Advice on shooting with Nikon CP995

[brent bertram]

Christmas brought me a CP 995, gang. I've been shooting indescrimately, using different ISO's ( just cause they're there ! <G> ) , and getting a feel for the critter. Anybody want to comment on their 995 advice ? Shortcuts are welcome !!

:-)

Brent

[Chuck Snyder]

Brent - what a nice gift! I don't know about the Nikons, but most cameras are best at the lowest ISO, showing increasing "noise" in the images as you go higher. I've never adjusted the ISO on my Canon from the default 50. Will be interesting to hear whether that advice is sound or overly conservative.

Chuck

[Mac McDougald]

Except digicam "grain" is multicolored nasty speckled pixellated looking
noise.

Mac

[John Gant]

Chuck..
With some of the high end dig cams...you can get the ISO fairly high (800-1600+/-) with "noticeable grain......
but Mac is correct...highrer ISO...Higer grain...

TC..
John

[Mac McDougald]

Yep, same reasons as using for film.

Except in digital you don't have to load a whole roll of different ISO
film :-)

Worst noise in digital is from long exposures, like night scenes.

Mac

[Mac McDougald]

Higher ISO in film, more grain.
Higher ISO in digital, more noise.
Noise is worse than grain.

Mac

[John Gant]

Brent..
I thought you were goin get a D1X.....
When Bert gets back from his cruise, he can help ya' out with that CP995.....

Congrats...Nikon....YES....

TC..
John

[Chuck Snyder]

Mac, sounds like the higher ISO's in a digital are for special circumstances only, e.g., low light, no tripod, still want a sharp picture, willing to try noise filter and smart blur in post-processing...?

Chuck

[brent bertram]

Thanks for the replies. Dim light is the enemy, I know, from a couple years with my CP700 . I have the option of manual aperture and shutter speed settings, and if I can figure out how to set my "programmed" modes, I'll see how that works. I expect, though, that the CCD element will react somewhat differently than film at slow speed from a tripod. Interesting to find out!

:-)

Brent

[owl_luvr]

Brent,

VERY cool xmas gift! For advice and comments (and reviews) on the CP 995, try the forums (fora?) at these sites:

www.steves-digicams.com
www.dpreview.com
www.worldatwar.org/photos/whitebalance/index.mhtml (not a forum, but a good tutorial about white balance)
www.megapixel.net
www.dcresource.com
www.epinions.com
www.imaging-resource.com
www.creativepro.com
www.photo.net
www.cliffshade.com/dpfwiw/advice.htm#approach

These should get you started. A few aren't forums, but they still have good advice & information. Again, congrats on receiving the CP 995. Now, go have fun with it! :)

owl_luvr

P. S. Apologies to the forum if I bent any rules by posting these web addresses.

[Tim Devick]

I remembered reading recently a tip for reducing noise from high ISO digital images and/or long exposures, and I finally remembered where I found the info.

From <http://www.dcviews.com/tutors.htm>:

"[Noise can be] successfully removed by tking a “dark frame” before or after the main shot, with the same shutter speed as the main exposure, and subtracting this from the original to replace the stuck pixels.

Open the two images in Photoshop and paste the dark image as a second layer. Apply a little Gaussian Blur and change Layer Options to “Difference”. You will note that most stuck pixels are now invisible and the image has improved considerably."

I also found this site that has a tip for reducing noise using Photoshop:

<http://www.nickgallery.com/web_pages/technical%2011.htm>

[RobertHJones]

This is in regard to Tim Devick's post.

1) Dark Frame tip: This works well. The Nikon (my model, the cp 4500, and I believe the 995 at least) can do this in the camera with the noise reduction option. Doubles the time to take and save the image to memory but can make a great difference in low light / high-ISO situations.

2) Photoshop tip: This references a tip oriented towards photoshop features not in PE (i.e. actions and alpha masks). You can do the equivalent with PE manually and the technique works fairly well. Here's how I've been doing it. I use PE 2, PE 1 uses a different way to create the mask, see Jay Arraich's elements tips for details. (1) create a new adjustment layer (I use levels)and save it without any making any changes. (2) From the layers palette, select the image layer you will be working with. Then, (3) do a "select All" and (4) "copy". Open the mask you created in step 1 by pressing "alt" and clicking on the mask icon in the adjustment layer in the layers palette -- this is for a PC, I'm not familiar with the MAC conventions, sorry. This will open up a blank mask image. (6) paste the image you copied in step 4 -- it will automatically be converted to greyscale since it is a mask. While still in the mask image, (7) filter->stylize->find edges then (8) filter->artistic->poster edges (play with the settings to get the effect you want, I've had good results using 1 for edge thickness and intensity and posterizations in the range of 2 through 9. After clicking ok, (9) select the layer you will be working with in the layer palette. (10) use the mask to create a selection (pc users press ctrl and click on the mask icon in the adjustment layer) (11) apply the median mask filter (filter->noise->median use a radius of 1 pixel). That's it, you're done. If you created a duplicate layer first I always do) you can toggle the visibility of the layer on and off to compare with the original image to see how well (or not) you did.

Besides reducing ordinary noise like you get with high ISO settings or low light, I've used this with photo restorations where you use a duplicate layer in multiply blending mode to enhance faded photos. That technique usually adds clumping to the image as well as improving the density and contrast and this helps remove some of that.

If Adobe will release the paper on how to write a "recipe" for PE 2, this could be made into a recipe.

Another tip for Brent: I've found shooting digital photos is a lot like shooting slide film. It doesn't tolerate over exposure very well, you'll blow the highlights out. If you must, err on the side of slight underexposure, and bracket critical shots.

[brent bertram]

Thanks, again.

I have the "big" Photoshop, too, ( that's where I primarily edit ), so I'll have fun trying out these techniques. <G>

Better, I think, to shoot it right in the first place, than have to correct it, but doing things right all the time isn't an option that I seem to have in my arsenal <G> !

:-)

Brent

[Mac McDougald]

"...and subtracting this from the original to replace the stuck pixels."

Stuck or dead pixels on the CCD are a totally different matter than
noise. This technique will have little or no effect on subtracting
overall noise, as the noise is random.

The only similar technique that works is to take SEVERAL exact pix of the
same scene and use layer techniques to replace the noise with "good
pixels". The more pix you use, the better the results. Obviously, only
works for scenes that have NO movement between frames, camera locked down
on tripod, etc. Not for the fainthearted :-)

Also, many folks report that Neat Image works quite well for noise
reduction.

Mac

[Raymond Sanborn]

Brent:
I've found the Coolpix 995 to be an excellent digital camera. I offer the following for your future reference. Although an improvement over earlier Coolpix models the on-board speedlight remains a shortcoming. Redeye cannot be eliminated and the relatively small guide number does not give an adequate flash for many photos.
Sooner or later, if you persevere, you will want to consider an external speedlight. Nikon offers an external speedlight bracket for this camera. However, it mounts the speedlight horizontally adjacent to the lens which is not a good position. For a much better arrangement go to Al Jacobson's site <http://www.aljacobs.com/> and review his speedlight arrangement for the 995.

Additionally, you may want to bookmark the following site as a useful digital photography forum.
<http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=rec.photo.digital>

This forum specializes in digital photography questions and is usually quite helpful in digital camera usage questions (although I should state that it is a very very busy site with hundreds of questions daily).
Ray

[brent bertram]

Thank you, Ray,
The external speedlight issue has already raised it's head. Very timely advice <G> .

:-)

Brent

[Bert Bigelow]

Brent,
One more bit of information: I was on the Steve's Camera Nikon user's forum, and a guy asked a question about the CP 950. If you recall, I have one. He mentioned that the Shutter Priority mode did not work if you selected an ISO rating higher than the default (80). He wanted to know if this was a failure in his camera, or common to all 950's. I tried it on mine and found the same thing. I contacted Nikon Tech Support, and they sent me an article that described this "problem." It is not a failure, but a necessary limitation of the camera, and I suspect it might be true of the 995 also. I will try to find the article and Email it to you. If anyone else is interested, let me know in this thread.
Bert