What Chuck Does

Sidetracked: Photography and Computers

Yesterday I got extremely sidetracked by two issues:

1. Flash photography and photography in general
2. Dealing with spyware and beefing up my computer’s defense

Issue #1: By not working out, I had an extra hour in the day to experiment with some flash photography on hummingbirds, since ther was still some daylight when I got home. I had an extremely frustrating and inconsistent session with the D3 and the SB800. At the time I could not for the life of me figure out how the hell the SB800 was exposing the shots. 1/3 of my shots came out completely underexposed (the flash did not fire). Then 1/3 of my shots were overexposed since they blew out the highlights on the birds. Then 1/3 of my shots were “correctly” exposed but underexposed the birds.

1. SB800 not firing? It turns out the damn thing was low on batteries and could not recycle fast enough. Especially when the hummers would come around and only be there fore seconds, and I would need to take several shots in less than 5 seconds. This was largely the problem with the severe underexposure where the flash did not even fire. However through the viewfinder, you just can’t tell if it fired or not. After changing the batteries, the flash worked consistently, or should I say at least fired consistently…

2a. Overexposed birds? I don’t know how the D3 meter really works but no matter how I selected the metering, the D3 consistently overexposed the birds on the shots where the flash DID fire. The whites were completely blown out and I couldn’t figure out how to turn the damn thing down. I tried a few things. Underexposure on the flash itself (flash exposure-compensation) and I think I also tried underexposing the entire shot within the camera itself. Is it because the birds are too small?
2b. Autofocusing difficulties? I had a hell of a hard time tracking them with the 51-point Dynamic-AF Continuous Servo autofocus. Usually it’s not that bad with 21-point non-Dynamic-AF Single Servo but when I use that mode, I try to “wait” for the birds to come into view more… with the 51-point Dynamic-AF on Continuous Servo, I expected the D3 to be able to track the birds everywhere, yet it did not.

Note: I reread the manual and I should have been using the Dynaic-are AF. I know I shifted the lever to use all the different types of AFs but I should have kept it at Dynamic-area AF. Also, I think 21-points is enough since I move the camera to keep the bird centered. 51-point dynamic-area AF might be overkill?

3. Metering/Underexposure difficulties with flash? No matter how I adjusted the metering, single-point, center-weighted, or 3D color matrix, it seemed that the camera would always underexpose the bird in order to not overexpose the background (sky). This was particularly evident in the pictures I’d take when the bird would sit on the wire (holding up the feeder). From that angle, the sky would be the background and with the sun already set, there was not much light to show the bird. Now in retrospect, there’s a huge possibility that the flash wasn’t even firing, hence the underexposure. But I remember at least 1 shot where the flash DID fire (I think…). Every shot favored the exposure of the sky at the expense of the proper exposure of bird. Is it because the bird is too goddamn small to meter properly? Is it because TTL-BL flash will always attempt to expose the background equally with the subject? Or is because my flash was simply malfunctioning since it was low on juice??? So many questions, so few answers…

Oh, and there’s the other issue with the hummingbirds HATING the flash. Normal flash-less photography is okay with them but the flash scares them. Just another element of difficulty when taking pictures of hummers.

Issue #2: Post-processing requires software and hardware. Well I’ve got a bunch of spyware on my computer and a bunch of obsolete anti-spyware programs. I spent the remainder of the night trying to remove spyware from my computer and running anti-virus programs (in Safe Mode).

I’ve decided to remove Spyware Blaster and Norton and install Kapersky (paid) and SpySweeper (paid). These are necessary if I’m going to actually do important work like post-processing on my machine. Hopefully this will be the end of the spyware attacks. Spyware leaves me feeling dirty though even after its been removed because I know things like my registry are never as clean as they once were thereby slowing the machine down unnecessarily.

All in all, it was a frustrating night. I think things will improve as I install the new software and progress with learning how the camera actually works…

Here’s the best shot of yesterday (note the blown highlights/lowlights)

Click here for the original.