Josef “Jeff” Sipek

As you may or may not know, Nexenta has a small office in Massachusetts, and so I end up in  Lowell a couple of times a week. Lowell is a decent size city with a history of textile production. As a result, the city is peppered with old mills, most of which have been converted to office and apartment buildings and a couple serve as museums.

The Wannalancit mill is one of the mills that ended up turning into an office building. (It is connected to the adjacent Suffolk mill so I often forget that technically they are separate buildings. You’ve been warned.)

The thing that makes this mill more interesting is that the National Park Service maintains an operational water turbine in the basement. The turbine turns a large flywheel (I am guessing it is about 5 m in diameter).

The turbine itself is in the “basement” along with other goodies. The basement is not very well lit, but the D750 performed quite well even at ISO 5000–8000.

The turbine is geared to the flywheel.

Finally, here is the turbine (inside the red-brown metal object in the background) and the governor (green machine in the foreground) controlling the amount of water entering the turbine and therefore the amount of energy getting stored in the flywheel.

The park service shows up in the mornings to “turn-on” the turbine.

A close-up of the governor:

The table on the left was used for repairing of the 2 cm thick leather belts. I got the impression that the four section cabinet housed containers of oil used to lubricate various parts around the mill.

There are more than three times as many photos in the full gallery. Enjoy!

The other day I took a slightly longer lunch break and headed over to the National Streetcar Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, they were closed that day so instead I used the parked steam locomotive there as my photography subject. For more photos, check out the full gallery.

I took two panoramas. They are not perfect since I was hand holding the camera. The smaller one is made up of seven shots (15 MB full image for you pixel-peepers).

The larger panorama is made up of twelve images. (34 MB full image)

The D750 has a feature called live view—it lets me use the tilting screen on the back to compose my shot. This is very useful for otherwise awkward to compose shots. (Instead of having to crawl on the ground to see through the viewfinder, one can use the screen!) The very important thing to note about live view is that if you take a still image while in live view (by pressing the shutter all the way) the resulting image will have a 16:9 aspect ratio instead of the standard 3:2. To get a 3:2 image, one has to compose in live view, then turn off live view, and take the shot as always.

I am hoping to come back one day soon and see what the museum has to offer for my photography appetite.

Recently, I posted a gallery full of photos from Earth Day. While I was post-processing them, I noticed something interesting in one of the shots. Since it was interesting enough, I had to blahg about it. So, without further ado, let’s get started—in the style of terrible TV shows!

Display original image.

Zoom in. (Crop.)

Enhance. (Set shadows to +100.)

Enhance more. (Set black clipping to +100.)

Enhance even more. (Set exposure to +2EV.)

Zoom in more! (Resize 200% and then crop to original size.)

Ha! I knew it! There were people there! Mystery solved!

While I am being silly here, I think it’s actually very cool that so much detail got captured by the 24MP sensor on the D750 even at 70mm focal length while standing pretty far away.

Maybe in the near future, today’s groan-worthy “zoom in and enhance” TV scenes are going to be the reality we live in. Of course this brings up interesting concerns about privacy—is the camera pointing away from you actually focusing on a reflection of you? Alas I am not going to delve into this topic today.

For Earth Day, Holly and I went to the nearby Sherburne Nature Center for their Earth Day celebration. The three hour event included a walk through the woods there as well as a demonstration of some owls. We showed up a bit early, so we meandered in the woods for a bit on our own. I was armed with my D750 and the 24-70mm lens, and Holly sported the D70 with the 18-70mm kit lens at first but switched to the 70-300mm not too long after. While I did all the post-processing, some of the following photos are Holly’s. As always, there are more photos in the gallery.

While meandering, we found a large-ish  garter snake—I’m guessing it was about 1m long.

After about an hour of roaming around, we joined the narrated nature walk. The guide, Mark Fraser, was quite good at spotting assorted nature that I was totally unaware of. For example, he took all of 15 seconds to find this (much smaller) garter snake.

The nature walk was followed by the owl demonstration by Eyes on Owls. As you can see, the owl demonstration attracted a lot of kids.

After a brief intro to owls, six different owl types got shown. Of the six, I post-processed photos of four. (We got photos of the remaining two as well, but none of them struck me as interesting enough to post-process.) All of the owls they brought suffered from some sort of injury that made them unable to survive in the wild.

The screech owls:

The barn owl:

The spectacled owl:

The snowy owl:

I wished I had a more telephoto lens than the 24-70mm, but thankfully the owl demonstration was pretty close to me—and the 24MP on the D750 let me crop quite a bit. At the same time, it is my understanding that for birding one wants the longest lens possible anyway. I’ve even heard that birders prefer DX camera bodies because of the crop factor. I think I understand them, but I’ll just stick to photographing mostly non-bird subjects and keep the FX sensor. I guess the world’s birds will have to be photographed by someone else. :)

I realize I’m a bit behind blahging about my photography adventures. Sorry. In early April, I ended up getting a walk-around lens I talked about previously—for reasons which I hope to discuss in another post, I ended up getting the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G. Needless to say, I’ve been using it quite a bit since.

Not even two weeks after getting the 24-70mm, the nearby Minute Man National Historical Park had number of Patriots’ Day events. I had time, so armed with the D750 and the new 24-70mm I spent the Saturday running around taking photos. The day consisted of reenactments demonstrating what 1775 was like in  Concord and  Lexington, as well as what the  running battle on April 19th, 1775 through them looked like.

The weather was good for watching, but not the best for photography—the bright sunlight created many harsh shadows. I tried to address them in Lightroom, but many are still way too obvious. Without further ado, here are a couple of photos from the event. As always, there are more photos in the full gallery.

The reenactor registration table—I’d like to think that something like this happened in 1775 when people signed up to fight the British.

There were about two hours where the reenactors mingled.

That eventually turned into practicing in formation and getting ready for the battle.

Then all the spectators moved toward the actual road where the battle would take place. Tons of additional spectators showed up out of nowhere. To amuse us (and to keep us on the correct side of the rope) some of the volunteers provided light entertainment. For example, one was dressed as a British officer on a horse and mocked (1775-style) the crowd’s ignorance of how benevolent the British are.

Others entertained the somewhat restless kids in the crowd.

Around this time, I realized that 70mm wouldn’t be enough. Not having brought any other lenses with me, I had to make the best of it. This resulted in a copious amount of cropping in Lightroom. (Obviously, I need to get the 70-200mm f/2.8 for next time ;) )

Anyway, both the British and the revolutionaries came and went. Not having anything else to photograph in front of me, I decided to follow the reenactors down the road. Sadly, that meant not having front row access and having to shoot over people’s shoulders.

All in all, I took about 600 shots that day. The 24-70mm performed admirably. Yes, I wish I had a more telephoto lens as well, but that’s not a fault of the 24-70mm. Finally, I was pleasantly surprised that the 1650g combo (750g for the camera, 900g for the lens) did not end up feeling too heavy. It certainly was not light, but I did not feel like I had an albatross around my neck.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently bought a Nikon D750. There is one big thing I did not anticipate happening—I have been shooting mostly in manual mode. (On the D70, I was almost always in aperture-priority mode.)

Using manual mode makes me think about the exposure which leads to thinking about the other stuff—composition, DOF, etc. I am not going to say that my shots are spectacular as a result, but I certainly think that they are better thought out. I do not know how long it will be before I decide that it is a terrible idea and I revert to aperture-priority. :)

I always thought that manual mode was too slow to set up for capture-the-moment type photography. It turns out that in general, it is not slower than semi-automatic modes like aperture-priority.

The secret here is that one can get close to the correct exposure way before the decisive moment. For example, while walking around on a sunny day, one can meter the surroundings and select a good ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. Then, when something interesting is happening, it is a matter of tweaking the exposure—by changing the aperture or shutter speed a little bit. This is something one has to do anyway in the semi-automatic modes. Of course as one continues walking around one needs to notice the light changing and adjust the approximate exposure.

Worst case, the exposure is off a little bit. Shooting raw however means that even if it is off by 2EV, the shot is not lost. This is very similar to how things were back in 35mm film days.

While it sounds like extra work, it really is not. Even if one is in a semi-automatic mode, one needs to have a reasonable exposure setting to begin with. On my D70 in aperture-priority mode, I have missed a number of shots over the years simply because I was at f/22 and it takes forever to scroll through 5EVs worth of aperture settings in 1/3 EV increments, or worse yet my ISO was set either too low or too high. Had I paid attention to available light and pre-adjusted the exposure in anticipation of taking a shot, I would have lost fewer shots.

With that said, semi-auto modes make a ton of sense in certain situations, but I am sticking with manual-mode for now.

I realize that I did not include any sample images in my mini-review of Nikon D750. That is what this post is about.

Here is a handful of photos from a gallery of D750 samples I uploaded for your viewing pleasure. Some of these are not great images, but instead they are meant to illustrate the capabilities of the of the camera. All of the photos below were taken using the Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D.

One evening, I decided to try out the high-ISO performance. The following is a hand-held shot of 1/200 seconds at f/4 with ISO 8000. While there is definitely noise, the image is far from unusable.

This is only about a third of the photos in the gallery, so do not forget to check it out.

It is 2016 and the digital SLR landscape is very different from what it was back in December 2004 when I bought my trusty Nikon D70. While the D70 is still going strong, it is obvious that DSLRs have dramatically improved in quality and upgrading would let me play with light in ways that the D70 just cannot handle. So after about a year and a half of telling others that I should upgrade my camera, I somehow managed to convince myself that I should actually upgrade instead of just talking about it.

The Body

Since so much has changed over the past 11 years, I had to essentially survey the land from scratch. I even glanced at the Canon lineup, but ended up focusing only on Nikons simply because I like how Nikon SLRs feel in my hand as well as the layout of the controls. (Already having a Nikon F-mount 50mm f/1.8 helped a little as well.)

Nikon has a decent lineup of cameras and choosing one is not the easiest of tasks. One of the more interesting questions I had to answer was: do I want a full-frame (FX) or a crop-sensor (DX) camera? Having “suffered” with the DX D70 for 11 years and envying all the people with full-frame DSLRs, I decided to bite the bullet and pay for the privilege of having a full-frame sensor. This narrowed the field down to D610, D750, and D810. The D810 was simply out of my price range ($2800). Between the D610 and the D750, the D750 wins at everything (technical specs, as well as the feel in hand) except the price—the D610 currently sells for $1300 while the D750 is $2000.

After about a week of deliberating and reading everything I could about the D610 and the D750, I decided to go with the D750.

The Lens

An SLR camera is useless without a lens. My arsenal of lenses has only one that is full-frame friendly and worth putting on a D750—the AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8.

My D70 came with a 18–70mm kit lens (which behaves as 27–105mm due to the crop factor), and I think this is a good range for a general walk-around lens. So based on this, I am thinking that I want something similar. Now, there are a number of options. I spent a good week trying to figure out what I should do lens-wise before I even bought the camera.

First of all, there is a D750 kit. It comes with the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm f/4 ED VR lens. By itself the lens costs about $1100, but the kit is only $300 more than the body alone. So, one could get that and if one does not like it one should be able to sell it for about $300–$400. Financially it makes sense.

So, I had a choice whether I should only get the body or if I should get the kit and either keep the lens or sell it and use the proceeds toward a lens I really wanted. If I got the body by itself, I would have my trusty 50mm prime to play with until I got a new lens.

Here are some lenses I found. I have only had a chance to play with one—the D750 kit lens.

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm f/4 ED VR (kit, +$300)

I got to play with this lens on a D750 and I had a couple of observations. While the room I was playing in was relatively decently lit (it certainly is not dark), I had some serious problems with exposure trying to keep the ISO below 1000 and the shutter speed within hand-holding range. Even at f/4. This is not surprising, since I know that I would have the same kind of problem with my 18–70mm f/3.5-4.5 zoom. I bet this would be a great lens outside. There is definitely some distortion. Near the edges there is noticeable barrel/pincushion distortion which makes straight lines look obviously “bent”. There is also some vignetting. In a “creative” shot of the dull carpeting on the floor, I saw that the corners were noticeably darker than the center. Lightroom fixed it up in no time.

Sigma 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM A ($900)

People seem to be raving about Sigma’s Art (“A”) lenses. Based on the sample images I have seen this is a good lens. The f/4 however is not very exciting at all. Much like the D750 kit lens, it is just too slow for anything other than daytime outdoors photography. In theory the vibration reduction (“OS” in Sigma’s lingo) should help with that, but I am not sold on VR as the solution to low light.

Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM ($750)

A bit shorter than the 24-105mm Sigma Art lens, but it makes up for it (in my opinion) with a fast f/2.8 aperture. It also loses the VR but I would rather fast aperture than VR.

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED ($1700, $2300 for f/2.8E)

This is a very nice lens. The only negative thing I have ever heard about it is that it is way too expensive. Indeed, $1700 is way too much for a hobbyist to spend on a single lens. Recently-ish, Nikon made a new version of this lens (the f/2.8E) which features VR as well. Sadly, this new version is even more expensive.

Tamron SP 24-70mm f/2.8 DI VC USD ($1100)

Price-wise, this one is between the Sigma 24-70mm and Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G. I hear good things about the image quality, but I have not spend enough time looking at it…yet.

It is rather unfortunate that good fast lenses are so expensive.

After a week of going back and forth on whether I should get the kit or not, I decided that I was going to take the easy way out, and get it. Amusingly enough, the evening I decided to place my order, B&H updated the product page with a banner saying that the combo has been discontinued by the manufacturer. Since I was so torn about the kit lens to begin with, I just shrugged and bought the body only. (The next day, the kit was available again.)

B&H threw in a 32GB SD card and a 4TB USB3 external hard drive—both useful. This way, I did not have to try to figure out which SD card I should get and I have an external hard drive to backup my photos to!

The shipping was prompt and uneventful.

“Review”

Keep in mind that I did not yet buy one of the zooms I talked about earlier.

So far, I spent most of my time running around with a 50mm f/1.8 prime (which is finally usable thanks to the FX sensor). The image quality is great regardless of how much light is present. I have used it indoors, for a white background “product shot”, as well as outdoors (under clear skies with tons of harsh sunlight and shadows, during a sunset, by a fog-covered pond on a rainy day, by a poorly lit church at night, …) and I am constantly blown away at how much detail can be extracted from the shadows. Even at night with ISO 8000 the performance is amazing—autofocus very rarely hunts and the noise is manageable.

There is one thing I miss that my D70 had—the 1/8000 shutter. The D750’s 1/4000 is still quite good, but on a bright day it would be convenient to have the option to have a shorter exposure than 1/4000 instead of having to reach for ND filters (which I do not have) or venture into extended ISO to cut down on the amount of light.

The body is rather hefty (750g), but since the 50mm f/1.8 is so light (156g) it does not bother me at all. The weight seems well distributed, and gives the camera a feel of quality—not just a body with a ballast. I may start minding the weight a bit once I get an FX standard zoom which will be a whole lot heavier than the 50mm prime I have now (e.g., 790g for the Sigma 24–70 f/2.8).

There are 51 autofocus points. 51! This is an insane number compared to the 5 that are on the D70. Sadly, as most D750 reviews point out, all 51 AF points are clustered in the center of the frame. As a result, it is possible that one may have to use a nearby AF point and recompose. It is a bit annoying, but it is nowhere near as bad as what I had to deal with on the D70 where a very large number of shots required a bit of recomposing. (Yes, I realize this is a crummy comparison.) Of the several hundred shots I took on the D750, I think I had to recompose maybe 1% of the time. I expect that to be an exaggeration too since I have been trying various extreme scenes to see how the camera reacts so the in-focus portion is not always near the AF points.

Software

Almost four years ago, I blahged about how Adobe Lightroom 4 makes it easy to manage and edit photos. I have been happily using Lightroom ever since.

Needless to say, I was disappointed that I could not import the D750 raw files (NEF) into Lightroom 4. It has been a while since Adobe updated Lightroom 4’s camera database and I don’t blame them. Thankfully, Adobe has a free DNG converter program which can batch convert NEFs to DNGs. Lightroom 4 then happily imports the generated DNGs.

I did this pre-import conversion for about a week. Then I found out that I can get the Lightroom 6 upgrade for $79 and that there is no need to do this import dance. Not only that, but Lightroom 6 has a number of goodies that are not in Lightroom 4. For example, built-in panorama and HDR merging, and facial recognition. I bought the upgrade, installed it, and started importing NEFs directly without any problems.

The raw files that come out of the camera are huge (~30MB) compared to what I was used to on my D70 (~4.5MB). As a result, disk space fills up quickly, and transferring them between computers takes longer. It is a small price to pay for the amount of detail captured by the camera.

Related Posts

There are two other posts to go along with this one. In the first, I include some sample photos taken with the D750. In the second, I describe my latest thoughts about manual exposure mode.