Lightroom and Capture NX
Capture NX is THE best RAW editor for Nikon DSLRs period.
It however, does not offer any DAM capabilities – which is where Lightroom comes in. LR is not great for this, but is the best out there for the time being.
You can configure NX to be an external editor, and injest images to LR, use your special command to send a TIFF file to NX to have it tweaked externally. However, except for the U-Point thingie – you will probably not get anything else with this approach. I think i can do the same with Photoshop instead and skip NX altogether.
If LR allowed sending NEF files directly to an external editor – that would be great! however, i LR being a RAW editor as well – i understand Adobe’s intentions of not providing this option (In fact, LR version 1.2+ has its own U-Point technology – called TAT). Read more
Thoughts for the week…
- A few weeks ago, i posted an image that i took recently to a forum and it got some pretty interesting feedback. It seems that people are generally divided when it comes to use of Photoshop for post-processing. These are probably the same people that shot film, and gave their film to a lab for processing. These are probably the same people that shoot JPEG as well. I have no comments on this – this is not bad, but it so happens that this is leads to “thinking inside the box”, which is also creative – but difficult and challenging, due to the fact that “photography”, unlike painting or other forms of visual art, is a “you get what you see” media. Also – i have nothing against Photoshop – in fact, i am proud to say that i use it on 100% of my images. After all, i am not doing forensic or journalistic photography.
- I recently got a Canon G9 – my Canon G3 is Infrared only, and my other other camera is a SLR. I badly needed a P&S camera, and having debated for a while between Ricoh GRD/GX100 and Canon G9, i decided on the G9 simply because, i was familiar with the controls (from my previous experience with G3), the ease of use for my wife (who was the primary user of this camera) and the advanced controls it offers if required (for me – such as RAW, Manual everything).
- If anyone is interested – my ACR calibration for xrite color target for G9 is as follows:
- Shadow Tint: 0
Red Hue: -13
Red Sat: 16
Green Hue: -2
Green Sat: -6
Blue Hue: 11
Blue Sat: -10
- Shadow Tint: 0
- I love the G9’s compactness – yet, giving me these controls. Its an excellent camera for street photography. Here are a few things about shooting street photography:
- Turn off the AF-Assist beam. That thing is distracting.
- Save custom settings for C1 = Av, f4, MF – set at 10 feet, C2= Tv, 1/125, MF – set at 10 feet
- Do not shoot at widest zoom – the G9 has too much barrel distortion at this setting.
- Turn off the LCD display.
- While i mostly shoot with Av – there are situations like inside a building when the Av mode just dont cut it – those times you might need to go with C2 – and pull back exposure in post processing.
- I normally shoot at ISO400 (Tri-x setting) – i have even shot at ISO 1600 (The couple above) with good results. I use ND filter option to “ON” if you are shooting in bright sunlight.
- Shoot RAW (Why did you pay all that extra money if you didnt need this – you could have just gotten that 870IS and its every bit as good)
- If you have a place to place the camera (like a gorilla pod), just set the camera to Custom Timer – set for 10 sec duration, 10 shots – and expect the unexpected.
New Photoblog
Let me tell you something. Its not easy to blog, let alone – setup a site to do it as well. Being a geek that i am – i have done it – many times now.
I have a new photoblog – here. The idea was to present one image at a time, in bigger size – with details on what the image means to me, and possibly explaining how and/or why i took it.
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By N2H
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