My weekend with Nikon Mentor Mark Alberhasky

Thanks to persistent urgings by my friend Hal Wallace, in April I had the opportunity to spend a precious B&B weekend with Nikon Mentor, Mark Alberhasky. Mark is one of a very few photographer-instructors, sponsored by Nikon, with whom you can travel to exotic locales for photographic opportunities along with rich, lucid, and inspired teaching; for example, you'll see some of his Nikon-sponsored treks in PopPhoto and other photo magazines. You can see his website here; and don't overlook checking out his blog. For a small fee and a plane ticket, I was able to enjoy Mark's undivided attention, completely immersed in things photographic at his Atlanta home and studio.

I must say that to take such a step elicited all sorts of insecure feelings about whether I was good enough, what if Mark didn't like my work? Fear often turns out to be unfounded and he immediately put me at ease. Pretty soon, we were chatting away like old friends. Our session started about 4 PM Friday afternoon and before I knew it, four hours had passed; it was like a Vulcan mind meld! After dinner, we went for another couple hours! And so it went throughout the weekend, pausing only to sleep and eat, Mark poured out his insights into composition, artistic vision, and technical execution. We did not do any shooting, the time was focused upon the digital "darkroom." Incidentally, Canon shooters are welcome, too! Mark prefers Nikon equipment, but what he has to share is generic. By the way, he has to purchase his equipment, just like us, from Nikon!

The weekend with Mark was significant for me in several ways. First, if I was serious about my photography, then I was going to have to invest in it: Time and money were only part of the commitment, however, as it also required exposing my own vulnerabilities and fears to a true master photographer. Another insight was the fact, often cited by others that have reached the pinnacle of their disciplines, that 99% of the effort goes into achieving the last 1% of finesse. I thought I was very good at using my camera, Lightroom, and Photoshop; Mark taught me even more and gave me some insight into what the journey towards that "last 1%" might entail. It's not a destination, it is a voyage and I feel like I have indeed embarked upon a new way of seeing and thinking. At the end of it all, I felt like I had feasted at the king's table! Yet I was not completely sated and with some sadness the weekend came to an end. I would definitely go again.

One of the tidbits I learned concerned manufacturers' software used to convert RAW images. Mark told me that there was proprietary information embedded in the Nikon NEF raw file, but I must confess I was a bit skeptical. My workflow, up until now, had been to shoot in 14-bit raw (NEF) and convert to the DNG format using Adobe's software. The NEF files were kept as a backup and all post-processing was done on DNG raw files. Being the scientist I am, when I got home, I did a little experiment to see what kind of extra information might be present in NEF that could not be teased out of a DNG file or its equivalent when Adobe did the raw conversion. For the D800E and the D7100, I started with the original raw NEF and opened it in Lightroom 4.4 (LR converts the NEF on the fly and it is the same whether using Adobe Camera Raw or the Adobe DNG Converter software; I know, I've compared them). Alternatively, I opened the NEF in Nikon ViewNX 2 and converted to 16-bit TIFF format before opening in LR4.4, thus any proprietary information would have the advantage of the Nikon raw conversion. For each comparison, I made comparable 100% crops.

Adobe Lightroom 4.4 converted: D7100

Nikon ViewNX 2 converted: D7100

With the D7100, the above shot was taken under fluorescent lighting following a flood in my laboratory (f/8, 1/100 sec, ISO 1600, Auto WB). There are definite differences in white balance, sharpness and noise between the two, with the Nikon ViewNX 2 providing a superior conversion in my opinion. Click on each to see larger images and see if you don't agree. I was amazed, frankly.

Nikon ViewNX 2 converted: D800E

Adove Lightroom 4.4 converted: D800E

With the D800E shot above of a Sedona sunset (f/8, 1/200, ISO 200, Auto WB), I thought maybe this phenomenon would be less intrusive using a higher end, higher resolution camera. Not so! The Nikon conversion again produced significantly better sharpness and the chromatic aberration was much less apparent. Note the odd red halo bordering the top of the mountain silhouettes along with noise and WB differences in the Adobe LR conversion. Mark informed me Canon software may behave similarly. Take home message: Raw may not be raw and the results depend on the converter used. This astounding result has caused me to change my workflow. Now, I convert the raw NEF to TIFF via ViewNX 2 and open the 16-bit TIFF for post-processing. Incidentally, the TIFF files are about double the size of NEF or DNG files, even with LZW (lossless) compression; I don't know why. Some may see the above differences as rather subtle features of digital photography, but I see such enhancements as important improvements in quality that as Mark said, layered one on top of another, soon add up to distinctive images.

One final note: Mark retired from his Pathology partnership a few years ago to work full time on his photographic passion and with Nikon. I envy his ability and the opportunity he has exploited to pursue his dream. He is truly a master photographer and I am indeed fortunate to have been able to spend some time learning from him. If you are serious about photography, bring your A-game, and consider taking advantage of the numerous opportunities available through Nikon, and even more significantly, Dr Mark Alberhasky.

UPDATE 30 MAY 2013: So, life turns out to be a little more complicated upon further reflection. Following a discussion on Luminous Landscapes, particularly with Jeff Schewe, who is a frequent contributor and the author of The Digital Negative, I tested the hypothesis that proprietary raw information in the NEF can only be accessed by Nikon software. The images shown above are indeed correct, but not because of any proprietary data or decoding algorithm. I created a Lightroom preset that copes quite nicely with the noise reduction, capture sharpening, lens correction, and white balance issues I discuss above. There's no need to show how this works, because the Lightroom converted images look exactly like the ViewNX-2 converted images above, whether from the D7100 or D800E. In effect, Nikon creates a similar preset in camera so, raw is indeed raw. There is perhaps one important caveat, which is that Automatic D-Lighting (ADL) information cannot be read by the Adobe software as shown in the four images below. ADL attempts to raise more detail in shadow areas while preserving highlights and thus essentially expanding the dynamic range of the camera. The differences are subtle, yet readily apparent, as seen below in the ViewNX 2 conversions; I have yet to make up my mind as to their importance.

ADL on(normal) converted with ViewNX2

ADL off converted with ViewNX 2

ADL off converted with LR4.4

ADL on(normal) converted with LR4.4

As you can see, while there are clear differences between ADL on or off with ViewNX 2 conversion, but ADL settings have little or no influence on the way Lightroom 4.4 converts NEF to DNG files (at least as far as I can see especially on a calibrated monitor). To compensate, you'd have to boost the shadows in LR, but this could increase noise and I have not looked at whether this would be comparable to what is done in camera. With the manual exposure above (1/350s, f/8, WB auto) the highlights do not appear affected by ADL, but other metering modes may change this. For me, this was an interesting little exercise. I have turned ADL to OFF and will use it only on very high contrast scenes. Note that images were converted with no other adjustments other than to save as jpeg files. So, raw is raw and there is proprietary information in the Nikon NEF, but you will have to decide whether it is worth introducing the step of using Nikon software to convert to a TIFF format that also takes up to three times more storage space compared to DNG.