New York City Photographer
There’s a simple but little-known trick in Photoshop and Lightroom that will help you sharpen your RAW photos more accurately. This trick works with any version of Photoshop or Lightroom.
To perform this trick, you’ll need to be in the Detail section of the menu, which looks like two little triangles. You’ll see all of the Sharpening sliders there. Set the Amount to 100 as a starting point.
Continue reading “Quick Tip for Sharpening RAW Files Accurately”Many new photographers find the idea of shooting in RAW to be intimidating because RAW files must be edited. Without editing, RAW photos usually look flat and dull since no post-processing has been applied to them by the camera. This is quite different from JPEGs, which always have color correction applied to them.
This guide is aimed at beginners. Follow these tips and you’ll be able to get great results from your RAW files in just a few minutes.
I always recommend shooting in RAW. The RAW files contain much more information than JPEGs, and give you more leeway when editing. You can brighten an image or correct the colors much more easily in RAW, without degrading the quality.
My simple technique here works with any RAW file from any camera. It doesn’t matter if you’re shooting RAW with a Micro Four Thirds camera, an APS-C camera or a full-frame camera. These are the basic steps I use to process all my RAW images, regardless of the camera.
In this example I am using Adobe Camera RAW inside Photoshop, but this will also work with Adobe Lightroom since the menus are basically the same. Any version of Photoshop or Lightroom will do.
Continue reading “RAW Photo Editing For Total Beginners”Everyone seems to love the Flatiron Building. A lot of tourists have told me that it’s their favorite building in New York City. The relatively short height of the building, its unique shape, and the detail of the architecture make it very interesting to photograph.
The Flatiron Building is located at 175 Fifth Avenue, which is very close to 23rd street in Manhattan. If you want to visit it, take the R or W train to the 23rd street station. You can use any subway exit and you’ll automatically be in a great position to take a picture of the Flatiron Building, since all of the station’s exits will leave you across the street from it.
Continue reading “Photographing the Flatiron Building”New York City has one of the most beautiful and iconic skylines in the world, thanks to all of the tall and unique buildings on the island of Manhattan.
But of course, you can’t photograph the full skyline while on the island — you have to travel outside of Manhattan to do it.
While there are many spots to photograph the skyline, I feel one place is much better than all of the rest to do it, and in this article I’ll explain where that is and why.
Continue reading “The Best Spot to Photograph the New York City Skyline” The Vessel is a new structure built as part of the revitalization of the Hudson Yards area of the West Side of Manhattan. Construction of The Vessel began in April of 2017 and it opened to the public in March 2019.
The Vessel consists of a series of interconnected staircases and tiers designed to allow visitors to walk from the bottom to the top of the structure easily. The Vessel is 16 stories tall and consists of 154 flights of stairs totaling 2,500 steps.
Looking down from the top tier, one can see how elaborately designed and constructed The Vessel is. For those that can’t or don’t wish to walk up and down the stairs, there is also an elevator, which you can see on the right side of the photo above.
The Vessel offers great views of the Hudson River and the distant New Jersey skyline. In the photo above, visitors wait on the top tier facing West to catch the sunset. Below you can see the rail yard – that’s where Hudson Yards gets its name.
As the sun sets it brings out amazing colors in the sky. It’s best to plan a trip to the Vessel around sunset time. Tickets are free but must be reserved in advance. Reservations fill up quickly, so be sure to reserve them a week or two ahead.
After the sun sets, the revitalized Hudson Yards area is a great place to hang out at night. It’s still under construction, but so far a shopping mall and arts center have been built in the area and more attractions are planned.
Have you visited The Vessel at Hudson Yards? What was your experience like? Let me know in the comments, and follow me on Instagram.
If you’d like an NFT of my sunset photo of The Vessel for your collection, visit here.
The answer is yes. You can use Nikon’s 35mm DX lens on an FX camera in FX mode. For some reason, the lens was designed to *almost* cover a full-frame sensor, despite being designed and marketed only for DX bodies. There are some problems with it, but if you recently upgraded to a full-frame Nikon and already have this lens, it’s worth giving it a try.
The first thing you need to do is find the “Image area” submenu on your camera and turn OFF the “Auto DX crop” option. Also make sure “Choose image area” is set to FX, which it probably already is unless you’ve been screwing around.
Once that’s all set, the camera will no longer go into DX mode and you’ll be able to use the full 35mm glory of this tiny lens on your full-frame system. You will now get a nice and useful 35mm field of view with only some minor vignetting at wider apertures (generally speaking, under f4).
If you stop down too far (past f4) the edges will change from gentle vignetting to totally black, as if you’re looking through the keyhole of a door. That’s the caveat with using this lens on an FX camera. But you bought a full-frame system to use the lenses wide open for that ridiculous background blur, so who cares about f4 and above, right?
As you can see in the sample photo above, the vignetting is definitely there but it’s not too bad under most shooting conditions. Vignetting may be become more distracting in bright sunlight, but you can always crop it out or correct for it in Photoshop or Lightroom under the Lens Corrections menu. If you shoot a lot at night or in dark bars like I do, then the vignetting won’t even matter.
The lens performs well on full-frame cameras, with rich and vivid colors. Sometimes the colors are too vivid, to the point of being almost cartoonish. But you can always color correct in your editing software.
Autofocus is quick and accurate, but that’s to be expected since FX autofocus systems are generally the best anyway. It’s also nice to use this lens with a huge, bright FX viewfinder rather than the tiny DX viewfinders.
Give this lens a try on your full-frame camera and let me know what you think below in the comments! And follow me on Instagram for my latest photos of New York City.
I have owned many cameras over the years: manual film cameras, point and shoot cameras, Micro Four Thirds cameras, APS-C cameras and professional full-frame cameras.
I’ve also bought lots of different lenses for all of these different cameras and camera formats, from cheap zooms to expensive primes.
But if I could start over, knowing what I know now and having experience with all of this gear, would I make the same choices? Would I buy and own the same stuff?
The answer is no way.
Starting over, I would try to keep everything as simple as possible. That means only two cameras. I say two cameras because I do think every photographer needs a backup camera, so in my “starting over” plan that’d mean owning a second copy of the same kind of camera or a closely similar model.
I’ve spent a lot of cash on gear. I wouldn’t do that again. I would just get the cheapest camera that fits my needs and be done with it. Also consider that when a more expensive camera breaks, it’s more expensive to repair. I want a camera so cheap that I can just buy a new one for the cost of repairing a higher-end camera.
In the past I have told myself that the image quality of certain cameras was “good enough”. Why even bother with carrying a camera around if you’re aiming just for “good enough” image quality? It is true that all modern sensors perform very well, but there are differences between the formats. There is a point where it’s hard to tell those differences (such as newer APS-C sensors versus full-frame sensors), but smaller sensor formats than APS-C just don’t deliver in a lot of circumstances. So no more “good enough” — I want superb image quality.
I don’t care that much about controls, buttons, dials, menu design, and so on. Are you going out shooting to make beautiful images, or are you out there to hold a camera and play with the buttons? I would absolutely rather have a camera with fewer controls that made stellar images than a “pro” camera with tons of buttons and dials that wasn’t so great.
So what does this all mean? It means I’d choose an APS-C camera, like one from the Nikon D5x00 series. The sad thing is, I already have a Nikon D5100 that I feel performs better than any other camera I own. I should have just stopping buying cameras after that one. Using it with an old 30mm Sigma f1.4 lens, the D5100 delivers images I haven’t been able to match with other combinations. I can also easily set it up for video since it has a fully-articulated flip-out screen and an input for a microphone.
If I knew everything that I know now I would have just bought that one camera — or these days, Nikon’s latest version of it, the D5500 and focused on taking pictures rather than chasing gear.
Every photo in this article was taken with my little Nikon D5100 & 30mm f1.4 setup. I bet you, dear reader, probably thought a more expensive, newer, or possibly even a full-frame camera took these images. But they didn’t. It was Nikon’s little outdated “amateur” model that made them.
What do you think of my decision process and final choice? Leave a comment below with your thoughts and consider following me on Instagram.
I was coming back from photographing an event in Manhattan, and wanted to add money to my MetroCard because I had a few more places to go to that day by subway and bus. When I tried to add more cash to the card, the machine gave an error, and took the twenty dollar bill without putting anything on the MetroCard. It spit out a receipt that showed an error code. The MTA had just stolen the money.
Robbed in the New York City subway.
I thought no big deal, I’ll just show this to the MTA employee working in the booth and get my money back. But of course, we are dealing with the MTA here: even though it just happened, even though I was holding the card that caused the error, and even though I had the freshly printed error receipt from the machine in my hand, the dude told me he could not refund me the money or even just electronically put the twenty bucks I lost onto the card. He said I had to contact the MTA for a refund. By writing them.
Luckily that wasn’t my last twenty bucks; I had more cash on me. But what if I didn’t? I guess I’d hop the turnstile like everyone else. Anyway, I spent another $20 getting a totally new card from the booth attendant and got on the next train.
The process of getting a refund from the MTA is, naturally, a pain in the ass. First, make sure you keep that receipt AND the MetroCard associated with the messed up transaction. You will have to mail both of them to the MTA as proof of what happened. So even if you think the MetroCard is busted, don’t toss it out, and don’t try to use it again anywhere else. Maybe put a small mark on it with a Sharpie so you don’t get it mixed it up with another card.
You will have to print out and fill out the form located here:
http://web.mta.info/metrocard/pdfs/form.pdf
The form is, of course, badly designed — I found it hard to write the letters of my address and all the other stuff inside those stupid little boxes. Then there’s a section of the form where you’ll have to write in all of the information that’s already on the receipt, because why not.
When you’re done, put the form along with the receipt and the MetroCard into an envelope and mail it off to the address on the form. And wait — it took about three months for the MTA send me back a new MetroCard.
It seems that every photographer dreams of some day owning a digital full-frame camera. The lure of full-frame is strong, with promises of photos that have less noise, better retention of shadows and highlights, better color accuracy, and that amazing shallow depth-of-field.
However, improvements in sensor technology have made APS-C and even Micro Four Thirds (m4/3) nearly equal to full-frame cameras in many of those areas. In my opinion, the main reason to move to a full frame system is if you really need very shallow depth-of-field at normal to wide angles (such as 50mm, 35mm, 28mm, 24mm, and so on). Otherwise an APS-C or m4/3 will probably serve you better, and for much less cost.
That being said, if you really want a full-frame camera but don’t want to spend a lot of cash, there are lots of used options among older models. Once selling for thousands of dollars, these old full-frame cameras can now be had for mere hundreds.
The Nikon D700 is a legendary camera. It has always reminded me of a digital version of Nikon’s F4 film camera in terms of cult status and aesthetic. And much like the Nikon F4, I have always wanted one (and now own both). The Nikon D700 originally retailed for $2999.99 back in the year 2008. In the used market today, you can pick one up for around $399 — or even less if you are patient and find a good sale. At this point, it’s the cheapest viable way to enter the world of full-frame photography.
So how does the Nikon D700 hold up today? Pretty well. It’s a rugged, solid, weatherproof camera. It’s *very* heavy but feels good to hold. The grip is perfect. The controls are great. The viewfinder is enormous and clear. And the full-frame images are… alright.
Color rendition at lower ISOs is excellent and true-to-life. Highlights and shadows in brightly lit scenes are preserved well. Blue colors seem particularly vivid, as is the case with many older Nikons. Skin tones at the base ISO are pretty good. The D700 seems to excel as a portrait or “people” camera, perfect for events.
As ISO increases, the color rendition does not hold up as well, though that’s true of many cameras. The further up the ISO ladder you go, the more washed-out and inaccurate the colors become. When you reach ISO 3200 and beyond, you may find magenta or green color casts in a lot of your images.
In high-contrast scenes where you may need to lift the shadows — such as trying to capture a group of people as they capture a sunset on their cell phones — there is a noticeable amount of noise. It’s not overwhelmingly bad, and not unlike film grain, but it definitely will be there if you try to salvage a photo taken under difficult conditions.
Noise is also noticeably present in high-ISO shots and night shots. In addition to noise, some night shots suffered from vertical AND horizontal banding at ISO 3200 and higher. If you shoot a lot of night shots like I do, I would say ISO 5000 is your usable limit in terms of noise. But you’re better off staying at ISO 3200 and below.
This is an old camera, and the people who owned them were often professionals or serious enthusiasts. Therefore if you buy one it will probably have a very high shutter count. It’s likely that any one you pick up will have a shutter count of well over 100,000 actuations, and possibly over 200,000 actuations. The more actuations your camera’s shutter has, the more likely it is (statistically) that you’ll encounter a shutter failure which will need to be repaired.
If your camera suffers a mysterious problem and simply stops working, other parts needed for repair (such as LCD screens, internal electronics, the internal card reader) may be hard to come by or impossible to obtain.
The camera uses Compact Flash (CF) Cards instead of SD cards, so if you don’t have CF Cards laying around, that will be another thing you’ll need to buy. You will also need an external CF Card reader since no computer or laptop has a built-in CF card reader.
The Nikon D700 does not shoot video. In addition, the Live View mode is extremely cumbersome to the point of being useless, so if you’re a shooter who uses Live View often, you may want to rethink buying this camera.
If you are moving from a Nikon DX camera, you will mostly likely need to buy new lenses. Only FX lenses will work properly on this camera (except for the 35mm DX lens which actually does work pretty well, but that’s for another article).
Note: some of you who are Nikon DX users already have the Nikon 50mm f1.8G or f1.8D lenses which you are using for portraits; those two 50mm lenses will work fine.
So, remember to factor in the cost of all of these things when deciding to purchase this camera. You may find that your “cheap entry” into full-frame has gotten rather expensive after all.
Would I recommend this camera over a recent DX Nikon? No. Even my little Nikon D5100 from 2011 performs better in terms of pure image quality and produces much better colors. It even handles noise better. The D700 is not a bad camera, especially for one that’s over a decade old. But technology has moved on and made significant improvements every area.
Would I recommend this camera to someone looking to buy their first full-frame camera? Maybe. The prices of used full frame cameras are all dropping. For a few hundred dollars more, you could pick up a used Nikon D610 or Nikon D750 which would produce much, much better low-light images. So if you’re a night or low-light shooter, I’d lean towards no. If you shoot mostly in the daylight or at well-lit events, then go for it.
I definitely recommend the D700 for people like me, who fall into the “always wanted one” category and are willing to put up with — or just don’t care about — the limitations of using an older camera. If you just want one, I feel like that alone is a perfectly fine reason to get one.
What are your thoughts on the Nikon D700? Leave a comment below if you are still using this camera in the year 2019 (or now, 2020) and tell me what you think about it. And consider following me on Instagram.
Photographing a political rally or political march can be both exciting and exhausting. In order to properly capture the event, you’ll essentially have to be a participant: you’ll assemble where the protestors assemble, listen to the speakers of the event, and go where the march goes. Here are some of my tips for covering a political march.
Try to show up about an hour before the event begins. There won’t be many people around aside from the organizers and the police setting up barricades. Introduce yourself and talk to the event organizers or event marshals if you can. They are usually helpful and can give you specific information about what is planned, the route, how many people they expect, what happens after the event is over and any last-minute changes to any of the above. They may even offer you a temporary press pass or “behind the scenes” access, depending on how large and serious the event is.
You will be on your feet all day long. If it’s a march, you’ll have to walk with the protestors in order to capture everything. In almost every case, you’ll be walking on the streets, on concrete and pavement, and you’ll be moving around a lot in order to get the shots you need. Comfortable shoes will keep your feet from getting sore. I actually bought a pair of sneakers just for these types of events.
If it’s going to be a hot summer day, don’t forget to apply lots of sunblock, wear loose & lightweight clothing, and wear a hat. You will be out in the hot sun for several hours. If the event takes place in the winter, be sure to wear clothing that’s warm enough without being so bulky that you’re physically limited. No matter what the season, always bring water or a sports drink. You may not realize how dehydrated you can become while walking, moving around and shooting for hours, even in cold weather.
The point of a political march or rally is to be seen and have one’s voice heard. People are usually more than happy to have their photo taken. While candid shots are great and should make up the bulk of your photos, a few posed shots can really help to capture the feel of the event and humanize it.
A political issue that inspires people so much that they assemble to rally and march will probably bring out a lot of emotion in them while they’re on the streets. Sometimes these emotions can get out of control. As a photographer, you’re there to capture what happens, but be sure to keep yourself (and your gear) safe. If someone seems a bit too aggressive for your tastes, quietly move away from them. In addition, some marches tend to bring out opposition protestors, which can lead to open conflict. Be cautious of situations like this, since they can spiral out of control quickly. If anyone is causing real trouble (such as threatening violence or throwing objects) tell an event marshal or a police officer.
You’ll be among a large crowd with active and fired up people, so it can’t be helped if people accidentally bump into you, step on your feet, or knock into you from behind (and you might be guilty of accidentally doing it too!) It’s nothing personal and not a big deal. Just be mindful of your photography equipment so it doesn’t get damaged. Keep your camera close to your body and don’t let it swing around.
This is one of the few times you’ll hear me say not to bother with prime lenses. Instead, use a zoom with a good range (24mm to 120mm is my favorite). You’ll often need to go from wide to close-up very quickly, and because of the crowd you may not always be in the position to get the shot you want. You will often be too far away, and the crowd will make it impossible to “zoom with your feet” with a prime lens. You also won’t need to worry about how bright the aperture is; these events always start in the morning and typically finish by late afternoon.
These are my tips for photographing a political march or a rally. If you have a question or any other tips, feel free to leave a comment below or contact me on Instagram.
All photos in this article were taken with a Nikon D90 and an old Nikkor 24-120mm f3.5-5.6D Streetsweeper lens from the year 1996 (my favorite Nikon lens of all time).
