Digital Photography's Best Kept Secret

It continues to amaze me how few digital photographers, especially those using Nikon cameras, know about Nikon's image editing program Capture NX2. Capture is built by the people at Nik software who have developed some of the most useful, popular and innovative PhotoShop add-on programs on the market. Capture, however, is a stand alone program primarily design to work with Nikon RAW images. One of its main advantages is that is works with the pure RAW information keeping it accurate. Other programs often have to interpolate this information.

Not all components of a digital photograph, such as focus, can be manipulated as a RAW part of the image but many can. Capture has menu items that correspond to those settings on the camera that control RAW parts of the image. These parts later be be changed in Capture without any destruction or negative impact on the photo. For example, if your picture is a stop over or under exposed, Capture has a tool that lets you correct exposure just as you do with the EV control on the camera. If your white balance is off Capture has a menu system similar to the one in the camera to correct the white balance quickly and easily.

With Capture NX2 you can create a specific shooting profile. Simply shot a photo under the conditions you expect to be working under, edit it in Capture to the way you want it to look under the those conditions. Save these setting as a profile and load them into the camera. Every time you shoot in those conditions you can load this profile using the camera's Manage Picture Control menu and all the photos will be corrected, in camera, to your profile.

My favorite part of Capture NX2 is the U-point technology that lets you create a Color Control Point. The point allows you to very easily make color and exposure change to a specific area of a photo. You simply place the Control Point over the area of the photo you want to correct and use the small drag tool to determine the size of circle that defines the area you want to work with. All you have to now do is slide one of the slide controls that allows you to control exposure, saturation, contrast, red, blue, green etc. The program is smart enough to use the circle you drew to figure, out what pixels around the circle look life the ones in the circle, and change them. The changes are fast, non destructive to the photo, and easily reversed. It sounds a bit confusing as I write this but in reality it is quick to learn and easy to do.

Capture has a lot of other great features including a very easy to use batch processing tool. I use Capture as a regular part of my work-flow. All my RAW editing is done in Capture. If the image needs further works I use the menu item "Open With" and the image is converted to a TIFF and opens in PhotoShop.

If you shoot a Nikon you really should try CaptureNX2. You can download a free 60 day trial versions from the Nikon website: www.nikonusa.com There are several books on the market will speed you through learning Capture and Nikon has a tutorials on its website as well under the Learn & Explore area. There is also a 64-bit version well on the way.

A Visit to Paradise

We just returned from completing a week long Wildlife Photo Workshop at the wonderful Silver Salmon Lodge in Lake Clark National Park Alaska. This area is known for its beauty and the opportunity to get up close and personal with the many coastal brown bears that inhabit this area. This trip was no exception. We photographed several sows with their cubs often from as little as 10 feet. We watched as the moms nursed, play with and disciplined their cubs. We photographed the cubs playing with each other or just playing with a stick or shell they found. In the mornings, when the tide was out, we photographed the bears on the beach as they hunted clams, dug them up and than with a couple of swipes of their giant paws opened the clams to eat the meat in side. The long Alaska summer days allowed us to photograph to well after 9pm.

The part of this trip that always leaves the greatest impression on me, however, is the raw natural beauty of this area. The beach is pristine. Tall saw grass in various shades of green cover the fields. The air is so clear the colors are almost surrealistic. Just beyond these fields rise steep mountains whose snow capped peaks are often lost in the clouds. Along the coast high wispy waterfalls sprout from rain forest covered cliffs that border the sea. Puffins, Murres, Oyster Catchers, huge flocks of Kittywakes and a wide variety of other sea birds soar overhead. The occasional bald eagle swoops in low above the streams to check for fish.

This is the Earth as it should be, as it was before we cut the forests to build mega-cities and strip malls. Before we fouled the rivers, the sky and drove away the wildlife . Lake Clark is not just a place for great wildlife photography it is also a place to refresh the soul.

We have already made a reservation to return to Lake Clark and Silver Salmon Lodge the week of August 19th 2012. We have places for seven of which 4 are already spoken for so please let us know as soon as possible if you would like to join us.

As soon as I have a chance to edit and review the many gigabytes of photos I took I will post a few on the site. Please come back and take a look.

How to Clean the Sensor in Your DSLR Camera

Since the first D-SLR camera hit the market, one of the questions I have been most often asked is about how to clean the dust off the sensor. Early adapters of D-SLR cameras quickly found that the electric charge in the sensor was a dust magnet and this dust showed up in their photos as black spots. As the popularity of the D-SLR grew, a cottage industry of products to solve this problem grew up. I've tried almost all of them and found a few that are both cost effective and really work. Among the best of these are the products made by American Recorder (americanrecorder.com). I recently wrote an article for American Recorder that currently appears in: Shutter Bug Magazine Special Edition: Digital Photography How-To Guide. Below is a copy of that article which I think you'll find very informative. Let me know what you think. Just for the record, I never endorse or even mention products I don't use myself and totally believe in.

CLEANING YOUR D-SLR’S SENSOR

by

Scott Frier

Digital cameras have revolutionized photography. However, despite their many advantages, digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras have an inherent problem with dust on their imaging sensors. Imaging sensors build up an electrical charge which attracts and holds dust particles floating around in the camera. This appears as black spots on your photographs. Recently, manufactures have started using a self-cleaning system that discharges the sensor and then rapidly vibrates it to shake the dust off. While this works fairly well, it is far from one hundred percent effective. This means that you still have to manually clean the sensor, and it has to be done right—otherwise, you risk damaging the sensor, which is a VERY expensive repair.

Most dust particles on the sensor can usually be removed with a blast of air. This sounds simple but there is a lot to watch out for. The traditional canned air that is available in photo stores contains a propellant which can cause a real mess on the sensor: shake one of these cans or hold it at an angle and you can see the propellant. A better choice is to use an air bulb. These are also called “baby syringes” and consist of a rubber hand bulb with a small tube at one end, a sort of mini bellows. There is no propellant, but the air you are shooting at the sensor is the air around you; unless you are in a “clean-room” it still contains dust. You are possibly shooting dust right back on the sensor you are trying to clean. Plus, even the largest of these air bulbs cannot create a powerful enough air burst to clean off stubborn dust. The solution: compressed Nitrogen.

Nitrogen is an inert gas that reacts with virtually nothing, so it contains nothing that can harm the sensor. American Recorder’s Nitro Blast compressed Nitrogen is propellant-free, and the air stream is powerful enough to remove ninety-nine percent of the dust or particle matter you’ll ever encounter on the sensor.

What about that final one percent? To get to that final, most stubborn dirt and dust, you will have to physically clean the sensor using a swab moistened with an effective cleaner. It is critical to use a cleaning fluid that will not damage the sensor and will not leave a residue behind. There are pre-moistened swabs and swabs that come with the cleaner in separate bottle. I prefer the latter of these, as the pre-moistened ones are usually so saturated with fluid that they leave a significant amount of it behind on the sensor. American Recorder’s UltraPure Cleaning Fluid--used with American Recorder’s Digiswabs--will do an effective job cleaning without harming the sensor or leaving residue. Since you apply the liquid cleaner to the swab, you can control the amount.

Now that we have the materials, let’s get to work.

How to Clean the Sensor

The sensor is located behind the camera’s shutter. You will have to keep the shutter open while you service it. As the shutter is extremely delicate, this has to be done carefully. Most of the newer cameras have a special sensor-cleaning function that will open the shutter, lock it and discharge the sensor to stop the electrical charge. This function is usually a menu item found under the “Tools Menu”. If your camera has no sensor cleaning option, set the shutter speed to “B” and hold down the shutter button. Be sure to use a fully charged battery when you do this, and be careful not to take your finger off the shutter while you are cleaning the sensor or it will close. This could severely damage the shutter—another very expensive repair.

Once the shutter is open you can use your Nitro Blast to blast off most of the dust. If there is still dust on the sensor, apply a couple of drops of UltraPure Cleaning Fluid on a Digiswab and carefully and lightly run it across the sensor. Be careful not to over-saturate the swab. Use a second dry Digiswab to clean off any excess fluid on the sensor. Finally, finish off by removing any remaining particles with a blast of Nitro Blast.

To close the shutter, turn off the sensor cleaning menu item or just exit it. If you’re using the “B” setting on the shutter speed dial, simply release the shutter and re-set your shutter speed. You can check the cleanliness of your freshly cleaned sensor by taking a picture of a white sheet of paper. If you don’t see any black spots on the photograph then your sensor is pristine. If spots remain, it’s time to take your camera in to a service center for a professional cleaning.

© Scott Frier 2010

Grand Teton National Park in June

We just returned from a ten day visit to Grand Teton National Park where I taught a photo class for Arizona Highways and Nikon. The class was great. A good group of people with a great attitude. The only downside that I want to share with you is that late June is not the time to visit this park. The place was packed with people, the weather was too warm and the sun so bright that it twas impossible to shot between 9:00 am and 7:00pm. In the morning, we had to be on-site by 5:15am and in the evening, out until about 9pm to maximize the time we had with the best light. We found much less wildlife than our usual trips in mid-May or late September early October, my favorite time. Nearby Jackson Hole is also tourist packed as well. At times the main street through town was crowded and a slow go. Restaurants were also full and often hard to get into. It was clear that they had all pulled out their tourist season menu prices. Like so many other things in life, timing is everything.

OFF AND RUNNING

It's been at least 3 weeks since I updated this blog. I left it up that long since we just introduced the new site and blog and I wanted to make sure all the people we sent out notifications to got a chance to take a look. Now, I will try to change it at least once a week.

Paula and I are off this week to Grand Teton National Park where I am teaching a class for Nikon and Arizona Highways. Hopefully, we'll have some time to do some serious shooting as well. Check back as we'll update you on what we see and how's it going.

Our first national advertisement for Wildlife Photo Workshops is out in this months Outdoor Photographer. Its just a little block ad but next month issue should have a write up about Wildlife Photo Workshops and our trips. I also just had a short article on How to Clean a Camera Sensor in the current special Digital Photography How-To issue of Shutterbug magazine.

I future blogs I'll be writing a lot more about technical issue, products and what's the latest going on in the world of nature photography.

Welcome

Welcome to our new websites and new blog. We have had the Frierworks and Wildlife Photo Workshops sites for a couple of years but never took the time to really kept either up-to-date and to give either a look we could be proud of. Finally, we have decided to get serious about them. We have integrated the two sites while at the same time trying to give each a different identity and a much more professional look. You can now look at the Frierworks or Wildlife Photo Workshops sites easily going back and forth between the two or just view one site without having to look at the other. We will be adding and and removing photographs to the galleries far more frequently than in the past. We will be adding exciting new trips to Wildlife Photo Workshops. We have added this new blog which both Paula and I will attempt to keep current with new tech talk, reviews, new equipment discoveries, articles, opinions, our travels and classes not to mention anything else that comes to mind. So please let us know what you think and check back often to check out this blog and see what else is new.