David Day Digital Cameras

By: David I. Day
In June of 1999 I got my first digital camera a Sony FD-71. This camera has a maximum resolution of 640 x 480. When it takes pictures it places them on normal 3.5" floppy disk. This camera is very well suited for use on the web. I soon learned that the resolution was suitable for small prints and for the web, but not for larger print sizes like 8.5 x 11. My next digital camera was the Nikon CoolPix 950. It has a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200. This resolution makes excellent prints even when printed on ledger size paper.
As good as the Nikon is there are still tradeoffs between it and the Sony FD-71 and the Nikon. First the Sony has a better zoom range. I like to take pictures in some awkward places. I am not able to get a wide enough view to fit some things in with the Nikon. The telephoto is good enough, however. Nikon does make a wide angle lens but it warps the image or at least that was my experience. The built in strobe is adequate for some applications but it could have been more power. I am in the process of getting a Nikon SB28-DX strobe. I can share it with my Nikon film camera. I do not want to seem critical with the Nikon, however. It is a truly wonderful camera. I have been taking pictures that match the quality of what I have been able to get with film. It is extremely easy to learn and use. I have never had to make any adjustments to the pictures that I have taken. Out of the hundreds of pictures I have taken only two or three did not come out the way that I wanted.

What I have learned and am still learning
There are just a few things that will make your picture taking experience a little more enjoyable. The most important remember thing is to take your time and set up your shot. One of the reasons that I was not taking good pictures was that I did not visualize my finished product. Look at the vegetable picture above. I waited until the natural light was the way I wanted it. I sprayed the vegetables with a little water to give the effect of dew. The camera was mounted on a small tripod to steady it. Remember that if the exposure time is below 1/125th of a second you could get hand jiggle and a fuzzy image that lacks the crispness that you may want. I knelt down behind the camera to set up the shot. This picture has not been retouched except for re-scaling from 1600 x 1200 to 640 x 480 to fit it onto my web page. I especially like the hairs on the tomato branches. On the ledger size print the fibers on the cord holding up the plants are clearly visible. The car picture was composed the way I like, but I needed more flash to fill in some of the shadows.
Another thing to consider is to fully understand how to use your camera. Many new cameras allow you to focus and AE lock your camera. On the Nikon 950 this means pointing at exactly what you want to shoot and gently pressing the button 1/2 way down. When the camera achieves focus, a green Led next to the range-finder eye piece will come on a steady green. If strobe is needed a red Led above the green Led will do the same thing. If either light is flashing when the button is fully depressed there will be unpredictable results and a ruined picture. I played with this for some time to better understand how it worked. This camera will let you take bad pictures if you want to. So practice...practice...practice. The idea is to resist the point and shoot habits that have been learned with cheaper camera systems.
A major flaw exist with many digital cameras. This flaw is in the auto focus system. In low light situations it is very difficult to achieve a focus lock. My Nikon film camera locks every time, even in very low light situations. My Nikon 950 digital needs a bit more light to focus. If you are very patient and do the right thing then you will be very happy with your results. On my Sony the camera would beep when it was focused and locked. I had to turn off the feature to keep from spooking my dog. However since the Sony only has an LCD display it was very difficult to compose in bright light conditions. The beep at least tells you when the camera was ready. I strongly suggest that you practice to see what the limitations are before you go to your once in a lifetime event and learn that you do not understand your camera system.
The nice thing about using digital is that it is very cheep. My Nikon 950 is one of the best digital cameras that I know about for both learning photography and as a high quality camera. One of the cool things that I had not mentioned is the white balance feature. I have been taking a lot of indoors pictures and had gotten some really strange effects on my film camera. If the pictures are taken under florescent lighting the pictures will look greenish. Pictures that are taken under incandescent lighting will look reddish. The solution is to use color filters to correct this problem. The Nikon 950 has the ability to correct for various lighting conditions without having to use all kinds of corrective filters.
The worst shortcoming of the Nikon camera is the inability to shoot live action. I understand that the next generation corrects this fault. This has not been a big problem for me since most of my shots are of stationary objects. I do, however, like the macro ability of the Nikon 950. I do some copy stand work and I can get very good close ups of some very small objects. On the copy stand I usually use four 100 watt incandescent lamps. This means lots of light with few shadows. Once again check the focus and do not forget to set the white balance for incandescent lighting or you will get reddish pictures. For now I am sold on this camera and highly recommend it for as a general purpose high quality digital camera.
Digital lends itself to being better at capturing still or slow moving images. I also have taken the best photos outdoors. For this reason places like Greenfield Village make an excellent place for photo opportunities. There is literally an unlimited amount of thing that can be photographed there. Prices of digital cameras are coming down and it makes good since to at least practice this art. There are now may low cost cameras available that will do at least 640 by 480. These cameras are good for learning on and for exchanging photo on the internet. They are also good enough to create web art. To begin with you will need a digital camera and a way to get the photos into you computer. You will need to have a photo editing tool. For hardcopy you will need a good inkjet or similar printer.
On my home system I had moved from regular sized HP printer to the HP-1120c. The 1120c prints 600 dpi in both color and black and white and color. It also prints on ledger size paper in photo quality.
So far all of the pictures that I have taken on the Nikon 950 had required no retouching. I have been using Corel Draw 8's Photo Paint program to print my pictures. I load each picture to be printed into the Photo Paint program. I then go to the print preview and select to fit the picture to the paper. I can then print the pictures. To get pictures of this size from 35mm film I must go to my local store that has the Kodak tools and then print them on their printer. The cost is generally eight to twelve dollars per print. I have been doing my computer prints for twenty-five cents to fifty cents per sheet. A considerable cost savings.

This summer (Summer 2000) I have moved up a notch to the Nikon CoolPix 990. It has about a million more pixels in the pictures take at the highest resolution than the CoolPix 950. There are a lot of nice improvements that made me make the jump. I do believe that the CoolPix 950 is a very good camera and should be considered for anyone that like to take good quality photos. The following is a picture that I took the first day of I got my CoolPix 990.


Gardening 2000

This image has been compressed and lacks the quality of the original. I have included the original and it can be seen or downloaded by clicking on this image. This image is 625KB and can take a while to download. This image was taken in my compost pile and is of some berries of Nightshade. The berries are about a quarter of an inch or less in diameter. I used a SB-28DX strobe to illuminate the area.

I have been trying to photograph Shasta Daisies and other flowers. Both the 950 and 990 lock on other details in the image and the heads of the flowers are always out of focus.

I now think that I have found a solution to this problem. In the instruction manual for the 990 there are references to the Auto Focus Area. This is set from the manual setting under Focus. When turned on five sets of brackets show up on the LCD display. Using the control pad you can select any one of these brackets. The Auto Focus is then limited to focusing in one of these areas.

One of my favorite areas of photography is Macro Photography. I have dove a few good pictures using film cameras but have never been really happy with the results. The following is an example of the type of thing that I like to do.

I just made a sterling silver bracelet for a teacher friend of mine. I always like to photograph each piece before giving them away. I got out my copy stand and attached my Nikon 990 on the flash frame with the SB-26B strobe. In the living room I found that the lighting was still too low for the 990 to get a focus lock. I put a single 100 watt bulb into one of the copy stand's four canister light sockets. I was originally afraid that the incandescent light would color shift the picture so I selected a color balance for incandescent lighting. Bad mistake the images were blue. With the strobe at such range the incandescent lighting is overwhelmed and the color is proper. I have found that I could use a remote release cable for the camera. It would also be nice to have the display flipped over since all the displays read backwards while in the stand.

I next am planning to get a Nikon SB-29 Ring light. This is a specially built strobe with two flash tubes mounted in a housing that attaches to a macro lens. The problem is that Nikon never intended to use attachments like this on their digital camera's. I have been seeing a lot of interest in this area on the web, but most people have had to hack a solution to attach the ring strobe. I do not know if this is a deliberate or accidental attempt to force the digital users to use film for macro work. I have coming to me soon some adapter rings that will convert the Nikon's 28mm lens size to 37mm and another to convert from 37mm to 52mm. The SB-29 is listed as being able to attach to a 52mm thread size. As of now I do not know if this will work, but I will give it a try.

It is important that things work smoothly together. It would be nice if all the products of a company worked with all the other similar products. However, it is also nice to see that there always solutions to fix these shortcomings. One of the nicest things that all digital camera companies could do is to get out of the Dead-End camera markets. I would like to see the digital part of the camera mounted in a housing that allows the camera to exchange standard 35mm lenses from a select group of camera manufactures. I also have a Nikon film camera. I think that they should be able to make a reasonable affordable digital in a 35mm frame to allow the exchange of all the add ons. The one that they do have is a lower quality than the 990 and very expensive. Let us make a push to correct this.

The following three photos were taken as part of my jewelry documentation process. As I hand make each piece I take pictures of the piece. I need the ability to photograph the piece so that I can see all of the solder connections. I set up my copy stand on a straight back chair in the living room. I soon found that there was not enough light to use the auto focus. I put a 100 watt bulb in one of the four copy stand light canister. Using a Nikon SB-28DX on the Nikon flash frame I achieved the following Pictures. The first is a face on view of this bracelet. Note the dark discoloration on the bottom middle of the stone and on the lower left prong. This is the polishing compound that I had used and in these pictures had not completely removed.

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The next two photos show what can be done using the Area Focus feature of the 990. It is most important to know where the camera is focusing. In the first of the next two photos the camera is focused on the foreground. The second picture is focused on the background. Never assume that the camera is focused on the place that you expect it to. Always verify the focus.

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You will notice that the solder joints can be photographed. Many process of assembly need to be accurately verified for proper assembly. Using the proper digital camera can make all the difference in the world.

Winter 2003

I just got a Nikon D-100. The advantage to this camera, along side for the higher resolution, is it allows the use of Nikon's 36mm lenses. After a few days I have discovered that there are a few minor problems. First the main reason that I really wanted this camera was that I wanted to use my SB-29 ring flash. What a surprise when I discovered that like the SB-28 flash can not work in TTL mode with this camera, the SB-29 only works in manual with this camera. Nikon has a SB-28DX that works with digital cameras. I have both the SB-28 and SB-28DX, Only the 'DX works in TTL with D-100. I suspect that if there is a need Nikon will make a SB-29DX ring or equivalent. When I was trying to make my Nikon 990 work with the SB-29 I soon discovered that light was metered from an external photo sensor next to the lenses. I found an adapter ring from a 3rd party that attaches to the camera and allows the SB-29 to attach to the ring. The manufacture placed slots in the adapter to allow light to reach the sensor. To compensate for this ring the next camera had the sensor placed under the flash. The adapter maker compensated by making a light pipe to direct the light to the sensor on the camera.

It would be nice of someone could come up with a device that could break out the signals from any Nikon camera fake out being an acceptable flash and communicate back and forth between camera and flash. This is basically what the SB-28DX does. The SB-28DX is programmed to communicate with the digital cameras. The digital cameras are programmed to babble at any strobe except for the ones built expressly for them.

On the good side this is the best camera that I have used. It fits in in the hand perfectly. The controls are placed where they can be easily reached. My Nikon lenses and filters for my Nikon film camera. There many things that have been improved from my 990. My favorite is the way the e-film is loaded and unloaded. I had to dig the film out with a mechanical pencil because my fingers do not fit. The D-100 allows the ejected film to be removed with the thumb and index finger in a pinching action.


My dog Nikki (David Day's Nicole, Snow Princes).

Picture of me taken by my mother (3-25-03).

I handed my camera to my mother, who has no experience with digital or automatic cameras. This image was taken using the SB-28DX and the Nikon micro-nikor lenses.


Picture taken with the SB-29

The above picture was taken with the SB-29 and the Micro-Nikor 60 lenses. As I said this picture was taken in manual mode. I set the F number to 32. After shutting off on flash tube and adding the diffuser I began to get an image. After much experimentation I eventually for a good image. I really thing that this should be an automatic function.

The Nikon Coolpix 990 and the Nikon SB-29
One of the reasons that digital photography is such an interest to me is the ability to do macro photography. Under most conditions digital macro photography is not so clean. If you use the internal flash or even a remote flash the picture will have side shadowing.

A possible solution is to use a copy or other such fixture with side lighting. In many cases, such as nature photography, this is impractical. One of the best solution is to use a ring flash. This was the route that I wanted to pursue. I purchased a Nikon SB-29 ring flash. I already had the Coolpix flash bracket that I used with my SB-28. The only problem is that the Coolpix was un-adaptable to this strobe. I had been given a series of adapter rings to adapt to two together.

My first experience was a disaster. I tried to film some small electronic parts in a plastic tray. When I took the picture my room looked like an bolt of lightning went off in it. I failed to realize that the sensor for the flash was covered by the adapter rings.

I found a series of pictures on European web sites that showed a special adapter mad to mount the SB-29 to a Coolpix camera. When contacted, Nikon deigned that this can be done. After much e-mailing to the various companies I began to get replies that pointed to a single US company ( www.dadsphotography.com/dadscp995.html ), that carries the proper adapter. It has been designed to work with the Nikon Coolpix cameras. However the newer 995 and 5000 have been reengineered. The company moved the flash sensor fully under the ring flash itself. This temporally caused this ring flash adapter to not work. The solution was to provide a fiber optic light path from source to sensor.

There are now two additional workarounds that Nikon has provided. First Nikon is soon to release its D100 digital camera that uses the their 35mm lenses. This means that their ring flash will be directly compatible. The second solution is a new ring light ( the SL-1 ). This is a small adapter that provides a ring of eight bright white LEDs. This is not a flash, but a light source. When available I will get both and try them. I am now in the process of testing the adapter ring. My first pictures have been great, but I would like to do more to get a better feel for using a ring flash.

The following photos were taken using the Nikon 990 and the Nikon SB-28DX flash. In full resolution this pictures are very clear. However, the lighting is obviously coming from from a single point source from the lenses left side. On the container on the left photo notice the darkness inside the opening. This could be an artistic effect, but in this case additional lighting could have improved this shot.

Here are a few samples of general photos taken with the Nikon D100. These are clickable thumbnails.