Frederik Bøving – Page 25

Review: Nikon AF 24mm f/2.8 lens

Best VALUE landscape lens for Nikon F-mount?

Spoiler alert: Can I recommend this lens? Yes! But the recommendation comes with 3 caveats. Let me take you through these and then review this lens with sample pictures. It will not be a scientific review with pictures of brick walls showing how soft the lens is in the corners wide open, more a does-it-yield-great-pictures kind of approach.

Nikon Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 - a gem in the Nikkor vintage lineup — Nikon Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 – a gem in the Nikkor vintage lineup

The lens comes in different versions. The older ones does not have distance information (hence the name 2.8 without the D) and also the manual focus ring is very thin and plastic-ish. You can see that my 50 mm lens to the right below is the right version. The one to the left is the version you should not buy:

*The Nikon 50mm to the right with the wider manual focus ring.*

To my knowledge there is no major changes done to the glass from 1985 to now, so if you don’t mind the flimsy focus ring and do not miss distance information, the older ones may work well for you – bonus is that you may find a very cheap older copy on e-bay or amazon.

There is no need to buy a brand new copy of this lens. My copy is around 35 years old, and everything works like a charm and the glass is great. But make sure you check the glass well before you buy.

Make sure you need this lens (2/3)

This is a prime lens. If you plan to have the holy trinity of zoom lenses then this lens may not be for you. The 24 mm sits right between where a zoom set of lenses would shift between normal zoom and ultra wide:

So you may find that the 24 mm replaces both the extremely wide zoom and the standard zoom, in which case you have saved a lot of money and weight. On the other hand, you may find that the 24 mm is an odd animal and that you prefer to use your zooms. In that case, the 24 mm probably never leaves your camera bag and is wasted. Here it comes down to personal preferences. All I ask is that you check if you think you really need this lens.

Make sure you have an AF motor (3/3)

The tin may say auto focus, the lens may say auto focus, but if you have an entry level Nikon camera, then the AF will not work. The reason you see below in the picture – Nikon D5600 on top, D7500 below:

The lens needs a motor in the camera body in order for auto focus to work.

You should also be aware that some copies have a problem with the rear glass (known as the CRC) which yields out-of-focus pictures very consistently. This could be what why this lens has received some lukewarm reviews from many respected reviewers. Make sure before you buy that your copy does not have this issue (or simply ask the seller to confirm this is not an issue). Best way to mitigate a mis-aligned CRC is to test the lens before you buy.

Specs and review

Ok, with those 3 caveats out of the way, lets look at what this lens is all about. It is an old construction, so no image stabilization and no silent AF motor built into the lens. Just good glass and a mechanical AF system.

The price I paid for my 35 year old copy was 220 EUR, but I am sure you can make a better deal if you look carefully and have a bit of patience. I bought my copy in Europe, but in my experience the prices in the US is much lower. So around 200 EUR for this gem of a lens! Notice that in this price range you also find the Samyang 14mm ultra wide lens, and it is also a great lens with lots of super positive reviews, but it is also more heavy, larger and the front glass is round, meaning that buying any kind of filter could prove to be costly. But the Samyang should definitely be on your short list of ultra wide lenses to consider, before you make your decision.

It is a relatively small lens that takes up the same space as the classic nifty fifty that I showed above. At f/2.8 it is not as fast as they come, but unless you shoot indoor in low light i doubt the 2.8 will be a problem for you. The advantage of the 2.8 is that the construction is light at 275 grams. The angle of view is 84 degrees and that is more than double the nifty fifty at 40 degrees. You can really tell the difference.

Color rendition is very much up to personal preference, but I have always been a fan of Nikon in this regard. The below pictures show a piece of art from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art north of Copenhagen in Denmark, and the colors are reproduced exactly as I remember them. In my mind Nikons color rendition is spot on, and the 24 mm is no exception.

From the shop at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

The minimal focal distance is where this lens really shines. Have a look here what you can do with this lens, where the art piece to the left is sharp and close up:

From the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

The minimal focal distance is 30 centimeters, and as you can see, you can get really close to your subject and still have it sharp:

Another area where this lens shines how much you can include in the frame. Below an example where I have shot with both the 50 mm and the 24 mm.

Wrap up

Ok, I hope the above gave you some idea about what the 24 mm lens from Nikon can do. I have not talked about distortion because these can be fixed in post, so why worry? The sharpness is great in my humble opinion, but I have only the pictures to judge from – no studies of brick walls under microscope. I think others have done that, and concluded this is a sharp lens!

So in conclusion, if you need a 24 mm in your lineup and f/2.8 does not scare you off, then the value for money you get with this little lens, makes it very easy for me to recommend this lens with the aforementioned caveats.

Nikkor 24mm, Nikon D750: Video link

What is the holy trinity of lenses in photography?

In photography the notion of a holy trinity of lenses refers to a set zoom of lenses that cover the full range of focal lengths, going from the ultra wide 10 mm to the long 200 mm. This is typically achieved by 3 lenses that cover each their area:

Extremely wide – 10-24 mm
Standard zoom – 24-70 mm
Long zoom – 70-200 mm
(and some also have the 200-500 mm, good for wildlife and sports photography)

The beauty of this lineup is that you do not need any other lenses!

The series of lenses is illustrated in the graphics above. Notice that all the above refers to full frame equivalents, so if you are shooting on a cropped sensor, you need to apply the cropping factor to get to the right values (1.5 for DX or APS-C lenses), but the idea is the same: to have a few lenses to cover the full range of focal lenghts.

Not all photographers like zoom lenses, and there are several reasons for this, one being that they are expensive compared to prime lenses, another that their weight can be significant, especially in the long end of the scale and then some argue that prime lenses with fixed focal lengths are more sharp than zoom lenses. Those who agree to these arguments typically cover the focal range with prime lenses to achieve the same end.

As you can see in the graphics above, the angle of view changes as you move up through the focal range, starting at a whopping 130 degrees and a lens of 10 mm (far left), ending at 5 degrees or less at a super long lens (far right). Here the photographer working with primes will have to change lenses each time a new focal length is needed, and as the prime lens only cover a point on the scale illustrated above, you may risk that the prime lenses in your bag does not make the desired focal length available. In such cases a prime lens that typically is too short is used and the frame is afterwards cropped in post processing. Some also “zoom with their feet”, but you have to remember here that the angle of view does not change, no matter how much you zoom this way, so you will not get the same result (due to compression) as you did would with a zoom lens.

Questions and comments

Thank you for reading this far. I hope you found this blog useful. Questions and comments (and likes!) are more than welcome!

What is light falloff in photography?

The inverse square law…

You may have heard of the inverse square law and seen some posts and videos going through the technical aspects of the inverse square law. I will try to stay clear of the technical aspects here, and simply say that light falloff is the fact that the intensity of the light drops fast, as you move your light source away from your subject.

Quite counter intuitively, the light falloff does not happen in a linear way, rather it drops like a stone! In the beginning that is. So if you move your flash from 1 foot away from you subject to 2 feet away, the intensity of the light has dropped not by 50% but by 75%! So by doubling the distance, you only get a quarter of the light on your subject. This is what the inverse square law is all about: the non linear relationship between light intensity and distance. You can maybe see it in the picture below, where I have taken a LED light and put it close to a white wall:

Good news is that the curve flattens quickly, so 3 feet away the light has dropped to 11% of the original light, 4 feet away it is 6 % and so on. So if you are very far away from your light source, moving one foot closer or further away means very little.

The intensity of the light drops dramatically as distance to the light source increases.

In the example above, had there been a 4th cup, it would get only 6%! If you draw a curve of the intensity of the light as a function of distance, you will get what I call a hockey stick curve – it drops a lot as distance increases only to flatten the more the distance is increased.

If you photograph a group of people and light them up using a flash, the ones standing in the rear will get a lot less light than the ones standing in the front, if you have the flash (or modifier) close to the front row. The solution is to move the flash further away from the subject to make the relative drop in light less. The price you pay is that your flash will need to work harder and that the light is less soft.

You can use the light falloff to produce a grey or black background, even if you have a white backdrop. Just make sure the distance between your subject and the backdrop is sufficient, then the light falloff will take care of “dimming” the backdrop to grey or even black! See the examples below, where the only thing changed is the increased distance between subject and the backdrop:

Here some light is still reflected from the backdrop. But not much, hence the grey color.

Here the background is black due to light falloff. But IRL the backdrop is pure white!

Using a flash and the effect of light falloff, I was able to make these withered leaves stand out on a dark background. If you are thinking that it did not look like this IRL, then you are absolutely right!

What is HDR? What is bracketing?

High Dynamic Range (HDR) is a technique used to get the best dynamic range in a picture, when the subject is comprised of both very dark parts and very bright parts. Your eyes have an amazing capability to see bright and dark subjects at the same time. Your camera does not, at least not to the same degree, although dynamic range has improved a lot over the recent years. So your camera has to cheat a bit, and combine an over exposed, an under exposed and a normally exposed picture into one, picking the best parts from each picture.

HDR on your smartphone

You probably have heard about HDR from your smartphone, where HDR is a feature that can be switched on and off. Often the camera factory settings is so that the camera will make the call if HDR is needed and it then processes the pictures behind the scenes without involving you, simply presenting you the final result as one picture and ditching the individual pictures.

Most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras do not offer this service level – all they do is enable you to take a series of pictures with different exposure levels, so the combination of the pictures has to be done like post processing software like Photoshop or Lightroom. And the camera manufacturers will refer to the series of pictures as bracketing – and to complicate matters you can bracket for all sorts of things other than exposure, but to keep things simple we stay with exposure here.

Example HDR

Your DSLR or mirrorless will typically have a mode selector or a menu option that enables bracketing. Factory settings are typically that the camera takes one normally exposed picture, one over exposed and one under exposed. However, it is possible to increase number of pictures to 5, 7 or even 9 and also control how much each picture is over and under exposed. I normally stay with 3 pictures and over/under expose by 2 stops, but more pictures and smaller exposure steps would probably yield a better result.

Take a look at these 3 pictures. The one to the left is under exposed, the one to the right is over exposed and the one in the middle is normally exposed.

The camera typically varies the shutter speed or the ISO or a combination to over and under expose the pictures. In the picture to the right, you can see the details in the wood, but the horizon and the sky is completely blown out. It will hence make sense to use the rightmost picture for the woodwork. Similarly, the sky and the clouds are most visible in the center and leftmost picture, so the horizon part of the picture should be picked here.

Luckily the post processing software has the ability to figure out all this so we can enjoy the combined picture without worrying too much about which parts are combined:

Of course the above picture has had more editing done than the simple combination of the pictures, but the result above would not have been possible had the dynamic range not been built with the help from all 3 pictures.

What is compression in photography?

When you use a long lens in photography relative to a short lens, the long lens will – all things being equal – give the impression of the picture being compressed. On other words, the background will appear to be moving closer to the subject.

Intuitively, you would expect that if you took a picture with a short lens, then mounted a long lens and walked back until your subject would fill the same in the frame, then the two pictures would be about the same. But they are not. For two reasons. One is compression, the background will appear to have moved closer to the subject, and the other is field of view. The long lens sees a much narrower part of the surroundings of the subject. Sounds complicated? Lets look at some examples.

The first picture here is taken at 18mm focal length:

You can see that I have put a shovel behind the chair to help me size the subject in the frame as I start to walk backward. Notice the greenhouse to the right.

Next picture is shot at 70mm:

Notice how the greenhouse to the right has disappeared due to the more narrow field of view. And the fence at the back of the garden seems closer – the picture is more “compressed”. Hence the name. And notice also how the arms on the chair no longer point so much outwards, they appear more parallel in the 70mm picture.

If we take it one step further to 135 mm:

You will notice that the black chair behind the brown chair in the foreground suddenly appears. This is because I have walked so far back and the field of view is so narrow that the brown chair no longer “shades” the black chair. And the fence has moved even closer. And finally 300mm:

More of the same: fence is closer, black chair even more visible, greenhouse long gone, etc.

What happens is illustrated below. As you can see, the angle of view is much more narrow with a long lens and hence the greenhouse disappears from the frame in the examples above.

Did you notice how the chair looked more and more natural as the focal length increased? In the first picture the arms pointed very much outwards, but this became better and better with increasing focal length. This is useful for portrait photographers, because shooting too close to your subject with a too wide lens will give a less pleasing picture. You can try to take a selfie with your nose into the lens, and I can assure you that it will not be pleasing! Therefore many portrait photographers prefer relatively long lenses, typically 85 to 135mm.

You will also see that the composition of your picture changes when the focal length is increased. There is less distracting elements in the pictures with the long lens, simply because the angle of view is more narrow. So you can make a picture where the subject is less disturbed by distracting elements around it.

Nikon D750: How to use manual mode – the basics

Manual mode

Manual mode is to many an off limits discipline, but there is no need to shy away from manual mode as it is a small investment to learn, and it pays off in great dividends in terms of better control of the camera and hence the pictures you take. And the good side effect is that by knowing manual mode, you also automatically know Shutter priority and Aperture priority, as these are “sub sets” of manual mode. But I advice you to practice manual mode until you have it “under your skin” and the controls and dials are – if not second nature – then at least part of your muscle memory, so you don’t have to think too much about the controls when you start shooting in manual mode for real.

If you want more detail on the exposure triangle, this post may be of interest to you.

Manual mode selector

To initiate manual mode, you need to select mode “M” on the mode dial, located on the top left of your D750 camera. Remember to push down the center button while turning the dial, otherwise your camera is less cooperative.

Aperture

The aperture is controlled via the command dial on the top right front of the camera. By turning the wheel left and right, the aperture changes accordingly. In the LCD display on the top right of the camera, you can see the selected aperture. In the picture below, the aperture is set to F/10:

Shutter speed

The shutter speed is c controlled via the command dial on the top right rear of the camera. By turning the wheel left and right, the shutter speed changes accordingly. In the picture above, the shutter speed is set to 1/1000th of a second, which is pretty fast. This is shown as 1000 – the “1/” is implicit. So a quarter of a second (1/4) is shown as 4.

ISO

The ISO has a dedicated button at the bottom left if the camera, the second button from the bottom.

The ISO button on the left side of the D750

When you push and hold that button as shown below, the ISO selection menu appears. Notice that only bottom half of the screen relates to the ISO – it is boxed in by a thin frame. The front command dial now controls the ISO auto setting (on/off) and the rear command dial controls the ISO value. You can see the graphics illustrate this to the very right. The selected value here is ISO 125 and ISO Auto setting to on.

When ISO setting is on, the camera selects the ISO as it sees fit (remember, you still control the Aperture and Shutter speed). If Auto ISO is on, the selected ISO sensitivity is ignored by the camera, but as soon as you set Auto ISO to off, then the camera uses the value selected here.

You can re-program the record button on the top of the camera (the one with the red dot, sitting right behind the shutter release button) to act as the ISO button. Press the menu button on the rear of the camera, top left, select the custom settings menu (aka the pencil menu), select f for controls and scroll down to F9. Here you can set the record button to act as an ISO selector:

Many find this configuration useful, as the entire exposure triangle can no be controlled with the 3 buttons/dials sitting right next to each other on the top right of the camera, with no need to move the eye away from the viewfinder.

Ok, that concludes the walk through of the controls and dials on the Nikon D750. Please don’t hesitate to drop a line in the comment section below if you have any questions or the like.

Video link

What is the exposure triangle?

The exposure triangle is probably not new to you, the point is simply that the aperture, the shutter speed and the ISO controls what level of exposure your picture will get. Changing one of the three in upwards direction will require one (or both) of the other two to drop accordingly to maintain the same exposure. And the other way around. In (fully) manual mode, you set all 3 values.

Aperture is the iris of the lens. The more light you let in, i.e. the more open the aperture is, the more exposed your picture will get. The confusing part is that the aperture is measured in f-stop numbers, and these are “upside down”, meaning that a low F-stop number means the lens is letting in a lot of light.

Shutter speed is more intuitive, if you ask me. The longer the shutter speed the more light is allowed to hit the sensor. A fast shutter speed is great if you want to avoid camera shake (you move the camera while the shutter is open) or motion blur (the subject moves while the shutter is open). But fast shutters lets in only a little light, so a balance it to be found.

Finally ISO is how sensitive your sensor appears to be. I say appears to be, as it technically is a gain that is applied to the base sensitivity of your sensor, but don’t focus too much on this part. All we need to know is that higher ISO means more sensitive to light. There is no free lunch in photography – so the price to pay for high ISO is grain. So we want to keep the ISO at bay. Modern cameras can ramp up the ISO with impressive results, but for now let’s just say that beyond 1600 you need to be more cautious.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is exposure-triangle.jpg — The exposure triangle – Aperture, ISO and shutter speed.

How to use (Nikkor) Vintage lenses with a Fuji camera

Adapter

In order to use your vintage glass on the Fuji X-T20, the first thing you need is an adapter that enables you to mount the vintage glass on the Fuji body. I always go for a “dumb” adapter, meaning that there is no communication between the lens and the camera body which of course means the camera has no idea what focal length is mounted or what aperture is used, but I can live with that. What is probably worse is that you also loose the auto focus, but if you shoot mainly stills, portrait, landscape and street, then I think you will find the manual focus to be ok, some even start to like it more than auto focus, as they feel more involved in the process of taking a picture.

In my case, I have Nikkor (Nikon) vintage glass made for full frame cameras, and as the Fuji is a cropped APS-C camera, that means I will have to multiply the length of the lens with 1.5 due to the crop factor. However, you can get a so called speed booster to reverse this effect, and in addition it gives you a stop more light, i.e. makes your lens faster. I went for the Zhongyi Lens Turbo II:

But there are many other good options to choose from. Here you can see what the Nikon 135mm f/2.8 looks like with the speed boost adapter mounted:

Zhongyi Lens Turbo II with the Nikon 135mm

And here is the camera with the 135mm lens mounted:

Zhongyi Lens Turbo II with the Nikon 135mm on the Fuji XT20

As you can see it is in this case a long lens for such a small camera body and it also makes the camera quite “front heavy”. Some don’t like this – I don’t mind, but as the X-T20 is quite a light camera, mounting fast FX glass will often give a dramatic weight increase to the total system. I have the Fujinon 27mm lens to the right, just to compare.

Shooting “blind”

As the camera has no communication with the lens, you need to tell the camera it is OK to release the shutter with no lens mounted. It will look that way to the camera! Go find the tool menu and in that menu look for “button/dial settings” and select that menu:

"button/dial settings" menu — “button/dial settings” menu

In that menu, find the item “shoot without lens” and make sure it is set to “on”:

Now your shutter should work with a vintage lens mounted!

Focus aid

The next thing is to select how you want the Fuji to help you focus. I prefer the focus peak option, where the camera highlights the areas in the picture with strong contrast, which is often also where you will have the focal plane. In the “AF/MF” menu (the second from the top), select the “MF assist item” (MF is Manual Focus):

Manual focus assist in the shape of peaking highlights.

In the sub menu that appears, the manual focus assist settings can be chosen. I go for the focus peak and select the color to help me find the area of focus:

Now we should be ready to shoot!

Final hurdle

When shooting in this setup, there is however no focus peak assistance! It is possible to shoot and focus, but you get no help with the manual focus! How come?

The solution to the problem is on the front left of the camera. Here you select drive mode by turning a little dial, i.e. if the camera is in (S)ingle frame mode, (C)ontinuous or (M)anual mode. Hence the letters S, C and M:

You need to turn this dial to “M” in order for the focus peak to start working. Then the high contrast areas area highlighted in the viewfinder and LCD screen. Enjoy! (Remember to flick the switch back to C or M when you mount a Fujinon lens – otherwise you will continue with manual focus…!)

Further aid

When you shoot, in addition to the focus peak, you have the focus magnification that helps you zoom in on details in the frame to see if they are sharp. Press the rear command dial (yes, it feels strange – you are used to turning it! But press as in push!):

and the camera will show you a magnified area of the picture:

If you then turn the rear command dial, you will see that the camera flicks between two levels of magnification. In the first example you can see the entire cow, but if you turn the rear command dial the zoom gets extended:

Now you can only see parts of the cows head! Notice how the graphics (the two boxes – one white and one green (blue?)) show you the zoom level. When you turn the command dial again, the camera jumps back to first level of zoom. So turn the rear command dial to select between the two zoom levels. Press (push) the rear command dial go leave zoom again. And press it once more to get back in, etc.

You will notice that with a long lens and the extended zoom peek switched on as shown above, the picture gets very nervous if the camera is hand held! This is a good reminder to shot with a fast shutter speed to avoid camera shake and hence blurry pictures.

Finally

The Fuji X-T30 offers 3 different manual focus aids:

Standard (basically no aid!)
Digital split image
Focus peak highlight

In the examples in the previous sections, I have only used the focus peak highlight, as I find it to be the best aid for manual focus. However, some like no aid and some like digital split image (where you have to align two pictures so that the vertical lines in the intersection are exactly on top of each other).

If you want to switch fast between the 3 modes mentioned above, you can push the rear command dial for a few seconds (not a brief push – you need to push the button in for a few seconds) to change to the next mode (the button is hiding behind my thumb top right):

When you have kept the button in for a few seconds, the mode the camera is about to switch to will be shown in a bar in the lower part of the screen. If the camera is in standard mode, it will switch to split, if in split then it will shift to focus peak, if in focus peak back to standard and so on. So it is like a wheel turning: standard -> split -> focus peak -> back to standard. Remember to keep the button pushed in until you see the bar on the screen.

How to get a wide angle photo with a not-wide-enough lens…

More than panoramas

A panorama is typically a photo stitched together of a series of photos, either purely horizontally or vertically to produce a picture with dimensions out of the ordinary. Below is an example of a very wide photo created using the panorama function in the Sony RX100M3:

Lightroom panorama function

Lightroom enables you to stitch together a photo from a puzzle of photos provided that sufficient overlap is secured. Good news is that the photos can be combined horizontally and vertically at the same time, i.e. in the same photo, which enables you to increase both width and height in the same photo, much like you would see with a wide lens. Hereby the panorama function in Lightroom is more advanced than the panorama function you would typically find in a smartphone or the in camera function of the Sony RX100.

As far as I can tell, there is not requirement to have the photos in a certain order, but of course for your own administration it is probably useful to have some system in the order of the photos. In the example below, in total 8 photos have been stitched together via two columns of photos: The left hand side is built up of pictures moving the camera from bottom to top, and the right hand column follows the same logic but with a solid overlap to the left hand column. This is illustrated in the light blue graphics to the left where the darker areas are the overlap. You probably need more overlap than what the graphics indicate (1/3rd is a safe margin), but it also depends if there is some easily identifiable objects in the overlap zones:

The resulting photo looks like this:

Ease your administrative work

When you are in the field and shooting the photos, you can help your work back at the desktop stitching pictures together by following a few tips. When you are out and about it may seem very uncomplicated and straightforward when you shoot the photos, but not so much when you look a them in the Lightroom grid view. It can be difficult to figure out when your series start and stop and which pictures are “normal” pictures and which ones are part of a series. Therefore I recommend that you find a hand signal to start and stop the series, so that you via a scrap photo can easily identify the start and the top of the series. I usually point to the direction I will move the camera to open the series, and to end the series, I simply hold up an open hand:

These photos are of course not to be used as input to the combined picture but are simply for the benefit of easing your administration of the pictures in Lightroom. Here you an see the overwhelming view in Lightroom and how these pictures help you getting an overview – I think the two “handsignal” pictures gives some guidance:

In the field

In my experience you get the best results using a tripod. I know, they are a nuisance in terms of weight and size to carry around. But a tripod gives you the least variance between pictures – you want the height to be the same between photos and you want the pictures to be without camera shake. And a tripod is the most save route to those objectives. You can also give it a try to kneel down and use your knee to support your elbow and that way get a very solid foundation for the camera if the tripod is at home.
In terms of camera settings, my recommendation is that you shoot in manual mode ideally, because you then have the least variance between shots in terms of ISO, Aperture and shutter speed. In automated modes, the camera will change the settings based on changing light conditions and any variance will complicate the merging process.
Also, unless you have a specific plan with varying the focus across the shots, my recommendation is that you disengage the auto focus with the shutter half pressed and go for back-button focus, or instead that you shoot with a manual lens where you actively have to change the focus. You can, however, re-focus every photo and create some amazing pictures with a depth of field a single shot cannot deliver, but you may find that Lightroom is struggling to merge the pictures if the overlapping parts of the pictures are not sufficient similar. A varying focus may be a complicating factor that could make the picture merge process fail.

Post processing – how to

In lightroom, in the grid view (press “G”), simply select the photos to be stitched together by holding down the shift key and marking the photos in scope. You can either mark them individually or point to the first and the last photo – Lightroom will know you want to include all in between.

After selecting the pictures, right click, and a small window with a menu appears, select “Photo merge” and then menu item “Panorama”. You can also simply press ctrl-M to achieve the same effect, and a picture with a preview and some options appear:

You can try the different projection options, but I find that for landscapes the “perspective” option works best. If you remove the “auto crop” check mark, then you can see the full picture including the parts without coverage:

If you use the “boundary warp” slider, you can get Lightroom to stretch the existing pixels into the areas not covered, so you get a picture with no bare spots, but of course the dimensions may be seriously skewed.

After playing with the parameters, simply press the “merge” button at the bottom right of the screen and Lightroom starts a batch process to merge the pictures. You can follow the progress via the little bar in the screen top left. Unless you have a VERY powerful PC, I recommend that you leave the PC alone while this process is running, as it is demanding, both in terms of memory and CPU capacity. If you press Ctrl-Shift-Esc (Windows), you can monitor the “stress level” of your PC while the process is running.

Once the process is complete, Lightroom will add the picture to the current folder and name the file the same as the last photo in the merged series, with the addition of “-pano” to the file name for easy identification.

Pros and cons of this approach

Pros

More wide and tall pictures simulating a wide angle lens
Two dimensional stitching beats traditional panorama function
Great fun when the result surfaces in the panorama preview – more rewarding?
More resolution – I think…

Cons

Cannot be used for moving subjects or changing light conditions
More work, more pictures, more disk space, post processing, etc
No in-camera result
Best result requires a tripod
Straight lines may be ”fisheyed”, i.e. look strange
Very demanding on your PC if shooting in RAW
Access to picture processing in Lightroom or the like is a prerequisite

A few tips

As shown above, mark the start and end of a panorama series with scrap pictures to easily be identified in grid view
Keep all settings the same for all pictures
Ideally shoot manual mode, or try to keep the setting the same across all pictures
Use back button focus so your focus is the same (again, to keep settings the same)
Use a tripod and ideally also a L-bracket if shooting in portrait mode
Make sure you have solid overlap between pictures – best to have some easily identifiable objects in the areas that overlap.
Keep the number of pictures low if shooting in RAW
– maybe start with JPG to see how your PC is dealing with the task

Questions and comments

Questions and comments are more than welcome – please post below. Hope you found this blog useful. Thank you for reading!

Sony RX100 M3: It has all the modes you can think of!

RX100 M3 mode dial – what a treat!

When I first started to read the manual for the Sony RX100 M3 regarding shooting stills, I could not believe the amount of intelligence and options they have packed into this little camera! The mode dial has 10 positions, and behind two of them are 3 and 12 options respectively, giving more than 20 mode options of which some are auto modes that combines underlying features in a new way! This may seem quite intimidating of you are new to photography or new to this camera, but let me see if I can give you an overview so that you quickly can zoom in on the options that are best for you.

If you want automation

Professional photographers want control of their camera because they want control of the process and hence the outcome. Us more humble amateurs may want to turn to some of the automatic modes, either because we are lazy or because we have other things to attend to (like hosting the party where we are also taking pictures). Now, there are 2 fully automatic modes for shooting stills named Intelligent Auto (green) and Superior auto (yellow/orange), but the text is not written on the dial, instead a little camera is depicted in yellow and green, with an “i” in front of it (i for intelligent presumably):

In these modes, the camera takes care of everything – ISO, aperture and shutter speed. You “just” have to point and shoot. The difference between Intelligent auto (green) and the Superior Auto (yellow) is that the camera in the latter mode takes several pictures and combines them into one. You may have come across a feature named HDR on your smartphone (or bracketing on a DSLR), this is a bit of the same. The camera takes several pictures and combines them so that the low light parts are “boosted” so they become more bright and the high light parts are scaled back a bit so they are not blown out. This improves the dynamic range, i.e. how bright and dark parts that the camera can handle in one shot.

If you want automation with a twist

In the automatic modes, the camera tries to guess what it is you are shooting, and adjust the camera settings to optimize what you shoot. Sony call this scenes, i.e. types of photographs that you do. It is very kind and in the top left corner shows you what scene it has arrived at, based on what the electronics find on the sensor. In this example where I am taking a picture of a plastic cow, the camera figures that it is flower photography! It is not as bad as it sounds – it is an object full of colors and close up, so a flower is not a bad guess. Notice the graphics top left gives the scene mode:

In the two fully automatic modes described above, the camera constantly guesses what we are trying to shoot and it arrives a for example: Pet, Gourmet, Macro, Baby (!), Sports, Portrait, Landscape, Sunset. Night scene, Night portrait, Fireworks, etc. It also has some scenes where it just concludes that the light is very limited or that you are trying to shoot hand-held. In the fully automatic modes, the camera informs you of what it has concluded in the top left corner.

The point putting the camera in Scene mode (SCN on the dial) is that you can now tell the camera what it is you are shooting. Of course only from the list of options given by Sony, but they cover many situations. In this way, you can control that the camera optimizes for the right scene, so that it does not think you are shooting fireworks, when you actually take a picture of a flower (he he). Such mistake is very unlikely I have to add, but there are some scenes where the camera has troubles finding the right scene (gourmet and macro are very similar to give a better example).

So choose scenes mode when you want to still rely on the cameras ability to optimize the settings based on what you are shooting, but you take control and tell the camera what it is you are shooting, so it selects the right shelf to meter from.

Semi automatic modes and manual mode

The RX100 of course also gives the option to select the classic semi automatic modes: Aperture priority mode, Shutter priority mode and Program mode:

(A)perture priority: You control the aperture, the camera selects the shutter speed.

(S)hutter priority: You control the shutter speed, the camera selects the aperture.

(P)rogram mode: You select both the Aperture and the Shutter speed but in pre-set tandems, so the

exposure is still correct.

The ISO is set according to the value selected in the menu system. Press the Fn button top left of the rear command wheel, and the menu appears. Bottom left gives the ISO setting. You can control if you want to set the ISO yourself, if you want to have the camera do so – with or without limitations to upper and lower values:

The RX100 also lets you control it all in manual mode where you can set each of the parameters in the exposure triangle as you see fit. This is probably the mode you want to use of absolute control of the camera is vital to you, for example if you do long exposures.

Memory recall (MR)

In the memory recall mode, you have 3 modes to choose from of previously stored mode information. So you are not only selecting the priority mode, but also the exposure compensation, just to name one. There are 3 pages of information with what the camera stores!

I find that the confusing part is to store this information (not the recall), but the process is simple: set-up the camera exactly the way you like it to, and then go into the menu system and select item 7 in the shooting menu, and hereafter select “memory”. You can the store then information in bank 1, 2 or 3 by moving left and right with the command wheel and pressing the center for storing.

Panorama

I have done an entire video on how to shoot in panorama mode with the RX100 and you may have come across this feature on your smartphone. But it is a nice way to “get it all in” when you have a wide subject to capture. Notice that you can shoot both in portrait and landscape mode – you select the direction on the front dial (the one at the root of the lens).

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RX100 M3 mode dial – what a treat!

If you want automation

If you want automation with a twist

Semi automatic modes and manual mode

Memory recall (MR)

Panorama

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