Along with Yongnuo YN-622N i-TTL radio triggers I ordered an i-TTL flash from Yongnuo. Shipping took about 1.5 weeks and today the package arrived. No time for a review yet, but I made an entertaining unboxing video. Enjoy !

Preface for everybody who did not follow the complete story:
Some D800s (‘s’ as in plural to avoid misunderstandings) do not trigger the slave flashes reliably when the internal popup flash is used as commander and the flashes are operated in M mode. The trigger problem does not occur in TTL or AA mode. Not all D800s are affected.
Preface end.

Remember the post in which I stated that the CLS problem does not occur any more ? Forget everything I said. Two days ago I conducted a shooting and the CLS problem occured again. Enough is enough. I contacted Nikon support and reported the whole history. Long story short- they asked me to send the camera in again and include a detailed description of the problem. Sounds familiar, because that is what I did last year when I sent the camera in for the first time. Let’s see what happens now.

Here is the history of the CLS issue as I encountered it:

March 22nd, 2012     Bought the very first D800 my local dealer received
March 25th, 2012      Problem with the CLS system recognized, posted a video on that.
March 31st,2012        Contacted Nikon Support, Camera was sent in, no solution
June 15h, 2012           Nikon Japan acknowledges the problem and offers a workaround.
<…>                            Two firmware updates are released, none addresses the issue
<…>                            Over time more than a dozen other D800 users contact me, reporting the same problem.
May 24th, 2013         Contacted Nikon support again due to persisting problems with CLS
June 07th, 2013        Sent my D800 to Nikon service again.

It’s a never ending story. I made another video demonstrating the problem to show that I am not seeing ghosts. I apologize, the video is really quick and really dirty. I just slammed my Samsung on the window ledge and pressed record.

I’ve been reading a little on flash photography in the last weeks. I already wrote about the great book by Joe McNally, today I would like to present another pearl of “flash education”. US-based photographer David Hobby runs an excellent blog called Strobist. The blog’s tagline is “Learn how to light” and that is what the strobist blog is all about.

David dives into the wonders of flash photography and shares his experiences from assignments, reviews gear or answers questions from readers. As the name suggests the blog is centered on strobist setups, meaning using off-camera flashes. While the blog itself is highly recommended there is a learning section on the homepage called Lighting 101. Below you can see some screenshots.

Lighting 101 is a compact course in flash photography, which takes you from the very basics to very advanced flash concepts. You learn how to trigger your flash, what equipment you need to get started, what different light modifiers do, how to mix ambient and flash light,  what gels do on your flash…. Go there. Read it. Even if you are an experienced photographer it does not hurt to ingest the basics again. There is always something one can learn, and David has a lot to teach.

While shooting a building near the Hannover fair grounds I manually underexposed the image to get some texture in the sky. When I controlled the image on the LCD screen I got big eyes. The sky – now with nice texture in the clouds – was full of dark specks. This, my boy, is dust on the sensor. And kind of a lot of dust.

The image above shows a test image – I just pointed the camera towards the sky and underexposed by -5EV, then modified the image in Photoshop (Auto Contrast) to emphasize the dust spots. I am not a camera technician, but I surely know that now is the time to clean the sensor. But let’s have some thoughts on dust and dirt on the sensor beforehand.

How does dust get into the camera ?
Dust is everywhere. The particles are suspended in the air and everywhere you go there is dust. Each time you change the lens you open the camera. It is inevitable that some dust enters the camera cavity. There are only two things you can do here – face the camera downwards, so that at least heavier particles can’t sink into the camera while it is open and – even more important – change the lenses quickly. Ok, a third tip would be not to change lenses in an especially dusty environment (e.g. it would have been a very bad idea to change lenses during the Porsche shoot I conducted since the hall we worked in was full of sawdust).

The second source for dust is zooming. Everytime you zoom the lens the lens extends, lens groups move back and forth. When the lens barrel extends, you also extend the volume inside the lens. This volume fills with air from the environment. And the air is – bingo – full of dust. So every time you zoom keep in mind you are pumping dusty air in and out of the camera. Eventually dust builds up inside the lens and some dust particles will make it to the sensor.

In how far does the dust affect the images ?
Up front – Dirt on the sensor is not good and one should get rid of it (rid of the dirt, not the sensor). BUT. In how far did it affect my work ? Well, until I noticed the dirt it was not a problem. I own my D800 for over a year now and I have never cleaned the sensor before – I never noticed the dust spots until now. So it is not very critical to have some dust spots on the sensor. They either don’t show up because they are in an area of the image which is well or overexposed or they can be magically removed by software (I know Lightroom can does remove hot pixels automatically – perhaps also dust spots ?).

To wrap this point up – it is wise to have a clean camera/sensor, but don’t get too fuzzy about a few specks of dust on the sensor. They are inevitable and if you don’t see them on your images – do they matter that much ?

How to tell if your sensor has dust on it
See above-shoot an image of a white wall or the sky – something neutral should do. Underexpose the image a little, set the image out of focus intentionally. You can even move the camera around during the exposure. The dust os on the sensor and won’t get blurred because it makes every movement the camera makes, too.

Countermeasures
Once you decide that your sensor needs cleaning you have several options.

Before I start spilling my guts on sensor cleaning here is an entertaining video from DigitalRev TV about sensor cleaning if you are too lazy to read:

1.) In-camera cleaning.

Most camera models today have this option. The sensor is mechanically shaken by ultrasonic waves, shaking the dust off the sensor. Well, that is the theory. In practice this concept did not convince me. I made a series of six images – the first one without cleaning and the subsequent five images with one sensor cleaning action each. Prove me wrong, but the dust does not seem to be very impressed by being shaken. Do you see any difference in the spots between the images ?

2.) Give your camera to a professional cleaning service.
Most camera stores and camera manufacturers offer sensor cleaning. The price is around 40-60 Euros depending on where you go. This has the drawback that you have to give the camera away for a short period of time and it costs money. But on the other side you can be sure that the cleaning will be done by professionals (hope so at least and if something is damaged during the process the repair is paid for (this is what I assume from what I would expect as a customer, but urgently check the terms and conditions of the company you give your camera to !).

3.) Clean it yourself. Here we have three basic options.
(Disclaimer: These are ideas and thoughts, I can not be held responsible if you damage your camera during the cleaning process. If you want to be on the safe side, let a professional camera technician clean your camera sensor. Only try to clean the camera sensor by yourself if you are one hundred percent sure about what you are doing !)

3.1 Poor man’s sensor cleaning.

• Mount your camera on a tripod, facing downward. Remove the lens, expose the mirror (there is a menu for locking the mirror up and opening the shutter blades for inspection and cleaning. Read the manual.
• Use a rocket blower or similiar to blow the dust from the sensor. In theory the dust is blown off and falls out of the camera. This might work for at least getting rid of the bigger dust bits, but in fact with each burst from the rocket blower you blow air with dust into the camera. As an alternative you can use compressed clean air from a can. Be sure the product you use is safe for cleaning purposes, so that you don’t blow oil or other fluids on the sensor which might be in the compressed air canister.

3.2 Sensor swabs
Sensor swabs are basically a small plastic stick with a lint-free special towel attached to them. There are versions with and without cleaning fluid. The idea is to swipe over the sensor surface with the swab and brush the dust particles away. Works well, relatively safe if you know what you are doing and, by the way, that is what is done when you give away your camera for cleaning. If you feel confident enough to do it yourself – get some sensor swabs (look for “CCD swabs” or “sensor swabs” on eBay or Amazon), expose the sensor and clean the sensor.

3.3 Sensor film
Sensor film is an emulsion which is painted on the sensor with a fine brush. Once the emulsion dries one can peel it off the sensor and all dust particles are stuck in the emulsion. Sensor film is water based and does not damage the IR filter on the lens. It is a very effective way of cleaning your sensor but needs an extremely steady hand during the application of the emulsion. Many people have used it, it is a very successful product on the market with lots of happy end-users. Well, except me. A few years ago I used sensor film on my D70s and, being a jackass, I painted a little emulsion into the rail in which the shutter curtain runs. This meant new shutter blades (250 €), which was about the residual value of the camera.

I have to point out that sensor film is a very good and clever product and that the damage was caused by my own fault. If I had handled it a little more carefully, nothing would have happened.

3.4 Fix it in post
Some camera models offer the option to record a reference photo for dust removal. You snap a picture against a neutral background and the camera records the dust specs, creating a profile which is applied to each subsequent image. The specs are removed by the camera software. As an alternative: Photoshop can also de-dust images automatically.
My personal opinion is that this should only be a workaround until the sensor can be mechanically cleaned. You have to do a cleaning at some point anyhow, so the software removal of dust should only be a temporary solution. But again, that is only my personal opinion.

There might be sensor cleaning options I have missed, but the ones I listed are the most common ones. To clean the sensor of my D800 I have ordered sensor swabs ( 9 € for eight pieces). Let’s hope I don’t succeed in damaging it again.

Two weeks ago I was in the Frankfurt region. At a small town called Königstein there was a celebration at the train station with historic trains. Yes, one of those big black monster trains which were built during the first half of the 20th century. While riding the train itself was not so spectacular (you ride an overcrowded coach and everybody pops his head out of the window to see the engine – not a good situation for taking photos), getting close with the metal beast at the train station was another kind of encounter.

The festival was very crowded and I had a hard time photographing the engine without people. So I focussed on details of the complex mechanical system, making only few shots which show the complete steam engine. The two shots which were taken a little further away you can see in the gallery are photoshopped – I removed people and buildings, so that the steam would stick out more prominently. The other one with the miniature effect… well… sorry, could not resist.

During post I made extensive use of the b/w filter presets in Lightroom. I actually came to appreciate those filter presets a lot. Lightroom offers some 30+ of them which ship with the software. Each one achieves a different look and I encourage you to play around with them.  They are a comfortable way to quickly modify your images and they can act as a source of inspiration. Sometimes, when a photo is “nice” (and we all know that “nice” is the little brother of “crap”), I play  around with the filter presets. Just hover the mouse over the filter preset name on the list and Lightroom will show you a preview in the top left corner of your screen of how the filter will look like. And sometimes browsing through these filter presets saved an image which I would have rejected otherwise.

Over time you can create your own presets or add commercially available preset bundles, but there are also tons of free filters. A good example of commercial filter presets are the VCSO filters. These presets imitate film and you can achieve a ton of effects. A good source for free filter presets is presetsheaven.com. But there are tons of different other commercial and free options, a Google query should do the trick.

A quick thought on presets in general. They are great for achieving a certain look quick and easily and it is good to have lots of filters. But keep in mind that presets are, well, only presets. They are just a set of certain settings of the Lightroom sliders  and buttons. Presets are not a substitute for knowing what would look good on an image. You still should have an idea what to do with an image to enhance it.

Last week I got the opportunity to shoot a Porsche GTS. I never shot cars before and this was quite a challenge. I practiced on our car at home, shooting it in the carport. Finding a pleasantly looking perspective did not prove to be a challenge but I experienced that lighting a car with  speedlights is hell when you are doing it for the first time.

I learned a lot during the Porsche shoot and despite some rookie-bloopers the outcome is somewhat presentable.

But first things first. The shooting took place in a large working hall with a barn-stlye wooden front. The first task was to clear the background. There were some cardboard boxes, a trailer and some tools which we moved out of the frame. Also we cleaned the floor a little since there were leaves and other debris lying around. Which proved to be a bad idea. In the hall also woodworking is done, sawing wooden beams and whatnot. Meaning: The floor is covered with sawdust. That’s bad for a freshly washed car. Very bad. The sawdust settled quickly on the high-gloss polished surface of the Porsche. Sometimes one has to learn obvious things the hard way. So here is a pro tip: Shoot in a clean environment to keep a clean car clean.

Lighting was hell. I did not shoot many angles, perhaps 8-10 different perspectives. But I made around 30 images per perspective since getting the desired lighting effect is very hard. And here comes another pro tip. I am a little reluctant to share it because it is so obvious, but having had this profane epiphany I must blurt it out: If you try to light a black car, all you get is the reflection of your light source and the environment. So either you have a veeery large light source (the kind car companies use when shooting cars – a giant softbox hovering over the car) or you light the environment and let the reflections do their play.

Here is a short making of-Timelapse video (taken with the D300s, timelapse compiled with the Lightroom Timelapse plugin).

Equipment – I used my D800 with the 24-70 f2.8 lens and three speedlights (SB-600 / 700 / 800). Further into the shoot I tried to add my two SB-R200s, but due to their position I could not get them to fire (I placed them in the car and in another situation underneath it with no direct line of sight to the camera), so the shoot was done with three Speedlights.

[Side note for faithful readers of my blog: The CLS caused only minor problems this time. I relate the triggering problems of the slave flashes to the positioning as mentioned above, but there were some other misfires. Read this post and search for "CLS issue" if you are a D800 user and also have trouble triggering your slave flashes].

One of the three Speedlights had an umbrella, the other ones only had diffuser domes most of the time. Why have one with an umbrella and two without ? Dunno, just did it that way. For certain images I attached a piece of cardboard to the flash to shield light. I did this to restrict light going towards the camera to avoid lens flare but also to lessen the amount of light hitting the floor. Taping cardboard to your flashes is tied to the concept of “negative fill flash”, read this enlightening post from photofocus.com for more info [not safe for work, naked ladies].

The shooting took around three hours and I went home with 300+ images (not counting the timelapse images from the D300s).

Post production: I mainly use Lightroom for retouching, therefore I am not very experienced in Photoshop. I use Photoshop from time to time, but never dug in very deep. This is why the dust on the car gave me a very hard time and it’s still visible on some images. To avoid dust, apply pro tip number one during the shoot, see above. Image modifications included cropping, straightening, tone curve adjustment, removal of some debris an major spots on the car surface. I did not succeed in achieving a high-gloss finish of the car, but that is ok since a.) the dust is only visible in high resolution and b.) the person who owns the Porsche is kind of a purist when it comes to retouching. His opinion is kind of like “I want to see the car on the photo as it looks to the naked eye” and my opinion is more like “Image manipulation begins with pressing the shutter”. But that is another topic with a large part being philosophy and personal taste.

To wrap it up – The shooting was fun, very educational for me and we agreed on repeating it in the future. So stay tuned for more to come !

Today I would like to give a short review on a very educating book. “The Hot Shoe Diaries” by Joe McNally is a very entertaining and also informative volume on flash photography. The name of the book gives the clue: It is about strobe flashes, not big studio flashes. Joe McNally has 30+ years of experience as a photographer and worked for Life and  National Geographic. Also, he is a Nikon CLS freak, shooting mainly with Speedlight flashes.

Joe selected photographic jewels he took in his career and explains on 3-4 pages how each image was taken and what lighting concept stands behind it. That is why the book is called a “diary”. There is no red line and the chapters do not necessarily build upon each other. But by explaining the creation process of the images and how particular flash concepts are applied, the reader is well educated on the use of fill flash, main flash, using gels to correct light, mixing available and flash light and and and.

The images he presents are portraits only. Most stories behind the images are very amusing, although some stories are also very moving. For example Joe did a project called “Faces of Ground Zero” in which he photographed people who witnessed 9/11 only six weeks after the attack (read the story to each portrait on the project website). Another story which moved me a lot is the one of three-year old Jody Miller. The little girl had a rare syndrom called “Rasmussen’s Encephalitis”, a critical brain disease. The only way to save her life was to remove the right half of her brain. Joe was doing a series on the human brain for National Geographic at that time and accompanied Jody with his camera, also during the procedure (at the end of the chapter Joe annotes that Jody is living a totally normal life today, becoming a teacher at the time the book was written).

What I like in particular about the book is the mixture of images. One does not have to read the book from beginning to the end, you can jump in between chapters and learn about the images which are presented. Also the chapters are quite short, each section is only 4-5 pages long, which is another thing I like a lot considering my short attention span.

At the beginning of the book some basics are presented (color, light formers, explanation for some flash gibberish like CLS, TTL and so on…). There is even a short section about how to hold the camera and an off-camera flash (which is not as simple as one might think). It pays off to really read that part and not shrug it off with a “I know that already” attitude. One might learn this or that from it… The only thing I find a little strennous is the way Joe writes sometimes. He uses a very vivid language and writes down his thoughts as he would articulate them in face-to-face conversation, which is a little strange sometimes.

Bottom line: It is a very unusual, entertaining and educative book on flash photography. Bite-sized chapters let you control your daily dose of photographic wisdom as you have the time / nerve to dive into it. I learned a lot  (and I haven’t read it all yet) and hope to put the learned stuff into practice soon.

With the insects coming out in spring the temptation to shoot bugs of all sorts is high. Especially ladybugs are crawling around a lot these days as you might have realized from my previous post.

Today I got the opportunity to shoot another ladybug. Both images were taken with the Nikon D300s and the Nikkor 105 mm f2.8 VR macro lens.

I decided to do a colorkey on the images since the table the bug was shot on has a very pale brown color – that looks better in grayscale’s. The complete workflow as been done in Lightroom. I enhanced the saturation a little to bring out the red of the ladybug’s carapace. Then I used the brush tool with saturation set to -100 and painted everything but the ladybug to get rid of the colors. I used a large brush mainly and switched to a smaller one only for the space between the bug’s legs. As a final touchup I brought down the lights on the bug’s carapace with the brush tool and also removed a blue shimmer (the sky reflecting in the carapace). The latter I did with by again using the brush tool and setting the color temperature a tad to the yellow side (for those of you who don’t use Lightroom: There is a slider in allowing you to influence the color balance. Left – blue; Right – yellow. The blue could be removed by moving the slider to the right). Each image took around 5 minutes of post processing in Lightroom. Again I am astonished by the efficiency of the Lightroom workflow.

Enough for today – enjoy the images and make the best use of the summer ! Grab your camera and go out !

Spring has finally reached us and last Sunday I could spend the first afternoon on the terrace. While my daughter was playing with her Duplo bricks a ladybug crawled around. I grabbed my D300s with the 105 mm macro lens and was able to take some shots of this insect. Ladybugs can fly, but they are not very jumpy, meaning you can poke them gently and “guide” them to go this or that way without flying away.

So I grabbed a yellow Duplo brick and “offered” it to the ladybug to crawl onto. After several attempts the insect did what I intended it to do and started wandering around on the yellow brick. I placed the brick in front of another large Lego piece (the blue…ish background). From there one has to work quick, since even though the ladybug is not jumpy, it is in constant motion. I had to turn and reposition the brick several times because the insect crawld over the edge. I took about 6-7 shots and this one was the best.

Nearly no fixes in post, just a tad of raising the dark parts to bring out the details on the ladybug a little more.

***UPDATE – 15 May 2013***

Problem still persists, disregard everything I wrote down there. Still the same problem. When triggering slave flashes with the popup flash and using M mode on the master to control the flash output the slaves are not triggered reliably. I am very angry at the moment and will file another support issue immediately. When will this story end ???

***UPDATE – 07 May 2013***

I keep getting emails and comments, that the problem still persists with some D800s (‘s’ being the plural and not some mysterious new model… just being cautious). So far I have not had problems with the CLS system, but some other folks have. At this point I can not say more than we have to be patient and see if Nikon addresses the problem directly. Which they will do if enough people file support cases, so do that if you are affected !

*****************

Recently Nikon released a new firmware update for the D800 and the D800E (A: 1.01 / B:1.02). Officially the CLS issue has not been addressed but some other things (support for the new 800 mm f5.6E lens, subject tracking performance in AF-C etc., read the release notes here).

Today I tested the flashes. I made two setups and took 50 images each. The D800′s internal flash acted as the master (Manual mode, 1/128), my SB-600, SB-700 and SB-800 as slaves. In the first series I pointed the camera towards the flashes with the flash sensors on the flashes facing the camera. The D800 fired directly into the light sensors of the flash units. 51 images – the flashes fired every time. Actually I had to wait for the master flash to cool down since repeated shooting in a short timespan builds up a lot of heat.

The next set of images was taken with the camera facing away from the flashes and the flashes also faced away from the camera. The setting was still manual mode and 1/128 flash power. Also this time the flashes fired in every of the 50 images. It looks a little dark on the images, this is due to the low flash power I chose and the lack of ambient light (I conducted the test in the evening). If you look closely at the second set – there is a dark outline of the room in every picture, they are not black.

Bottom line – It _seems_ as if the CLS issue has been resolved with this firmware update. After the first firmware update about half a year ago the problem got better, but still some images were black. I am not sure why Nikon did not mention the fix in the release notes of the new firmware but in the end the results are what counts.

If the CLS issue still occurs at your D800 even after the firmware update, leave a comment or drop me a line !