Shooting with a D800 - need some advice please

[PatW]

I think Edge has a discussion on histograms. By the way, you will want to turn down the brightness on your LCD because your eyes will be dark adapted making an under exposed image look just fine.

The thing you want generally is no clipping that is pixels that are too white to have detail or too black to have detail. Sometimes you can ignore this. For example, if you take a shot and your subject is nicely exposed against a dark background. That is just fine. Or if you are shooting up and get the sun dapples on the water surface in the shot. Those will usually be blown out. But who cares? It looks nice.

Usually, one looks for a nice spread of pixels along the various exposures. Think of a bell shaped curve with a low peak and high shoulders. High contrast shots are tricky. Cameras still do not have the dynamic range that our eyes have. I wish they would work on extending the DR over high iso or high mp.

In digital cameras, most of the information is at the higher exposures. For low contrast situations, you want the pixels mainly in the upper exposures. I find when I shoot small critters on sandy or muck bottoms, I get low contrast situations. I expose to the right. In post processing, I can spread out the histogram and reveal all sorts of hidden colors in seemingly drab subjects. It is rather fun. I use lightroom. It works very well and is pretty easy to use.

 

[Tigerman]

AND its fairly inexpensive when you look at what you get

 

[Stoo]

Finally been able to figure out how to upload a few of my photos.

Hey, those aren't bad at all...

The lionfish is nicely exposed and the only comment I'd make is that if you had used a wider aperture, (and so a correspondingly faster shutter speed) then the background would be blurred and perhaps not interfere with the main subject.

Your shot with the sun is a perfect example of on of the limitations of any digital cameras. When an image is exposed, a pixel is either "off" or "on". Digital sensors always seem to totally blow out sun-blobs, where slower speed film like Velvia would do an awesome job of them. The D800 is better at this than most due to it's high dynamic range, but it still isn't great. (I noticed a HUGE difference when I went from a D90 to the D7000).

Something I do, is position the sun so that it's just slightly out of frame... you still get the rays, but the "hotspot" in the middle won't show.

Also, regarding the images that look a bit blurred... How much "de-speckling" did you do? If it's much, that can really soften the image tremendously. If you are de-speckling, you want to do it with the image enlarged, and very judiciously. Better let, work at strobe placement to reduce back-scatter. Up here in the Great Lakes, silt is always there. I tend to point my strobes away from the subject on maybe a 20-30 degree angle. Use the overlapping edges of the light from the two strobes to light the centre of the frame. Edge's book discusses this very well. Having two strobes is a huge advantage when it comes to reducing back-scatter. Having said that, make certain you are using the correct extension ring behind your dome...

 

[dwilliams]

Been away for a while. Thanks for the feed back Stoo

Not sure what you mean by "de-speckling". I'm assuming it refers to something I can do in post processing. Are you able provide more details?

I'm don't think I asked this previously but I was also wondering about whether the use of a focus light (to aid auto-focus) is going to give me issues with back scatter. I have a reasonable idea of where my strobe angles need to be to reduce it but wouldn't the positioning of a focus light almost guarantee more backscatter.

Thinking back to my last trip where I had the focus light on the system, I think my decision not to use it was due to the amount of sediment in the water and concerns that I'd get too much backscatter from it.

 

[supergaijin]

I think focus lights are designed to momentarily switch off when you press the shutter so BS shouldn't be an issue.

It would be great if you include your Aperture/SS/ISO settings when you post the pictures. I personally learn a lot from seeing these details.

 

[Stoo]

When I was referring to "despeckling", I meant fixing the backscatter as best you can in post-processing. For best results do it on an enlarged photo and the finest "brush" you can to remove just the bit of stuff itself...