I promise to be good from now on

Ok so I'm a bit lazy and modern technology doesn't punish enough for my sloppy behaviour. With my D800 I get reasonable pictures, but I often feel that I'm leaving something on the table. My main crimes are:

1. Auto white balance rather than using the grey card. I shoot raw and adjust to eye in Lightroom, but I often feel I could do with an honest starting point.

2. My tripod spends too much time in the car. The auto ISO set at 2x focal length returns pretty sharp pictures and the higher ISO on modern sensors does not punish me for it.

3. I don't use my colour checker to set profiles as often as I should.

4. I don't use ND grads to balance the high contrast scenes and meter for the best exposure. The dynamic range of my camera allows me to recover too much in the highlights and shadows.

Points 1-3 are a quick fix, I just need to use them. Point 4 will take a little more practice. I've currently got a Sekonic 478DR incident meter mainly for flash, but it's not ideal for landscape. I've borrowed a 758DR to try the spot meter. I can then measure the mid tones and highlights, select the correct ND grad and then push the whole scene to the right for a good exposure. I'm going to compare a couple of things. Firstly, how the spot meter on my D800 compares the the 758. I know the 758 is 1 degree, but how much do the numbers vary. If the answer is that the 758 is a lot more accurate I may get one.

The second thing to compare is the filters. I currently use Cokin P series. I want to see what impact they have on image quality as they are not the most expensive on the market. I may ultimately need to look at the Lee filters, but I'll check the Cokins first. Has anybody compared both?


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As I look at others' work I look at what they're doing that I'm not, but want to/should be doing, and it really comes down to two things, 1) better glass, and 2) I'm lazy. What you've spoken to above is all about my #2. There are things I should do that would immediately make minor improvements in my photos, but those small things all add up. I've relied far too much on my ability to post-process a mediocre image into something interesting, but I'm never going to save great into spectacular - you need to get that out of the camera and then not lose it in post.

I'm presently in "kick myself in the ass" mode, and I'm looking to make some major adjustments in the way I shoot, much like you've stated. Different steps, though the tripod/monopod thing is one I need to get comfortable with, particularly if I want my birds tack-sharp. Glad I'm not the only one that's feeling like there's much more I could be doing.

Ditto here. Lack of time for me. Would like to o find the time to experment and improve.

This is a great thread for anyone considering moving to the D800 or D810. You really have to have your sh*t together to maximize results as they are a lot less forgiving for sloppy practices. I notice that when I slow down my results (to me) are much better. I'm using my ND and CPL filters much more too. The biggest difference between the D300 and D800 that I've noticed is how high ISO images are dramatically better. I'm in the same boat with y'all regarding needing to use my tripod more often (see previous comment about slowing down).

Eduard said:

This is a great thread for anyone considering moving to the D800 or D810. You really have to have your sh*t together to maximize results as they are a lot less forgiving for sloppy practices. I notice that when I slow down my results (to me) are much better. I'm using my ND and CPL filters much more too. The biggest difference between the D300 and D800 that I've noticed is how high ISO images are dramatically better. I'm in the same boat with y'all regarding needing to use my tripod more often (see previous comment about slowing down).

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Eduard,

I'm inclined to disagree, I think this isn't actually a problem with the modern cameras, in fact it it quite the opposite in my opinion. Basically if I use auto ISO to get a reasonable shutter speed I get reasonably sharp pictures. Because it can handle higher ISOs than my old D300s I get away with that to a large extent as far as noise is concerned. Because the camera has a reasonably good meter and high dynamic range I can recover a lot of detail from less than optimally exposed images. Again the auto WB is not bad and I can tweak that in Lightroom with raw files.

So the end result is that due to the camera being so good (And actually forgiving as far as I'm concerned) I end up with good and sometimes, but less often very good images, certainly from a quality perspective. However what I really want is excellent and consistent results. This is where I need to slow down to get better composition and then do all the things in the original post to to get the best quality image straight from the camera.

The high megapixel cameras like the D800 were surrounded with much BS when they came out and it seemed like only a photography demigod would ever get a decent photo out of them. In truth they take great pictures and if you either use a shutter speed of 2 x 1/focal length or you down size to 16 or 12mp you will get much better images than a D300 even handheld. At least this is my experience

Personally I think a significant percentage of "serious" photographers that own a D800 are still using them like a Nikon from the '70s or '80s. I mentioned using the very sophisticated automation and everyone turns their nose up at me and says, "well if you have so much money to throw around, who am I to criticize you wasting the camera." When in fact, they are not using the strength and automation that has been painstakingly developed. To use a modern camera, you set the auto stuff before a shoot, and then only need to keep an eye open for sometime that might exceed the parameters you set. So, if I go into the dark forest, I might set auto ISO to 800 and shoot P, multi point focus. Since still shots. For birds in a medium bright day, turn on auto tracking and minimum shutter speed 250. Or close ups, ISO 200, A at f22' multi point focus. Nearly always - EV 2/3. Then shoot, don't pay any attention to the settings other then getting outside the range. The exposure objective is to come as close to blowing out the highlights without doing so, not optimizing the exposure ( unless for some silly reason you are only shooting Jpegs) for viewing. So, if you are an amateur trying to take really good photos, you want to let go of manually adjusting anything, unless you get beyond the abilities of the automation and that is getting harder and harder. If you let the camera do what it was designed to do, it will take astonishing photos if you can compose them.