Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Photo I Took

Nikon D3 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/100 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Reverse Angle
photo by Paul Barr

This post is about a new camera-bag solution I'm trying, and so far like, involving an unconventional use of a Think Tank Photo Retrospective® Lens Changer 3 shoulder bag. You can see it at my side in the photos above.

I usually bring just a few lenses when I'm out with the camera, often a Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 and a pair of Nikkor f/1.4 primes (24mm and 50mm). My normal bag is the v1 version of the Think Tank Photo Speed Racer, a nice bag with a silly name, and it's not bad with how I shoot, but I was looking for something less geeky. Think Tank's Retrospective line is advertised as "inconspicuous, soft-sided shoulder bag with a simple exterior that blends into the environment while carrying photo gear", so that seemed to fit the bill.

Since I carry the camera either free in my hand or on a Sun Sniper Pro camera strap, I need a bag just for the lenses and little knickknacks like WhiBal card, polarizer filters, GPS unit, wallet, phone, and such. I liked the idea of the Lens Changer bag because it has three large separate compartments for the lenses, allowing me to place the lens I just took off the camera into one compartment, then use the same hand to fetch the next lens from another.

But as it turns out, I found the whole “shoulder bag” concept inappropriate for the kind of moving around I do when I shoot — bending, kneeling, crouching, stretching, etc. — and with the bag's strap slipping here and the bag flopping there, the bag was a nuisance as often as it was a blessing. It's a fine bag that does exactly what it was designed for and advertised as, so the problem is not with the bag, but with its match to me and my style.

Also, with all the weight constantly on one shoulder, I found it felt heavy after a while.

I figured that if I could hang it off my belt, all those problems would be solved. Hips take weight much better than shoulders, and being attached right at the bag would mean that it wouldn't flop around. Most importantly, unlike a traditional waist-pack camera bag, clipping it to my belt would not garner “what a geek!” ribbing from attractive women. (Thanks go to Lauren for sending me down this relatively stylish path.)

So, I paid a visit to a local hardware store to see whether I could fashion a pair of clips of some kind, and ended up finding exactly what I needed already available, a $7 belt clip:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/125 sec, f/16, ISO 6400 — map & image data
Added Belt Clip
one of a pair

As can be seen, I was able to attach the rings of the belt clips to the heavy-duty strap attachment points, one on either edge of the bag. They slip easily on and off my belt, allowing the bag to become part of my wardrobe.

E-P2 — ¹/250 sec, ISO 100 — map & image data
photo by Nicolas Joannin

The bag's shoulder strap is sewn-in captive and can't be removed, so it just hangs there below the bag. The captive strap makes perfect sense for what the bag was designed for, but I'd prefer is wasn't there, so I may cut it off. I haven't had the guts yet, though.

E-P2 — ¹/250 sec, ISO 100 — map & image data
In Use
going after the Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8
photo by Nicolas Joannin

The bag's materials and workmanship are first class, but I'm not quite so sure about the design. I'm not in the bag industry so grant that there are likely considerations — of material, manufacturing, and marketing — that I'm not aware of, but the design seems to me to have striking flaws.

For example, in the photo above you can see the two large Velcro patches on the outside of the bag. Those are the closure for the cover flap, and they seem gratuitously large for their intended purpose. One of the big selling points is that they have a method to shut up the noise that the Velcro makes when detached (they have a separate piece of Velcro that covers the first, rendering the exposed side non-Velcro), but maybe they wouldn't need that in the first place if the patches were not the size of a soccer pitch.

Worse is the design of a small zippered compartment on the body-facing side of the bag. The captive strap's attach points are right there snug against the top of the zipper, blocking almost completely access to the zipper when it's fully open or fully closed. Here's what it looks like when I've gone to the trouble to pull back the strap to reveal, as best I can, access to the zipper:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/16, ISO 6400 — map & image data
Ill-Conceived Design
the dark brown thing to the right of the blue ribbon is the zipper tongue

It would be hard enough to gain access to the zipper without this flaw because the pocket is on the side of the bag pressed against your body (why is it not on the other side, with clean access protected by the flap?) but all the more awkward to access due to this design.

And notice that blue ribbon? That comes from inside the compartment, and is meant to secure your keys, I suppose. The problem is that the ribbon is sewn inside the compartment right at the zipper, almost guaranteeing that it will get caught up into the teeth. It took five minutes of my life the very first time I touched the zipper because it so effectively jammed the whole thing. It's one of those “What were they thinking? Were they even thinking?” times that make you just shake your head.

It would have been nice if the blue ribbon had been placed on the other edge of the zipper so that you could close the zipper while leaving the blue ribbon out, thereby allowing, if you wanted, access to whatever you attached to the ribbon while the zipper was closed. It seems to be an obvious choice, but perhaps there's some other consideration that makes that design unattractive?

Besides the body-facing zippered compartment and the three cavernous lens compartments, the only storage is a small pocket on the outward-facing side (just below my hand in “In Use” above). It's good for a cell phone or a GPS unit.

Overall, the design of the storage with this bag seems really sub par, especially compared to that of the other Think Tank bag I have. We're back again at the “I'm not a bag designer” nor an expert in the bag market, but I think it could have been done much better. I'd start by putting little memory-card pockets just inside the lip of the main bag, just as in the other Think Tank bag I have. I'd add a low-profile pleated compartment on the outward-facing side of the bag instead of the dinky cell-phone pouch, and I'd throw away the entire flap-closure “solution” (their ridiculous, bulky, kludgy, uber-geeky “Sound Silencer” expanses of Velcro) and design something... anything... else.

And since it's a bag explicitly for lenses, I'd also have thin pockets at the lip, opposite those for the memory cards, for filters or lens caps.

(For the record, I wouldn't make the strap detachable, since my personal desire for a detachable strap is outside the bag's target use.)

Despite these silly design decisions, on average I'm pleased with the setup I've come up with. It feels great, looks stylish (except for the hanging strap, and for the person it's attached to), doesn't get heavy even after many hours trekking through mountain paths, is easy-on and easy-off, but is held secure, and as I said, the bag build quality is first rate.

Here are some other random shots I collected from Paul and Nicolas, who joined me on the trip to the temple....

E-P2 + LUMIX G VARIO 14-45/F3.5-5.6 at an effective 84mm — ¹/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 — map & image data
photo by Nicolas Joannin

E-P2 + LUMIX G VARIO 14-45/F3.5-5.6 at an effective 42mm — ¹/13 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 — map & image data
Chatting With Fellow Visitors
photo by Nicolas Joannin

E-P2 — ¹/160 sec, ISO 100 — map & image data
photo by Nicolas Joannin

Nikon D3 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 42mm — ¹/500 sec, f/4, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
photo by Paul Barr

E-P2 — ¹/80 sec, ISO 100 — map & image data
photo by Nicolas Joannin

I'll probably end up getting rid of the shoulder strap, but may try to rubber-band it out of the way behind the bag, or something, before I bring the knife to bear.

As most folks guessed correctly in my golden bumpy “What am I?” quiz, the object is a lens CPU chip/contacts set. I'm surprised so many people knew what it was because I had no idea they existed until recently. It allows one to update an old lens with modern electronics that tells the camera body a few particulars about the lens.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/8, ISO 1400 — full exif
Tiny “Dandelion” Lens CPU for Nikon

By far my favorite and most-used lens is the “Cosina Voigtländer Macro APO-Lanthar 125mm F2.5 SL”, a mouthfull of a name for a gorgeous lens described here. My blog has no end of posts that highlight some of what this lens can do, but here are a few:

• The Towel Museum in Imabari Japan, Part 2
• Exploring the Edge of Creamy Macro Bokeh with Lily of the Nile
• Exquisite Beauty Growing Like a Weed by the Side of the Road
• Haphazard and Defocused: Elusive Lesson in Photographic Composition
• Exploring a Glass of Dainty Flowers With the Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5
• Exploring the Sharper Side of the Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5
• Low-Hanging Fruit: Flower Detail from Kid Ikebana
• Little Flowers, Little Context
• a post about Lightroom using a creamy magnolia example photo

Unfortunately, even though it was made just a decade ago, it has no internal CPU to tell the camera body what it is, so I've had to rely on the “Non-CPU Lens Data” feature of my Nikon D700 to allow basic use of the lens. This is fairly inconvenient because I use a number of non-CPU lenses and must remember to switch to the data set for the lens each time I switch.

So, when I found out about the Dandelion all-in-one CPU and contact set made by Russian firm Filmprocess, I ordered some. Filmprocess doesn't actually sell them to consumers, so I bought some from Spanish firm Leitax, for 27 Euro. (They list it on their “Leica for Nikon” page, but you can buy just the chip in the entry described "And this is the special Dandelion Chip for Nikkor manual lenses (and other lenses where the chip rests on top of a flat surface)", which adequately describes my Voigtländer.

It seems that most people who install these chips on their own lenses write up an article about how they did it, so a web search quickly brings up plenty of places you can go to find details. Of note is this post on Leitax's own site about how to glue the chip, or this one from almost two years ago.

The chip comes with a little mount-location guide, so it's easy to see where it has to go:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/11, ISO 1000 — full exif
Rough Placement Test
with the chip sitting on the section of plastic it needs to be placed in

Just make sure that the four pins are to the right when viewed as in the photo above; you don't want to put the thing in upside down!

While the chip was on top of the black collar, I scored the edges of where it should go with an X-Acto blade...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/16, ISO 6400 — full exif
Marked Area To Remove

Then removed these three screws...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/11, ISO 2000 — full exif
Just Three Screws
to remove the plastic collar

...and the black collar can be pulled out without fuss.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/22, ISO 4000 — full exif
Plastic Collar Removed

I was surprised to realize that it's fairly soft plastic; I had my Dremel ready because I thought it was metal of some kind. Being plastic, I could just work on it with the knife...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — full exif
Ready for Surgery

It turns out that the area where the chip must go is hollow:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/8, ISO 1250 — full exif
Hollow
reverse angle of area to remove

This is great news because it makes it all the easier to cut, just by shoving the knife blade up from the bottom, flush with the inside wall:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/8, ISO 1100 — full exif
Starting Cut

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/8, ISO 1400 — full exif
Natural Lower Cut Limit
the “seam” running up and down in this pic

I tried a number of methods to make the cut... including repeated scoring with the blade, but after much trial and error I found that I got best results by just repeated “poking” with the blade, eventually perforating where I wanted the cut. Because the whole collar is soft plastic, ripping part and/or squishing the whole thing were real concerns, but I was able to get through successfully...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/8, ISO 6400 — full exif
Rough Cut

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/60 sec, f/8, ISO 6400 — full exif
Looking Ragged
but it cleaned up nicely

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/250 sec, f/8, ISO 6400 — full exif
Fit Test

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/8, ISO 3600 — full exif
Alignment Test

Once the fit was checked I was ready to glue it in. I've never in my life had good luck with Krazy Glue or the like, so when I ordered from Leitax I had them include a small tube of what they use, sold for eight Euro on the same page they sell the chip itself. It came without instructions, but I was able to find them both in Spanish and in English. The summary is "Sets and dries quickly; best removed, if needed, with a knife".

I glued the chip mostly at the back, but also along the bottom edge and two side edges. It also says that it's ready for practical use within a few minutes, but I left it for several hours before replacing it and its three screws:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 280 — full exif
Success
Glued and Dried

Once it's been mounted, you need to program it for the specific lens, which involves an ingenious method of telling the chip the lens focal length, minimum aperture, and maximum aperture. Full instructions are here, but in short:

To set the widest aperture (“f/2.5” for the Voigtländer):

1. Turn the camera on
2. Set the camera to manual-exposure mode
3. Take a photo with a 1-second exposure.
4. Take a photo with a 5-second exposure.
5. Take a photo with a 1-second exposure.
6. At this point the aperture displayed in the camera settings will start to cycle, changing every second or so. You can then pick a programming mode by taking a 1-second-exposure shot when a specific aperture is displayed. In the case of setting the widest aperture, wait until “f/2.8” is shown, then take the 1-second-exposure shot. Now the chip is in “set widest aperture” mode".
7. Now the aperture will cycle again, changing by a small amount every second or two. When it gets to “f/2.5”, take a 1-second exposure shot. The chip has now been programmed to tell the camera that the widest aperture is f/2.5.
8. Turn the camera off.

To set the narrowest aperture (“f/22” for the Voigtländer):

• Repeat all the steps above, except in step 6 wait until the display cycles to “f/40” before taking the shot. That puts the chip into “set narrowest aperture” mode.
• Then in step 7, wait the minute or two until the display cycles up to f/22 and take the shot.

To set the lens focal length:

We'd like to tell the chip that the lens has a focal length of 125mm, but, according to the maker, it's not possible. That makes some sense because Nikon also doesn't allow you to set that focal length in the camera's “non-CPU lens data”, so 125mm seems to simply not exist in Nikon's world.

So, I picked to program the lens as “135mm”, to match what I've used in the non-CPU lens-data section. This is done by repeating the steps above, except in step 6 wait until “f/4.5” is shown to take the shot. That puts the chip into “set focal length” mode. Then in step 7 wait until f/13 is shown, which, according to the instructions, corresponds to “focal length is 135mm”.

And that's that. Update: Not quite... see below.

Now I don't need to remember to set the lens data when I use this lens... it just works. I leave the lens's physical aperture at f/22 and control the shot aperture via the thumb wheel on the camera body, just like with a modern lens.

It's a bummer that the metadata records as 135mm instead of 125mm, but I had that problem before, so I still pre-process my images before loading them into Lightroom, injecting proper lens data (including the “Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5” name) so that I see it properly in Lightroom.

Next on the list: the 1983 Nikkor 300m f/2. I also have a Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 that I'd like to do this to, but its rear glass is so big that there's not enough room to physically mount the chip (at least not without physically chipping the lens glass), so that's a no-go.

Features that I hope for:

1. Clean, simple, uncluttered interface.

2. Photo update via FTP, Dropbox, or some other method where management is done on my computer and merely reflected to the device.

3. Supports display of basic metadata on each photo, when asked.

4. Supports display of a map for geoencoded photos.

5. Supports large images.

6. An arbitrarily-deep folder structure.

7. Image sorting: at least via photo date and image filename.

Things that I don't care about:

1. Any kind of photo management on the device (rating, flagging, moving, grouping, renaming, rotating, labeling, ...)

2. Any kind of photo development on the device (cropping, filters, touch-ups, etc.)

3. Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, or anything else like that.

4. Passwords, slideshows, music integration, etc.

The best I've found so far is Photo Manager Pro by Linkus, after Scott Bourne recommended it. It's a great bargain for a couple of bucks, and it does many things I like. To boot, the developer is responsive, and the current version of the app contains some features and fixes that I requested. I like it so much that I built an FTP client into my new Collection Publisher plugin for Lightroom, so that I can instantly reflect changes in my portfolio to the app.

But alas, Photo Manager Pro's interface is anything but “clean and uncluttered” and I doubt one request from me would result in a monumental shift in aesthetics, so I'm looking for other options.

In the comments of a recent post about GPS receivers, it was suggested that the GPS receiver in the iPhone was useful for keeping tracklogs. I had bad experiences with iPhone location services when I tested in 2009, but perhaps my test wasn't good, or perhaps the old iPhone 3 wasn't good, so I thought I'd give it another try.

So, the other day I took three GPS receivers with me while I did some errands. As I'm apt to do lately, I walked.

This post is a comparison of the resulting tracklogs.

Coming and Going
Garmin eTrex Legend HCx  ·  Garmin eTrex 20  ·  black is iPhone 4s

The three devices I took along on my unscientific test:

1. Garmin eTrex Legend HCx that I bought in 2007. It supports GPS with WAAS for increased accuracy. It has a slate-blue outer shell, so its tracklog gets a blue line on the plot.

2. Garmin eTrex 20 that I bought in Fall 2011 (product page at Garmin). Garmin has adjusted the hardware/software to make it even more troublesome to use than its predecessor, which is quite a feat, but on the plus side it not only contains a GPS/WAAS receiver, but also a GLONASS receiver, to tap in to Russia's own independent version of America's GPS. The theory is that more satellites in the sky means more satellites likely visible to the unit in any situation, and so better accuracy. I got the orange one, so its tracklog's plot is orange.

3. iPhone 4s with the MotionX GPS app. This is a GPS (update: and GLONASS!) receiver, likely(?) without WAAS. My iPhone is black, so its tracklog gets a black line.

The results from the iPhone was much better than I expected, and the others were worse than I expected. In the short plot segment above, which shows both the start and end of my walk, the iPhone is the closest to where I actually walked, including crossing the street toward the top of the image.

Garmin eTrex 20 is best along here
I walked along the north side of the street

All-Around Fail

iPhone Least Bad of the Three

I had planned to treat myself to the lunch delights at CHEZ LUC, but they were closed, so I wandered around until I found a place, at the center red dot in the next plot:

Lunch

While there, I sat about two yards from a floor-ceiling window, and the two Garmin units reported accuracy as good as 10 meters, but the scatterplot above shows that they had no clue.

The more modern eTrex 20 perhaps had a better clue, because while in the restaurant it generally reported less accuracy than the older eTrex Legend HCx:

±16m     ±10m
both wrong, but the eTrex 20 less so

Again the Legend HCx is off

Pause

I spent a few minutes inside a building where I had poor-to-no reception, but instead of realizing the lack of reception and pausing the tracklog, the Legend HCx gave incorrect readings scattered across a span of 310 meters. The iPhone mostly realized that it had no signal, and its scatter was limited to 80 meters. The eTrex 20's scatter was about 60 meters.

For while the Legend HCx just drifted off, at one point more than 200m off, as illustrated by the outward bow in the blue line at the left of the overall plot, which I'll repeat here:

Legend HCx Going Crazy

I've never seen it show a suspected accuracy that bad, so it wouldn't surprise me if it was showing its normal accuracy of 3m-10m while it was actually off by 200m, but unfortunately I wasn't looking at it while walking, so I don't know what it thought its accuracy was.

Pedestrian Overpass

In the plot above, I crossed the street from north to south, then doubled back a bit on the pedestrian overpass (just to the left of center), to check out the view from above the street. Again, the iPhone seems the most accurate here, though the eTrex 20 at least makes it look like I used the crosswalk.

Not Too Bad Down This Stretch
but again, the iPhone is best

Cutting Corners
again the iPhone is best

Leaving Yodobashi Camera
it all looks crazy, but the iPhone plot is by far the best

More iPhone Bestness
I walked along the south side of the street

Heading Down to the River
eTrex 20 seems best

Walking Under a Bridge

The iPhone track looks best, but in this case it might be a side effect of laying down a plot point less often. The two Garmin units were set to log locations every second, but the app I used on the iPhone seems to have logged a location every six or seven seconds, which is just about the time it took to pass under the bridge.

Pretty Tight
the iPhone's less frequent updates smooths out the jaggies

Just Crazy
iPhone wins again

Shopping

I don't know how far I actually walked, but I can tell you what each tracklog tells me about my three-hour stroll:

• The iPhone 4s tracklog contains 1,163 data points, and the distances add up to 11.8km.

• The eTrex 20 tracklog contains 9,973 data points, and the distances add up to 12km.

• The eTrex Legend HCx tracklog contains 10,428 data points, and the distances add up to 13.8km.

Remember, the older eTrex Legend HCx kept reporting a location even when it should have realized it had no idea where it was, jumping all over the place while I was in a building, and all that jumping added up to more “distance” and more data points. The other units were smarter in that they knew better when the accuracy was not good enough to count on.

Both Garmin units were powered on for the same amount of time and had the same 1-second logging frequency, so they should in theory contain the same number of data points, but the eTrex 20 recorded 455 fewer, representing seven and a half minutes where it choose to not record a location (because I was inside and it didn't have a good signal) while the Legend HCx continued recording its incorrect location.

Elevation

Due to the nature of its design, the GPS system is not as accurate with altitude as with latitude and longitude, and on some Garmin units this is exacerbated with a worthless barometric barometer. I've learned to avoid those, so none of my units now have that, so the altitude in today's three plots is all from GPS (or, in the case of the eTrex 20 (and the iPhone!), both GPS and GLONASS).

It's almost comical how random it seems. Here are the elevation plots from each tracklog, along with an extra one for the elevation that Google Earth has on file:

Google Earth

Garmin eTrex 20 (GPS + GLONASS, 2011)

Garmin eTrex HCx (GPS, circa 2007)

iPhone 4s (GPS, circa 2011)

The Google Earth data seems closest to reality, except for the odd hump in the center (Google thinks there's a hill just north of Kyoto Station). The elevation in Kyoto slopes down from the north, and you can see in the Google Earth plot that I'm mostly level as I walk east to west, then slopes down as I approach Kyoto Station, then at the end climbs steadily as I walk north along the river.

The other plots are just ridiculous. (According to the eTrex 20, at one point I was at 225m elevation, and according to the Legend HCx I was at one point walking 0.68 mach!)

In the end, I'm dismayed at how bad my old Legend HCx was, and how not-much-better the eTrex 20 is, especially for having twice satellites available to it.

But most of all I'm shocked at how good the iPhone 4s results are... even judging from this one simple test, it's clearly good enough in outdoor use for geoencoding photos.

This post is long, but here's the two-sentence summary for the “tl;dr” crowd:

As with most any technology release (hardware or software), folks tend to frame their personal whims and desires as “absolutely required!”, while features that they don't personally care about become unneeded fluff. Photographers who don't care about video, for example, lament the assumed cost of all the new video features.

This is human nature, and in this respect I am human (why on earth doesn't Lightroom have geoencoding built in!?), but my moral outrage at the omission of personally-desired features is tempered by many years of experience with product design, and a long-learned understanding that in practice things are much more complex than they might seem from the outside.

A feature not included in the D4 is built-in geoencoding, an omission that some people find unfathomable, as evidenced by a thread at DPReview started with this message:

This rant is clearly emotional, by someone who doesn't realize that it's emotional, nor that others may not share their particular emotions on this issue, so it's easy to dismiss. However, it started a long thread — one of many, I'm sure — where people debated the usefulness of having a GPS receiver in camera, and the business decision of having omitted it.

Of course, the responses included equally emotional rants on the other side of the aisle, such as this gem from Curtis Smith:

Personally, I've been geoencoding my photos for the better part of a decade (the ones I've posted, mostly in Kyoto, are mapped here) and would love to have it built into the camera.... but only if done well. I understand enough to know that it's not necessarily easy to do well, so I followed up the initial message with one of my own about some of the likely costs that came to mind — costs such as the physical space the GPS unit would add to an already bulky camera body, and how it would lower the value/cost benefit ratio (that is, the marktability) for those not interested in geoencoding their photos.

Each specific “cost” has its own level of impact, but the manufacture must weigh them as a whole against their benefits, and at this point in Nikon's product roadmap (at this point in the economy, at this point in their market research, perhaps in light of Mother Nature's harshness in 2011), built-in geoencoding didn't make the cut. Maybe it will when they reevaluated everything for the next camera. Or maybe not.

Anyway, as is common on faceless online discussions, some folks mix in a healthy dose of ignorance and antagonism with their emotion, such as this bit of arm-chair logic from Robin Casady replying to a “there are costs” post similar to my own:

Here, Robin is referring to a small add-on product that Nikon sells that includes a GPS antenna; when you plugin it in to the camera and it has any kind of satellite fix, photos are geoencoded automatically. This has been available for years, and if I were to use it with my current camera, it would replace what I actually do (which is carry a separate GPS receiver while out with the camera, then sync its tracklog to the photos in Lightroom, with my geoencoding-support plugin).

I don't choose to use Nikon's add-on because I feel it's an ugly wart on the camera, I worry about its speed and accuracy, and it lacks the ability to display its status beyond more detail than a blinking light. And even if I did use it, I'd still need a way to geoencode after the fact, for locations where I didn't have it with me, to geoencode the photos I get from others on the same outing with me, for locations it couldn't get a good signal, and for times where a depleting battery prompted me to turn it off.

Anyway, at first blush Robin's logic may seem reasonable... Nikon already has the hardware as a separate product, and the cameras have had for years the firmware needed to geoencode the photos, so the simple step to include the hardware inside the camera takes almost no work, so citing “engineering costs” seems unreasonable, Robin concludes.

But that's an exceptionally naïve, ignorant point of view, even when limiting the scope of “engineering costs” to the “software aspect” that Robin brings up. (Update: In light up the updates noted below, "exceptionally naïve, ignorant point of view" is a perhaps harsher characterization than Robin's statement merits. See more below...)

For example...

• If you move it from an external dongle to an internal component, you've lost all UI (“user interface”), so now you've got to come up with a way to interact with the user. You have to come up with a way for the user to turn the GPS feature on and off, and you have to come up with a way to indicate to the user whether the unit is on or off.

• Let's look at just that latter point for a moment, the oh-so-simple “indicate to the user whether the unit is on or off”. That might naturally go into the viewfinder display, but since that very-limited real estate has been staked out by other UI needs for years, you're forced to change or remove things that until now were considered critical. Maybe just make everything else slightly smaller to squeeze in one more indicator, but geez, that was done the last several iterations and now things are starting to get way too small....

  So that's not straightforward, and the same angst applies to the LCD displays.

  Update: In a touche!-worthy reply, Robin points out that there's already a GPS-related indicator in both the viewfinder and LCD-body displays, which flashes to indicate that it's on but has no position fix, and is solid if it has any kind of fix. This clearly makes this bullet point of mine completely moot and I have learned something, but I don't think removing one or two points removes the idea that there's a cost/benefit balance that most of us don't fully understand.

• Then you're faced with the fact that “on” and “off” are not really sufficient... you need to be able to communicate to the user whether the unit is actually getting a signal, and if so, how accurate. If I recall correctly, the hardware dongle uses a bi-color LED to indicate the difference between “on with good signal” or “on but no good signal”, and this is really very minimal because “good signal” means different things to different people (100m accuracy vs. 3m accuracy, for example). Also, “Not good signal” may really mean “warming up” or “can't see satellites”. So if you're going to bring it in house, you'll naturally want to tackle that issue to provide the user with a more-usable level of information, but maybe all of that doesn't need to go into the viewfinder, so now you've bifurcated the information (some in the viewfinder, and some somewhere else... likely in the menu system), so finding the balance there is another issue.

• Then you've got to consider the situation of when the battery is getting low... it makes no sense to run the battery into the ground just so the GPS receiver can keep its fix while the camera is idle.... what good is it to have had a good fix for the last hour if you now don't have enough battery to take a shot? So you've got to come up with some measures to handle this situation (perhaps GPS auto shutoff when battery is below X% full), and this means that you have to have a whole new UI to communicate to the user when this has happened, what the current status is, and perhaps to allow the user to make adjustments to the heuristics for their specific needs.

  Update: In the same reply noted above, Robin cites that there is already an option just as I postulated, that turns off the GPS receiver when the exposure meter turns off, some user-selected time (default: six seconds) after the shutter button is released. I offered the idea merely as an example of something that might be done, but I'm quite dismayed to find it's actually there in that form because one would generally want the GPS receiver to be active a lot longer than the exposure meter; the exposure meter comes back on instantly when you press the shutter button half way, but Nikon's GPS receiver takes a minimum of five seconds to get a fix when already hot, but is rated at 45 seconds when warm (unused for more than 15 minutes, I think). I'd like to the GPS unit remain on much longer than the exposure meter, and would like the ability to have it wake up every 14 minutes or so to keep itself "hot"...

• But we've forgotten the more common situation of power management... should the unit be on all the time, or should it auto-shutoff in the same way the image review shuts off, coming back up when the shutter button is half depressed? (I'm half depressed just thinking about this.) Both make a lot of sense, each applied to its own situation, but no one solution makes sense for everyone, so again you need to add UI to allow the user to indicate their wishes, and more UI to communicate to the user this additional status of the settings chosen and the current state within the context of those settings.

Notice how the “simple software aspect” immediately turned into a hardware aspect: both the viewfinder display and the LCD display require physical hardware manufacturing changes to update. There are other hardware aspects one could turn to (such as the LED seen in the external GPS unit), or one could keep it all software by burying everything into the menu system, but these are substantially less desirable.

Update: So, with my first viewfinder/LCD point having been completely wrong, the previous paragraph is pretty clearly unreasonable. You do still need to handle on/off for the GPS unit, but in my experience as a geoencoder I think it'd be sufficient to have it in the menu system.

All features have costs. The ones above are just what came to my imagination at first blush, but because I have no experience with embedding GPS receivers inside cameras, I'm sure there's a whole litany of additional problems I've neglected to consider.

Update: And it's because of this ignorance that we all have (at least those of us who are not camera-design engineers) that I characterized Robin's curt conclusion of "Bogus!" as I did. In light of my own ignorance on the viewfinder/LCD issue when I wrote it, my use of "exceptionally" seems overdramatic. Sorry about that, Robin.

Then there are the followup costs, such as the need to document all this in the user's manual, and translate that to all the languages that Nikon supports. (Of course, they'll have had to translate all the related UI in the camera menus.) Then there's the recurring need to provide support: more features mean more support calls, etc.

None of this is unsurmountable, and it's all certainly trivial compared to all the video features that did get added, so it wouldn't have surprised me in the least to have seen Nikon include this in the D4. But to do that they would have had to shift resources from something else, and if they had done that, we'd see these same online flamefests about whatever that “something else” was that got the short stick.

We'd also see additional flamefests about whatever GPS support did get built in and how lame it is...

This applies to pretty much every new hardware and software product you'll come across (I see it every time Adobe releases a new version of Lightroom, or Apple releases a new phone), so the next time something near and dear to your heart is released, realize that like everyone else you're talking to, you don't know it all, and take care to frame your wishes and opinions as just that, wishes and opinions.

(And as a matter of courtesy, don't point out my own advice to me when I don't follow it. )

By the way, several years ago I read an excellent writeup from a software developer about the extensive ripple of high-impact ramifications that he came across while trying to implement a "trivial" feature request from his users. I think it was about some kind of email-notification aspect of an online forum of some sort. My web-search kung-fu is weak on this one.... does anyone have a link for this article?

Anyway, I'm in the process of reading the D4 press release and am left in wonder by the ultra thick spread of marketing fluff that I don't recall in earlier Nikon releases. For example, talking about the low-light ability, they say:

which is just fine — the use of phrases like “sovereign” is strong when used in limited doses — but then they continue with:

“Excel in any situation”... what does that even mean? The entire sentence could have been replaced with “Pixel size is 7.3µ.” and it would have retained exactly the same information, while shedding the smarmy, fake feeling that makes me want to shower before moving on to the next paragraph.

I'd really love to chat with the person who wrote/approved this, to find out what beneficial effect they actually envision this kind of prose has on what kind of people? To me it's the textual equivalent of Tammy Fay Baker makeup.... I just don't see this kind of writing as anything other than a total failure in every respect. I'm not even half way through the press release, but already this kind of crap has been laid on so thick in paragraph after paragraph that my desire to vent about it actually eclipses my desire to know more about the camera (and hence I'm here writing this post instead of reading further). Bravo, Nikon Marketing, bravo... that's an amazing feat.

I'm excited to go on to find out more about the camera, but all I can do is hope that camera was designed by brighter minds than Nikon has in their marketing department.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 400 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

mouseover button to see that version

Since writing “A Few Polarization-Filter Examples” several years ago, I've been meaning to do a post on a polarization filter's effects when shooting fall foliage. Over the years I've mentioned some effect or other of a polarization filer on my blog (such as here, here, and here), but I'm only now getting to filling in a huge deficiency of my 2007 post on making the best of bright light in fall-color photography by demonstrating how useful a polarizing filter can be when shooting foliage.

While at the Yoshiminedera Temple south of Kyoto during various trips last year, I did something I do often: snapped some pairs of shots with and without a polarization filter. Today I'm doing something I don't often do: actually making use of them. As I mentioned last year in “Photo Shoot Among the Fall Colors at Shouzan”, I thought I'd get around to this post soon, but a year later, finally, here we are.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/2500 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/3200 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

As you can see in these examples, colors can be much richer, and shiny reflections reduced. Before I talk about why, I should mention a bit about how I made these shots....

First, I should have used a tripod, and perhaps sometime I'll go to that trouble, but these were all snapped freehand. Most often I'd find the rotational angle of the polarizer filter that maximized the effect, then snap a shot, quickly rotate it 90 degrees while trying not to move, and snap another shot. Later in Lightroom I attempted to compensate for slight camera movement by adjust one crop or the other, but otherwise each pair has identical, default “just loaded into Lightroom” processing. (I did subject the photos to my standard treatment via my bulk-develop plugin, but I don't think any of these photos would have been affected by it.)

So, to be clear, this means that the “without” is not really “without a filter”, but “with the filter at its least impact”.

So, what's happening when we use a polarizing filter? If light is polarized for whatever reason, a polarizing filter blocks most of the light, at least when the filter is rotated to “align” to the polarized light. Most light is not polarized, so the filter does not block much of that light, but some kinds of light are strongly polarized, and those can be strongly blocked while, again, leaving other kinds of light mostly alone.

Strong reflections from the sun on the leaves in the photo above cause the whole “Without Polarizer” version to be washed out a bit, and each individual area of reflection is washed out considerably, towards pure white. But for whatever reason, those reflections are mostly polarized, so when I use a polarization filter and rotate it to maximize the filtering of the reflections, the overall dynamic range of the scene is reduced to a sweeter spot for the camera sensor, resulting in richer colors and a more aesthetically-pleasing result. The non-polarized light is still there so we still see the leaves, but the blinding reflections are greatly reduced. It's the same effect for your eyes when you put on a pair of polarized sun glasses.

(By the way, a polarizing filter would be better called a “polarized-light filter” because it filters that kind of light; the term “polarizing filter” sounds to me as if it somehow turns non-polarized light into polarized light.)

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/4000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/5000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

Light from a blue sky is often polarized, though it depends on the time of day and the direction you're facing relative to the sun. In this case, a polarizing filter tends to bring down the overall brightness of the sky relative to the rest of the scene, compressing the dynamic range, which allows a deeper blue.

You can read on Wikipedia all about polarized light if you're interested in the physics behind it.

Not all scenes are affected by a polarization filter. You can test the effect by holding the filter to your eye (have the part that would face the lens facing your eye) and rotating... you'll either see the effect clearly, or you won't. I've some experience using these under my belt, but I'm still not very good at predicting which lights will be polarized, and the overall effect of using a filter on them. But luckily, it's easy to test and experiment while out and about, so I generally keep a filter or two in my camera bag.

By the way, as a good test of your filter, try viewing a smartphone screen through the filter and rotating... my old iPhone 3G's screen becomes perfectly black at certain angles, though my new iPhone 4s's screen merely shifts colors, a technical advance sure to be a boon to sunglasses-wearing phone users.

Anyway,not all scenes look better with the filter. Both versions of the following photo are uninteresting:

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/800 sec, f/4, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/1000 sec, f/4, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

Consider the water reflections in“Snowy Gardens of the Heian Shrine”... removing them would destroy those shots, so it was definitely a situation where one would not want a polarization filter.

Some more examples follow...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 280 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/9, ISO 1100 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/9, ISO 800 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/4, ISO 560 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/4, ISO 250 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

Having finally obtained a manual for the lens I got last week, I've learned a few things. One, it seems that it actually has a built-in slide-out lens hood in addition to the big detachable hood I'd been using. You're supposed to deploy both.

Also, for some reason, it says that proper focus can't be achieved without a filter installed in the filter holder. It can be simple optically-inert glass, but you've got to have something. I don't know how it could matter, but I'll trust the maker on this. Unfortunately, the only filter holder it came with is for gelatin filters, and it was empty, so I'd been using it improperly. Nobody seems to have the normal filter holders in stock, so for the time being I got a special polarizer filter that fits, as it was both in stock and something I'd want anyway.

So, armed with this new knowledge, I went out this afternoon to the Kamo river to give it a spin, also using for the first time its dedicated 1.4× teleconverter, making a 420mm f/2.8 manual-focus lens.

I'm really disappointed with the results. I don't know whether I was just bad at hitting focus, or whether I need to spend some time calibrating the focus, but none of the photos — none — were well focused.

A bunch of hawks (which I've realized is the normal word for what I've been referring to as “kites”) were swarming across the river as a pair of ladies threw hunks of bread, so I tried shooting that. The birds could catch bread in mid air, but unfortunately, I could not do the same with the focus.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 + 1.4X TC @ 420mm — ¹/4000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Drawing A Bead
the bright spot immediately below the hawk's head is a chunk of bread, soon to be lunch

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 + 1.4X TC @ 420mm — ¹/4000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2500 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Sort of Pretty
but would have been better in focus

I was hoping for some shots like in “Feeding Frenzy on the Kamo River”, but these were the best I could come up with.

The water was quite high due to rain all week, though nowhere near where it was last year, but the stepping stones across the river (seen here and here) were mostly submerged...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/2500 sec, f/2, ISO 280 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Sort of Funny
two unrelated folks build a seemingly-related scene

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/2500 sec, f/2, ISO 250 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Snacking on Dried Beans
focused better than most, but lacking in the not-off-kilter department

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/2500 sec, f/2, ISO 360 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Fisher of Photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/2500 sec, f/2, ISO 220 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Missed It By That Much
the white thing in the water in the lower-left is the baseball
that he dove to (try to) get before it rolled over the bank

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/2500 sec, f/2, ISO 280 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Second Team Off the Bench

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/2500 sec, f/2, ISO 320 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Still Trying

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/2500 sec, f/2, ISO 360 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Oh Well
there are other things we can do besides baseball

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/3200 sec, f/2, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Like a Boss
he carries himself well
while she carries his camera, his camera bag, her big bag, and his shoes

I'll need to practice.

So, as evidenced by “Street Photography (Sort of) In Roppongi Hills“ and its followups (parts two and three), I got a new lens last week. Some have asked to see a photo of me with it, so it's fortuitous that Kyoto friend Stéphane Barbery (he of the oft-different artistic sense and some killer Festival of the Ages shots, among much other) actually got a photo of me where I don't think I look horrible. He had been laughing at me for using the new lens, a circa 1983 Nikon 300mm f/2 (“Nikkor ED 300mm f/2 IF”), without a tripod, and I guess I was laughing back.

Normally I'm pretty pathetic in photos, which is why I prefer to be behind the camera.

The next day, Zak Braverman (of Shakuhachi bamboo flute and Gen's daddiness fame) took a shot of me where I had hoped to come across relaxed, with the lens cradled in my arm for loving safety, but instead I look like... I dunno... spaced out.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 280 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Out to Lunch?
Photo by Zak Braverman
stupid look by me

But that's not the worst of it. After picking up the lens, I had my camera bag, a monopod that I didn't use much, a pouch with my wallet, iPad, etc., and the big heavy case for the lens, all in addition to the lens. It was so much to lug around that I was tempted to just head home, but I don't get to Tokyo much, so didn't want to waste the opportunity, so lugged it all around as I wandered the Roppongi area of Tokyo.

I felt ridiculous and self-conscious enough with the big lens, but lugging all that stuff around as well, strapped in various kludgy ways to my body.... wow, I had to just jettison all sense of shame and embarrassment. And it turns out my feelings were justified, as I see in some pics that the lady of this couple took, and the guy then sent to me...

PENTAX Optio I-10 — ¹/250 sec, f/3.5, ISO 80 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Behind Tokyo Midtown
trying to stand such that the big silver lens case is hidden behind me
Photo by Nice Lady in Tokyo

PENTAX Optio I-10 — ¹/640 sec, f/3.5, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Lens In Action
Photo by Nice Lady in Tokyo

Let me repay each of these kind folks for snapping my picture by offering one of each of them actually taken with the lens....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/1600 sec, f/2, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Photogenic Couple in Tokyo

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/80 sec, f/2, ISO 6400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Zak Braverman

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/3200 sec, f/2, ISO 450 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Stéphane Barbery

I processed Stéphane's photo in what I think his style might look like.

And for completeness, here's the photo I took moments after Stéphane took the photo that leads this post, in what turns out to be a boring picture of a fisherman with a very long fishing rod that you can't quite see...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/4000 sec, f/2, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

DEC 2011 UPDATE: the "v3" camera profiles mentioned below have now been supersceeded by "v4" profiles mentioned here, available with Lr3.6.

If you shoot with a Nikon D3, D700, or D300, and use Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop, you'll want to know about the “Camera v3” beta camera-calibration profiles described in this Adobe-forum thread. (The actual profiles are in this ZIP file.)

This is important because in some cases, the standard “Camera” profiles that come with Lightroom ACR fail miserably for these three cameras. For example, consider this crop from the photo above:

Mottled Yuck!
“Camera Standard” profile that comes with Lightroom 3

Those mottled magenta splotches are not on the flower; they're a bug in Lightroom's camera profiles for the D3/D700/D300.

(The rest of this post is written from a Lightroom perspective, but the concepts apply to Photoshop's Adobe Camera Raw module as well.)

Lightroom's “camera profiles” are internal recipes for how to convert the camera's raw hardware-specific sensor data into a color image. The camera itself has this built in as part of its JPEG engine, but that's not used if you shoot raw because the whole point of shooting raw is to give you control over the conversion process later. Thus, each raw converter (Lightroom, Aperture, ACR, Nikon View NX, etc.) has the latitude to make the conversion itself, as it sees fit.

In Lightroom's case, it gives you a choice from a number of “recipes” (profiles) for how the basic conversion to color image data is to be done. In the Develop module, at the bottom of the right-side panel, you'll find the Camera Calibration section, and a “Profile” selector that contains items such as “Adobe Standard”, “Camera Vivid”, “Camera Standard”, “Camera Portrait”, etc.

The ones with “Camera” in the name try to mimic the particular look and feel of the camera's own JPEG engine, with “Camera Standard” obviously being the profile to match what the camera does when it's not in any kind of special-look mode.

I think “Adobe Standard” is the one that Lightroom uses if you don't tell it otherwise, but it's so generic and its results so “blah” that as a matter of course I apply “Camera Standard” automatically to all my images as part of the Lightroom import process. This has worked great for me for years, but every so often... maybe every 5,000–10,000 photos or so, I'll come across a situation like that shown above, where there are clearly errors in how Lightroom is processing the image.

The magnitude of the problem seems closely tied to the white-balance setting, so sometimes it was easy enough to make go away.... but sometimes not, and the photo above is one such example. It happened so rarely that I didn't bother to investigate, but I really wanted to post this flower because it's a clear candidate for membership in the Voigtländer “Exploring the Edge of Creamy Macro Bokeh” club. I'd come across the flower by the side of the road during the “Mountain Play with Monet and Friends” outing a week ago.

So, I asked around and was directed to the Adobe forum linked above, and voila...

Smooth as a Baby's Bottom
with the new “Camera Standard” v3 Beta Profile

All the various “Camera” profiles (Camera Vivid, Camera Standard, etc.) could suffer from the mottled-color problem, at least for Nikon D3/D700/D300 hardware, but it seems it's been completely fixed with these v3 profiles.

All the images above are crops... here's the full frame, which might make a nice vertical desktop image...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Vertical Desktop-Background Versions
1050×1680  ·  1200×1920  ·  1600×2560

For context, here's a wider view, showing how the sun is shining directly on the rear of the blossom, thus causing it to glow from within when viewed from the top...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/8, ISO 500 — full exif & map — nearby photos

I don't know what kind of tree it is, but it had a lot of buds in various stages...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Desktop-Background Versions
Standard: 1024×768  ·  1440×1080  ·  1600×1200      Widescreen:  1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

I was very happy to get these profiles, but I'm not ready to switch to them for all my images. On the plus side they don't suffer from this rare-but-major splotch problem, but on the minus side, they seem too bright for my taste. The initial post in the Adobe thread says to set exposure to -½EV, but even when I do that, I feel details are lost in the highlights. This is just a gut feeling and I need to do more research, including reading the entire forum thread. However, it's important for D3/D700/D300 shooters to know these profiles are available, so I wanted to post about them right away.