My first D-200 pics

Hi,

I got my Nexus housing from Yuzo last week & took some pictures.

Sam

few more pictures.

All pics taken at Anilao, Phillipines using

D-200

105mm Micro

Nexus housing

Woody's diopter

SB-800 Strobe

Fish-eye target light

Sam

Hi Sam, great sharpness and detail. Thanks for posting. Some pictures look very saturated to me, especially the fire goby, what saturation settings do you use?

Luiz

P.S.: If they look fine to you, it maybe just a matter of monitor calibration. Mine is not calibrated.

I think that the shots look very film like. If you had told me that they were taken on Velvia I would have believed you.

Alex

Yes, I agree Alex, that's why I asked what his settings were. But I am sure that those photos have a great chance of being considered "artificially over-saturated" by contest judges (but nothing would happen if they were slides, no matter what the saturation was). What do you think?

Luiz

Thanks for good comments. My first thought was exactly the same 'film like'. I am at work now & will post my settings at home.

I find them a bit dark, but if you look at some of your old slides, Luiz, I don't think that you will find them over saturated.

I also think a couple are a bit dark - which makes them look more saturated too. When I use the Nikon speedlights I always set them at +0.7 as they do tend to underexpose (on land that is).

Alex

My settings were;

Image Size:M

JPEG Compression: Optimal

White Balance: A

ISO:100

Optimize Image:More Vivid

Color Space:sRGB

Image Quality:FINE

LCD Brightness:-1

I agree with Alex on SB-800. I felt little dark & ended up shooting at ISO200 (like when I was using D-70) & got little better.

Sam

These 2 pics were little better.

Sam,

Just dial in some flash compensation on the SB800 and it should be fine. And stick at ISO 200.

Alex

The "More Vivid" setting of the D200 makes colo(U)rs scream, and is probably why these are looking a tad oversaturated.

For example, see this very quick and dirty composite I just made of my rather nice cup of tea. Each shot was exposed identically, the only difference being the in camera image optimization setting from normal to softer (labelled). The mug was being lit by an off camera SB800, auto white balance, aperture priority @f8 so that the flash is the major light source.

More vivid is just a bit too extreme for my tastes.

All,

Thanks to great advices. I will surely try different setup next time.

Another thing I suspect is TTL setting on SB-800. I usually used just TTL mode with D-70 & never had this problem. I found I was using TTL-BL (TTL-Balance) mode this time. It is new toy & I am learning a lot.

Sam

Vivid is nice!

Alex

Why aren't you shooting in RAW?......then all these settings are meaningless and you can control your colors as you like?

Karl

Karl,

I took 5-6K RAW pics with D70 but, worried about file size on D200.

I will try RAW on my next trip in May.

Sam

I understand about the file sizes......I upgraded to 4gb cards with the D200.....2gb were fine with the D70

Karl

Does the contouring/shading on the "more vivid" look clearer to anyone else ... especially on the "white" area of the mug?

... interesting.

Chris-

I thought the More Vivid looked less clear (kinda splotchy) on my monitor...especially in the greens.... of course it could be my 4 year old flat screen montior...

Either way, I would just shoot with normal mode and do all post processing in photoshop. I think the jpegs coming out of my d2x, and I would imagine d200 are fabulous, needing very little work in photoshop.

M.

I actually find the in camera "normal" to be too flat. I was an E100VS and E100SW fan while shooting film, and find the "vivid" to be a little closer to those emulsions. "More vivid" does actually look a little blotchy in big areas of green. As I'm currently without good raw support for the D200, I have been shooting RAW+Fine JPG and working from the JPGS.

Another example of the differences I am seeing:

Normal is very definitely flatter out of the camera than the scene in front of the camera (not great art, but the sky was kind of cool ). Vivid is closer to what I would have expected from E100VS, it is the one I personally prefer. In reality the colours were not quite that saturated and the sky had more of a greenish blue tinge.

Note the histograms in the lower left corners. The camera is compressing the blues and lifting the reds/greens.