Reinier van Houten – Photography

This week Nikon released the new version of its RAW editing software tool: Capture NX2 2.3.0. It is a long awaited version by many people around the globe, because it now officially supports Windows 64-bit environments, promising better performance.

As you can imagine, I immediately downloaded the new version and started to install it. The installation program detected that the plugin Color Efex Pro 3.0 from Nik Software was installed. I was offered the option to continue with the 32-bit installation to support this plugin, or the 64-bit installation without support for CEP 3.0! I found this so unbelievable I had to read the message twice. You have to know that Nik Software recently released a new version of the plugin, Color Efex Pro 4.0, with Windows 64-bit support. However, this version officially does not work with Capture NX2, only with Photoshop and Aperture.

So that leaves me in a dead-end street. I’m running a Windows 7 64-bit system. I’d like to make use of its capabilities for Capture NX2 and Color Efex Pro. But, unfortunately, this not possible. Capture NX2 2.3.0 supports 64-bit, but not in combination with Color Efex Pro 3.0 plugin. On the other hand, Color Efex Pro 4.0 supports 64-bit environments, but does not work with Capture NX2. Net result of this catch-22: I can only continue with Capture NX2 2.2.6 and Color Efex Pro 3.0. Both in 32-bit mode…

I have asked Nik Software if and when they intend to support Capture NX2 2.3.0 (in 64-bit mode). Will update this blog with their response as soon as I have it, but I’m not keeping my hopes up too high though. It clearly illustrates the co-operation between Nikon and Nik Software, if any, is seriously broken. To be continued…

Just to be accurate: Linelle told me that, although it is true that she’s not limited by time when she’s with her models trying to catch them, it can be quite different in many other situations. The time she spends with her models was an answer to one of the questions during the seminar. The way it’s put in the entry below is a bit out of proportion and might give people the impression it’s more or less her trademark to spend so much time with her models. To prove that’s not always true, take the photo in the middle: taken in less than 15 minutes.

Just so you know…

I came across the name of Dutch photojournalist Linelle Deunk a number of times in the past few months. Mainly because I noticed more and more of her work being used in one of the newspapers. Her work reminds me of Stephan Vanfleteren and Sally Mann in a way. Last week I attended a seminar of De Zilveren Camera ( The Silver Camera), a Dutch contest for photojournalists, where Linelle Deunk would be one of the guests to be interviewed. She is last year’s first prize winner in the  Portrait Series category.

Linelle explained what’s typical for her way of working is the amount of times she allows herself to take the pictures. A session can take several hours. In her opinion, this explains the sensitivity with which the people are captured. This is characteristic for her work.

To my surprise I happened to read an article on her in the December issue of Dutch photomagazine Fotografie this weekend. So, it was a week with a high level of Linelle Deunk. It doesn’t matter to me, because I like her work very much. To give you an idea of her work, see some of her pictures below. But even better: visit her website at www.linelledeunk.nl.

Frequent visitors of this blog probably know that I’m a big admirer of the old masters of painting, Rembrandt in particular because of the way he handled dark and light in his portraits. The painting, already known for a while, was last week officialy attributed to Rembrandt. State of the art techniques revealed that beneath the painting another portrait was hidden. Rembrandt used this method quite often to save on canvasses for the many pupils he taught. The original painting, however, was probably an unfinished self-portrait.

Anyway, I think the final portrait is a beautiful portrait and a very good example of chiaroscuro, the way dark and light is handled. Even if it wasn’t been painted by Rembrandt, I still think it’s very beautiful. Now, just slightly more…

Rembrandt remains a master and a source of inspiration for many portrait photographers.

The final painting on the left and the unfinished self-portrait, that was hidden, on the right.

In case you have missed this, Nikon will be releasing Capture NX2 2.3 fairly soon (click here). Besides support for new (to be announced) cameras, the most important feature by far of this release is support for 64-bit Windows environments. To me this proves, contrary to what is stated on many forums, Nikon is still putting development efforts in CNX. Believe you me, CNX3 is not far away…..

At the photo club of which I’m a member we define a number of themes each year. For every theme we submit 2 photos to be judged by an external professional photographer who acts as a kind of jury. The first theme for this year is Lines and Shapes. When I set out to shoot some photos for this theme, I found myself going after lines (literally) as in the images below.

But they weren’t to my liking. They both missed something. So I gave it a bit more thought. Besides lines (and shapes) in the literal meaning of the word, you can also think of lines as lead-in lines. Well known in photography and paintings. Once again I set out to shoot some photos of lines in combination with lead-in lines. Here’s what I came up with.

Especially the last one I particularly like. It has lead-in lines all over the place, left, right, top. The father and daughter, exactly where all the lines come together, just happened to be there. As a bonus. It was a very impulsive shot. I just walked by, saw the lines and the people, and took the shot in a split second. I’m very happy with it.

To my great astonishment, the cover of this month’s Focus (Dutch photo magazine) shows a picture by Henri Cartier-Bresson that he took in 1947 in New York. In all modesty, I do see a certain resemblance…

I’ll let you know in December how my 2 photos scored in the overall ranking and what the assessment of the professional photographer was.

For those interested to find out more about Nikon F-mount 50mm prime lenses please have a look here. A very extensive comparison of 7 prime lenses. Not that long ago I bought the Nikon AF 50mm f/1.8D. The cheapest of the list. Certainly from this price-performance standpoint I’m still very pleased with it. I can certainly recommend it, but read the review yourself.

We gave one of our boys a new leather jacket for his birthday the other day. Shopping with him is an experience. To say he’s picky would be an understatement. Finding the right jacket is a process that takes weeks. But I must say, we found a very good one in the end. One that really suits him.

When he was wearing with just a white t-shirt underneath a few days ago, I couldn’t deny a certain resemblance with James Dean. Former moviestar who died way too early. Took a couple of shots of him wearing his new jacket this weekend. Found a number of James Dean images on the internet afterwards. It was certainly not my intention to have him pose as James Dean, but just something I happened to notice when I compared the picture with images I found. Anyway, judge for yourself.

Well, Nikon certainly did a very fine job of making all the headlines with the announcement of its mirorrless cameras, the Nikon 1 V1 and the Nikon 1 J1. All the serious photography websites and magazines gave it a lot of attention. Me personally, I couldn’t care less. I’m perfectly happy with my good old DSLR. A full frame camera one day, perhaps, but I cannot imagine I’ll go for a smaller sensor size with one of my next camera purchases. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with mirrorless systems in general. On the contrary, I think it’s the next logical step in the evolution and the only way forward. But not right now for me.

So now Nikon’s marketing dust can start to settle down. We had their Coolpix announcements in August and now the announcement of their first mirrorless cameras in September. For a brand like Nikon that’s more than enough for one year. But there’s a small rumour going round that there will be another Nikon announcement in October. The same rumour also says it will not be about any new full frame DSLR. So, not about the much anticipated D4 or D800.

I know it’s against all odds, but let’s just speculate and hope here for a second. The V1 and J1 cameras are positioned between the Nikon compact and DSLR cameras. Clearly Nikon the people at don’t want to cannibalize their DSLR marketshare with the new mirrorless equipment. The V1 and J1 cameras support NEF file format (Nikon’s RAW format). So, in Nikon’s vision the introduction of the new cameras will lead to a greater marketshare. And more people shooting in NEF. This (growing) community needs to be supplied with a state-of-the-art RAW conversion and editing tool (Capture NX2 2.2.8 they just released was only to accomodate the V1 and J1 models). That’s why Nikon’s software R&D people have been working very hard lately on a new release of Capture NX. That’s what Nikon will be announcing in October: Capture NX3! Not as big as the recent mirrorless announcement and not about new DSLR’s like the D4 or D800, but still very much needed and asked for. And that’s also why the book The Nikon Capture NX3 Book by Johan Kerver – a 160 page paperback – will be available in December.

So now you know. Remember, you heard it here first. Just don’t tell me I haven’t told you so!

Nik Software – the makers of fantastic photo editing tools – just released a brand new release of their Color Efex Pro product. Version 4. That is, it’s not quite released yet, but you can pre-order it on their website. I immediately started to read the feature list on their site. It really got me excited. Good stuff! About to pre-order. It’s compatible with Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture and…..what? No Capture NX2 support. This could not be true and I asked Nik Software what I had to do to get a CNX2 compatible version. Here’s their response:

“We are very sorry here:
The Capture NX 2 software from Nikon does not support Nik Software’s new Color Efex Pro 4 plug-in. Color Efex Pro 4 is built on an entirely new and powerful framework and thus requires certain functions of the plug-in architecture of the host application that are not currently present in Captures NX 2.
If you are a current Color Efex Pro 3.0 customer, you can of course continue to enjoy the benefits of that software with Capture NX 2.
Regarding plans to make the two products work together, the effort to update Color Efex Pro 4 to function within Capture NX 2 relies on Nikon’s future plans and development for their photo editing software.”

Nikon’s future plans and development for their photo-editing software. So this means that Nik Software is not involved in these plans or not aware of them. Nikon is apparently defining its own course without Nik Software being consulted. I do not know this, of course, but it seems to be the case based on the answer. So let’s assume for a moment it is true and Nikon and Nik Software are each going their own way, then yes, a next version of Capture NX is out of the question. Such a wonderful tool and still no future. So it seems…