DoP and Photographer Robert Hollingworth

Highlights from the islands of Thailand

April 10th, 2012

Finally managed to go through my pictures from a glorious two weeks in Thailand. We visited Koh Yao Noi island just off Phuket and then Khao Sok National Park, north of Phuket. Both are stunning and somewhere I’d love to return.

Travel photography is always a hard one to crack. Getting the balance of equipment to weight and practicality is very tricky. If it’s a commission then I err on the side of taking a lot of stuff. I’m off tomorrow to Nepal for a shoot and for that I’ll be taking three bodies, many lenses, laptop and strobes. However, if it’s a holiday then you (or your friends and family), don’t want to be lugging around 30Kg of camera gear. Maximising the use of the kit is key, and I haven’t found anything better than the D7000 as a starting point (D800 hadn’t arrived by the time I went to Thailand). The D7000 is light, great resolution, brilliant in low light when needed and runs on one battery for ages. The pixel pitch of the Sony Exmore sensor in the D7000 also lends each picture a great look with a superb dynamic range. In terms of ROI, it’s hard to beat. Then it’s a matter of picking lenses. Very wide, and very long are normally the two I use the most. I love fisheye especially now because it can be undistorted in post turning it into a massive wide angle instead. Suddenly it’s a great, non-gimmicky lens to have. Then it’s just a flash that you need. Nikon’s creative lighting system (wireless TTL to you and me) is probably the most useful feature on any camera. The D7000 can trigger any of Nikon’s upper-end strobes wirelesses and faultlessly (no Pocket Wizards needed – unless in direct sunlight) and you can get creative…even while dangling out of a speeding boat!

I was travelling really light for this, just one body (Nikon D7000) and 24-70mm f/2.8 as the main lens, then moving to 12-24mm or 10.5mm. I opted not to take the 70-200mm f/2.8 for space and weight, but it’s the one lens I really could have done with. To power the timelapses I used one IDX battery which managed to keep the camera going for probably about 4 days in the end (mostly overnight star shots, so the shutter was open for 30 seconds at a time). Tripod was the new Giottos VGRN Vitruvian – great tripod but smaller – double edged sword, small if great for travel but harder to work with. First time I went abroad without a laptop, and what a joy that was. It all packed down into my ancient LowePro Nova – must be 15 years old and heavily used and still going strong! All the shots were graded up in DXO.

In Khao Sok we stayed in Our Jungle House and in Koh Yao Noi in Koh Yao Island Resort.

Apart from stills, I shot quite a few timelapses and they’ll be online in the near future.

To see more, visit the gallery here.

Tags: nikon d7000
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Nikon D800 review and test shots

March 30th, 2012

My D800 arrived yesterday and I lost no time in taking it outside into the beautiful spring sunshine here in London to see how it performed. There’s a gorgeous magnolia tree next to my house so I decided to try that as my subject to begin with. The wind didn’t help, but I tried some macro and long lens shots including backlighting so see how the camera handled the contrast and highlight details:

Magnolia – Nikon D800 test footage from Robert Hollingworth on Vimeo.

My initial thoughts are that I am very impressed. Not a surprise for a Nikon, but the camera is solidly made and feels good in the hand. It has a nice weight (heavier than the D7000 but less that the D700 I think) and the buttons are in the usual places. Menus again similar design to before, so if you’re used to Nikon cameras then it won’t take any time at all to set the camera up your way and get shooting. It’s physically bigger than the D7000 which I like for longer assignments since my hands fit it better. I still love a full sized body with the D3 or D4 – much nicer to work with especially on long lenses, but equally sometimes a smaller body is better. I just came back from Thailand where I shot with the D7000 and I wouldn’t have wanted anything bigger (or heavier). See pictures below for how it compares in size to other bodies.

One surprise feature that I love is the overlaid or HUD data in the viewfinder. It superimposes the artificial horizon information on the image at the edges and I found this incredibly useful. One tip, the Landscape mode on the D800, D4, D7000 etc all match the D2x colour modes. The D2x is still one of my favourite cameras for its colour reproduction and good to see Nikon have modelled the picture profiles on the new cameras to enable you to shoot like the D2x. The D3 needs downloaded profiles to match the D2x, but can still do it.

I’ve not had a proper chance to shoot stills on the camera yet, but I did some tests on the tree. All were as you would expect. Sharp, great tone and whopping resolution and detail. Focus wasn’t any harder to achieve with the higher resolution and the shots looks great. On an aside, I’m happy to see Apple set out an update yesterday for Aperture to support the D800. Haven’t checked if DXO and Capture One have done so yet.

The real test for the D800 will come in a week for me when I head off to Nepal on assignment. I really can’t wait to test it out in the stunning landscapes out there and to see what level of detail I can get in my portraits.

Video from this camera is another big thing for me and I did a very quick test yesterday, results above. It’s not a proper test, but just a quick shoot with the camera to see how it performs. Again, very impressed. First up, no rolling shutter that I could see so handheld and whip pans are back in. The 5D MkII was atrocious for rolling shutter and the MkIII is no better. I didn’t have time to hook up my monitor yesterday but the screen on the back of the camera is so sharp that I didn’t have any trouble finding focus using just that. However, the screen does make things look not burned out when they are (or are very close to being so). So worth checking exposure on an EVF. The histogram is very useful and accurate. Well-documented now, but it has full audio meters and headphone out.

I did shoot the video on the standard picture profile which I’d not recommend. I did this because I wanted to see the ‘warts and all’ output. I’d recommend shooting with a flat profile with all sharpening turned down. Even better, try making your own gamma curves in their software and uploading them to the camera. I want to try this as soon as possible and see exactly how much dynamic range it’s possible to get from the camera.

One great feature of the D800 is ‘Power aperture’. In filming mode (Live View has two mode – stills and video, both modes have separate custom button functions i.e. the lower function button on the front of the body can be programmed to do different things in stills and video LV move – great feature!). In video mode, the two front programmable buttons can drive the aperture…SMOOTHLY. Yes, you can increase / decrease the aperture smoothly live during a shot. This is something the C300 can’t even do, and that costs £10,000. I did notice though it didn’t do it all the time when actually recording to the internal memory, so further testing is needed to work out what’s going on. This is a superb feature though and all that’s needed now is to enable that via the 10-pin connector and then you can remote control the aperture. Great.

Hopefully this weekend I’ll shoot some tests with external recording to the Pix240 and see how the D800 really looks with the uncompressed signal. This I’m very excited about! Just noticed the factory setting is that LV switches off after 10 mins – not good for external recording, so in the custom menus pop it to infinity and it will never switch off.

Here are some pictures of the DSLR rig that I’ve been working on. Main features, the camera is powered off the IDX battery, so no more will you need loads of batteries just to get through a day (and then another day to charge them up). Now, just one battery which will last probably over a day. Then the SmallHD DP6 to monitor the clean feed from the camera and facilitiate exposure and focusing. Then on the front is the Genus matte box. All rigged off the ProAim 6″ camera cage. Plenty of flexibility to add a Pix240 at the back and radio mics or top mics etc.

I’ve attached the Pix240 (thanks to Prokit in London for lending me one to test). It recognised the signal from the camera fine and I used the Pix’s ability to cross-convert the signal to HDSDI to then monitor on the DP6, so I went HDMI from D800 to Pix and then HDSDI from Pix to monitor. This way you know if there’s a break in signal as you’re monitoring the output of the recorder the whole time. There is a slight colour difference between the two monitors, but I’d trust the DP6 more as I’ve used it a lot and it’s fine (that’s not to say the Pix isn’t too).

One small problem, I discovered none of my CF cards are good enough for the Pix. I have lots of 32Gb cards all for long timelapse shots but none are UDMA 6 or above. Shame. Need to find some suitable cards before I can actually record the signal. Just noticed some 64Gb Lexar UDMA 7 (1000x) cards on Amazon which look ideal, if a little expensive!