 as shown, as I now output them from Lightroom as ‘color’ originals which have been converted to B&W. Epson counts those as ‘Color’ as it cannot tell the difference.

Here are the ink levels after those 110 prints from new:


110 prints made from new.

Each ink bottle is 70ml in size, meaning we have to add back 25% of that amount, or 17.5ml, to take out the effect of the ink stored in the lines and heads. Obviously these do not need refilling – it’s a one-off permanent ‘ink sink’ for a new printer.

This computes to use in mL and % of full as follows after adjusting for the ink sink:

BK – pigment black – 0ml, 0%
PB – dye Photo Black – 17ml, 25% – this confirms that the 8550 is only using dye black ink for prints, not pigment black ink. In fact, the 0% use of the pigment black ink suggests that pigment black ink is being reserved solely for printing office documents and dye black is used, by default, for making photographic prints.
C – dye cyan – 25ml, 35%
Y – dye yellow – 17ml, 25%
M – dye magenta – 26ml, 38%
GY – dye grey – 81mL, 116% – I have refilled the GY tank once with 70mL of ink added

The high GY use reflects the many B&W prints made, but averaging the five dye tanks out use (pigment black is not used for prints so that sixth color is disregarded in the calculations that follow) is 166mL or 2.4 tanks for 110 13″x19″ prints. Stated differently, five dye tanks will allow printing of 230 13″ x 19″ prints or, if you prefer 608 (!) 8.5″ x 11″ prints. The cost of five 70mL dye ink bottles of genuine Epson ink (only a fool would use aftermarket substitutes at this price) is around $85 or 48 cents a 13″x19″ print.

That agrees with my definition of frugal, and while you can print office documents using that pigment black ink, I do not recommend that for two reasons: first, it’s bog slow. Second, a cheap desktop laser printer is faster and cheaper.

One note. Dye ink is absorbed by the swellable HP printing paper I am using and probably handled in much the same way by Epson papers and those from other makers. The dyes soak into the emulsion of the paper and need time to dry. In fact, you can feel the tackiness of the surface of a fresh print. So leave new prints out in the air for 24 hours before putting them in sleeves or heating them for mounting, etc.


My high end print drying area.

Itoya large print portfolio

Printing, Technique

An inexpensive display approach for large prints.

It costs some $40 to mount, mat and frame a print for hanging. Not cheap, especially is you have many. A related issue is that wall space is limited unless you are an oligarch or billionaire.

One inexpensive alternative is the ‘family’ album, but that usually comes in small sizes for display of wallet sized prints.

However, there is a fine product to be had, made by Itoya, which comes with 24 13″x19″ plastic sleeves, each with a black interleaver to prevent ‘bleed through’ with back to back images. B&H has the best price; buy two or more and shipping is free.


The album holds 48 13″x19″ prints, back to back.
Click the image to go to B&H.

Longevity? I have one where the prints have been in contact with the acid-free plastic sheets for over a decade and the colors are as good as new, with no yellowing. One cautionary word. If your prints are freshly made let them air dry for 24 hours before inserting in the sleeves. This will avoid having heavy ink areas stick to the plastic. That is certainly my experience with the Epson ET 8550.

It takes longer to sort the prints than it does to insert them in the sleeves:


This batch used less than one tank of ink in total in the Epson 8550.

Nikon D800 film scanning – Part IV

Film

Can you say ‘fast’?

For an index of all my Film related articles, click here.

There is absolutely no upside to time spent scanning old films, other than the end result. The process is of surpassing tedium and the goal of the previous three articles, starting here, has been to make this process fast and seamless, without sacrificing a commitment to the highest quality results.

With LR tethering working well and a carefully tailored import preset dialed in in the tethering panel (exposure, contrast, vibrance and so on) I set about the project seriously and here is this morning’s result:


28 scans, 47 minutes.

Yup, 28 high quality scans in just 47 minutes and that includes negative strip selection and insertion in the film strip carrier, dusting, image recording using the D800 rig, conversion in Lightroom from negative to positive (in the import settings, so it’s automated), dust retouching – the most time consuming step though LR’s clone/heal tool is excellent and fast – and final contrast/exposure/vibrance tweaks. And I was not rushing things. The final step is to rename the files to conform with the original negative numbers should the originals ever need to be retrieved. The computer is a 2010 MacPro with two 3.47gHz 6 core CPUs, 96gB of 1333MHz RAM and an Nvidia 980GTX GPU.

The results are ready for printing …. large:


Magnificent English sheepdog.

These were taken at Crufts Dog Show in February, 1972. Leica M3, 50mm and 90mm Elmar lenses, TriX processed in Microphen pushed to 800ASA/ISO.

Nikon D800 film scanning – Part III

Film

Some further efficiency fixes and related notes.

For an index of all my Film related articles, click here.

In Part II I looked at batch inversion and color negative imaging. Here I look at tethered capture and focusing considerations.

Tethered capture: Lightroom has long supported tethered capture with many Nikon and Canon cameras; the camera is connected with a cable to the computer and after tethered capture is enabled (File->Tethered Capture->Start Tethered Capture) this panel will appear on the display:


The tethered capture information panel.

Comments on user fora suggest many have issues getting LR to recognize supported cameras – indeed I had that issue – and one fix from Adobe goes as follows. Go to this directory in Finder:


This is the file to erase.

Erase the highlighted file – this is for LR6. It will be recreated when you next start LR. After doing that my tethered D800 was recognized fine.

I wrote about tethered capture here and because Nikon uses the fragile USB2/USB3 Mini USB connector I strongly recommend you concoct a strain relief at the camera end, whether a piece of wire, as I show, or the more elegant Nikon USB Cable Clip. Damaging the camera body will not make your day when that sub-optimal connector is yanked/torqued out accidentally.

Why tether? Because you see the image on a large display seconds after pressing the shutter button. Nothing is recorded on the camera’s CF or SD card. The image is sent straight into LR where sharpness and alignment are easily judged. This speeds work flow and you can bang away at those old negatives with abandon, watching the images pop up on the display. You no longer have to remove the SD/CF card from the camera and insert it in your card reader.

Film strip orientation. There a lot of nonsense written about making sure the matte side of the negative faces the lens. I tried both ways, flipping the image for comparison. This image has microfine detail in the child’s pullover and there is no distinguishable difference between matte side and glossy side to the lens. So I use glossy side to the lens as there’s no need to flip the image in LR. Here are enlarged comparator images:


Glossy and matte sides to the camera lens, respectively.

Here is the processed image:


Glossy side to the camera lens works fine.

Focus point: Once inserted in the film strip holder, the film is slightly bowed in a convex shape on the glossy side, the one which faces the camera lens. I do not use a glass film strip holder to try and remove this bowing, as holders which use plain glass can cause “Newton rings” interference on the image. These manifest themselves as rainbow like patterns. There are “anti-Newton ring” glasses available but they are lightly etched to prevent this phenomenon and reduce definition in the image as a result. Further, four glass surfaces mean four more areas on which dust can accumulate.

I use an aperture of f/9.5 on the Micro Nikkor AF-S lens which is the sweet spot where depth of field and definition meet. You do not want to use the lens at full or minimum aperture where definition suffers. Further, depth of field at full aperture is very slim, making critical manual focus that much harder. Given that the film surface is not plane, does it make sense to focus on an area half way out from the center of the image to optimize depth of field and related sharpness across the frame?

In the comparator images below, the first used spot focus in the center while the second focused midway between the center and the edge of the long side of the negative. I used the directional pad on the D800 to move the autofocus point, having earlier determined that auto focus is superior to manual focus. The latter uses the viewfinder LED indicator to show best focus and I have found that nailing that is so critical that deferring to auto focus is easier and more repeatable.


Center and half left spot focus points.

There is no discernible difference between the center and half-left spot focus point images with the grain sharp at all points. Conclusion – center spot focus is just fine at f/9.5.

How fast is the process, a key goal of this project? Read about that here.