Digital SLR Photography Book For Nikon D90

It is always confusing to find the book which is the best guideline for us to walk through. This creates more confusion when we are totally new to the field and trying to learn something new however possibly we can. When I bought my first DSLR almost 15 months ago, I didn't bother to get a book as a guideline. I learned many things from internet, went to the forum and asked to the experts. I learned myself by playing around with it and seeing other people's work. I took almost 10,000 photos from my D60 and learned from my mistakes. I wish I could have kept that camera but I had no choice but sell it to upgrade to Nikon D90. When I got Nikon D90, it was not totally foreign to me. What I learned with D60 helped me quickly navigate through it’s control and settings. But given the many added features and options this camera came with, I felt the need of better guide than my past experience with less powerful camera. I wanted to get the best result out of it which force me to search for more detailed and descriptive guide for Nikon D90. Soon after, I started searching on Amazon for a good book. I found quite a few books on Amazon but the top two books based on it’s popularity and review were David Busch's Nikon D90 Guide to Digital SLR Photography and Mastering the Nikon D90. After reading lots of reviews from amazon, I decided to go with David Busch's Nikon D90 Guide to Digital SLR Photography.

I am reading this book for a while now and already learned so many new things about DSLR camera that I didn’t know before. This book not only describes about the camera and it's features but also deals with different kind of accessories that fits with the camera. It also talks about various types of lens you can use with camera and it’s pros and cons. Knowing about different kind of lenses is so much important to the beginners. It helps you to get the best possible lens for your photographic genre. I am hoping to learn many more tips and techniques about digital photography and particularly about D90. If you are also reading any book or guide that you find helpful, please do not forget to share with us so that we all can learn from our collective experience.

Keep learning and keep shooting!

What Is The Best Post-Processing Software For Photos?

There has been much debate about which one is the best post-processing software for photography. I decided to write on this topic because I am also confused on this matter and wanted to see what my readers have to say about it. Photography grew as a hobby within me and now it’s becoming a serious passion. I don’t do it to make my living out of it, at least not until today but, I have to admit that it's an expensive hobby to have. As you learn more, you will find that you know very little and there is more area for the improvement. Learning is a never ending process but it would be a fun to learn about something you would love doing. As my journey continues with the photography and learning more about photography, I recently stumbled upon the post-processing software and I am excited to explore more on this area and improve my editing skills.

When you search online about our today’s topic, you will get hundreds of thousands of articles and they all have mixed opinions. There are many software available in the market and they all have their positive sides as well as some negative. But I think getting any particular software is an individual choice and also depends on many factors like how expensive the software is?, how steep the learning curve is?, and so on.

Nikon Capture NX2

Personally, I had never used any expensive and complex software to edit my photos. Most of the time, I use Google Picasa to crop my images, put watermarks and tweak some lighting and color saturation. But nowadays, I have been shooting RAW images occasionally and I felt the need for good software to edit my pictures. I did little bit of research on the internet and got Nikon Capture NX2 recently. But, for the most of the time, and also depending on the situation, I don't process them much. Some people may use it because they have heard about it and want to try it out but don't really need it? When I just started photography, I didn't want to spend couple hundred dollars to buy an expensive software just to edit the picture. I used free software that were available to download for anyone and didn’t have much learning curve as well. As I started learning more about photography, I also learned that spending little bit of money for the software also became necessary if I wanted the best result. Free is good but not the best always.

I have also downloaded GIMP but haven't had chance to use it that much. Some people say it's the best and free alternative for the Photoshop Elements. I have also got some suggestions about post processing from pro photographers. And they said, when you start shooting in a RAW mode, that is the only time you might want to start using post-processing software to edit the details. Most of the time, specially if it is a friends and family gathering, I shoot in JPEG FINE mode and do not feel the need of editing much except cropping sometimes.

Anyway, here is the list of few popular and standard post processing software I found during my research.

• Capture NX 2 (Nikon)

• GIMP(FREE)

• Adobe Photoshop (Licensed)

• Google Picasa(FREE)

• Apple Aperture (Licensed)

• iPhoto (Comes with MAC)

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (Licensed)

These are my short list but you can get any software depending on your need and availability in the market. There are many more choices but please do some research before you spend your hard earned money on it. If you are a pro photographer and make your living from photography, post-processing software is a must have tool in today’s market. But, if you are doing photography just for fun or starting it out as a hobby, then may be its a good idea to learn from freely available software first and then slowly move towards the licensed software by properly calculating your need and budget for it.

If you have got any software for post-processing, please feel free to share your experience and let us know what do you think about it.

What Is Active D-Lighting?

Active D-Lighting is the technology used by Nikon which is designed to control the exposure to recover the details in the highlights and shadow areas. It allows you to shoot in different lighting condition and give natural contrast to the photograph. It does so by adjusting the exposure value depending on the situation. Camera will set the exposure slightly underexposed when Active D-Lighting is set to ON. It will adjust aperture and shutter speed combination to give that underexposed result. According to Nikon, "Active D-Lighting optimizes high contrast images to restore the shadow and highlight details that are often lost when strong lighting increases the contrast between bright and dark areas of an image. It can be set to operate automatically or manually, and it's also possible to bracket pictures to get one with Active D-Lighting and one without." ADL can be selected from Auto, Extra high, High, Normal, Low, or Off in case of Nikon D90.

Where to set ADL option for NIKON D90?

1. Go to the Menu button.

2. Select Shooting Menu (camera icon) option.

3. Choose Active D-Lighting.

4. Set the option as you want.

NOTE: Using ADL at higher ISO (more than ISO 1600) will create more noise in the shadow areas. Sometimes it is a good idea to avoid ADL because of shadow areas noise issue in higher ISO sensitivities. The contrast can be managed using either Photoshop or Lightroom during the post production. To do this, you have to shoot in RAW format which produces less noise than shooting with ADL option ON.

Active D-Lighting decreases the contrast to add details in the areas of highlights and shadows only. It won't affect the whole image but only to specific areas that require detail recovering.