Nikon D300 Streetshooting in New York

Had a great day in New York yesterday street shooting and getting to know my D300. I had mixed results. I had it on automatic white balance all the time, but I think that an adjustment would have perked up the colors under the overcast sky.

My kit lens, Nikon 18-200, is fairly disappointing at zoom settings. It's hard to keep still when all the way out to 200, and is a lit soft at that focal distance anyhow. About half the distance shots I took were out of focus.

I did some basic corrections on Elements 6 and improved the white balance somewhat.

Then I had an unfortunate experience getting prints at Ritz.

I asked the guy behind the counter if his equipment could print without cropping the original and he said yes. When I got the 4 X 6s they were all auto-cropped, particularly the ones I'd cropped on photoshop.

The counter guy explained to me that if I had requested 4.5 by 6 I would have not had the cropping. I wonder why he didn't tell me this before the printing. Then I asked him to do another run at 4.5. The cropping was still there, and in some cases was worse.

Conclusion: guy behind the counter is clueless.

I understand Ritz's vary from place to place with the quality of their printing, but I'm a little gunshy after that experience.

Anybody have similar experiences?

You can't have a cake and eat it, or there is no free lunch, all apply to the 18mm to 200mm. I have the D300 but got it with out that lens, I have not test it, but if you use your logic thinking you can conclude that there has to be a lot of IQ compromise for a lens that is basically a motorcycle and truck, or a speed boat and a cruise liner.

Doug, the D300 is a serious camera, so I recommend you to try the shooting philosophy of Asher:

Get a normal lens (It is difficult for the D300 since Nikon has yet to come up with a prime "normal" fast lens f1:1.4?, but Sigma has javascript: openAWindow( '/_lenses!/popup_images.asp?name=113_big.jpg', '', 300, 276, 1 ) put it on and adjust your subjects to the lens, in other words: just get close to the subject. The advantage is that you can shoot at night, in restaurants and make good portraits of people...

The other suggestion is to always shoot RAW, that way you don't have to worry about white balance since you can adjust latter. The problem would be that you cant take raw images to the guy behind the counter.

By the way, you can avoid problems while ordering prints if you do the entire process yourself. There are increasingly more stores where you do everything, from inserting your Compact Flash, to selecting the images, >glossy, matte> cropped, not cropped> size> number> etc. Then the machine prints an invoice and you take that to the counter guy...

Leonard, thanks for the feedback. As soon as I get my website set up I'll be able to share some of these shots.

Thanks for the info on the processing.

By the way, how good are the printers they are selling folks like me? I hear the inks are are really expensive.

Doug

PS I'm thinking about a Zeiss 1.4 Planar 85 millimeter for the Nikon. I already have a great short lens: 17-35 high end Nikon. It seems like the 85 would be perfect for surreptitious shooting.

Printer ?

Unless you really have a reason to do comps or just want the convenience, having your own printer is not the way to go. There are a large number of quality print services online that will have the images back in a day or so. The images you send out will be printed using more-or-less traditional printing methods. Meaning, they will expose photographic paper and process as you would film.

I have even heard, god forbid, that Walmart does a good job and has the advantage that if you don't like the prints you don't have to buy them. If you can find someone that you like, the printing will be considerably cheaper than printing it yourself. I understand that Walmart is using Fuji Luster paper. If you factor in the price of the printer, all of the consumables, electricity,... It is 2 to 3 times more expensive to print it yourself than to send it out and the chemically printed images are arguably better.

That being said, I'm lazy and print copies for my personal portfolio off my Canon i4300. And, once you have a printer, you can't be too prudent in it's use. I ended up throwing out my last printer, an Epson, because it got gummed up from not using it enough.

On a more serious vein, I have my workspace calibrated so that I can print proofs of my art prints before sending them to the service bureau for printing on Crystal X with a lightjet.

Charles Lupica said:

Unless you really have a reason to do comps or just want the convenience, having your own printer is not the way to go. There are a large number of quality print services online that will have the images back in a day or so.

Click to expand...

Do you have a name or two? I was unsatisfied with the prints I got from the local Ritz. Their machine was set to average everything and diminish the tonal range of the photo. The clerk didn't know what I was talking about.

Do these online services return photos that resemble the ones you shot and processed?

Doug, I use Mpix.com and have been pleased with their service most of the time. There have been a few occasions where, for whatever reason, the prints were really bad colorwise or even damaged in shipping. (bent, crushed, or creased) On those rare occasions all it took was one email and the replacement prints were reprocessed and shipped right out. Prices are pretty competitive and they are fast. I have also had some of their hardbound coffee table books and calendars made from some of my photos and they turned out very nice. They were given as Christmas gifts and were very well received. Mpix is really their consumer side of the business but they also have a more professional processing service, Millers, that is a bit higher in cost but supposedly in quality and service as well.
James

Thanks, Jim. I'll try them.

D