Frederik Bøving – Page 6

From Nikon D5600 to D7500 – is that a good move?

So over at my YouTube channel I got the following question from Arpski 2K, and I want to add it to my list of blog posts, as I find that many ask – if not the same question – then questions that circle around the same subject:

“Right now I have a dilemma what to get after my D5600, but I am still not sure. I think that right now my DSLR is limiting me, I like to photograph landscapes and wildlife, mainly birds but for landscape looks like crop sensor is the limit like i can’t zoom out the scene how I would like to do. And the AF for fast birds is sometimes slow and wrong as it pick up often wrong thing to focus on, idk, my lens is stock 18-140mm, also I love to travel with my camera so weight is a factor too. Maybe 7500 would be better option?”

Arpski gives us a number of hints regarding what is important: the weight of the gear, the ability to go wide in landscape photography and the ability to track fast moving birds fast with autofocus that locks on. And he has an idea that the APS-C sensor in the D5600 is limiting him.

Ok, let’s look at the individual parts:

Weight: If weight is important to you, my advice is to stay with APS-C or cropped sensor. Full frame glass is much heavier and also more expensive, and the bonus of the FF in terms of bokeh and low low light capabilities does not seem to be important here. I have seen landscape photographers working with APS-C cameras and getting beautiful results, so no need to go full frame if you ask me.

BIF: Auto focus to track fast moving birds, i.e. birds in flight (BIF) is a challenge for many AF systems. Mind you that the AF speed is a cooperation between the lens and the camera, so it can sometime be a bit difficult to say of the camera is slow, or the lens is slow or the combo is slow. But before you go and invest in new gear, try this: Manual focus! Or rather, no focus at all. I do not know what distance you shoot birds at, but if they are say 100 meters away, focusing at 100m distance and leaving the lens in that position may just give you the results you are after! The depth of field here is 60 meters at f/4 on an APS-C camera when shooting at 140mm! So if you can figure out the distance to your subject, manual focus may be the answer to your problems. The depth of field – all things equal – grows to very forgiving sizes when the distance to your subject is large!

Shooting wide: In my book a 18mm lens is pretty wide. Yes, you can go wider! If you want to invest in a small prime that is wider than 18mm, then there are a number of options. But before you do that, you can try an alternative: shoot several overlapping images and stitch them together in post processing. That way you can go wider than the lens itself and as a bonus you will get an image with a lot more resolution. If you can stomach it, then try to shoot in manual exposure mode, as the exposure and depth of field needs to be constant across the images, otherwise merging them may give strange results.

Ok, so none of the issues reported cannot be addressed using the existing lens and the D5600. But then Arpski mentions that he feels the D5600 is a limitation to his photography. This is a feeling I think most photographers have tried: we constantly ping pong between upgrading our gear and upgrading our skills. And sometimes we just feel like our gear is the limiting factor and it is time to move on. That is as it should be.

The D7500 was a camera I unfortunately only enjoyed for a short while. I bought it after my D5600, but the D7500 was bricked in a salt water accident shortly after I got it and it could not be restored unfortunately. But I loved that camera: great ergonomics, fast FPS, excellent low light performance, etc. I had it with me on a trip to Dublin and I came home with a wonderful set of images.

Mind you that many photographers love to hate the D7500. The reason being that Nikon gave the D7500 a wrong name. The D7100 and D7200 are legends and loved by many Nikon enthusiasts, so when the D7500 came out, they thought the D7500 would be the successor to the D7200. But it was not, and the D7500 took a lot of beating from frustrated photographers. If Nikon had flipped to digits and called the D7500 for D5700, I think all would have been good and the camera would have been seen as what it is: a really good all round APS-C camera. So bear this in mind when you read blogs where people discuss the D7500 – people don’t like it, because the name stages the camera the wrong place.

So what to do? I have one principle that I pursue wholeheartedly, and that is ergonomics and weight. The best camera is the one that is with you, and if weight is important to you, choose a light camera. In other words, don’t go full frame – you will hate the weight penalty. And many APS-C cameras are absolutely wonderful cameras that often are at par with full frame if you do not have crazy demands in terms of shallow depth of field or low light capabilities.

The D7100 and D7200 may be what you should be looking at. They have legendary status and if you can find a good copy without too many clicks on the clock then I am sure that could be a good next step. I shop used over at mpb.com (no affiliate) and find that they give a fair trade in price for used gear and that what they sell is in the condition advertised.

The D7500 is also an option and I think it will be easier to find a good copy used as it is a younger camera. They even sell new copies (affiliate link). My only issue with the D7500 is that it had little “ears” to hold on to the camera strap and those ears were not good friends with my big hands. But that is the only negative that springs to my mind.

If you specifically try to choose between the D7500 and the D5600, my advice is to go with the D7500 if your budget allows. The D5600 is a good camera, but the D7500 is in many respects just better (FPS, dynamic range, etc). I shot with the D7500 in low light conditions and especially this image convinced me that the D7500 is a great camera.

Again, it is difficult to give a final and decisive advice, as you hold the list of personal preferences and what is important to you. And it is your money. And you have to live with the consequences of whatever you decide. My best advice is: consult many sources, read many reviews and don’t trust anyone fully, but make your own opinion based on many different sources. That way you can make an informed decision. I wish you the best of luck with your photography!

Nikon Z50: Manual exposure guide

Manual exposure

Many find manual exposure a bit intimidating and stay with the automated mode or one of the semi automated modes like aperture priority or shutter priority. Good news is that manual exposure is not complicated at all and that you have a lot of room for making exposure mistakes and still be able to fix it in post, provided you shoot RAW, which I highly recommend. And you will understand your camera a lot better when you know how to operate in manual exposure mode.

You camera has a built in metering system, that constantly measures the available light. This system continues to work also when you set the camera in manual mode. Select the manual mode on the PASM dial top right on the Nikon Z50.

Mode dial top right – here the mode “M” for manual is selected.

Once in manual mode, you will notice a little exposure indicator appearing, both in the viewfinder and in the rear LCD. This indicator will tell if the camera finds that the aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings will give a correctly exposed picture when you hit the shutter.

Nikon Z50 — Notice the scale bottom right on the rear LCD. Here the metering system says the image will be underexposed.

It is a good thing to keep an eye on the exposure indicator to make sure you get the exposure you are after. Sometimes you want deliberately to over- or underexpose your picture, and the exposure indicator is a good tool to make sure you get what you want.

exposure indicator guide — The exposure indicator shows if the picture will be over- or underexposed or correct exposed. Notice the difference between the viewfinder orientation and the rear LCD ditto. Credit: Nikon manuals.

Another way to see the same information as the exposure indicator is to use the histogram – you can make it appear by hitting the “disp” button on the center top rear on the camera. Finally, as you have WYSIWYG, you can simply notice if the LCD or electronic viewfinder turns very dark or very bright – a good indication something is off relative to a technically correct exposed picture.

Aperture and shutter speed

You control the aperture and the shutter speed by turning the front and rear command dials respectively.

If the camera flashes “FEE” in the top LCD when you mount the lens, it is probably because you have not locked the aperture on the lens to the highest f-stop number possible – the camera needs this setting to be so, in order for it to control the position of the aperture blades when shooting with AF or AF-D lenses.

If your lens is an older model (say AI or AIS) where you have an aperture ring on the lens, it is not always possible to change the aperture with the front command dial – instead you will have to set the aperture on the lens. The top LCD will not show the aperture but just a “F–” to indicate it cannot “see” the chosen aperture. The metering indicator works fine still though.

ISO

On a digital camera, ISO is actually not part of the exposure. The sensor has the sensitivity it had when it left the factory and it cannot be changed.

By setting the ISO to other values than the base ISO 100, you apply a gain to the values read by the sensor. It is camera internal post processing that happens from the sensor has read the light and until the image sits on the memory card. Just like in the old days when you turned up the radio, you both amplified the signal and the noise – the original signal remains the same. ISO works the same way, so the price for turning up the ISO is more noise and grain.

When you push the ISO button on top of the camera, you change the function of the front and rear command dial.

Pushing the ISO button and at the same time turning the front and rear command dial, changes the ISO values. The front command dial switches between ISO and auto-ISO and the rear command dial shifts between ISO values.

Here the ISO button is pushed. The ISO value in the bottom of the rear LCD turns yellow to show the value can now be changed using the command dials.

When you have auto-ISO switched on, the camera will be in a – if not semi automatic – then quarter automatic mode. In other words, the camera will try to make the picture correctly exposed ALONE changing the ISO. So if you have a dark scene where the aperture is closed down and the shutter speed is fast, the camera will have to go to very high ISO values to compensate.

You can use auto-ISO to make sure you come home with images that show at least something, but be aware that grain and noise may be the price you pay for switching auto-ISO on. For starters, I would recommend that you have auto-ISO off, and keep an eye on the exposure indicator or the histogram to make sure the exposure is roughly right. Later, when you have some experience, auto-ISO can make you work faster.

Metering modes

The Nikon Z50 has 3 metering modes. You can access these by pushing the little “i” in the rear of the camera (middle) and this shows a 6×2 menu where one option is “metering”. Selecting that one, brings a sub-menu with 3 options.

The metering mode does NOT change the amount of available light, rather it changes how the camera meters the light that passes through the lens. I shoot almost entirely in the “matrix metering” mode as it is the most advanced one, that tries to take in the entire scene and find a good compromise.

Second option is center weighted metering. This one is good if you shoot portraits where you don’t really care of the corners are exposed correct – the important is that the person in the frame is exposed correct. The manual also mentions this as a good mode if you shoot with filters.

The final option is highlight-weighted metering. This one many street photographers use as they are not afraid of losing details in the shadows. I use it for shooting silhouette photography, where the details in the shadows are also less important.

All of these modes may seem confusing, so my advice is to use matrix metering. If you shoot RAW, then there are plenty of options for adjusting the exposure in post and hence I find that these 3 options are maybe more for backward compatibility with older DSLRs.

Final thoughts

I hope the above has given you some inspiration for shooting in manual exposure mode. With a mirrorless camera like the Nikon Z50, it IMHO has become much easier to see if the exposure is right or not: both the EVF and the rear LCD will show you a too bright or a too dark image if you got it wrong, the histogram will be “lefty” or the opposite and the metering indicator will do the same. So there is plenty of help to get the exposure right if you ask me. And then, if you shoot RAW and didn’t nail the exposure just right, there is lots of headroom to tweak the image in post so the exposure is spot on. I hope you will practice your new set of skills! I think you will find it rewarding!

Video link

Review: Timbuk2 Heritage Classic S Messenger bag multi-colored

I was looking for a messenger bag (a sling bag), and after googling a bit the Timbuk2 Heritage Classic S Messenger bag quickly came out as the one that suited my needs the best: A basic bag, not too expensive (83 EUR) and solid build quality. The price varies a bit subject to the color chosen, but it is in the vicinity of 80 EUR here in Europe. (For the record: I am not sponsored by TimBuk and have bought this bag for my own money).

It measures 37 x 26 x 10 centimeters approximately and easily holds my laptop, a X280 ThinkPad laptop (13″ approx). In addition I have a notebook and and a few pens, and that is basically it. I have both keyboard, charger, mouse and screen both at home and at my workplace, so I am so lucky that I only need to carry the PC itself and then a notebook. And for this limited purpose, the Timbu2 has plenty of room.

There is no padding in the bag and if you plan to carry fragile material in the bag, you’d better be sure not to drop it or put it down suddenly – there is only a thin fabric. The fabric seems solid and durable and I trust it will last for many years and also keep water out, but do not expect padding.

Inside the bag there are 2 large rooms. I use the inner room for the PC and the other room for my notebook and gloves. There is a little net for holding a bottle as well, but it will not hold a tall thermo bottle like above (the bag will not close properly) – but a 1/2 liter cola fits fine.

Inside the bag there is a number of small open rooms that I use for holding pens primarily, and there is also a larger room you can close with a zip.

On the outer side of the bag there is one open pocket and two that closes with a zipper, and one of them has a string inside that allows you to attach a keyring so you can have your keys attached and stored safely.

The thickness of the bag can be adjusted with two straps that also hold the locks for closing the bag. I don’t like to have the strings flapping around, especially when I am on the bike, so I have made a little knot to keep them at bay.

The strap to throw over your shoulder is nice and wide and well padded.

The flap that closes the bag is fitted with both velcro and buckles. When not out and about, the velcro is more than plenty to keep the bag closed, in fact, sometimes it feels a little to efficient when you just want to grab a pen quickly and the velcro does what it can to keep the bag shut! But you’ll get used to it.

Timbuk2 Heritage Classic S Messenger bag multi-colo — My fingers point two the two buckles that close the bag firmly. Between my fingers the velcro that also closes the bag.

Conclusion

If this bag will suit you and your needs of course comes down to your criterias and personal preference. It is a very solid built bag, durable materials and very convincing sewings everywhere. And they have clearly thought very carefully about many of the details such as the closing mechanism, the pockets, the strings, etc. In my humble opinion the design is spot on for a simple bag that will serve you for many years without breaking the bank.

However, the money has been spent on solid durable fabric, sewings and straps, and not on more luxury items such as padding, leather or other up-market features. It is a very basic bag, and if you want a little extra or a little luxury, this bag is probably not for you. This one delivers the basics only, but does so very well.

Review: Outdoor Photography monthly magazine

Before Covid hit us all and we could travel freely, my dear wife bought me a copy of the magazine Outdoor Photography in a UK airport somewhere. This was back in 2019 and the copy was issue 249 with a great article by Lee Acaster: His guide to black and white photography. I have read that article at least 20 times, and thanked my wife that she introduced me to Outdoor Photography equally many times.

Outdoor Photography magazine

Ever since colleagues gave me a copy of the Landscape Photographer of the year, I have been convinced that British landscape and outdoor photographers are amongst the best in the world. Carrying a Danish passport and having no relationship to UK other than a holiday now and then, I think I can say that this assessment comes with some level of objectivity! And the Outdoor Photography magazine has continued to confirm that my assessment is not half bad.

The table of content for the magazine has been pretty stable over the years:

Features and opinion
Learning zone
Location guide
Nature zone
Gear zone
Regulars (newsroom and books)
Your op (e.g. publishing readers work)

My favourite part is the Features and opinion, because you here get close to some of the really good photographers and their work. And there are lots of examples of images they have produced and the inspiration I have got from reading these articles and seeing their work is monumental.

Coming from little Denmark, the sheer amount of talented photographers that UK has is simply astonishing, but of course it has to do with the population of UK being 10-15 times Denmark. But even when factoring this in, I still think the UK on a global scale is in the top league, without having done any scientific assessment. Part of the answer probably also lies in the competition being so much more fierce in UK as you simply have to be good to make it, otherwise you will just disappear in the crowd of reasonably good photographers.

I have now subscribed to the magazine, and as such a copy wrapped in plastic arrives in my physical mailbox on a monthly basis. It is not cheap but I find that the value and the pleasure of seeing these great images and articles by far exceeds the costs. Of course, should my economy get worse than it already is, this would be one of the first items in my budget to cancel, but as long as I can afford it, this is little photography luxury that I really enjoy. And it is one of the very few items hitting my physical mailbox that I enjoy (although when the competition is bills and dunning letters, it is of course easy to shine in compare!).

So bottom line: if you are interested in outdoor photography (landscape, nature, adventure, wildlife), then this magazine comes will my highest recommendations.

What are depth of field indicators on a lens?

Not all lenses have a depth of field indicator! It seems like it is a thing of the past, so you need a good old lens to find a DOF indicator! And that is not necessarily a good think, as it can be very useful!

The Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 — My beloved 70-200 mm lens has a distance scale, but no DOF indicator.

On older manual focus lenses there is a distance scale where a – typically – white marker shows what distance your are focusing at. The scale is often very detailed for close distances, and as you increase the distance the jumps get bigger and bigger: 5 meters, 7 meters, 10 meters, 20 and infinity. So it is like a hockey stick – when you get to the far end, things happen very fast!

In addition to the distance scale, you also select the aperture on an older lens by turning an aperture ring. Each of the f-stop values are color coded – if you see the image below, the f/16 value has a pink (?) color coding.

Depth of field indicators for two different apertures.

Now here’s the trick: On both sides of the white marker that shows the focus distance, there is a pair of colored markers that shows the near and the far end of the DOF. In the example above to the left at f/16, you can see the two pink arrows showing the DOF markers and in the example to the right it is green arrows doing the same for f/8. The image above is from the video that I have linked to below, in case you are interested in more details about manual focus.

As you can see on the colored pairs, the blue markes give a much wider DOF than the green markers, which is not a surprise as the blue corresponds color wise to f/22 whereas the green corresponds to f/8.

The DOF scale can be super useful to determine the circle on confusion, i.e. the range in which the image appears to be sharp. This for example enables you as a landscape photographer to put the focal plane so that the far end of the DOF just touches infinity on the distance scale, and hence you make the best use of the DOF at a given aperture. It can also be a group portrait where you want to select an aperture so that everyone in the image will appear to be sharp, and not just the front row!

Video link

What is luminance in photography?

You probably know the word lumen if you have been interested in the brightness of the light in a lightbulb or a flashlight. For my bicycle lights, I always study how many lumen they generate, as I want to be as visible as possible in the traffic. So the more lumen, the brighter the light is.

The luminance of the colors in an image is perhaps best illustrated using the sliders from Lightroom:

As you can see, the more luminance a given color has in the examples above, the more bright it appears to be.

The above sliders are “tweaks” you can make to the luminance in Lightroom, but in addition to this each color has an inherent level of luminance value. So blue is less bright than say yellow, just to pick two colors that luminance wise are at the opposite end of the scale. This is probably also why blue and yellow work well together as contrast colors – I often notice this when I see the Swedish flag.

Example with brightness changed in post processing. Before left, after right.

In the example above I have reduced the brightness of green and increased it for red, and as you can see it gives a very different expression. Had I reduced the exposure in Lightroom, the brightness of all colors would have been changed at the same time – here I can work with the brightness of each color and how bright they are individually.

What is monochromatic colors?

Single

You probably think of monochrome as black and white and the shades of grey in between, i.e. that monochrome is the same as a black and white image. This is how it is often used, but monochrome means that only one color or hue is present in the image.

“Chromaticism” is the greek word for color. So monochromatic underlines that only one color is present. You can of course have different versions of that color by having different tints (adding white) and shades (adding grey/black) to the pure color (hue).

I think of monochrome and monochromatic as being one and the same, but this is not entirely correct. However, for practical purposes working as a photographer, I think this assumption works just fine.

Not a monochromatic image — In real life the colors here looked amazing, but it does not really come across in the image.

You can work to achieve monochromatic images by using colored filters or post processing the image or a bit of both. Personally, I use Lightroom to tweak my images to a monochromatic look.

Using one single hue across the board in this image — Pulling a few sliders in Lightroom, it is possible to change the image to be (almost) monochromatic.

The reason for using a monochromatic color scheme is to simplify the image and take out some distractions. If you have a scene where there are many different colors, reducing the variety of colors down to monochromatic can help the viewer to see more of the structures and textures in the image, and help the scene appear more calm.

What is foreground attraction in photography?

3 dimensions

Pictures are by nature 2 dimensional, trying to capture a 3 dimensional world. Thinking in foreground, midground and background (or distance) when you compose your image, can help bring the illusion to life that the image has a third dimension. So putting something in the foreground to give a bit of edge or contrast relative to the subject (typically found in the midground) can help make your image appear more 3D like.

Foreground attraction in photography — The moss and straws in the foreground serves as foreground attraction here. Some prefer the foreground to be tack sharp and have leading lines pulling the viewer into the scene – here it is more used as a way of framing.

Another role of the foreground can be to help bring the viewer closer to the scene.If you shoot a portrait of a person and the edge of the picture depicts a door, or if you shoot your subject through some vegetation, where the viewer almost feels like they are hiding somewhere and studying the subject.

The point is not to put something in the foreground each and every time. When shooting silhouette photography for example, the whole point is to play with the picture being 2-dimensional! But you can use it as one of many tools in your toolbox, exactly when you see the need to make your D2 images appear more 3D-ish!

What are complementary colors in photography?

Opposites attract

When put next to each other, complementary colors gives the biggest contrast and – for reasons beyond me – are an appealing combination to the human eye. You can use this knowledge if you work in a studio where the combination of the color of the models clothing and the color of the backdrop can be matched as complementary colors. Or you can use it in post to say do split toning to the highlights and lows using two complementary colors to do so.

The color wheel here as a screen shot from Lightroom.

Complementary colors sit exactly opposite each other in the color wheel, so if you follow the edge of the color wheel through all 360 degrees, you will find all the possible combinations. However, many of these are gradual changes from one color to another, so a more “black and white” presentation of the complementary colors could be:

Red and green
Yellow and violet
Orange and blue

Some photographers like Finn Beales are able to color grade their entire image portfolios in a consistent way and clearly using their knowledge of color science in general and complementary colors in particular. If you can follow this lead, it could be a way for you to develop a portfolio of images that stands out from the crowd and enables you to brand your work so it is easy to recognize.

Author: Frederik Bøving

From Nikon D5600 to D7500 – is that a good move?

Related reading

Nikon Z50: Manual exposure guide

Manual exposure

Aperture and shutter speed

ISO

Metering modes

Final thoughts

Video link

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Review: Timbuk2 Heritage Classic S Messenger bag multi-colored

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Review: Outdoor Photography monthly magazine

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What are depth of field indicators on a lens?

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Video link

What is luminance in photography?

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What is hue in photography?

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What is monochromatic colors?

Single

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What is foreground attraction in photography?

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What are complementary colors in photography?

Opposites attract

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