First the bad.

One of my favorite functions on my D3 was the ability to lock both the aperture and shutter wheels. Nikon made this very simple by pushing a button on the top left of the camera and turning the wheel until a lock indicator showed up in the lcd display next to the aperture or the shutter speed. The Nikon D4 still has the ability to lock the wheels but the function has now been moved into the menu. I firmly believe that if changes like this are made from one camera to the next, the ability to assign the button in firmware should be provided. I know this is a little thing, but when you use it as much as I do, it becomes a pain in the butt.

The next thing is also a “little thing” but the screen size changed like 2 microns, just enough that all of my screen protectors from the D3 no longer work on the Nikon D4. While on the subject of the screen – resolution and display is amazing – the color,not so much. The images displayed on the screen are just flat out green, and the contrast isn’t as good as the D3. How did we go backwards in screen quality?? The D3 had one of the best displays I have ever worked with – what happened on the Nikon D4?

One other bad thing in my opinion is the new card slot from Sony. I just don’t get it, there are some speed differences, but to the end user, I don’t see any huge differences at this point – Canon has been recording 1080 video to CF cards with no issues for the last few years.

I guess while we are talking about bad, the price tag certainly has to be mentioned, with the new Nikon D4 a full thousand dollars more than expected. The added thousand dollars has many asking is it worth it? Especially with the D800′s price point, functionality, and imager.

Now the good.

Let talk video first – Nikon hit a home run with the video on the D4. It has all the bells, whistles, and resolutions expected on a flagship DSLR, the magic is how they did it. All of the controls are exactly where they need to be for both video and stills. Not an easy task with the ever increasing number of controls needed on a modern DSLR with video. ISO, white balance, shutter, aperture, and focus can all be changed “on the fly” while recording. The video at 1600 ISO looks like 200 from the D7000, and the color is amazing. The autofocus works very well while recording on lenses 70mm and shorter, I had quite a bit of trouble trying to autofocus my 70-200mm Nikkor. It took a very long time to respond and most of the time wouldn’t find what it was looking for. Luckily most people aren’t using long lenses for video.

Stills are what I expect from Nikon. Tad bit on the magenta side, and skin tones from the jpg files are not quite as good as the Canons. The jpgs are better than the D3, and using Capture One for raw files, the Nikon D4 files are almost exactly the same as the D3. Incidentally, in my opinion the D3 files from Capture One are simply the best DSLR files available today.

Shooting the Nikon D4 is very much the same as the D3 except for a noticeable change in the sound of the shutter. There is something totally different inside the camera, probably due to the live view and video. The Nikon D4 made some much needed changes to the controls layout. The D3 had issues with the AF and shutter release buttons on the vertical grip, and the AF button on the horizontal grip. The D2X had a small “shield” that protected the AF button from accidental presses with the thumb, Nikon removed this on the D3 causing all kinds of focus issues until the user figured out what was happening. The AF and vertical shutter buttons were simply in the wrong place on the D3, problem solved for the Nikon D4. The Nikon D4 has the most useable vertical arrangement on any camera that they have ever produced. Vertical feels almost as good as shooting the camera “normal”. I am glad they got it right, but something tells me the D4 will spend a great deal of its life shooting horizontally for video.

Another thing that bears mention is the autofocus. The change from the D2X to the D3 was a painful one for me. The D3 focuses quite differently than the D2X and it was a painful learning curve for me to get the D3 down. The D4 is AMAZING. Autofocus is BLAZING fast and extremely accurate for stills. On top of that it will pretty much focus in the dark, all I can say is wow.

Will add a couple of images and a video soon!

Courtney

While there are many photography schools available along with programs presented by the photography organizations, it is always better to get one on one training to better your photographic skills. Studying with seasoned professionals at a photography workshop is usually the best way to become a better photographer in the shortest amount of time possible. I learned early on that while more expensive, studying with the best photographers in the country made me a better image maker, better at business, and set my photography career on the fast track to success. I learned that a photography workshop was the best money that I could invest.

There is a trend in the country today to get training, especially for photography, from online forums and blogs instead of photography schools and workshops. I can’t say this for ALL of these online resources, but for MOST of them, you get exactly what you pay for.

Wading through thousands of opinions from everyone takes time and the quality of the information is usually poor at best. Many of the members and owners of these forums and the writers of the blogs haven’t any credentials, many aren’t really professionals, and many have failing businesses. Not a place to get the training needed to make it in today’s very competitive photographic market. You need top notch training, because today, you must differentiate yourself from the competition to succeed.

While there are still several quality photography schools available, you still don’t get the one on one training that will accelerate your learning curve. A photography workshop is still the number one source to learn the craft of photography.

Ken Kneringer is a PPA Master Photographer, Photographic Craftsman, And PPA Certified Professional Photographer. Ken has a successful store front business that photographs over 100 high end seniors, several dance studios, and has photographed agency models, pageant winners, spa model winners, and playboy playmate of the year – Julie Cialini. His averages for senior pictures are well above the national norm, and he also gets above normal averages for most of his other work as well. Ken has been an instructor at the prestigious Winona photography schools, a fashion shooter for the Senior Portrait Artists for four consecutive years, an instructor at the After Dark photography schools, and a speaker at several local and national PPA sanctioned photographic organizations. While Ken is known nationally for his senior pictures, he also does other types of photography as well.

If you are looking for the best money to spend for photography schools or lighting workshops, Ken’s photography workshop is the best money you will ever spend especially if your business is senior pictures! Take your photography to the next level, get your average sales for senior pictures up to where they need to be to make a good living, and get your clients to love you for what you do instead of what you charge.

Ken teaches studio lighting, digital photography, outdoor photography, photoshop, and studio flash at his photo workshops and photography schools.

Learn to use studio lighting kits by Profoto and Photogenic, as well as studio lighting modifiers from Larson, Westcott, Elinchrom, and Mola to make amazing fashion inspired senior pictures. Learn posing, interacting with models, getting expressions from clients, shooting to sell, and making amazing images that sell every time.

Watch the website/blog for current workshops, prices vary depending on the number of days, and the subjects covered.

Photo Shoot For Senior Mode Magazine

The sun was low in the sky and just over Theresa’s left shoulder for this image. The settings on our D3 camera were as follows; white balance 5350K, raw, ISO 320, shutter 1/320th and the aperature set manually to F2.8 on our 300mm F2.8 Nikkor lens. The settings slightly overexposed the light from the back (sun) to provide the light in her hair and the rim light along the length of her body.

Main light for the subject was provided from our Elinchrom Ranger and a 39″ Elinchrom Softbox. The 300mm lens we use is a manual focus, it works better for us when we are shooting in back lit situations like this. The lens is mounted on a Bogen tripod with a pistol grip head. The finished image was lightened a little in Capture One Version 5. Some subtle retouch, and an overlay, completes this image for an article on Senior Mode Magazine.

Julie Cialini is amazing! She is fun, had a great time at the shoot, and is a totally awesome  model. We are planning on working with her again soon!!

We shot a lot of different images with different cars, and different lighting setups. This poster shot was lit with 2 4′x6′ Larson Softboxes as fill lights, a bare strobe head blasting into the ceiling to lighten up the background, and a 39″ Elinchrom Octabox with the 1100ws Elinchrom Ranger as a key light. The shoot was done at Schumacher Racing – the garage was HUGE!!!!! With all of the power we brought, we could barely make F-8 at 1/60th – ISO 800, not the greatest for a poster, but the Nikon D3x is an amazing camera. We were able to get a workable image and punch it up to poster size with out too much trouble. I always look at what we could do to improve, the biggest problems on this shoot were dealing with the ambient flourescent lighting and the color cast that it projected to the top of the cars (we had to do a lot of  localized color correction on the finished image to get rid of the greenish cast on the tops of the vehicles), and the grain from shooting at ISO 800. This image would have been AWESOME if we could have gotten the ISO down to the D3x native ISO 100.

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Julie Cialini - IMIS Poster

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Julie Cialini - IMIS Poster Shoot - Ken Kneringer - Studio K Photo

Portrait With The Quadra

There is a lot of recent hula-bulu about OCF ( off camera flash ). We have been using it for years, but not in the same fashion as the “new definition”. The new definition seems to be all about getting the sky to go blue, not paying full attention to the light on the subject. Many times the light is harsh, contrasty, and the color is way out in left field.

We use natural light where we can, but most of the time we augment the natural light with flash. Yes, you can add flash and still make it look very natural! Part of making sure that the flash looks natural is to make sure that you know your color temperatures. The Elinchrom Quadra and our Elinchrom Softbox puts out light at around 4850 degrees Kelvin. Shoot that into shade at around 7000 degrees Kelvin and you have a mess. Make sure that you gel the Elinchrom to match the color temperature of the ambient light, once that is done the light blends beautifully into the ambient and looks absolutely natural!

Keeping the light in some kind of modifier will soften the light for portraits, and give your finished images a more polished look. Don’t get me wrong there is a time and place for harsh, contrasty light. I just don’t think it needs to be applied universally to every image. I still believe that you CHOOSE the light that is proper for the subject and the look of the final image. We choose soft boxes in the studio for most of our portrait clients, why wouldn’t we want to do the same outdoors?

We have I-Opener set up to……. Open each finished photoshop file in a directory, create a new folder named printer images, flatten to a jpg, rename and save in that folder at full size – create a new folder named lab images, flatten to a jpg, change the colorspace from adobe to sRGB, rename and save in that folder at full size – create a new folder named facebook images, flatten to a jpg, rename, change the colorspace from adobe to sRGB, put my logo on the image and save in that folder at “longest side 500px” – create a new folder named  animoto images, flatten to a jpg, change the colorspace from adobe to sRGB, rename and save in that folder at the optimum size for animoto – create a new folder named wallets, add my logo and a text area for the seniors name, rename and save in that folder as a layered psd file, 2-1/2×3-1/2 – all in about 2 minutes for 20 -24 images. All that we need to do from there to finish the order is to open any of the wallets that need to be personalized and add the seniors name in the text area, another minute or two.

It isn’t hard to imagine the time savings – 24 images x 5 minutes of time saved x 200 clients – that is a WHOPPING 400 HOURS OF TIME SAVED!!!!!!!! Mulitlpy that by a rate of $16/hour = $6400 saved per year, 5 years that is a new car!

So… A program that can do all of that must be expensive right ?? How about $59 last time I checked!!! What is the down side?? It takes a little bit to set up, but we have presets availble that will make the task a lot easier.

Ken Kneringers Photoshop Actions

For those of you that aren’t familiar with my action set, it is designed to give you great color and contrast in your images, speed up your workflow, and help you produce better images faster. It isn’t a bunch of color shifting stuff or black and white conversions, just great workflow and amazing color. It is the same photoshop actions that we use every day in our workflow.

We have other educational and workflow products available including retouch videos, pretouch actions, presets for I-Opener, Capture one videos, and more to come for 2012.

If you want to order the products, textures, photoshop actions, or if you purchased the actions from me previously and just want an update, call 317-882-9500, give us your info, we will get them out to you ASAP!

What I like – the camera has a nice feel to it, is very intuitive, and is a joy to shoot. Image quality is amazing. The lenses for the camera are also incredible, the 100mm f2.2 is razor sharp when it needs to be for fashion/commercial, and can be softened down by opening up to produce beautiful portraits.

What I don’t like - the LCD viewing screen is a HUGE disappointment. The color on the screen is truly hideous, you can’t judge anything from it including exposure. If it weren’t for the menu system, the camera would be better off without the screen, it just ticks you off that a camera this expensive has a screen that can’t live up to an $800 Nikon. 

The included Phocus software is also a huge disappointment. Things that are extremely fast and easy in Capture One, are slow and painful in Phocus. The software reminds me of what comes as standard with most cameras, image quality is there, but the workflow is too slow for everyday use. Products like C1 and Lightroom are designed for workflow, not just to process raw files. I am quite sure that after working with it, I will become faster with it, but it will not measure up to C1.

The batteries are just simply too small for the camera. Keep a good supply of these puppies on hand if you are shooting all day. The camera is set up to save as much power as possible – to the point of being totally annoying. I had to adjust the power saving features to make the camera more useable, but pay the price in battery life. If you are going to shoot all day with this, make sure you have 4 or 5 batteries laying around. Probably not out of line for a big power hungy machine, guess I am spoiled by my Nikon gear where one battery will let me shoot for 3 days.

I will put an image or two up for download in the next few days.