Good thing about the trips to NYC is that there is always something new and no matter how many times you capture this magnificent city, there is always a new building popping up and you would always find an interesting angle to shoot from. But since the global pandemic hit all of us and the cities around the world started lockdown in early 2020, many photographers including myself haven’t been able to travel much. Some photographers that I have talked to told me that they are finally getting time to finish their editing projects that have been pending from years, some say they are finally learning how to edit in digital platform and some say, they are now experimenting shooting indoors and learning to shoot using studio strobes and flash units which all are great ways to stay positive and get creative.

Since many of you know that I work as an IT professional full time and photography is my hobby and my way to escape from the computer terminals. But since last year, I was forced to spend more time in front of a computer which led me thinking of doing something creative with it. And after giving much thought, I decided to start a YouTube channel and share the knowledge and the experience I have gained as an IT professional over the last 15 years. By doing so, I am hoping that it provides some guidelines and meaningful resources to those who are just starting their career in IT field specially as a system/network administrator or cybersecurity engineer. If you are one of those IT nerds, I invite you to check out the channel and would love to get your feedbacks as well. Even though I love to take pictures, I am a camera shy person myself and it was the reason I never started a YouTube channel for photography. But while creating videos for this channel, I could hide behind the terminals and let my keyboards and monitors lift those heavyweights for me.

I had never used any video editing tools before but recently I discovered a program called Shotcut which is an open source and completely free video editing tool. I highly recommend it to you if you don’t want to spend lots of money on video editing software. You can download and install it and see if it works for you or not. I believe the workflow for other paid software is also similar and practicing on this free version gives you an idea if you need upgrade to the paid software or not. So far, it is working great for me and does what I need to produce videos for my channel. And if you need help using the software, there are tons of helpful articles and YouTube videos explaining the tools and the features of the software.

Stay safe, stay happy and keep shooting!

Tin (Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam) asked: Your gallery has some really amazing long exposure night shots. I am also interested in taking such photos. How should I prepare myself for the long exposure shots?

If you want to take long exposure shots, there are few requirements in terms of accessories you might need and the camera settings you need to setup. And if you are just starting, you can start with a minimal setup and as you grow more with your experience, you would find out what else you might need to improve your skill. This is what I would suggest to anyone who is starting into any genre of photography; start with the basics, you would make mistakes, learn from those mistakes and keep practicing. This is coming from my personal experience.

Now, to answer your question about the requirements for the long exposure shots, let's talk about the accessories you might need in the first section and then I will go through the camera settings in the following section.

1. Accessories you would need for the Long Exposure shots

- Tripod

Tripod is a must have device when you are taking long exposure shots. The general rule of thumb is: if you are shooting with a shutter speed that is slower than the focal length value, you would need a tripod to get the sharper image. Let’s say you are shooting at the focal length of 80mm, any shutter speed that is less than 1/80th of a second requires a tripod to produce a crisp image. I think it pays to invest in a good tripod (carbon fiber if you can afford) so that you won't have to keep replacing the tripod with every new camera you would buy in the future. I suggest you to get the one that can support heaviest camera-lens combo in the market and have extra features like panning support and easy movement of the camera in all possible directions. I think finding the best tripod requires a little bit of research of your own based on your budget and future plannings.

- Remote shutter release cable

This is a good to have accessory but if you don't have or don’t want to get one, there is a workaround. You can setup a timer for shutter release so that the shutter will only be opened after a few seconds (the time you set on self-timer setting) of pressing the shutter release button. This technique is used to avoid the camera shake during the long exposure shot. If you are using a faster shutter speed to freeze the motion, little camera shake wouldn't make a difference but if you are taking a few seconds or longer shutter speed, camera shake is very important issue to be taken care of to get a sharper image.

- Night filter

This is an optional accessory but would be helpful to cut out night light pollution. Some of it's effect can also be achieved using post-processing tools, but if you want to get one, Ni-Si is one of the popular brand among landscape photographers.

That's pretty much it on the accessories part, at least on the basic level. Now, let's discuss about the camera settings.

2. Camera settings for the Long Exposure shots

- Set the Exposure Mode

I usually set the exposure mode into Aperture Priority (A) mode most of the time unless I would be using more than 30 seconds of shutter speed. And in such cases, I would set the exposure mode into Manual (M) mode so that I can set the shutter speed to the BULB mode. In BULB mode, the shutter remains open while the shutter-release button is held down and only when you let go of the shutter-release button, the shutter will be closed. When you purchase remote shutter release cable, look for the type that comes with the shutter lock feature. That will allow you to lock the shutter once the button is pressed and when you release the lock button, the shutter will be closed (in BULB mode).

- Set the Aperture and the ISO Value

Generally, in landscape photography, it is preferred to have everything from the foreground to the background in focus. Depending on the lens you are using, you would have to find the best Aperture value which produces the sharpest image. My Nikkor 16-35 mm f/4 lens produces the sharpest image at f/9 or f/11 but it might be different for your lens and the only way to find out is to experiment with the different values and compare the results. In case of the ISO value, I would suggest to use the minimum native ISO value possible to avoid any noise that long exposure may produce. Additionally, you can also enable the long exposure NR (noise reduction) in the Custom Setting Menu if your camera has such option.

- Lock the Focus

When you want everything in focus, you can use the two-third of the frame focus technique or calculate the focusing distance using the hyperfocal distance. In two-third focusing method, you would compose the shot and then zoom into a two-third of the frame and adjust the focus to have that area in focus and once the focus is achieved, you can zoom out and take the shot. While focusing with this technique, either you have to use a manual focusing or a back button (AF-ON) auto focusing method. If you autofocus by pressing the shutter release button halfway down and then release the button to recompose the shot, camera will try to focus again when you are trying to take the shot. Alternatively, if you are using a wide angle lens, you can also manually focus by switching the lever on the lens barrel from A or A/M to M and set the focal length to infinity. This is what I have been doing lately and works great every single time. While using the camera on the tripod, I would also suggest to turn the VR off on the lens so that the lens wouldn't move its internal parts trying to stabilize the image, which is unnecessary efforts while shooting on a tripod.

- Take the shot

Once the camera is mounted on the tripod and leveled up properly, you would plug the remote shutter release cable into the camera or set the shutter timer to delay the shutter release once the button is pressed. After that, you would set the exposure mode and set the aperture and the ISO value. If your camera has a shutter on a viewfinder eyepiece, I would suggest you to close it right after composing the shot and before snapping the shutter release button to take the picture. It will prevent the light entering through the viewfinder and interfering with the exposure settings. Once all of the above setup is done, you would press the shutter release button to take the shot. As you advance more, you might be interested shooting in RAW mode, bracket the shots and merge them to create a single HDR photo which would have a high dynamic range, rich color tones and greater details of the scene.

I hope I was able to answer your question and if you have any follow up question, please don’t forget to write them in the comment box below.

Pittsburgh is known as the city of the steelworkers where the United States Steel Corporation's 64-story tall headquarter is located. The famous football team Steelers also got their name from this steel town and the history of it’s steel workers. Sadly, the steel corporation does not own the building anymore but they are still one of the largest tenants in the building. The city lost most of the steel workers due to the change in global economy market.

I chose to drive to the city instead of flying. I entered the city through a tunnel and as I came out on the other end, I was amazed by this view of Pittsburgh’s skyscrapers and bridges. I could not believe that it took me so many years to visit this beautiful city surrounded by the hills. As soon as I checked into the hotel, I went out for an evening stroll around the downtown. Surprisingly, the downtown was pretty quiet and not much was going on (I thought it was a MONDAY to blame!). Then I tried going to a few shops and restaurants and they were all closed or getting ready to close. After walking around for a while, I found one restaurant which happen to open late on Monday nights. It was quite an experience for me on the very first day. Nothing goes down before midnight in DC downtown and here I was in Pittsburgh at 9 pm trying to look for an open restaurant. When I came back and asked the hotel staff about the minimal activity in the city, he said that's how it's always been around the downtown. All the restaurants and small businesses depend on the corporate employees and closes early right after the office hour.

On my second day in the city, I toured the city and scouted the place for taking pictures. I wanted to take a picture of beautiful downtown from the hills, and with the help of local Uber driver, I found the viewing tower on Grandview Ave. in Mount Washington, from where I captured the shot below.

With more than 400 bridges, Pittsburgh is also known as the city of bridges. But among those bridges, three very similar self-anchored suspension bridges are famous among locals. Collectively, they are known as "The Three Sisters" which are spanning the Allegheny River in downtown Pittsburgh at 6th, 7th and 9th streets. To honor some of the well known Pittsburgh residents, the bridges have been given a formal names. The bridge at the 6th street is known as Roberto Clemente Bridge, the one at the 7th street is known as Andy Warhol Bridge and the third one which is located at 9th street is known as Rachel Carson Bridge.

The first bridge you see in this picture is the Roberto Clemente Bridge followed by the Andy Warhol and the Rachel Carson Bridge.

Both of the shots were long exposure shots and bracketed in five different exposure settings; -2EV, -1 EV, 0, +1EV, and +2EV. After the pictures were imported into Lightroom, all five shots were merged to create a single HDR image. By doing so, I was able to get more dynamic range of colors, and extracted more details in the highlights and the shadows.

Back in the days of film photography, we could only take a certain number of pictures per roll. Also, we would have to keep the negative as a backup for the future production. But digital photography has changed the way we take pictures and the way we store them. We can now take unlimited number of pictures without ever getting worried about the space on the camera memory. Even if the memory is full, we can download them on a computer within a few minutes and make it available for the shooting immediately. Given the number of files we capture during one shooting, I think its time to think about the proper backup solution so that we don’t lose the pictures because of the memory crash or the computer hard-disk failure. If you are working on time sensitive projects, the worst thing that can happen is lose all of the photographs that you have taken for the clients because of the electronics malfunction. Now, you may argue that even our backup device or the service may fail and we may lose the data. In short, yes it can happen, but, having a multiple backups is obviously a better idea than storing your pictures on a single memory card or rely on your computer hard-disk only. The chances of failing multiple devices at the same time are very very low, and also, there are few strategies you can implement to decrease that chance to virtually zero.

One of the simple and cost effective strategy you can follow is the use of two kinds of backup solutions and they are: on-premise backup and cloud backup.

1. On-Premise backup solution

This is a traditional backup system where you buy a backup media and keep a copy your data into the external device as well. Even this traditional backup system has evolved in many ways and provides a robust and cost effective backup solution. You can use a single hard-disk, Western Digital external hard-disk for example, and store your data into the drive. You can also use a backup solution that implements RAID technology, which utilizes two or more hard-disks and let you choose to copy the data into multiple disks simultaneously. You can use a NAS (network-attached storage) device from QNAP if you want to use multiple hard-disks, which are configured in RAID, as your backup device. There are multiple versions of RAID technology and you can select the one that meets your need. Let’s say you purchased a QNAP device that has at least three hard-disks and configured them in RAID 1, QNAP copies the data into the first and the second disk and keeps the third as a spare disk. If one of those two initial disks fails, it copies the data from the working disk to the third disk and maintains the mirroring of the data across two drives all the time. Personally, I have been using WD external hard drive and use iMac's Time Machine to backup my entire iMac. And professionally, I have been using QNAPs for more than 10 years, and I absolutely love their products.

Pros

• One time limited investment and there is no recurring fee.

• You are in charge of your data and the chance of data being stolen (by hackers) is virtually zero.

• Relatively a cheaper solution.

Cons

• Single point of failure (external device may crash).

• Your backup device might get lost or stolen.

2. Cloud backup solution

Another solution, which is being really popular recently, is a Software as a Solution (SaaS) service, also known as cloud service. When you use a cloud backup service, you need to install a small program (provided by the company of your choice) which creates a folder into your computer. After the program is installed and the folder is created, you can create a folder structure within the root folder and start coping your data into them. Once you copy your files into those folders, it will automatically upload them (as long as the computer is connected to the internet) to the service provider’s backup server. The basic workflow would be - You would purchase their monthly or yearly subscription for a certain number of Gigabytes (GB) or Terabytes (TB) and store your data by uploading them into their server. Now, it's the responsibility of those companies to take care of your data and the backup system.

Here is the list of few well-known cloud based backup service providers and their monthly/yearly subscription fee.

Pros

• You don't have to worry about the backup device failure.

• You don't have to worry about losing your backup device.

• Company who provides the backup service maintains multiple backups which avoids single point of failure.

• You can access your data from anywhere as long as you are connected to the internet.

Cons

• An expensive solution because of the recurring monthly/yearly fee.

• You have to rely on the company’s integrity and the security system to protect your data.

• May require a high-speed internet to upload and download high resolution photos and videos.

Use of camera's built-in flash and its effect on the picture is determined by various settings on the camera, but most importantly, which metering mode you are currently using and what exposure mode you are on play a bigger role. Let's recap these camera metering modes briefly and then we can discuss about the steps we would be following in order to use on-camera flash. Since I wrote the blog about camera metering (in more detail) almost 9 years ago, Nikon has added a new metering mode; Highlight-Weighted Metering, which we will be discussing in the section below.

With the addition of Highlight-Weighted Metering mode, Nikon’s latest DSLRs use four types of metering modes and they are:

I. Matrix Metering

Nikon D810 uses 3D color matrix metering III with the type G, E, or D lenses and color matrix metering III, which doesn't include 3D distance information, with other types of CPU lenses. Matrix metering takes the entire frame into account and calculate the exposure based on tone distribution, color, composition, and distance information (with type G, E, or D lenses). Matrix metering mode produces a good result in most of the situations. It is also a default metering mode in most of the DSLR camera.

II. Center-Weighted Metering

In this mode, camera meters the entire frame but gives center area of the frame a greater priority while calculating the exposure. If you are using a CPU lens, you can set the diameter of the center area circle to 8, 12, 15, 20mm or to the average of the entire frame by navigating to b6, Center-Weighted area (on D810), in Custom Setting Menu. If you are using a non-CPU lens, the diameter of the circle area that gets the greatest weight for the metering would be 12mm, regardless of the setting selected for non-CPU lens data in the setup menu.

III. Spot Metering

Spot metering gives the priority to the small circle of 4mm in diameter (approx. 1.5% of the frame) centered on the current focus point and ignores everything in the frame. If you are using non-CPU lens or if auto-area AF is in effect, camera will meter the center focus point. This mode allows you to meter the exposure from off-centered subjects and ensures that subject will be correctly exposed no matter whether the background is much brighter or darker.

IV. Highlight-Weighted Metering

This is fairly a new metering mode and offered only in select Nikon DSLR cameras. In this metering mode, camera assigns the greatest weight to the highlights on the scene. This mode is designed to reduce the loss of details in the highlights. You can use this mode while photographing spotlit performers on a stage, or sunrise and sunset.

After a brief discussion of metering modes, let’s go through the steps to activate and use camera’s built-in flash.

Steps to follow while using the built-in flash

1. Select a metering mode

Matrix metering mode is the default metering mode in most of the cameras. If you want to change the metering mode, you can press the metering button (shown in the picture below) and rotate the main command dial until your desired mode is displayed in the viewfinder (or on the LCD screen near the shutter release button).

Nikon's flash utilizes the TTL (also called i-TTL) technology to determine the flash value. To learn more about the TTL and its types, please read - Understanding Nikon’s Flash Metering Mode. When you select matrix metering, or center-weighted metering, or highlight-weighted metering mode, camera activates i-TTL balanced fill-flash. And, if you select spot metering mode, camera automatically activates Standard i-TTL flash.

2. Pop-up the flash

After you select the desired metering mode, press the flash pop-up button to open the flash. When the flash is opened, camera starts charging the flash, and after the flash is fully charged, flash-ready indication will be displayed on the LCD screen, as shown in the picture below.

3. Select a flash mode

Press the flash button and while the button is still being pressed, rotate the main command dial (also known as rear command dial) to switch between various flash modes. Depending on which exposure modes you are on, supported flash mode will appear on the LCD screen as shown on the right side of the picture below.

Here is the list of various types of flash modes available in Nikon DSLRs.

• Front-curtain sync

• Red-eye reduction

• Red-eye reduction with slow sync

• Slow sync

• Rear-curtain sync

• Flash off

Please refer to your camera manual to find out which flash mode is available in which exposure mode. To learn about these flash modes in detail, please read - Understanding Flash Sync Modes - Which Sync Mode Should You Use?

4. Take a picture

Compose the photograph, lock the focus by pressing the shutter release button half-way down or using the AF-ON button (this is when camera calculates the exposure settings) and then press the shutter release button all the way down to take a picture. When you press the shutter release button to take a picture, camera fires pre-flashes and gets the current lighting information Through-The-Lens (hence the name TTL) and passes that information to the flash metering system. Flash metering system then combines that information with the focal length and the exposure settings from the camera metering system, which shares the same metering sensor with the flash metering system. After analyzing and processing all those available information, flash metering system determines the final flash value to properly expose the subject and then camera fires the main flash. The timing of the flash firing depends on which flash mode you have selected in step 3.

When I purchased 18-300mm, I got AF-S DX Nikkor 18-300mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED VR lens which seems to be discontinued now and replaced by the newer model, AF-S DX Nikkor 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3 G ED VR, which I am going to discuss in today’s post. Let me briefly summarize the technical details and then we can go to the practical aspects of the lens.

Technical Details

G - It means the lens’ aperture is electronically controlled and does not have an aperture ring on it. Some of the Nikkor lenses will have an aperture ring allowing physical, manual aperture control which is designed for the older bodies.

ED - ED stands for Extra-Low Dispersion Glass. It is basically a glass coating that doesn't disperse light as it enters the lens as other normal glass does and obtain optimum correction of chromatic aberrations.

If you want to learn more about the symbols that are printed on the lens barrel, please check out my blog - Alphabets printed on Nikon lenses and their meaning

The main advantage of this lens is you have to carry only one lens to cover the wide angle at 18mm and if you want to reach longer distance, you can zoom all the way to 300mm. And if you use this lens on FX format DSLR, your max effective focal length will be 450mm (300mm multiplied by 1.5 sensor crop factor) and can reach even farther distance. This superzoom lens saves your time by not having to switch between multiple lenses if you were carrying two lenses, let’s say 18-55mm and 55-200mm for example, to cover the shorter and the longer focal range. The only downside may be you have to carry around heavier lens attached to the camera all the time. Another great feature of this lens is AF-S system which utilizes the silent wave motor (SWM) technology that converts “traveling waves” into rotational energy to focus the optics. This technology enables high-speed auto-focusing which is extremely accurate and super quiet. This lens would be better balanced if used with Nikon D7XXX series cameras and the D500 but works equally well with the lower model DX cameras as well. The lens is well built which comes with the metal mounting and also designed to protect the internal parts of the lens from external influences such as moisture, dust, and humidity.

One thing I noticed on this lens is the loss of one-third aperture value (hence one third less light) at 300mm focal length than it’s predecessor, which means you have to increase the ISO sensitivity of the camera to be able to use a higher shutter speed at the maximum focal length. This is usually a problem if you are shooting a fast moving subject, flying bird for example, fully zoomed at 300mm and want to freeze the motion of the subject by using a faster shutter speed. But if your camera can use a higher ISO value without producing much noise, you can increase the ISO value and then increase the shutter speed to capture the fast moving subjects without a problem. The trade-off for the flexibility of this lens is probably the lower image quality compared to the lens which has a fixed focal length, also known as the prime lens. But if you look at the versatility of this lens and consider the price, it might be an ideal lens for the travelers.

During the peak bloom period, it can be a real struggle to find a good spot to photograph without getting tourists or other fellow photographers in the frame. Last year, I reached the tidal basin area at around 6:30 AM and quickly realized that I was late. Because of the crowd, I was not able to take a single photo the way I had imagined. On the good side, I was able to put aside my camera and enjoy the beautiful scenery of the cherry blossoms. Learning from my past experience, I decided to go little earlier this year but still bumped into few tourists and a couple of photographers who came to photograph the sunrise. While people were waiting for the sunrise, I was setting up the camera on the tripod and getting ready for the blue hour shots. It was a cold and a windy morning, and taking a long exposure shot for the blue hour was a challenging task without getting part of the image blurred. After finding a proper composition, I took a few shots but it all came out blurry because of the swinging tree branches. I patiently waited for the wind to stop and managed to get one good shot. The picture below was taken at aperture value of f/11, exposure time of 25 seconds, ISO 64 and focal length of 22mm using the Nikon D810 body and the Nikkor 16-35mm f/4G lens.

My idea was to get the early morning blue hour shot and then gradually start taking pictures after the sunrise. Along with the sunrise, more tourists and photographers arrived at the tidal basin and got ready to capture the glimpse of the cherry flowers glowing with the sunlight. The picture below is one of the shot I captured right after the sunlight hit the flowers.

As I was walking around the tidal basin and getting shots from different angles, I saw this amazingly beautiful flower smiling with the morning sunlight.

Here is another close-up shot of the cherry blossoms. I think the camera was not able to do the justice to these beautiful flowers but I tried my best.

And here is the Martin Luther King Jr. watching the cherry blossoms festival.

When you walk around the tidal basin, you get countless opportunities to capture the beautiful cherry blossoms and surrounding landscapes. In the shot below, I tried to capture the Washington Monument and frame the cherry blossoms as well. I wanted to keep everything in focus but my 70-200mm didn’t let me focus on the nearest cherry blossoms without moving back and changing my composition. Instead of changing the composition, I decided to focus on the monument and blur the foreground cherry blossoms.

All of these shots were taken this Monday morning which was supposed to be the peak day for this year’s cherry blossom, according to the official website. If you have ever visited DC during the cherry blossoms festival, please share your experience with us.

Panning is an interesting concept where the motion is shown by freezing the movement of the subject while making the background blurry at the same time. We all know that freezing the moving subject requires faster shutter speed, but to make the part of the image blurry, we need to shoot with the slower shutter speed. If that is the case, you can possibly argue that how can we achieve the desired shot without combining multiple images, right? And that is the secret of this technique. You don’t have to edit the picture or combine shots in order to get the motion effect in a single picture. You would get it by properly applying the techniques, and timing the shot from the proper distance so that you could include the background in the frame, which is very important to get the motion effect. Now let’s get into the details of these techniques and see how can we master the panning shots.

Here is the list of my recommended tips and techniques in order to get good results with panning.

1. Shutter Priority Mode and the Shutter Speed

Since panning requires the control of the shutter speed, it is no-brainer to shoot in a Shutter Priority (S) mode. Now the question would be what should be the ideal shutter speed? In my experience, that varies from time to time as it depends on the speed of the subject, your distance to the subject and how much motion blur you want in the picture. I usually start with 1/15s to 1/30s if I am closer to the moving subject and decrease or increase by one third of the stop if I do not get the desired result. This range of the shutter speed works best for me when I am shooting cyclist or moving cars on the street. It might not work in other situations and that is why experimenting with the shutter speed is very important.

2. Enable VR on the Lens

If the lens you are using for the panning has a VR (Vibration Reduction) feature, I recommend enabling it. If your lens supports both Normal and Active VR, I suggest using the Normal VR which is designed to capture the image in general scenario where the camera shake might affect the picture, whereas Active VR is designed to compensate image blur while shooting from moving vehicles or other unstable positions. Stable camera is essential to get the sharper image and during the panning, you have to pan your camera along with the subject which makes the picture vulnerable for the camera shake. And that is the reason we enable VR which allows us to shoot comfortably with up-to four stops down (on certain lenses) and still get the sharper image. Generally, I turn the VR off if the camera is mounted on a tripod. But while taking a panning shot, I would use the VR whether the camera is on the tripod or hand-held.

3. Use Flash in Rear Curtain Sync mode

If you need to use a flash to properly expose the subject or in order to use the faster shutter speed, you would want to use the flash in rear curtain sync mode so that the flash fires at the end of the exposure, just before the closing of the shutter, and freezes the subject. While you are panning with the subject, you would press the shutter release button and the camera captures the movement (this will make the scene blurry). And, at the end of the exposure, while the shutter button still being pressed, camera would then fire the flash and freezes the movement of the subject.

Exposure : 1/25 sec     Aperture : f/4.0     Focal Length : 16mm     ISO : 64

4. Keep your Focus on the subject

Panning technique requires to maintain the focus on the subject all the time. If you take a shot where everything is blurry, it will not make an interesting picture and may not get the attention of the viewers, but if you keep your subject in focus where the rest of the image is blurry, viewers get drawn to the picture with their focus being locked on the subject. That is why maintaining the focus on the subject is very important for the success of panning technique. I use AF-C Autofocus mode to continuously track and maintain the focus on the subject while it is moving. You can also use AF-ON (back button focusing) button in AF-C mode which helps to maintain the focus on the subject by holding onto the button and use the shutter release button to take the shot.

Exposure : 1/25 sec     Aperture : f/4.0     Focal Length : 16mm     ISO : 64

5. Pan with the subject

I think this is the key element in getting a good panning shot. When you are ready to shoot, position yourself and maintain a good distance with your subject. When you find your subject, lock the focus on it and move along with the subject on the same plane of the motion and snap the shutter release button. When you see the subject moving in your frame, you can’t expect to freeze the motion of the subject while you are standing still with the shutter speed of 1/15s. A proper sequence would be - see the moving subject -> lock the focus on the moving subject (using AF-C) -> keep panning with the subject -> press the shutter release button -> and continue to pan with the subject naturally even after taking the photo. This inertia will help you to capture the crisp subject while making the background blurry.

Exposure : 1/25 sec     Aperture : f/4.0     Focal Length : 17mm     ISO : 64

6. Use a Tripod (if it is applicable and necessary)

Using a tripod is helpful only if you can predict the motion of the subject and also if the camera and the subject both will be moving on the same plane of the motion. If you are planning to use a tripod for the panning shot, I recommend using the one that supports panning. If I am using a heavier lens, 70-200mm f/2.8 for example, and have to use a tripod, I would use the Manfrotto 055XPROB Pro tripod with the Manfrotto 498RC2 ball head but the majority of my panning shots are hand-held. While shooting a bike race, the motion is more predictable, but if you are shooting a player running on a soccer field for example, movements of the player is unpredictable and using a hand-held camera is probably the best choice in that case. And if you are shooting hand-held, make sure that you are holding the camera with the proper techniques.

7. Practice more and more

There is no substitute for practicing more and experimenting with the shutter speed, maintaining a proper distance with the subject, properly moving along with the subject and snapping the shutter release button at the right time. As you practice more and more, you would buildup a habit and be mindful about what you should do and what you shouldn't do for the next shot. This is probably the only way to master the panning shot.

Since I stepped into the photography world in 2009, Nikon D810 is my fourth DSLR but second full frame camera after D700. The decision to upgrade D700 to D810 was influenced by the need for a moderately higher resolution camera which was designed and marketed for landscape photography. Over the last 10 years, I have tried and shot in different camera settings and lighting environments. I have traveled to many places to get a good shot and also made countless mistakes repeatedly. I have learned the most from my own mistakes which gave me some invaluable lessons about what to do and what not to do during the shooting process. All these years of mistakes and countless teaching moments gave me my own set of camera controls and the settings to follow. Today, I want to share that information with you and get your feedback if you have any.

There are many options in the camera menu but today I am going to mention only those menu items and the settings which I always set on my camera before going out for the shooting. And all the other settings that camera has but I haven't mentioned here are left to its default value. Without wasting any time, let’s get right into the menu items one by one.

1. Shooting Menu

• Primary slot selection: CF - This makes Compact Flash memory to be the primary location to store images.

• Secondary slot function: Backup - D810 comes with two memory slots and you can make secondary slot as a backup slot. Selecting this option will write the image you have taken to the primary slot first and then copied it to the secondary slot as a backup.

• Image Quality: NEF (RAW) - I shoot in a RAW mode most of the time which gives me the flexibility to edit the images later on the computer without losing any details.

• NEF (RAW) Recording

  Image Size: L - When you select the RAW type in Image Quality option above, this option will be grayed out.

  Type: Lossless compressed - When you select this option, the camera will compress and store the RAW file without losing any color tones information.

  NEF (RAW) bit depth: 14 bit - By selecting this option, camera stores 16,384 (2^14) color tones per pixel for each color channel (Red, Green, and Blue). This gives you tremendous flexibility to play with the color tones during the editing.

• Image Area: FX - Image covers the whole sensor area of the FX camera.

• White Balance: AUTO - I keep the White Balance auto and edit it during the post-processing.

• Active D-Lighting: OFF - I use the shadow and the highlights tools available in Adobe Lightroom and turn the Active D-Lighting off on camera.

• ISO Sensitivity settings

  ISO sensitivity: 64 - I always shoot with the lowest native ISO to reduce the possible digital noise. I would increase the ISO only if I have to increase the shutter speed (at night) in order to capture the moving subjects without getting it blurred.

2. Custom Setting Menu

Autofocus

• AF-C priority selection: Release + focus - If you are using a burst shooting mode, the camera will give priority to release the shutter for the first frame whether the subject is in focus or not and only starts focusing for the future frames. In this mode, except for the first frame, the camera wouldn’t take a picture if the subject is not in focus in the future frames and hence slowing down the frame rates to allow the camera to focus. It is best suited for wildlife and sports photography.

• AF-S priority selection: Focus - In this mode, pictures can only be taken if the camera acquires the focus on the subject. It is best suited for portrait and landscape photography.

Shooting/display

• Beep

• Volume: OFF - I turned the beep volume off so that the camera won’t beep every time the subject is in focus. This is helpful if you are shooting wildlife or any special event which are sensitive to any kind of noise.

Bracketing/flash

• Bracketing order: Under > MTR > Over - While taking the bracketed shots, the camera will store the underexposed shots first and then the camera metered shot and finally the overexposed shots in that order.

Controls

• Assign Fn button: Viewfinder Virtual Horizon - This option helps me to get the virtual horizon on the viewfinder so that I can level up the horizon on the frame.

• Assign preview button: Preview - By pressing the preview button, you can preview the DoF before taking a picture and adjust the aperture if necessary.

• Assign AE-L/AF-L button: AE Lock (Hold) - It will lock the exposure and hold that setting until you push the AE-L/AF-L button again.

• Assign BKT button: BKT - When the BKT button is pressed, you can change the number of shots for the bracketing and also set the EV value between each bracketed shots by rotating the main command dial and the sub-command dial.

These are the settings on my D810 which I rarely touch or alter. Besides these settings on the menu, I make sure that the Exposure Compensation is set to 0 and the shooting exposure mode is set to the Aperture Priority (A) mode. Sometimes, I use the Manual Mode (M) if I have to switch to the BULB mode for the shutter speed while using the filter and taking long exposure shots. I rarely use the Shutter Priority (S) mode but if I am shooting sports, birds or taking panning shots, then I dial into the S mode. While I am shooting landscape or cityscape using the Nikkor 16-35 mm f/4 lens with the D810, I dial into the A mode and make sure that the lens aperture is set between f/9 and f/11. But if I am using 70-200 mm f/2.4, which I use for the portrait most of the time, I usually use a larger aperture (small aperture value f/2.4-f/5.6 for example) to soften the background and get some bokeh. I always carry the tripod and also make sure that my camera bag has some ND filters, shutter release cable and the lens hood as well.

When I am shooting landscape or cityscape, I check the Autofocus mode on my camera and make sure that it is set to AF-S mode, an Autofocus mode which takes a single shot and requires focusing again for the future shot. But lately, I have been focusing manually by sliding the focusing switch on the lens barrel to M and set the focusing distance to infinity which prevents the camera from reacquiring the focus for the future shots during the bracketing. And finally, while using the camera on the tripod, I make sure that the VR feature on the lens is turned off so that the lens doesn’t move its internal elements trying to stabilize the shot, which is a very useful feature to use if you are shooting without a tripod.

This has been my practice for the last couple of years and I am sure you also have your own set of settings and styles for the shooting. But if you do have any questions or comments, please let me know.

I had no choice but look for the alternatives which would support the RAW files from the Nikon D810. After doing much research, I decided to go with Adobe Lightroom. It's been little over a year since I started using the Lightroom and I couldn't be more happier. It is lightweight and very powerful program which works well with the varieties of RAW files. When I download the pictures on the computer, I import the RAW (NEF format) files directly into the Lightroom library and edit them when I want to. Besides Lightroom, I don't use any other tool to process my pictures. In terms of editing the picture, what I can do with the Lightroom, I could also do with the Capture NX2 but the process was complex and time consuming. In my experience, I found Lightroom to be much faster compared to the Capture NX2 and provides various powerful tools to edit the pictures with much more ease than it’s competitors. All of the edits done inside the Lightroom are non-destructible, which means Lightroom doesn't modify the original RAW file but only adds the instructions on the file based on what settings were applied during the development of the picture and renders the image by layering up those instructions step by step. You can always go back to the previous step and undo the changes you made in that step. However, Lightroom being a linear program, you have to be careful about going back to the previous step and undo the changes in that particular step because by doing so, it will erase all the editing going forward from that step as well. For example, after applying 10 steps of editing, if you go back to the 7th step and make any changes there, it will delete everything from the 7th step up-to the 10th step and you have to progress the future editing from the 7th step again.

When I was going through my old pictures, one particular picture caught my attention. It was nicely composed photograph of the World War II Memorial in DC but parts of the image were heavily overexposed which hid all the details in the area. I thought it would be nice experiment with the Lightroom and started editing it. When I finished the editing, the original picture I started with became much more balanced and appealing. Let me go through the step by step settings I applied on the original photograph below and how it got transformed into the final image shown at the bottom.

Usually, when I start editing the picture, I correct the lens profile and remove chromatic aberration first to see the real perspective of the image but in this case, I wanted to see if I can extract any details from the highlights by playing with the exposure and the contrast and then continue processing it if I was getting any satisfactory results.

After adjusting the exposure, temperature and contrast, I tried to bring in some details by using the highlights and the shadow control. But in order to get more details, I needed to clip the white areas and some of the black areas as well which made the overall picture a bit darker but extracted some really nice details which was lost in the overexposed highlights before.

After adjusting light tones and dark tones, I tried to bring in some clarity by using the sharpening tool. You have to be very careful while using the sharpening tool because if you increase the sharpening too much, you will start noticing the digital noise in the picture and the picture doesn’t look natural.

When I was happy with the details in the picture, color tones, shadows, highlights and the exposure, I adjusted the lens profile and removed chromatic aberration and cropped the image on the sides. When I cropped the image, I noticed some of the areas of the picture had random blurred objects which was the movement of the tourists created by the long exposure. I applied spot removal tool in those affected areas which blended those objects in by using the surrounding pixel colors. This tool is very helpful to remove the spots in the image caused by the flare or the scratch on the lens or even some small unwanted objects. Then finally, I applied the graduated filter tool at the bottom of the image, which simulates the effect of applying graduate filter on the lens, and darkened the bottom part of the image. I wanted to draw the viewer’s attention to the moon and the pillars of the memorial rather than the bottom part of the image.

Even though I applied the cropping tool, I didn't change the overall composition of the original picture. I just clipped the small part of the image on the right side to make picture look more symmetrical and removed the small area at the bottom to change the distance and the angle of perception to the main subject. If you want to see all the editing steps, please click the image to view in a bigger size and follow the processing steps.

This majestic city is the home for almost 10 Million New Yorkers and travel destination for almost 60 Million tourists every year. No matter what day of the month or what month of the year it is, the crowd doesn't seem to be lessening. People are out and about even if it's blazing hot outside or freezing cold. This city of concrete jungle welcomes you with the magnificent view of countless skyscrapers which seem to be growing in numbers every day. One does not have to be an architect or a photographer to admire the skyline of New York City. When I visited this city for the first time in 2009, I drove through New Jersey Turnpike and reached to the city via Lincoln Tunnel. When I saw the glimpse of these skyscrapers for the first time (from a distance), I was in complete awe and forgot to take a photo. I went there for the July 4th weekend to celebrate America's independence day and witnessed one of the biggest fireworks in the world. Even though I had just started learning about photography, I took my camera with me but didn’t feel ready to go out and shoot. I returned with some casual shots of friends and family gathering and promised myself to come back more prepared. I visited the city many times ever since and had managed to take few shots here and there. However, I was not satisfied with the outcomes and felt something was still missing. I decided to visit the city again and this time, I went back fully prepared to capture NYC in its full glory. This time, I was determined to get the shots I have always wanted and from as many places as I could pinpoint.

I pinned the places of interest on Google maps and started my journey. My first stop was the Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ. When I reached the park after sunset, it was little windy and cold. Without wasting any time, I set up my camera on the tripod, connected the remote shutter release cable to the camera and started composing the shot. When I was happy with my composition, I took one test shot. Since my focus was to get the deep depth of field making everything in focus, I set the exposure mode in Aperture Priority (A), set the ISO to 64 (lowest native ISO on the Nikon D810 to avoid any digital noise due to long exposure) and the Aperture value to f/9 (I discovered f/9 to f/11 to be the ideal range for sharper image when my Nikkor 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 lens is attached to the D810). I was taking the skyline shot across the Hudson river from the Jersey side. Since there were no moving objects and my camera was on the tripod, I didn't care too much about the shutter speed and let the camera decide it. Afer that, I setup the exposure bracketing (5 shots with the interval of 1 EV; -2EV, -1EV, 0, +1EV and +2EV). One last thing I did was change the lens focus from Autofocus to Manual focus and then focused into the infinity to make everything from the foreground to the background in focus. I have seen other photographers following a few other different techniques as well. One of the popular technique is, after composing the photograph, zoom into the 2/3 of the frame and focus on any particular point on the frame and then zoom out and take the shot. And the other more technical way of doing this is by using the Hyperfocal distance. You can follow the link if you want to know the detail about the technique. When I used my 16-35mm f/4 lens with my Nikon D700, manually focusing into the infinity always worked for me and I continuously use that technique with the D810 as well and I have never been disappointed so far. The first picture below was taken using f/11 at the focal length of 32mm with the shutter speed of 1s and the ISO 64.

My next stop was near the Brooklyn bridge. After taking the shots earlier, I felt confident with the camera setup and didn't bother much to change the camera settings. All I did was find the good vantage point, composed the shot and took a few bracketed shots with different aperture values. The second picture below was taken using f/9 at the focal length of 16mm with the shutter speed of 4s and the ISO 64.

When I got home, I exported the RAW pictures into the Adobe Lightroom and the first thing I did was fixed the chromatic aberration caused by the lens distortion. After that, I adjusted the exposure, changed a few color tones and applied gentle sharpening across the image. This has been my general workflow on the Lightroom ever since I switched from Capture NX2. Sometimes, I also merge the bracketed shots (using Lightroom) to produce an HDR image and see if I get more dynamic range in the picture by doing so. If I do notice the difference in color range, I further process the HDR image. Otherwise, I will just select the single best image which is correctly exposed and process it.

I tried my best to describe my workflow but if you have any question or comments, please let me know using the comment box below.