DigitalPro Shooter Volume 1, Issue 12, July 12th, 2002
Welcome to DPS 1-12. We'll give you some tips on how to improve your composition by improving your focusing technique and announce Moose's review of the D100! Plus David reviews the surprising MapPoint 2002 from Microsoft. And as always we'll give you some highlights from the Forums and a DigitalPro for Windows user tip.
One of the most interesting parts of running a Photography website is seeing all the images people post for our comments. It’s very fulfilling to see many of our posters learn and grow in their photographic skills. But certain common problems appear again and again. One—that we all suffer from at least on occasion—is having our subject dead-center in the frame. While it isn’t always wrong to center the subject, you can normally create a better composition with more dynamic tension by arranging the scene differently.
Inevitably when we mention this the photographer replies with a comment about how difficult it is to get a sharp, focused image with an off center subject. There is quite a bit of truth to that, but it’s something everyone should learn. In this article we’ll give you some tips on how to improve your composition by learning how to focus in more different ways.
Modern SLRs offer a variety of tools to help you focus quickly and effectively. Not all cameras offer all of these features, but most cameras will provide you with at least some of them. You certainly don’t need to learn all or even most of them, but picking out a couple that you can rely on is a worthwhile goal.
When focusing on birds in flight, race cars, water skiiers, or other action subjects Dynamic Auto-Focus can be a real help. By locking on to the moving target your camera can follow it across the scene and sometimes even behind intervening obstacles. It works particularly well with plenty of distance between the subject and background and in brightly lit scenes. In these cases you have great control over your composition while the camera keeps its focus on the moving subject. But if your composition is more static, or contains a variety of closely grouped objects or is dimly lit, Dynamic AF can easily be fooled and wind up focusing on the wrong subject. So as a way to get proper focus on a non-centered subject it's most helpful when the subject is moving and clearly separated from the background.
Having multiple AF sensors, particularly if they are arranged in a pattern that allows you to move the focus both horizontally and vertically, is a huge help in staying focused on a subject that is not in the center of your frame. Learning to quickly switch AF sensors is a big plus. Multiple AF sensors can work particularly well when you have a composition that is off-center in one direction. For example, if you want to focus on the eye of a bird that is in the upper part of your portrait (vertical) mode image, the right (Top when you go vertical) AF sensor is perfect for the job. But AF sensors have two obvious drawbacks as a mechanism for controlling your focus. First, if you want to put the subject somewhere other than where a sensor is, you'll still need to use one of the other methods described here. And second, it does take time to change sensors and can involve changing your hand position and even taking your eye away from the viewfinder. In addition, there is a less obvious drawback that with slow lens + teleconverter combinations (f8 or above) your camera may only auto-focus with the center sensor. These drawbacks mean that even with practice switching AF sensors may not be the ultimate focusing option for you.
Frankly, I've never been much of a fan of any type of focus lock for general purpose shooting. It's just too slow. For truly static compositions like group portraits it can do a fine job, and has the advantage that you can leave the camera while keeping the focus locked, but I've never found it a speedy alternative for me when photographing action.
Both Canon and Nikon offer custom functions that allow you to decouple AF from the shutter. Once the custom function is activated you need to depress a separate "AF-ON" button to start to auto-focus. Before I started using AF-S lenses I found this a real help. If you are nimble enough to be able to use both your thumb and your shutter finger separately this is a very flexible and very fast alternative that allows you to quickly engage AF, focus on your subject, release the AF switch, and then recompose to your heart's content. If you don't have AF-S lenses I'd recommend experimenting with this approach to see if it works for you.
Since focus is entirely a matter of distance, by focusing on an object that is the same distance from the camera as the subject you in effect focus the camera on the subject. If you're lucky enough to have an object the same distance as the subject right in the center of your lens, for example, you can focus on it. Keep in mind that for shallow depth of field situations like telephoto lenses your depth of field may be very small so the object you focus on and the subject need to be at very similar distances.
This technique is often useful when you have a subject with a large, easy to focus on, part and a smaller, faster moving part. Sometimes you can focus on an athlete's body for example to keep their face in focus, or on the breast of a bird to keep its eyes in focus--if the eyes are the same distance from you as the breast. There is one subtle issue with focusing on an equivalent distance object. If you have your camera in Matrix or Evaluative metering modes it will be keying in on the active AF sensor as the most important element in your scene to meter. If that element is very different in color or brightness from your subject you may be throwing off your metering by focusing on it.
You can of course manually focus your camera. If your eyes are good and there is enough light, this is still a very effective technique. However, if there isn't much light or your eyes are not what they used to be, manually focusing may not be an option for you. In addition, many of the new auto-focus lenses can focus as fast or faster than most photographers so you may be losing speed by trying to manually focus. In my case I'm certain that when they are working well my AF-S lenses focus much faster than I every could--as long as I know they are focusing on the right thing!
Finally, there is my favorite feature of Nikon's AF-S lenses. Anyone who owns one of the new high-speed AF-S telephotos can tell you they are a joy to use. They lock on in an instant. But you’ll be missing the boat if you leave it at that. If you’ve ever watched Moose closely while he’s photographing wildlife with his 400 or 600 you may have noticed his left hand madly moving back and forth on the lens barrel and wondered what that was all about. He’s using the M/A mode on the lens. This mode allows both you and the camera to focus at the same time! When you press the shutter down the camera will quickly focus on the active AF sensor. But then you can move the focus ring either to critically adjust the focus or to change the focus to a different subject. So far so good. But the really nifty part is that the camera won't try to refocus until you let up on the shutter. So you can quickly depress the shutter half-way while aimed at your subject, then jiggle the focus ring a little, and finally recompose to get your subject where you want and shoot. The camera won't attempt to re-focus when you recompose as long as you keep the shutter partially depressed. This allows you to quickly focus, compose, shoot, and focus again for the next shot--without either hand leaving its proper position, since your right hand is on the shutter release and your left hand is resting on the lens barrel where it belongs in any case for proper long lens technique.
Like many of you, I'm a bit of a map junkie. It is natural for photographers to have an affinity for maps. We're always rushing around in new locales and trying to figure out the best routes to and from our shoots. As a result I've used half a dozen different map based navigation programs over the years, including Street Atlas USA, Map'n'Go, and a few others. While all of them would allow me to create routes and find locations, the interfaces were painful and the data very incomplete. I even tried Roads and Recreation from Garmin, hoping it would do as well as their Topo maps when used with my GPS. Unfortunately despite the hopeful use of the word Roads in the title it doesn't do any real routing.
As something of a last resort I tried Microsoft MapPoint 2002. I'd used MapPoint when it first came out and found it fairly cumbersome. So I didn't expect much. But I was very pleasantly surprised. From the very beginning the software is impressive. The map display is crystal clear and easy to read, even on my laptop. And the system for creating waypoints and turning them into routes is a joy to use compared to most packages. It has its own quirks, like having to click inside the zoom box to get the software to actually execute a zoom command, but those quirks are well worth the benefit of using the software.
In addition to the basic mapping and navigational capabilities MapPoint also has a fairly complete set of points of interest data and a clever interface for specifying queries. I was able to point to likely stopover points on my trip and ask for hotels within a certain number of miles of that spot. Or I could type in the name of a Hotel I'd already booked and most of the time MapPoint quickly found it on the map, without my even needing to know the address. A couple more clicks turned it into a waypoint on my trip. It's not as easy as I'd like to tell MapPoint to make a waypoint an overnight stop-over, but other than that one glitch it was trivial to have MapPoint create a route, driving directions and strip maps for me.
As a heavy user of both Garmin and DeLorme mapping software for topographical maps and satellite data I wish they'd pick up on some of Microsoft's interface. Somehow MapPoint manages to show a useful amount of data without cluttering the screen. And they use intelligent scrolling arrows and zoom controls that don't take up much space compared to the quirky zoom boxes and very old compass rose of DeLorme or fairly simplistic scale drop down of Garmin. I'm sure I'm trivializing the task--since MapPoint only needs to deal with the vector data and Topo and Satellite products have large amounts of raster information to organize and display, but it is a refreshing interface to use.
Now for many of you the best part goes well beyond what we've just talked about. MapPoint supports powerful data mapping capabilities as well. You can map your database records or Outlook contacts right on your MapPoint maps. If nothing else it's kind of cool to see a push-pin map of where all your contacts are. But if you have database records with location information on images, clients, or other business data MapPoint allows you to use that right away. Clearly this capability was designed with sales reps in mind, but it has plenty of other uses as well. If you don't have any of your own data, MapPoint comes with a ton of data including US, Canadian and Worldwide demographic information. Want to see the population by zipcode in 1990 vs. 2000? A few clicks and it's there on your screen.
If MapPoint offered topographical data I'd be tempted to create an add-in that mapped the GPS information from digital camera images right onto the map. The only catch is the price. MapPoint is available from Microsoft directly for $200 after rebate. However, if you are a Microsoft developer it may be included with your MSDN subscription so you might have it already. Probably not a must have for most folks but if you like to use the computer to plan your trips it's a surprisingly powerful and helpful tool.
As most of you know the Nikon D100 is finally shipping. Moose has had one for nearly a month and has posted his hands-on review of the D100 on http://www.nikondigital.org. The review contains plenty of useful information and tips for those considering a new D-SLR or those who may be lucky enough to already own a D100. We also give you more information on our exciting new eBook: D100 and D1 Generation Update.
We're busy at work adding full D100 support to DigitalPro version 1.5 and will have more news on that within the week.
There are some lively discussions about the merits of various of the current D-SLR offerings, as well as some very helpful tips on making the most of your wildlife and wedding photography. Plus lots of good information on various photo software for use once you've created your image.
If you haven't already signed up, we encourage you to visit the DPS Forums at: http://www.nikondigital.org/discuss/ubbthreads.php.
DigitalPro keeps a backup of all your camera files whenever you ask us to modify them as part of a batch process. This is particularly important since camera vendors are frequently changing their proprietary data formats and often adhere only loosely to standards. If you delete a file in DigitalPro we put it in the Recycle Bin. If you tag incoming images from your Flash card, DigitalPro will insist on creating a copy of the original file in the Archives folders (which you can locate whereever you want). If you add IPTC captioning to a file, DigitalPro will place a backup, with the filename <filename>-iptc.<extension> in the Recycle Bin. This way you'll always have your original image to fall back on if there is an issue with a new camera creating hard to decode images.
If you have a hot tip or news item for DigitalPro Shooter, write us at dps@proshooters.com. If your tip or news item is picked as the Shooters' Tip of the Week, we'll send you a really cool DigitalPro hat! Or just write us to let us know what you think of the newsletter.
To keep up with the latest articles and reviews, join Moose and I at http://www.nikondigital.org. For the latest versions of DigitalPro, visit http://www.proshooters.com/dp.
Good shooting!
--David Cardinal, editor DigitalPro Shooter
Pro Shooters LLC
--Moose Peterson
Wildlife Research Photography