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22 May ' 04:52
Last update: 21 May 2012
Spooky. There are found photos and made photos. This is a made photo. The location is Spooky slot canyon in Grand Staircase-Escalante. I only had a few minutes here at the entrance because I discovered that my hiking companion had seriously dehydrated himself and was showing signs he needed to be dealt with. So I set him down in the shade with all the water we had and started him drinking while I quickly tried to figure out what I might be able to shoot while he sucked down the H2O. The problem is that Spooky doesn't really live up to its name until you get way back into it. I didn't have time for that, so after a bit of thought I decided to put my ghost in the image coming out of Spooky. Nothing is spookier than having me come haunt you, after all. The trick here is actually really a trick: you shoot a very long exposure (say five seconds), hold in position for a small portion of it, then move for the remainder. Had I thought that I'd do this shot before I left on the hike and had I had more time to actually shoot it, I'd change a few things. First, the color of my shirt and pants. They're too close to the red/browns in the slot itself. A ghost needs to contrast its background. Second, I would tried more variations of how long to stay still and how fast I moved when I did move (there are almost infinite variations that could be done here, but I only had time to try a couple). Third, I would have raked the sand and only had footprints where the ghost is moving. Finally, I probably would have played with graduated filters or flash or both to change some of the lighting contours on the walls of the slot. Of course, if I had really had more time, I would have just gone all the way in to the part that gives the slot its name ;~). And yes, my hiking friend came through okay, though he didn't do much more than sleep and hydrate for the next 24 hours.
Slow Start to WeekMay 21 (commentary)--I'm still trying to get all the pieces picked up after my major video shoot this past week. I only have nine hours worth of material I've got to get properly managed into the video workflow, plus there are few other odds and ends I've got to do before I can get back to regular function.
That's a polite way of saying it may be a couple of days before there are any new site updates here.
. Everyone knows about the "take card out to ensure that you record the highest resolution video out the HDMI port," right? You're going to forget some day, and there's nothing to remind you. But it doesn't stop there. I count five other major things that can trip you up when you're not looking. One of them is the croc sitting in the water waiting for you to not be paying attention.
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19 May ' 05:45
The problem is made more acute by Nikon's stubborn insistance on how settings banks work (or don't work, as most of us have been saying for years). Yep, you guessed it, the settings you'll be dealing with are scattered between the SHOOTING, CSM, and SETUP menus, which means you can't configure a "Video bank" to ease the pain.
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18 May ' 09:23
Last update: 18 May 2012
Features Versus UsageMay 18 (commentary)--I'm doing a major video project this week, which is letting me flesh out the D4/D800 capabilities a bit more. Here's the bottom line: you can capture superb video, good video, or poor video, but those aren't settings you dial in, they're the result of a lot of attention to detail.
Never have I been more aware of the difference between having features you can set, versus making a shooter's life easier by the camera maker understanding what the user is trying to do. Nikon put in the features. They don't understand what the video shooter is doing. Yes, it's the age old workflow issue all over again, but this time caged with nuances in workflow that extend back into just getting the camera ready to shoot.
Things you need to set are scattered willy-nilly through the extensive menu system, not explained in the Nikon manual, not capable of being set as a logical group, and one of them will almost certainly catch you by the short hairs if you don't cross all T's and dot all I's every time you turn the camera on. Everyone knows about the "take card out to record highest resolution video out the HDMI port," right? You're going to forget some day, and there's nothing to remind you. But it doesn't stop there. I count five other major things that can trip you up when you're not looking. One of them is the croc sitting in the water waiting for you to not be paying attention.
I'll have an article on getting state-of-the-art video out of these cameras some time next week. In the meantime, if anybody at Nikon is listening: just because a user can doesn't mean a user will. If you don't understand that sentence, you don't understand how to create discoverable, reliable, and repeatable UI to a purpose, simple as that. A good tool makes what we're doing and how the camera does it obvious. Sure, we can get clean HDMI, but we're never sure whether we're actually getting that until we review the outboard signal carefully. Yep, another darned set of workflow steps that we don't want or need.
Video is bad enough for workflow as it is. We don't need even more steps and more settings that can cause you grief. This is doubly problematic because the D4/D800 are very portable units. Even with a Ninja hooked up you can be extremely spontaneous and free in movement. But, that spontaneity is broken by all the detail you have to pay attention to.
The problem is made more accute by Nikon's stubborn insistance on how banks work (or don't work, as most of us have been saying for years). Yep, you guessed it, the settings you'll be dealing with are scattered between the SHOOTING, CSM, and SETUP menus, which means you can't configure a "Video bank" to ease the pain.
So, while I appreciate the features—and there are plenty—I don't appreciate what I have to do to fully take advantage of them, particularly when it comes to video. I don't think I'll be alone on this complaint. Sure, some of the long-term video pros are used to dealing with this kind of nonsense, and it's a job creation program for them, too. But it doesn't have to be this way, it shouldn't be this way, and it needs to change if Nikon really wants to get some attention in the video world.
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15 May ' 13:16
Last update: 15 May 2012
Are You Really Locked into Glass?May 15 (commentary)--One common statement I see in emails is that "I'm locked into Nikon (or Canon) glass, thus can't change mounts."
I'm not convinced such a statement stands up to full scrutiny. Most people are falling into the Cost Trap. They bought a lens for US$1000 ten years ago. They can only get US$500 for it if they sold it. This is seen as "losing US$500."
In reality, it means that the use cost of the lens was actually US$50 a year ([cost-resale]/years). Seems pretty inexpensive to me. If someone offered to rent you that lens for US$50 a year, you'd pretty much jump at the deal, right?
Things have two worths: (1) what you can get for it by selling it today; and (2) what you benefited from having it during its lifetime. #1 generally goes down over time, while #2 generally goes up. The balance line of how you make a "monetary decision" changes over time, eventually favoring #2 because #1 for good lenses doesn't usually approach zero.
Now, if you're a constant switcher, dumping everything every generation to jump to a different brand, sure, your costs go up. Consider someone buying US$6000 worth of reasonably high-end gear and then selling it and buying another US$6000 worth of gear when the next generation of equipment comes out. Their use cost is about US$3000 a year, which could easily reach 5x the use cost the ten-year switcher had.
The "lock," therefore, is very short-term. Hold equipment three or more generations of camera, and frankly I don't see a lock. Switch every time a maker issues a press release, and you'd be beyond foolish because you're ignoring the cost of use (e.g. locked).
Not that I advocate switching mounts, especially between the big two (Canon and Nikon). One or the other brand tends to have some advantage at any given time, but over a longer period of time, the distinction isn't all that dramatic. Better to be a little patient and keep driving your use costs down.
Jumping to a different class of camera is a little different. Whether you're going DX->FX or DX->mirrorless, you're probably jumping because of something that can't be matched by future generations of your camera.
Within any given sensor size, if you're only an occasional switcher, you're probably not locked, you're just over valuing what you'll get paid for selling it versus what you gained from owning and using it. Of course, if you never used it...
Small clarification. There was one post about this article on dpreview that pointed out a point I didn't make fully clear here. I'm writing about peak lens performance in this article (and peek performance, as in peeking at pixels). Some people do indeed get confused, as that poster wrote. If we print a D3, D3x, D4, and D800 image all at 14" wide, diffraction isn't going to limit the D3x or D800 image (it's buried too deeply in the print's pixels where you can't see it). As I noted at the beginning of the article, more resolution is always good. While I write for sophisticated shooters who know these things, I forget sometimes that there are others trying to get up to that level that might not have yet learned everything I assume or are confused by something I write because they're missing a piece of information.
One reason why Galen was often criticized by other photographers during his career was that those (medium and large format) photographers felt that he was limiting his potential gallery print size by using a smaller capture format. The diffraction would show up in very large prints because you were magnifying the small frame more to get the big print (compared to 645 or 4x5). Yet he was very careful to understand just how far he could go, and pretty much went right up to the edge by practicing great shot discipline and understanding the balance between DOF and diffraction in the equipment he was using. I'm reminded of that when I use my D800: with care I can push into what used to be the sole territory of medium format. But push too far and things like diffraction starts to show.
So let me state this: there will be times when it is worth going into diffraction-limited apertures to capture more DOF. As I noted, more resolution is always good, and done right you should gain more from the DOF than you lose from the diffraction. But once diffraction is the primary limiting factor of your len's resolving power, the gains from the extra resolution start to fall. A lot of people are buying D800's to "print big." Those people, especially, need to understand the gains and losses they're going to encounter, and to do what Galen did: carefully balance them.
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14 May ' 18:09
Last update: 14 May 2012
Completeness. Yes, I have a version of this image with the near hoodoos complete. Though it has more, it lacks something. Funny how that works sometimes. I talk a lot about depth cues in images. Sometimes it isn't just focus that gives you that cue. Our brains work using big/small, too. Big is near, small is far. By cutting off the forward hoodoos I don't give you the chance to decide how big they are. You have to guess at their size, and our brains often will decide that the incomplete thing is actually bigger than it really is, which is good, because that means we fool the brain into thinking it's closer, too.
D800 Lens ChoiceMay 14It seems a lot of readers are grappling with which midrange zoom to stick on a D800. The commonly cited choices are 24-70mm f/2.8, 24-120mm f/4, and 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6.
Give me a moment. I need to put my flak suit on, buckle my helmet, and check the protective sandbags I'm crouched behind. Ah yes, all good.
All the things you read about resolution are both right and wrong. We've been in a tricky area with DSLRs lately, and it's going to stay tricky until we get far higher pixel counts. More resolution is always good, as you lose nothing and potentially gain something. But we're currently negotiating a specific rapid that has some hidden rocks we need to be aware of. (Can you tell I just got back from that Grand Canyon trip?)
In particular, diffraction is at the heart of some of the confusion. The irony is that compact cameras negotiated this rapid long, long ago. The small sensor size and huge pixel counts we've had most of this decade in compact cameras means that they're all pretty much efficient diffraction recorders. In other words, if you stop down the aperture at all, you record more diffraction on those compact cameras. The lens opening itself, even at maximum aperture, is already contributing diffraction to every compact camera's recording of detail. In fact, it acts like an AA filter, so guess what, you can remove the AA filter (or at least temper it considerably).
Back when we had 6mp DX or 12mp FX cameras, we didn't really have to worry much about diffraction impacts. At the extreme small apertures you could provoke diffraction far enough that it extended across the Bayer pattern enough to be fully realized, but at most apertures it wasn't an issue worth stressing over.
At 36mp on the D800, though, diffraction impacts start recording noticeably at f/8 and above. So we have about half the typically used apertures (f/2.8, 4, 5.6) where we don't have to worry much about diffraction, and half (f/8, f/11, f/16) where we do.
Now let's put another variable into play: maximum performance of a lens. Typically, that's one or two stops down from maximum aperture. And there's the rub. With the 24-70mm we're at f/4 or f/5.6 for optimal results and thus "okay." With the 24-120mm we're at f/5.6 or f/8 for optimal results and venturing into diffraction land. With the 28-300mm much of the range we're at f/8 or f/11 and definitely in diffraction land.
So here's why I put my flak jacket and helmet on and ducked behind the sandbags: different shooters are going to come to different conclusions about those three lenses on the D800.
Let's assume for a moment that they're all "equal" in performance at the same focal length. Let's pick 50mm and assume further that we need to stop down one stop for "picture perfect" results from our lens candidates. The 24-70mm is f/4, the 24-120mm is f/5.6, the 28-300mm is f/6.3. Yeah, I picked this case for a reason: the 24-70mm is not recording visible diffraction (it's there, it's just not a key influencer in final results). The 24-120mm got into the realm where some people say they see a difference on a D800, though a minimal one. The 28-300mm is further up that realm and more people will notice a small difference when pixel peeping.
Put a different way, faster apertures give you more leeway to avoid visible diffraction impacts. Couple this with the fact that the prices on these lenses predict a level of performance, too, and we get to this: the 24-70mm is the best mid-range zoom to put on your D800. Duck!
Phew, that one almost hit me.
Okay, but there's another way to use a D800: shoot at 36mp and reduce in size to 12mp or 18mp. Done properly, the diffraction problem pretty much goes away and these lenses are back to performing like they're on a D3 or D4, which is to say that even the 28-300mm looks pretty darned good. Duck!
Nah, Nah, missed me.
In reality, all three lenses are pretty good. The 24-70mm has some small faults, the 24-120mm very few more, and the 28-300mm surprisingly only a few more. But those faults do add up. On MTF tests, they array like this: 24-70mm best, 28-300mm worst. So how much worse is worse? As much as 20% in terms of absolute numbers averaged over the frame, but some of that is that the 28-300mm's best results occur at f/8, where diffraction is robbing it of a bit of performance, while the other lenses both top out at somewhere around f/5.6, where diffraction isn't yet a major factor.
I'm always reluctant to quote numbers, though, as my photographs don't consist of numbers ;~). If you can live with f/8 as your smallest aperture, the 28-300mm may be good enough that you won't notice the difference. Duck!
Phew, that one almost hit me.
Come on guys, I said "may not notice the difference." I didn't say there was no difference.
Back in the film days, Galen Rowell almost never shot below f/11. Why? Because of diffraction. I suspect that if we pixel peeped as thoroughly then as we do now, Galen might have upped that to closer to f/8. Basically, he was trying to balance depth of field with diffraction, and I think the D800 puts us right back in the same realm as film. If you're shooting at f/11 to get DOF, it might not make a huge difference which lens you're shooting with. Duck!
Phew, you almost hit me again.
Of course, the reason to buy a D800 is...well, what the reason to buy a D800? If you answer "resolution," then I suspect that you need to stay under f/8 and you will definitely find that the 24-70mm puts up slightly better numbers than the 24-120mm, so you automatically put yourself in the "must buy 24-70mm" camp. Duck!
Ha Ha! Didn't even come close to hitting me.
I suspect that people are stressing over the wrong thing. Yes, you can select a lens that takes away some of what the D800 gains you, but if you're jumping from a 12mp camera to 36mp, is that really going to hurt you?
But so far we've just talked about resolution (and its cousin sharpness). Don't these lenses have other attributes that come into play?
Sure. Some of you will reject the 24-120mm because of its vignetting, for example, which is at least a stop wide open (and two stops at 24mm) and at least two thirds of a stop at f/5.6. Remember, you're going to be avoiding f/8, Duck!
Wow, that one came in fast and low.
The linear distortion and chromatic aberration production is relatively high on all these lenses. The 24-120mm isn't particularly better or worse than the 24-70mm. The 28-300mm is slightly worse at a few of those things (linear distortion at the extremes) and slightly better at others. Personally, none of those attributes bother me all that much as they're pretty all correctable after the fact.
Hey! That was a cheap shot, I didn't even say Duck! Fortunately it bounced off me.
For me, it all comes back to center and edge performance, and there the lenses stack up exactly as you'd expect: (1) 24-70mm, (2) 24-120mm, (3) 28-300mm. In particular, the 24-70mm has extremely strong central performance, weak corner performance at maximum aperture that rapidly gets to very good. The 24-120mm has surpisingly good center performance wide open, though at most focal lengths the corners are far weaker, but those corners are quite good up to about 50mm once you get to f/5.6 or smaller. The 120mm performance is good in the center, weak in the edges, pretty much no matter which aperture you pick. The 28-300mm is the weakest in the center but still very good (better than I expected and strong enough for some to consider even on a D800), but at anything less than f/8 the corners are very weak. At above f/8 the lens is diffraction limited in what it can do and isn't far off from the rest.
So my preference is exactly as you might think it is and the price points suggest: (1) 24-70mm, (2) 24-120mm, and (3) 28-300mm.
Let me check my helmet for a moment. I think I'll put on another layer of flak protection.
Buy the 24-70mm. While it has plenty of modest weaknesses, that extra stop actually buys you a bit of performance at f/4 (plus, of course, you have f/2.8 ;~). If you're on a budget or can live with the edges, okay, buy the 24-120mm. It's surprisingly good on the D800, enough so that the extra focal length starts to make it highly tempting, even if that focal length is the weakest part of the lens. Plus you've got VR.
Whoa, almost didn't see that shot coming. Fortunately I'm immune to that shot, as I've long said that the 24-70mm needs VR.
The 28-300mm? No, I'll pass. I know a lot of people like the notion of one-lens-does-everything, but that seems to me to be in direct contradiction to the core of what the D800 is. I really don't see the point of buying the DSLR with arguably the best image quality available and then slapping it with the penalty of less capable glass (probably with a protective filter out front that further reduces capability).
Hey, was that a Swiss Army Knife someone attacked me with?
There's another option out there, though. Get the upcoming 28mm f/1.8G, plus the existing 50mm f/1.8G and 85mm f/1.8G. Yes, f/1.8. Another hint at what I'm likely to write in future reviews: I like the 85mm f/1.8G better than the f/1.4G, and I've already written that I prefer the 50mm f/1.8G over the f/1.4G because of focus speed. I'm betting that the 28mm will round out this prime powerhouse trio. And it'll chase away most of those demons you see in the corners of the zooms. If you're not on a budget and don't mind manual focus, the Zeiss ZF.2 primes will polish those D800 pixels even more. A 21/25mm, 50mm, 100mm Zeiss combo basically nets you the best you can do right now on a D800.
This also brings me to my last thought before I duck down deep behind my bunker: maybe the 24-120mm f/4 is the right choice. Coupled with three primes, what would you be missing?
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11 May ' 16:56
. Pretty much everything you need to know is in that document (if there's something that isn't that you need an answer to, either call the number in the document or drop me an email with the question).
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11 May ' 05:30
Last update: 11 May 2012
CardsMay 11 (commentary)--A reader asked me a good question yesterday: with the proliferation of card formats (XQD, CompactFlash, Secure Digital) which should they invest in?
Unfortunately it's a trick question. Anyone looking backwards will tell you that card formats/abilities aren't secure enough for long-term investment. Had you bought a bunch of state-of-the-art cards five years ago, today's cameras would all perform less than optimally with them. If you're a deliberate, slow-paced, one-shot-at-a-time shooter, that might not be a big penalty, but if you're thinking about current and future performance, old cards should be retired.
Unfortunately, Nikon has completely garbled (and will continue to garble) the whole subject with their lineup of cameras. Simply put:
- D4 — You bought the camera for performance, and the clear winner here is XQD cards. At the moment you get one free with the camera, so it's easy enough to compare it with your best CompactFlash card. I'll bet the XQD card wins every time.
- D800 — A trickier battle, but CompactFlash wins for still performance, at least if you have the state-of-the-art (1000x). The SD side of the camera, despite being UHS-1 compliant, doesn't match the CompactFlash side performance with state-of-the-art cards (1000x CF, 95MBs SD). Exception: video, where I'd tend to use SD.
- D7000 — dual SD basically made all the upgraders junk their CompactFlash cards for Secure Digital cards.
In essence, there's no consistency in Nikon's lineup or thinking, and I don't believe we'll have any more consistency with the next couple of models being introduced (other than SecureDigital is the choice for lower end cameras).
But again, it's a trick question. You sacrifice ultimate performance if you use cards from your two-year camera in your new camera because write performance is consistently moving upwards. A different way of putting this is: buy a small number of new state-of-the-art cards with your new state-of-the-art camera. For me, that meant buying 3 XQD cards and some new CompactFlash for my D4, and some new SD cards for my D800 (I can use the CompactFlash I bought for my D4 on my D800). Even when the card slot is the same as what you've got (say a D3000 user moving up to a D7000), you still should look at the state-of-the-art in card performance at the time your new camera was introduced and buy a couple of those. That advice is even more important if you're one of those that ever fills the buffer.
Maybe I Should Ask for More Things
May 10 (commentary)--Let's see, I asked for a large sensor compact camera, and now we have five (Leica X1/X2, Sigma DP1, DP2, Canon G1x). I asked for a monochrome camera and today we got just that (Leica M-Monochrom). Even "Communicating" seems to be the word of the day for new camera intros (still waiting on Programmable and Modular, though). I guess I'm going to have to think further into the future and ask for more ;~). -
10 May ' 18:08
Last update: 10 May 2012
Nikon is a Growth CompanyMay 10 (news)--Nikon is probably the most transparent of the camera companies in terms of information about camera sales, probably because most of their sales are in cameras (64% this year, compare that to Sony's 8%). Today they reported their full fiscal year numbers (fiscal year ended March 31st).
While Nikon was impacted directly by the Thailand flood, they actually reported an extraordinary gain (due to insurance proceeds), though this doesn't include the impact it had on DSLR sales.
Surprisingly, Nikon managed to beat their previous estimates (made only a couple of months ago) in the Imaging group. They finished the year with 587b yen in imaging sales, and a strong 54b yen profit. Nikon sold 4.74m DSLRs and mirrorless (compared to 4.29m last year; and remember, most of their DSLRs are made in Thailand), 7.13m lenses (compared to 6.36m last year), and a whopping 17.37m Coolpix (compared to 14.26m last year). Nikon claims 29% of the interchangeable lens camera market (DSLR and mirrorless), 17.5% of the compact camera market, and 19% of the overall camera market. Nikon described sales of the Nikon 1 model as "brisk."
Nikon also makes forward predictions. They expect camera sales to increase 24% and profits 48% in the coming year. Yeah, you read that right. Nikon thinks they're a growth company. Let's put that in numbers: DSLRs and mirrorless sales in the coming year: 7m units (up 48% over last year). Compact camera sales: 18m units (up 3.7% over last year). Coupled with the CIPA estimates for industry wide sales, that would put Nikon's market share for DSLR/mirrorless at 37% and their overall camera market share at 22%, both significant gains in what is a flat camera market. Heck, if that weren't enough, Nikon expects to sell 10m lenses in the coming year (another 40% increase).
Because yen value is an important part of forward estimates, here's Nikon's numbers there: 80 yen to the dollar and 105 yen to the Euro: basically no substantive change expected in the coming year, which implies no yen appreciation price increases in the coming year.
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09 May ' 12:00
Last update: 9 May 2012
Botswana Workshop
May 9 (news)--My August 2013 workshop and safari in Botswana is now open for registration. Other than the changes in park fees and internal airfare (over which we have no control), we've been able to keep the costs from rising from the 2010 workshop. I think it would be tough to top this trip at the cost.If you want details, you can find the PDF description of the workshop here. Warning, it's a 40MB+ file, so it'll take a bit of time to download. But pretty much everything you need to know is in that document (if there's something that isn't that you need an answer to, either call the number in the document or drop me an email with the question).
Hurry, because as I write this the workshop is already half full. Wait, how does that happen when I'm just now announcing the details? Simple, I gave my former workshop students a couple of days head start. I do try to reward my former customers, and I'll be doing more of that in the future, as I think it's the right thing to do, especially when the resource is scarce.
If you want to know about my other planned workshops, here's the current 411:
- South Africa is an extremely small trip (6), and already has a wait list, so I'm not going to promote it except to former workshop students at this time.
- Galapagos is slowly moving towards some final decisions. We've changed boats, we've changed the itinerary, we've changed a lot of things, but it's all starting to lock down now and I should be publishing that itinerary and opening up registration within a month.
- Patagonia and New Zealand are both at stage one of planning, and it will be some time before I have any details. Given that we're talking about workshops at the end of 2014 or start of 2015, there's no rush; I'd rather get things done right rather than lock into something I later decide isn't optimal.
I can't really promise anything other than those four. Here in the US, I really don't like to do large scale workshops (more than 6 students) and small ones have turned out to be economically unfeasible. I can't really do lots of big International workshops, as they chew up large chunks of time. So I'll continue on the two-international-workshop-a-year schedule for the foreseeable future. I'll continue to look at other options, as well, but for now, what you see is what you'll get.
Thom is currently planning a few workshops for 2013 and 2014. At present, the planned schedule is:
May 2013: South Africa (max 6 full) August 2013: Botswana (max 14) March 2014: Galapagos (max 14) Nov/Dec 2014: New Zealand (max 14) March 2015: Patagonia (max 14)
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07 May ' 09:49
Last update: 7 May 2012
Still Trying. Another professional photographer once asserted to me that "you can never create a good water picture from above looking downstream." I'm not 100% sure of whether I believe that to be true or not, but every time I'm around water, I spend time trying to disprove the statement (thus this week's image). The teaching point this time is an unusual one, because I'm going to tell you to believe me ;~). Whenever you hear an assertion—something I make a lot in these short teaching points—don't just nod your head and say "yes Sir Thom, I'll do as you say." No, the real response should be almost the opposite: try to prove the teacher wrong (yes, that attitude made me a real hellacious student to find in your class, but that's another story for another day). The higher level the thought is, the more you should test it to make sure it is relevant to what you're trying to accomplish or what you think. Many of my Aha! experiences in life have come from not just accepting some teaching lesson as is, but actually challenging it and trying to apply it myself. Try critical thinking and hypothesis testing as opposed to blindly following the leader. You may indeed find that your teacher/mentor is most of the time leading you down the right path. But it's that time when you discover even a small flaw in the teaching that you suddenly rise above and stand on the shoulders of those who came before you. There's a popular notion that everything is a remix (see this), but it's how you perform that remix that's important. Start with good ingredients (hopefully my teaching is one of those) but invent your own recipes.
Users versus UnitsMay 7I called Engadget on the carpet for sloppy reporting (small part of next story). Some of you have tried to call me on the carpet for that. So let me restate things.
First, I wasn't picking on Engadget, per se. They just were the first of what how has become several to commit the sin I was pointing out. Most of the stories about this problem that have appeared to date appear to be paraphrases of the original PDN story. Why a paraphrase? Because then it looks like you're doing your own reporting, not quoting someone else's story verbatim. Worse still, Engadget lists their source as Nikon Rumors, who correctly and clearly quoted the PDN story. Bonus points for Nikon Rumors; Negative points for Engadget.
However, in doing all that paraphrasing, a key word got changed by Engadget, and now by Galbraith's site and others, too: units are not users.
The original PDN story wrote "a small number of users." Engadget wrote "a 'small number' of units." There is a difference, and the nuance is important here in understanding what the problem might be.
Highlights and RGB Histogram are set to a default setting of Off. If you leave your D4 or D800 set to the defaults, you won't experience a problem. If you turn those things on (which is one of my recommendations in my books and something a pro would tend to do), some of you will lock up your camera eventually. Nikon used the term "small number of users" in their response to PDN very pointedly, I think. They meant users who turn those features on, and even then a subset of them.
There are two possibilities: (1) it indeed is a "units" problem, which would tend to imply that there's a part failure in some cameras; or (2) it is a "users" problem, likely meaning that it's a firmware issue that won't be triggered unless you set those two Display settings off their defaults. I'll vote for #2, as I don't think there's a separate part involved in the Highlights and RGB Histogram display.
So let's do some real reporting. I took both my D4 and D800 and ran 2000 shots on both, 1000 first with Highlights/RGB Histogram off (default), then 1000 with those settings turned on. I performed random reviews, different camera settings, shot a variety of subjects, and a few other odds and ends I'd expect people to do in shooting that many images. Neither camera locked up.
So what does that prove? Nothing, really. It still could be "users" or "units." That would be true regardless of whether my camera locked up in my test or not.
However, Nikon is generally careful in their wording, so I'll continue to use the word "users" in the same context they did. That's what the original story that started this all had as the quote, after all. Like me, PDN seems to think it's a firmware problem (they write "[firmware update] seems likely").
This all gets me back to my next story: one problem with the Internet is the tendency towards false positives. Everyone wants to beat everyone else to stories. Plus, because once you start a news site it becomes a black hole (e.g. sucks up all news content constantly), the tendency to jump on a "story" is doubled.
The problem is that the original expression of something might not be fully accurate. Certainly paraphrasing the original ex per es si on can lead to inaccuracies. By the time an actual, accurate statement verifies something, the Internet is often filled with plenty of conflicting information derived from that first "gotta publish" spurt. This is one reason why I believe camera companies need to be more forthcoming when they discover problems: the Internet vagaries can be worse than the actual problem. Nikon probably needed to issue a "Don't use Highlights/RGB Histogram until we fix the firmware" statement. Followed by a "remove the battery and put it back in" statement "if you do encounter the problem." There, done. If someone misquotes it on the Internet, jump on them to fix their mistake. No serious user is going to be upset by that type of problem on a brand new complicated camera, especially if a quick fix is promised. They're going to thank the camera company for making it less likely that they miss a key shot.
I'm not 100% accurate. I don't know anyone that is. But I try to wait until I have real information that's useful before passing it on. I try to correct previous misstatements and those of others, as well. I'm not perfect at that, but I think I have a pretty good track record there.
All those asking for me to verify production issues therefore will have a bit of a wait: I can't actually do that until they're really verified, after all. That was the point of the next story. I test, I research, I ask questions of others (including the camera makers), I report what I find when I'm sure of what I've found. Simple as that.
In terms of the problem being reported, this user and his units have not triggered, and thus not verified, the problem yet.
D4 and D800 that, when you have Highlights and RGB histogram active (my usual recommendation and what most pros would have set), the D4 and D800 will experience random lockups. The quick fix is to turn those things off. The long term fix will likely be a firmware update. Nikon has acknowledged a problem, and I have no doubt that they'll act quickly to put together this and a few other "fixes" into a firmware update soon.
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