two questions re: manual focus and viewfinder

I'm making the jump to DSLR from low end pro video cameras and am slowly figuring out the differences interchangeable lenses make.

I'm really surprised my new D3300 doesn't have anything to help focus. Most camcorders, even at the consumer level, now come with focus peaking or zoom focusing. Is there something on this camera I haven't uncovered yet? Or is it just up to my ability to squint at the viewfinder/LCD?

Also, I don't understand at all why I can't see my shutter/aperture/ISO aren't visible in the viewfinder. I have to look at the picture I just took to see how what my settings look like. This seems like I'm doing something really, really wrong. Is there some setting to make the viewfinder functional for more than framing?

Thanks,
Jay

Go thru the manual !!
All the necessary info is displayed in the viewfinder..ISO shutter Fstops

For helping with focus..u can try using live view and zooming IN on what you want in focus and then take the pic

Play around with the camera..to discover features and capability

Sent from my GT-I9070 using Tapatalk 2

JyBorg said:

Also, I don't understand at all why I can't see my shutter/aperture/ISO aren't visible in the viewfinder. I have to look at the picture I just took to see how what my settings look like. This seems like I'm doing something really, really wrong. Is there some setting to make the viewfinder functional for more than framing?

Thanks,
Jay

Click to expand...

They are visible. At the bottom of your viewfinder all that info is displayed. I don't know if it can be turned off but in mine it's all there. To align anything, just use the focus points you see in the viewfinder.

If you don't have those either, or there's something wrong with the cam or you need reading glasses. Try to adjust the diopter value at the viewfinder, maybe that is set wrong.

adityasoman said:

Go thru the manual !!
All the necessary info is displayed in the viewfinder..ISO shutter Fstops

Click to expand...

J-see said:

They are visible. At the bottom of your viewfinder all that info is displayed. I don't know if it can be turned off but in mine it's all there. To align anything, just use the focus points you see in the viewfinder.

If you don't have those either, or there's something wrong with the cam or you need reading glasses. Try to adjust the diopter value at the viewfinder, maybe that is set wrong.

Click to expand...

I didn't mean the numbers, I mean I visually cannot see the changes to the image through the viewfinder. Do you guys (still photographers) only go by the numbers and the metering? I guess I can see that if you want a flat, properly exposed image you can manipulate in post, but what if you guys want to do some high contrast pics with deep shadows and blown whites? Would you be able to do it in camera? I guess you could, with enough confidence, knowledge and set-up. I think the manual mentions Active-D here.

I guess I didn't realize just how integral meters were in still photography.

The viewfinder isn't digital if that's what you mean. Any changes in cam have no effect on the image you see. It's old school.

You can check the histogram of a shot taken and then adjust exposure to compensate for clipping. I take most shots without checking since I know I can adjust exposure compensation up to 2 stops in both directions and still do what I want with it in LR. Not all shots of course.

I tried about every setting up to their max and then checked what I could or couldn't do in post. That's my guideline when setting exposure.

For high contrast shots; if I want to salvage light, I overexpose, if I want to salvage dark, I underexpose. Simply use exposure compensation for that. The shots your normalize in post. How much depends on the situation, the cam and your ability in processing.

adityasoman said:

For helping with focus..u can try using live view and zooming IN on what you want in focus and then take the pic

Play around with the camera..to discover features and capability

Click to expand...

I'm looking and I can't find a way to punch in and focus. Do you mean to physically zoom in on the lenses? Ohhhh man that makes perfect sense. That's what we had to do on those old Canon XL2 video cameras. All the newer digital stuff doesn't focus like that, but it makes sense that still cameras still do.

I guess the only way you can reliably focus prime lenses is by measuring. Not going to be eyeballing those.

I use my D3300 as night cam these days.

Here's what you could call a high contrast shot. Total darkness trying to capture as much light as possible. I do that by overexposing.

Shot SOOC:



Current stage in LR processing:



I overexposed 5 stops in LR to show the only data I lost in this capture. All that's green and black (besides the grass) is data that got clipped. All the rest I can normalize and use.



You can do a great deal with the cams there days but you need to know how to tweak the settings and get out of the shot what you need in post.

J-see said:

The viewfinder isn't digital if that's what you mean. Any changes in cam have no effect on the image you see. It's old school.

Click to expand...

Just realizing that! I've been pampered, new school style.

For high contrast shots; if I want to salvage light, I overexpose, if I want to salvage dark, I underexpose. Simply use exposure compensation for that. The shots your normalize in post. How much depends on the situation, the cam and your ability in processing.

Click to expand...

I'm going to have to figure out the best way to get the visual style I like on the DSLRs. I like deep blacks and intense whites in the same shot and I typically eyeball it by bathing the shot in light and just stopping down until I like the way it looks.

This is the visual style I gravitate to:

J-see said:

I use my D3300 as night cam these days.

Here's what you could call a high contrast shot. Total darkness trying to capture as much light as possible. I do that by overexposing.

Shot SOOC:

View attachment 127285

Current stage in LR processing:

View attachment 127286

I overexposed 5 stops in LR to show the only data I lost in this capture. All that's green and black (besides the grass) is data that got clipped. All the rest I can normalize and use.

View attachment 127287

You can do a great deal with the cams there days but you need to know how to tweak the settings and get out of the shot what you need in post.

Click to expand...

Wow. That is amazing. Based on me playing around with the D3300 since I got it I had no idea the camera could preserve that much information in the dark. So what did you do to get that? Long exposure, fast lens opened up, iso on Hi+?

JyBorg said:

Wow. That is amazing. Based on me playing around with the D3300 since I got it I had no idea the camera could preserve that much information in the dark. So what did you do to get that? Long exposure, fast lens opened up, iso on Hi+?

Click to expand...

I only shoot ISO 100 for these night scenes at as long exposure as possible (30 seconds). Depending upon how much light is present, I overexpose to get as much in as I possibly can without clipping the other side too much. The D3300 usually can handle two stops fine. Aperture I set as if it were day. I still want my sharpness and DOF.

Night shots are really about light. The dark just serves as contrast to make it shine. The rest is processing in Lightroom.

J-see said:

I only shoot ISO 100 for these night scenes at as long exposure as possible (30 seconds). Depending upon how much light is present, I overexpose to get as much in as I possibly can without clipping the other side too much. The D3300 usually can handle two stops fine. Aperture I set as if it were day. I still want my sharpness and DOF.

Night shots are really about light. The dark just serves as contrast to make it shine. The rest is processing in Lightroom.

Click to expand...

I'm stunned that you shot this on 100 iso. That's truly amazing work.

JyBorg said:

I'm stunned that you shot this on 100 iso. That's truly amazing work.

Click to expand...

Don't praise me, praise the D3300.

Higher ISO is troublesome for these night shots since it increases noise too much. Since time is of no relevance, better low ISO - long shutter than the opposite.

J-see said:

Don't praise me, praise the D3300.

Click to expand...

You can't tell me you're not finessing that like a Swedish masseuse in post.

Higher ISO is troublesome for these night shots since it increases noise too much. Since time is of no relevance, better low ISO - long shutter than the opposite.

Click to expand...

I really thought once you crushed the blacks that info was gone forever. I'm trying to imagine the histogram for that pic. Also, I've got a pic of my lens cap that I might be able to save.

The histogram gives an indication but it isn't really accurate enough to see what got clipped and what not. For me I rely on experience and good guessing for that.

This is the histogram of the SOOC shot.



What I pay most attention to for night shots is the opposite side. Once I start clipping the right side, I have a hard time doing something with the shot. The dark matters less.

Even while it got squeezed to the left, it contains loads of data.

When overexposing it to the max it shows the relevant data and the inevitable losses. Where the histogram shows severe differences and spikes up and down, tones are lost. As expected for this shot, that's in the dark/shadow region. Even when you lost tones there, you can always desaturate the ugly colors and they're usable in night shots.

JyBorg said:

I didn't mean the numbers, I mean I visually cannot see the changes to the image through the viewfinder.

Click to expand...

SLR and DSLR viewfinders show the view with the lens always wide open. This makes the viewfinder brighter and improves focusing (and we can see the subject).

The camera models above the D3300 and D5300 do have a Depth of Field preview button (beside lens, under shutter button), which stops the lens down to working aperture (to view through viewfinder). I doubt many users ever bother with it.

Live View has to show the view stopped down (to be meaningful). However, the lower models typically do not react to changing aperture, it has to be set before entering live view. Top end models can change aperture during recording.

Digital camcorders in contrast .... mighty few affordable ones even show or allow fstop and shutter speed and ISO settings. they are fully automatic. There might be relative compensations, but no absolute values are known.

WayneF said:

The camera models above the D3300 and D5300 do have a Depth of Field preview button (beside lens, under shutter button), which stops the lens down to working aperture (to view through viewfinder). I doubt many users ever bother with it.

Click to expand...

Some users don't even know. I wondered what the hell was clicking when I pushed that button on the D750 but since I didn't notice any direct change and couldn't be bothered to check the manual, I decided to just not push it.

The light-metering in digital cams still gets me. I wonder why they have to finalize the exposure adjustments done according the lightmeter.

The data my sensor collects is only affected by two things: aperture and shutter speed. Regardless how I meter or what I compensate, this data remains identical. Yet when I overexpose a shot and the underexpose an identical one while using the same aperture and shutter, after normalizing the exposure of both in post, they should be pixel-identical. That's what I expect when RAW collects pure data. In my experience this is not true which implies the lightmeter affects the values of the data when stored.

That's exactly the thing that bugs me. I see no logical reason why this has to be done as a permanent adjustment to the RAW file. Why can't it, just like WB or saturation, be done as a digital post-manipulation?

Now it appears the lightmeter turns exposure a bit into something like JPEG mode.

Scratch that for the D750.

I just put it to the test. Even while I can use exposure compensation in manual mode and it says so for the shots in the EXIF data, it does exactly nothing. So in manual I have the illusion of compensation. I guess that's something.

When maxing out the timer in aperture mode, about the same is true for the D750 and the change between 0 and +5EV is that minimal I blame it on slightly moving the cam.

I have to check and test the D3300 again since I remember it being different for that one.

Edit;

And the same is true for the D3300. When maxed out EV doesn't do anything which means I was wrong and the RAW data collected isn't permanently affected by the lightmeter and depends purely on A/S.

I guess we learned another thing.

J-see said:

Scratch that for the D750.

I just put it to the test. Even while I can use exposure compensation in manual mode and it says so for the shots in the EXIF data, it does exactly nothing. So in manual I have the illusion of compensation. I guess that's something.

Click to expand...

Manual is manual, the camera settings are always whatever you set them to be. Compensation does not change the manual that you set, but it does affect the light meter you see, so if you zero it manually to the meter, then it has effect.

If Auto ISO is also on, compensation will adjust it to change the Manual exposure recorded (becomes auto exposure), but it cannot change the actual Manual settings.

If in the other A,S,P automatic modes, of course compensation does change the settings of the camera to zero the meter.

I'm not sure I follow all of your words, but yes, raising ISO means the camera shifts the sensor data higher (histogram is higher).
And increasing Exposure in ACR means the computer shifts the data higher (histogram is higher), essentially the same thing (it is actually the Levels White Point that is shifted, pulling everything up). No real difference (camera is an analog gain, ACR is a digital shift, but both multiply data). Except if the camera ISO does it, you cannot shift it back so easily. ACR Raw can simply do it or not.

Either one also pulls the noise level up.

Exposure compensation doesn't affect the metering in manual Wayne. I took two shots with identical settings besides 0EV and +5EV and they both are identical. I guess the fact I can set the compensation on the D750 is something they didn't bother changing. On the D3300 it's disabled once I go manual so I had hope on the D750 I could affect the metering somehow in manual but alas.

I guess those two lines of code less saved them another 5 cent.