Revisiting the past

tony
December 3, 2017
birds / New Zealand / opinion

Blue Duck (Hymenolaimus malacorhynchos) feeding in typical mountain stream habitat — Blue Duck (*Hymenolaimus malacorhynchos*) feeding in typical mountain stream habitat

As part of the photography course I am doing through our local PolyTech I am putting together a portfolio of images illustrating a range of photographic techniques. Being a bit of an obsessed bird photographer I have challenged myself to try and cover as many topics as possible using bird photos. This has required a bit of a trawl through my archives to gather the required images. I keep a mental archive of images and some of the photos I needed have not been processed from the RAW file. Processing the file I needed from my original 2011 Blue Duck expedition (along with some others from that trip that hadn’t made the initial cut) reminded me of the pleasures in revisiting the past.

Blue Duck. Even though this was quite subtle fill flash it now looks very flashed to me. While the light brings the duck forward in the image the lit area beneath the tail looks unnatural.

The first and most obvious benefit is to relive the adventure and excitement of the trip. Secondly is the pleasure in realising how much better current software is for extracting the most from a RAW file. We get a bit spoiled and take for granted the current state of the art in processing software. My go to RAW processor is Adobe Lightroom CC (Classic CC in it’s latest iteration) and it has incrementaly improved with a significant step forward with the process 2012 version). I am very keen to try Capture One but find the cost excessive and have an issue with their lack of support for Fuji RAW files in a bid to coerce photographers into using their medium format Phase One digital cameras.

In a similar vein it highlights the progress in camera technology. At the time the Nikon D3s was my main camera body. It’s high ISO performance was amazing and gave me an extra stop of usable ISO compared to the Nikon D700 I had been using. I still love it and use it for specific jobs but compared to the resolution and dynamic range of the Nikon D810 and D500 it makes much less versatile files for processing. Despite this it was fun and rewarding to process the files that had been patiently waiting for attention since 2011.

Blue Duck resting after a period of feeding in the stream.

Revisiting the past has also reminded me of how the way I usually work has evolved and changed over the years. In 2011 my routine gear was the Nikon D3s with Nikon 500mm f4 (usually with 1.4x teleconverter) on a monopod and often with a SB900 flash with Better Beamer and external battery pack. All in all quite a load to carry. Currently my usual kit is the Nikon D500 with 300mm f4 PF (with 1.4x teleconverter if needed) hand held. I seldom use flash now as the dynamic range of the modern files allow much better control of shadows and highlights in post and gives a simplicity and look that I prefer to fill flash. There has never been a better time to be a photographer.