D5300 first time use on holiday

Techn

Hi,
I am borrowing a D5300 for a weeks trip to Tromso Norway and was looking for some tips for getting great pictures. I haven't used a dslr before but have been playing around and getting used to the settings. I will mostly be using it for wintery night time shots of the northern lights and the city, but also day time pictures of the fjords and mountains. I will be using the kit lens of 18-55mm.

I have looked around the forum at similar settings for other cameras. This thread gave settings for star and moon pictures which I assume translate well to the D5300?
(see here)

What settings would you recommend for night time city light pictures? There is also a cable car that gives a great view of the whole city. I'd love to get various pictures from up there and hopefully stitch them together when I get home. Or perhaps the auto settings are good enough?

Moose

Hi @Techn - Welcome to the forum! I would say in general, shooting in Aperture priority mode, with the aperture set to f/8 and your ISO set to 100, you'll be able to get great landscape/city shots no matter the time of day. The one caveat is stability. In order to shoot at f/8, you'll need to use a tripod to eliminate camera shake. If you don't want to lug around a traditional tripod, you could always pick up a Joby Gorillapod, which has flexible legs and can attach to almost anything.

You might also have a look at the cheat sheets, which will tell you the exact settings to use in a wide range of scenarios...including landscapes, cityscapes, moving water, etc...

Happy shooting!

Techn

Funny that you mention that. I was looking at getting the slr gorillapod zoom; could come in useful. I also just noticed your cheat sheets which I might have a look at. The gorillapod with a ballhead looks useful but I'm on a budget and it is twice the price. Do you think the standard gorillapod will be sufficient?

bruto

It may be that the lineup has changed. My Gorillapod was the large size that came originally with no head, and I put a small ball head on it. It probably amounts to the same thing as the Zoom with a built in head. My head was cheap, but I don't remember after all these years what the pod cost. For this kind of purpose the ball head does not need to pan smoothly or work the way a normal tripod head does; it only needs to articulate and lock securely. For an SLR I would not trust a small one. I posted this link earlier, showing the one I have, supporting an old Minolta sturdily on a stair railing:

(see here)

About the only other suggestion I can mention on night shots is that if you rely on the camera's meter, you might find the results too bright. The meter would like to make everything look like day. Especially these days when you have so much ISO latitude, allowing you to shoot even hand held in near darkness, the meter may do too good a job of it. This is great in poor light when you are trying to pull off a shot, but you may need manual exposure or heavy compensation when you want real darkness. This is easily done, and a quick few wasted shots in the dark will tell you immediately whether you need to compensate.

If this is your first big trip with a good DSLR, my other suggestion is that you take more memory capacity than you think you'll need, because it's very easy to shoot a lot of pictures. Make doubly sure that your battery is well charged. A second one is a good idea. If you can't have that, make sure you recharge whenever you can, even if it doesn't seem to need it.

debbiejoe

Hi, I am about to purchase a Nikon D5300. My D90 was stolen. I have a Nikon 70-300mm lens ( ED AF -S. 1:4.5-5.6 G zoom/vr and a Nikon 18-105mm DX 1:35-5.6G ED). Will these lenses work on a D5300? Are your $10 cheat sheets good for these lenses on that camera?
DebbieJoe

bruto

The D5300 will work fully with both. It will work fully with any AF lens with a built in motor. It will meter, but not auto-focus with any AF lens that requires a focus motor in the camera. It will mount and work in manual mode without metering or auto focusing, virtually any other F mount lens made since 1959.

Moose

Hi @debbiejoe - Yes, both lenses will work with the D5300. You can use the cheat sheets for the 55-300mm lens (see here: http://www.cameratips.com/nikon/d5300/cheat-cards) with your 70-300mm lens. The settings will be identical. As for the 18-105mm, I don't have any cheat sheets yet for it, but may add it to my to do list. Happy shooting!

Techn

Thanks @bruto.
I have ordered the SLR gorillapod and the northern lights tours I have booked have full size tripods available to borrow. Regarding the exposure in night shots you mention, I read somewhere, maybe here, that you can change the white balance to something day time related?

Moose

@Techn - I would go ahead and shoot in RAW if you're planning on taking night shots. This will allow you to reduce the noise levels a bit and also control the white balance, after the fact , when editing your image using something like Lightroom.

Techn

Would you recommend shooting in RAW and high jpeg or just RAW?
Also, what is NEF (RAW) recording, listing 12bit and 14 bit as options? Will this option make any difference?

bruto

The compression of the 14 bit raw is less, and quality may be a little better. Both will still benefit from being RAW. The D3200 does only 12 bit, and the results are quite nice, but if you have the space and do not run short of buffer time on bursts, I don't think there's any downside to the bigger files.

If you have enough hard drive space, there's also no real down side to saving in high JPG as well. The only problem I've had doing this is one of space and sorting files when downloaded to the computer. If you download to a hard drive folder the files will be mixed. So, if you want them separated you'll need some way to move them in bulk. That's really easy to do in DOS, but Windows explorer is clumsy.

There is a safety issue, since every once in a blue moon something goes wrong with reading RAW files. I have not had that problem except one computer that occasionally clobbers cards, but saving a JPG does give you a second chance. I rarely bother with this as everything has behaved well, but if you have not worked extensively with the equipment you're taking, it might be a good idea if you can afford the file space.

There is one other issue, not really a problem. When reviewing files in the camera if you delete the JPG, it will delete the RAW file as well, so you should be aware of this when reviewing. I never delete anything in the camera except for obvious misses, blurs and mistakes.

With regard to noise, the recent free program from Nikon, Capture NXD, includes noise reduction with a number of options for type and extent, including the ability to deal with chroma and luminance noise separately.

neilmn

Hi @Moose, I am new in photography, however I really love taking portraits both outdoors and low-light. I would like to confirm which of the two lenses would create an amazing bokeh effect. Which one would you recommend to buy, 35mm 1.8G or 50mm 1.8G?

Thanks buddy!

bruto

I'm not Moose, but I'll throw in my two cents here.

Three things control depth of field: aperture, distance and focal length.

At close distances the difference between one lens and another may not be great, but at longer distances it becomes quite noticeable. At portrait distances, if you are using both lenses to produce the same framing size, you will, of course, have to come about 75 percent closer with the 35mm than with the 50mm, and this will reduce some of the difference, but not all.

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html allows you to plug in the variables.

The controversial term "bokeh" properly refers more to the quality of out of focus areas rather than the degree of blur, but most of what I've read rates the 50mm higher.

The 35mm of course is more versatile because you can get closer to things, and it's a great bargain. But if you can frame what you want, you'll always have more depth of field control with the longer lens.

Here's another site to play with:

(see here)

This one allows you to see (more or less) how different settings influence not only background blur but background scale. The longer lens changes the perspective relationship between subject and background too.

bruto

I don't have either of the 1.8 AF lenses to try out, but I do have some manual lenses of assorted focal lengths, so here's a quick and dirty hand held demo of what the differences are. The pairing shown has on its left a 35mm f/2.8 at f2.8, and on the right, a 50mm f/2 at f/2.8. The camera is a D3200, bad lighting, hand held, high ISO, 1/60. The subject is roughly the same size in each, about 2 1/2 feet from the 35mm, and 3 1/2 from the 50mm. The wall is about 5 feet behind the subject. Iffy manual focusing in the dim light, but it's not too far off. As you can see, the blur is considerably more for the 50mm, and due to perspective difference, the objects in the background appear larger and closer, and thus a bit more abstract.

https://app.box.com/s/chjwz6gauypl9myh9rl7c2zwq4gsmtpd

neilmn

@Bruto thank you for looking into my concern and putting your efforts into it. I appreciate a lot. :)

neilmn

What is the perfect settings for ISO and shutter speed that would still create a smooth blurry background when shooting portraits outdoor?

1. ISO number?
2. Shutter Speed?

Appreciate the help, thanks!

bruto

The background blur is dependent only on depth of field, which is determined by aperture. ISO and shutter speed will not change it.

Your ISO should be as low as you can get away with depending on the light. There is no advantage, other than gathering more light, to a higher ISO. Set the shutter speed to something you can reliably hold steady. The only blur you get from the wrong shutter speed is motion blur, which you do not want.

If you're not entirely sure what is best, you could start by using Aperture priority and Auto ISO. Set the ISO at 100 and the aperture as wide open (small number) as you can, and let the camera determine the rest. The default for Auto ISO in A mode is to raise ISO from your initial setting if the shutter speed drops below 1/30 of a second. This pretty much guarantees that you'll get your shot at a reasonable shutter speed, and at the lowest ISO you can get away with.

neilmn

I was shooting outdoor photos (daytime) in portrait mode, but the auto flash still triggers. How can I disable the auto flash in portrait mode?

bruto

I don't think you can disable it, as portrait mode sort of presumes you'll want fill flash in many instances. P, S, A and M modes never pop the flash unbidden.

The main benefits of portrait mode are a wide F stop for shallow depth of field, and a color scheme that is supposed to be kinder to skin tones.

If you shoot in Raw mode you can choose the Portrait picture control in post, which you cannot do in the camera for anything but portrait mode. A or M mode will let you select the aperture you want. You may have to compensate in exposure if you're not using fill flash, as faces can be a bit dark, especially if the background is light. Center weighted or spot metering can help here.

bonsai

Hello I'm going to be travelling to the Caribbean. I have the 18-55mm, 18-140mm and 55-300mm lenses. In beginning in photography, which lens I should use for this travel?

bruto

The 18-140mm is a very nice lens and has some advantages over the others. It's one of the higher end kit lenses, and quite pricey when bought alone. It has good reach, a bit more robust construction, the ability to manually adjust focus without switching out of auto, and a non-rotating front element that allows you to polarize. If you have room for only one, this would be the one, providing pretty decent reach, with enough sharpness to allow a good bit of cropping on a D5300. If you have room for a second lens, take the 55-300mm to get that telephoto reach. If you need to travel fairly light, leave the 18-55mm at home, as it is redundant and except for being more compact than the 18-140, it has no other real advantage.

edit to add: the 18-140 VR is also the newer (sometimes labelled II) style with 4 stop improvement rather than 3. It is slightly less macro than the 18-55, at 1:4 instead of 1:3.2, making the little lens a little nicer for extreme closups, but neither is a true macro, and for traveling it's not likely to be an issue. The 18-140 my wife got with her D7100 also came with a rather nice petal style hood, which the 18-55 lacks.