Snowy Night - Nikon v Lumix

Experiment - Nikon S9050 on a tripod shooting through the kitchen window. Had to take a lot of shots as the scene was so dark. In fact the LCD screen was virtually blank even with the outside lighting switched on. Exposure was about one second. These were about the best of the bunch. Orange sky is the falling snow reflecting the sodium street lights. Also there is an interior reflection from the window.



All photos tweaked with the ReDynaMix plug-in in Photoshop Elements.


Yellow foreground is from a low energy lamp outside.

Finally I tried the Lumix TZ7. This time I was able to see a dim view of the scene on the LCD screen. The Lumix took 8 seconds to take the photo plus another 3 or 4 seconds processing before it was saved.



Interestingly both cameras claimed they were properly focussed by giving a green indication on their screens and by beeping. Both cameras were set to their fully automatic settings with flash forced off.

More Monochrome

Again taken with the Nikon S9050 using the High Contrast Monochrome setting.


One side of the village cricket field is bordered with a line of Poplars.

As taken by the Nikon S9050 - cropped

The same crop processed with ReDynaMix in Photoshop Elements

 The cricket clubhouse in Winter

As taken by the Nikon S9050

As above processed using ReDynaMix in Photoshop Elements

Some tree bark patterns (unprocessed):

All were taken hand held with one hand. The other keeping a tight hold on Penny's lead. Unfortunately with her four years training for greyhound racing her chasing instinct would kick in if she spotted any small furry prey. Considering the grey, dull lighting conditions they came out much sharper than I expected - a tribute to the camera's image stabilizing abilities.

What a Grey Day

Not really. It has been wall to wall sunshine and cloudless blue sky so far today. Practising more with the Nikon S9050 I decided to try out the Special Effect Mode called 'High Contrast Monochrome'. The camera also has the ability to make b/w copies of the colour photos but the test I made gave soft focus b/w. Must investigate that further.

The advantage of the High Contrast Monochrome mode is having a b/w view of what you are taking shown on the LCD. This gives an instant idea of what the result will look like. That I found very handy and helped in composing the picture, focus point and exposure point. Not that I am saying my results are marvellous - far from it but I like the possibilities. It was just a pity there was a lack of white cloud.

All these are exactly as taken by the Nikon with its highest resolution jpg (no RAW available). If the odd horizon or tree is tilted blame the hairy monster who seemed to delight in trying to turn me into a 21st Century Houdini by wrapping the lead round my legs if we stayed in one place for too long.

The variation of shading in the sky is not a fault in the camera - distant blue in the sky was much paler than that overhead.

My favourite of this batch

As an addendum - video can also be shot in monochrome.

Pop Goes the Video

This morning I had a play with the video facilities in the Nikon S9050. Last night I had a browse through the owners manual - all 200 pages of it! For a camera which cost me less than £100 it has a whole host of facilities. As I thought, the colour 'popping' facility works on video as well as stills. There are quite a few choices for video quality and speed. I set it to 720p 16:9 for normal video (it will go better but for YouTube I keep the file sizes down) There is also the facility for high speed video, in effect that is slow motion when watched.

This is normal wide screen 720p starting in full colour and then popped red. Colour cannot be changed while videoing so you have to stop, change and then start again. That only takes a couple of seconds. The camera has a 15x optical zoom. As I was using all of that the camera was fixed on a tripod in the kitchen.





The next video was shot at 4x speed. The higher the frame rate, the smaller the picture. At this speed the video is 640x480. There is an 8x speed with a video size of 320x240.
Although the video subject is clear I was disappointed that it came out very dark and needed a lot of tweaking to see what was going on. For high speed filming the camera only shoots 10 seconds and then automatically reverts to normal speed. No sound is recorded.

Pop Goes the Scenic View

Following on from my earlier post I took the Nikon with us on our mid-day walkies down the lane. There was glorious Sunshine but the wind chill made it feel raw in spite of the outside thermometer showing 7.3C. Hanging on to Penny while taking photos as she tries to join in with a couple of Spaniels which were dashing about a few feet away is quite an art but I got there in the end. Again it was to see how the in camera colour 'popping' would work.

One of the views from the end of the lane:
Cropped but otherwise as taken with the camera:

Nikon Coolpix S9050 - full colour

Nikon Coolpix S9050- blue filter

Nikon Coolpix S9050- green filter

That's got that out of my system - for now!

What Will They Think of Next?

A few days ago a Nikon Coolpix S9050 caught my eye in the Amazon end of year sales. One of the facilities in it took my interest and as the camera seemed to me to be a good price I ordered one.

What was it that caught my interest? The ability to take the equivalent of colour popped photos in the camera. Today I had a little play to see how it worked. Not a lot of colour about at this time of year.  Set the camera to effects, choose special effects then selective colour from the menu. Now you have an on screen choice of full colour or one of twelve colours that can be cycled through with the result seen in real time on the LCD screen.

Here are a few test shots - no added processing apart from cropping:

Penny's Pooh Bear, full colour with the inset photo taken with a red filter choice:


A red filter choice on some remaining rose blossoms:


 For the flowers it would be better to go close in but I needed my wellies to get much closer!

Orange seeds:


Blue sky with one of the blue filter choices:


Blue collar:
 

Grass with one of the green filter choices:


Woodwork with an orange filter choice:



Popping colour with a program like Photoshop will always pick out the true colour as photographed though it can be quite fiddly to get right up to the edge of the colour you want. The built in choices in the Nikon will often be a compromise but there will be times when it is worth experimenting 'in the field' to see what effects can be made. It gives another 'artistic' ability to the photographer in a nice little camera which fits easily in a shirt pocket. I will probably have more to say about the camera's general abilities at a later date.