Tips From DP Review Nikon D70 forum

Newbie howto

links to other links to posts on how to use the d70

1) Read and try out David Chin's excellent "lets all try this together" tutorials

First: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=10261215

Second: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=10274823

Third: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=10309654

Fourth: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=10313290

2) Read some of the articles on David Chin's treasure trove of D70 info http://www.pbase.com/dlcmh/dslr_links

especially the ones under here http://www.pbase.com/dlcmh/d70_camera_operation_and_controls

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Also, see SnapShotTips

Preview print quality on monitor

 Forum: Nikon D70
 Subject: No surprise here...part 1
 Posted by: David SL

I've got an 18 x 20" poster done from a D100 image that looks perfectly smooth up to about 6 inches from the paper! It was done on a large format Agfa color laser at my favorite print processor , the UK shop photobox.co.uk , they also have a Fuji Frontier for images of 10 x 15 and smaller at 300dpi effective resolution.

It's really very easy to model the appearance of the printed image on the screen, you simply have to match the screen inch to a physical inch and note the percentage scaling done in the image. I do it all the time to "print proof" my images on screen without falling into the "1:1" trap that many many people wishing to get their head around printing issues are encountering.

A standard size D100/D70 shot provides 3008 x 2000 pixels, the effective resolution of the print varies with the dpi. We know that off hand the measure of 72pixelsper inch was used to describe the resolving capability of monitors at the old resolution of 800 x 600 ( i think it was) ...however we don't need to know the actual number of pixels to physical inches we just need to know that they are mapped. I do this simply by taking out a ruler, yes a ruler....and placing it on the screen..if you have a flat screen monitor your measurement is even more accurate...essentially you are using the ruler to judge against the virtual ruler used in your image editing software , like photoshop. Here's how I do it:

1) Set virtual ruler units to inches in photoshop properties,note the span of the virtual inch on the screen as you will observe it change after the next step.

2) Now, you need to set the ruler dimensions so that they map to real dimensions of your print, you do this by changing it's dpi in the Image>Image Size dialog. Before we start, notice the dimensions in the "document size" section, if your "resolution" is defaulted to 72 pixels/inch the "width" and "height" fields should show respectively, 41.788 and 27.788 inches...this is the effective physical size that you are viewing the image at on screen when you have it at 100% or "1:1". That is all the proof one should need to know that judging 6mp images at 1:1 for noise that might appear in a print is really bordering on neurotic. However, let's proceed to see how neurotic it is... First, unclick the "resample image" box before doing anything so that you don't accidentally change the actual datasize. Second, in the "resolution" line, enter "300" if it was anything else (it might have been 300 already in which case you have nothing to do) and the units should be "pixels/inch", note the box entries in the "document size" section automatically should go to width and height, 10.027" and 6.667" respectively...this is the size a physical print will be if the print device maps 300 pixels on screen (now equivalent to the virtual "inch") horizontally or vertically to 1 physical inch. We can now proceed with the calibration step. Hit okay and exit the image size dialog.

3) First, note the ruler span around the image, if you changed the dpi from 72 to 300 and you had the image at 100% you'll note that the span of the physical inch has stretched dramatically...this let's you know that you are effectively looking at a magnified view of the image as it would appear if printed with "300 pixels/ physical inch" as previously configured in the Image size dialog. So to calibrate the inches you simply need to make sure they appear by eye about the same span. Lay your physical ruler (or tape measure) across the screen and align the beginning of an inch mark on it with any inch in the virtual ruler on screen (horizontal or vertical doesn't matter if you have a flat screen..if not you'll have slight measurement error due to the curvature which you might want to guestimate away..) Now to change the span of the virtual rulers inch select the "slider" on the "Navigator" pane, move it left or right until the virtual inch "shrinks" down to the size of the physical inch, when they are essentially the same span calibration is done and you are viewing the image on screen at print size@ 300dpi ..which is 6.667 x 10.027 physical inches. (you can confirm this by measuring (if your screen is big enough) the width of the image ..it should be on or about 6.7" depending on how accurately you were able to calibrate against the physical inch and how much curvature there is on your screen in the dimension chosen for calibration. Note, this works irrespective of your video cards set resolution, after calibration at any size you will always get the virtual inches mapping to the physical ones ..what will change is the effective resolution(or the screens ability to resolve detail in the displayed image) of the screen at the calibrated reduced magnification. eg. If you have your video card at 1600 x 1200 after calibration you'll be able to see a bit more detail in the image than if you viewed it at a lower size, effectively the monitor is your print device and the chosen video card resolution defines how many ppi it can apply to the image to resolve it's data for display...it makes perfect sense. (just as it does that a 4mp cam. can resolve more real detail than a 2 mp when both capture the same field of view)

4) Now, take a look at the reported % view above the image, you'll notice it has reduced, you'll also noticed that the image shrank along with your virtual inch...when my monitor is set to 1152 x 864 the % reported is ~33.7. If you look at the image, you'll notice that it may have alaising due to the rough downsampling done when using the scaling feature of the navigation tool, to look at the screen "print" as close to how it will appear in print as is possible we need to go back into the image tool.

5) Inside Image size, first thing is to check the "resample image" box this is ery important as we are now going to actually change the data size of the image, effectively downsampling the data to the level required to provide a crisp screen proof (without the alaising mentioned before)..the percentage reduction was 31.7% to get the final display dimensions (as displayed in "pixel dimensions" section of the image size tool) we multiply this by the dpi to get:

31.7% x 300 = 95.1

Enter 95.1 into the "resolution" field and note the "pixel dimensions" shrink to 954 x 634, hit ok and exit. The image edges should now become more distinct on screen, this is as close as you can get on screen to viewing the final print, on screen the image can't match the dynamic range or absolute sharpness that may be provided by certain print devices but it gets as close as you can without actually printing it, moreover the point of the proof(for the noise fanatics) is to indicate if noise will be a factor. (Which it is not for 8 x 10" prints from 6mp cameras up to about ISO 800! I've done the prints to prove it...even ISO 1000 in good light looks perfectly smooth at 8 x 10" ...so I am not suprised at all that a ISO 200 D70 shot can scale to 10 x 15" and show no noise in the sky, at that size effective resolution is ~200 dpi which is only 33% smaller than the 300dpi available when printing at 8 x 10 size, if there is low noise in the image to begin with you can get away with larger prints before seeing degradation.

General NEF Post Processing: Guidelines: Get Rid of the MUD

 Forum: Nikon D70
 Subject: General NEF Post Processing: Guidelines: Get Rid of the MUD
 Posted by: Skip2000

A while back a few users wanted to know a few starting guidelines to make their NEF's pop out and to get rid of the MUDDY pictures. These guidelines should give you some general better results for first time Nikon Capture users.

Generally, new users to NEF's & Nikon Capture want some sort of structure guidelines at first to give them a nice photograph, with little post processing. The entire scope of these settings is to bring alive a few features of Nikon Capture that will GET RID OF THE MUD...

Start out with your WHITE BALANCE first, a quickie would be to pick the DAYLIGHT 5200K first, Notice, (usually) that your nice blue skies will pop out and if close to water it will blue up even more. Watch your Yellows go away if you are shooting in the mornings. Also the entire complexion of the shot will give separation to the colors with just this single click of a key.

Next: ADVANCED RAW: Pick ColorMODE^? IIIa sRGB. I know, this may look a little dark at the moment, but bare with me... I generally like this setting over any other color mode. Now and then I do pick another, but it's up to you....

Now: pick LCH editor, lighten your picture to taste. Try to bring the exact mood you wish to show with this setting. I try to remember the exact level of the original shot, when I have it I stop....

Next: Move on to sharpen, pick whick ever one you really like the best...

Now just for kicks, click on the button to show the original NEF file information... WOW!!! Did that work or what......

Save your NEF information to attach it to the original NEF file and there you are....

From this point on you can learn the other features of NC and apply even more great changes to your files either with NC or PS etc.

Skip...

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-- JohnSchettino - 30 Jun 2006