Tag Archives: d7000

Going Mobile – Editing Images On The Road With An iPad

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We took a family trip down to Durango, Colorado, for Christmas. Instead of packing a suitcase full of photography and computer gear, I wanted to experiment with taking only what was necessary…the minimalist approach to packing and saving my aging back. So I left the 40-pound laptop at home, along with the other gear I knew I wouldn’t need, and instead packed my camera, a few lenses, and my iPad to see to what level I could take and post process images without using my normal workflow of Lightroom on a huge, heavy laptop.

Equipment and Software

Importing The Images

The D7000 has two SD camera slots, and I typically shoot RAW to one card, and a JPEG to the second card. I expected that the iPad would only be able to use the JPEG files, but the iPad recognized the Nikon NEF format, and I was able to import the RAW images. With the card reader in the iPad, I simply inserted my SD card with the RAW images, the iPad image import dialog came up and prompted me to select which images I wanted to import.

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iPad Camera Import

I did not test it, but you can also use the other USB adapter that comes with the Camera Kit to plug your camera in via a USB cable to import the images, which would be handy if you are using a camera with an CompactFlash or other type of media.

Depending on how much space is left on your iPad, you may not want to import all the images, especially when your SD card might be larger than the capacity of your iPad. I suggest importing only the ones you want to edit or to work in batches. Process just what you need on the iPad, and save the rest for when you get back to home base.

Editing The Images

Once on the iPad, all the different photo editors that I tried were also able to pull up and edit the RAW file, as well. None of them, however, seemed to be able to access the images while still on the SD card, which would have been a great way to conserve space…maybe in a future release.

Ideally, a mobile version of Lightroom would exist, but unfortunately the only Lightroom application in the App Store are tutorials, not editing software. So instead, I looked around for the best candidates that would allow me to do more than just the basic editing that the native camera app provides. To do this, I started with the image below.

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Original

My test image was underexposed, which forced me to adjust the exposure, as well as test the noise reduction necessary to handle an image at a higher ISO, in addition to some of the normal edits I would have done in Lightroom, include white balance, contrast, and sharpening.

There are a lot photo editing applications available in the app store, so I limited myself to some of the more popular applications, namely: iPhoto, Snapseed, Photogene, and Photoshop Touch.

iPhoto

I don’t use iPhoto on my Mac, and I don’t see iPhoto fitting in to my mobile workflow, either. The features were limited, and the interface was clunky, so it didn’t take me much time fumbling around to decide to move on to another application.

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Editing with iPhoto

Snapseed

Snapseed is a free application, but it has a lot of the features of its non-free peers. Accessing those features, though, takes a little getting used to, with a combination of vertical and horizontal swipes to select and apply adjustments. It wasn’t my overall favorite, but the image I was able to produced compared well to the other candidates, and the price was right.

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Editing with Snapseed

Photogene

Photogene for the iPad was the low-priced ($2.99) but full-featured step up from Snapseed. It had a lot of nice features, was easy to navigate, and produced an excellent image. The noise reduction algorithm worked very well; so well, in fact, that I had to dial in back in some images. The iPad version is better than the original Photogene for the iPhone, and easier to navigate than the new Photogene2.

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Editing with Photogene

Photoshop Touch

My favorite application turned out to be Photoshop Touch. The most expensive of the bunch at $9.99, Photoshop Touch had all the feature that I was looking for and the feel of the full version of Photoshop, which made it a very comfortable choice with a minimal learning curve. The noise reduction worked well, and the ability to maintain edits in layers, just like the full Photoshop, made managing changes a breeze.

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Photoshop Touch

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Photoshop Touch – Editing Image – Layers

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Photoshop Touch – Filters

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Photoshop Touch – Tools

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Photoshop Touch – More Filters

Summary

Editing images on the iPad presents its own challenges, include the capacity of the device as well as processing power for larger images. But with the ability to import RAW files, and the features of the available applications, both free and paid, it is within the realm of possibility to process images with great results without needing a computer. Now, I’m not giving up my laptop or Lightroom any time soon, but the next time I find myself wanting to travel a little lighter, I feel confident that I can survive with just my camera and my iPad, and still create print-ready images.

 

Orion Nebula With a Nikon D7000

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wpid1533 orion nebula 1 1 Orion Nebula With a Nikon D7000

It might not look like much. But one of those purple stars in the middle of the image is actually a nebula. The Orion nebula, to be specific. If you’re familiar with the constellation Orion, the middle “star” of Orion’s sword is actually a nebula, a big cloud of dust and gas.

Compared to the images the Hubble has taken of this nebula, mine is rather primitive. I used a Nikon D7000 DSLR, a 300m lens, and a static tripod. A pretty basic setup compared to the Hubble, which  is, well, a space telescope. Even so, what struck me in this image is that I could tell where the nebula was because of the faint cloud around the nebula and the color difference between the other stars around it.

I never really though of pointing the camera up without a telescope. I always thought I needed $10,000 worth of equipment to make it worth it. And while I’m still looking for a mount that will keep my camera pointed at a celestial object for long exposures, it’s nice to know that even when it comes to the universe, you can still take inspiring pictures without having the latest, greatest, or most expensive gear.

Make This The Year Of “Go”

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wpid1477 untitled 1 494x494 Make This The Year Of GoLast Christmas, Santa brought be a D7000, my first video-capable DSLR and Nikon’s first DSLR produced after they realized the Motion JPEG probably wouldn’t be the standard for…well, anything, really.

Within minutes of unwrapping my present, I was exploring the wonderful world of video that I had only read about in magazines. I learned about the 180 rule, compression, codecs, and lot’s of cool new terms to add to my already impressive glossary of photographic terminology. I ordered the largest, fasted SD cards. I cleared out some hard drive space for the annoyingly large file sizes. I put together my first video, 2×30, taking it from capture through post in Adobe Premiere and uploaded it to my brand-spankin’-new Vimeo Pro account. I created another video studiously documenting ISO performance of the D7000 in video mode that actually received a few “Likes” on Vimeo. I was riding high, waiting for more inspiration. Or for Hollywood to call. Sadly, neither happened, and my video production stalled.

I still listened to the new podcasts I found, though, and studied movies a bit more, noticing camera angles and lighting choices. Thoughts of “that would be cool to shoot” continued to pop up in my head, and I’d think to write the ideas in my journal, but I never would. Like the Higgs boson, video inspiration would blink in and out of existence in an immeasurable fraction of time.

And then the year ended, and I looked back disappointed that I hadn’t done more. In the creative communities, 2011 was the year of not being afraid to do something, anything, and to put yourself out there, and I wasted it.

Enter 2012.

Maybe 2011 was meant to fill up my tank, and 2012 is the year that I start my engine and actually drive. Not only did I start jotting down my ideas in my journal instead of just thinking about jotting them down, I took it a step further. Yesterday, I created a story board for one of those ideas. I had an idea for a short video of my son and I playing Nerf hockey, and I worked through the idea, breaking it down in to scenes, taking notes on my ideas for the different shots. When I got home, I grabbed some lights, the camera, and started capturing video, knocking out the scenes one at a time (and loving every minute spending time with my son, who was very patient and cooperative for a two-year old). At the end of it, I had a handful of clips, enough to assemble in to…something.

After he went to bed, I loaded the images in to the computer. I started noticing things that normally would have caused me to quit the project all together. One of the shots of me was out of focus. The crop was wrong, the angle was wrong, the lighting was wrong. The 2011 me would have just packed it up, defeated. But I pushed through, flaws and all. I remember someone saying somewhere that H264, the format my camera records in, was a great compression technology for the web, but horrible for video editing. I did some research on how to convert it to a friendlier format, but I didn’t seem to have any of the codecs that the higher-end, more professional blogs were referring to. ProRes what? Avid DNxHD doesn’t install on OS X Lion? Roadblock after roadblock came up before me. Again, normally I would have been frustrated and stopped. Instead, I figured that these clips weren’t really that big, so maybe I could push through in a non-edit-friendly format on my substandard computer, which I did. And I’m glad I did.

Too often, I feel like I’ve had it too easy, and that since there are no consequences for not figuring something out, it’s way to easy and enticing to quit. So I quit. Meanwhile, at work, or being a father, if I need to figure something out, my expert troubleshooting and reasoning skills almost always bring me to a logical conclusion, and I find that I’m better off and more informed by going through the process of figuring it out. Well, news flash, its the same even when a paycheck isn’t involved. And who knows, maybe the stuff that I figured out because I wanted to, not because I had to, will come in handy somewhere down the road. You know, when Hollywood calls.

Hollywood may not call because of this video, but I’m proud of pushing through my roadblocks to actually get something done and putting it out there. Whether it’s a new year, or simply a new day, it’s an opportunity to do things differently. Seize that opportunity and just go.

You can see the final video below. Enjoy.