Events and Nikon DX vs FX

[MartyD]

I shoot a lot of sports and my editing for sports has to be much more efficient than it does for wildlife. I usually have to edit several thousand images into a few hundred images or less for upload usually within 24 hours. Here are my thoughts.

I don't see how shooting in DX mode would save any time except on the rare occasion where DX mode eliminates any need for cropping in post. DX can improve focus acquisition but I wouldn't think that event shooting would benefit much from that. My problem with switching to DX mode is forgetting to switch it back to FX mode.

I shoot in HE* RAW, the files are smaller and I adjust my FPS for the sport. No need to shoot at 20 FPS if the action is not fast enough and there is nothing to be gained from faster FPS. Shooting at 15 FPS reduces the number of images you have to cull by 25%.

I copy all of the images from the card onto an external scratch storage drive. I then use Photo Mechanic for the first round of culling. I rate the images I want to import into Lightroom as a 3 and then use PM to ingest those images to my work drive. The files in the work drive are then imported into Lightroom Classic. I keep the images on the scratch drive until the end of the season in case there is a need to find images of certain athletes or I need to complete a good sequence and then they are deleted. I then cull a second time in LrC and rate the images I want to edit as a 5. Photo Mechanic has gone to a subscription model that I think is expensive but a program like Faststone Image Viewer or FastRaw Viewer will do basically the same thing but I have not used them for this purpose. RAW viewers save a lot of time in the initial culling process.

There are a number of controllers that work well with LrC to speed up editing. I have used a plugin called MIDI2LR that allows you to use an inexpensive midi controller to adjust certain properties in LrC. I purchased the LoupeDeck Live last season and it has worked wonderfully. It has keys and buttons that you can program to perform certain tasks in LrC. I can even use it to crop by programming one knob for crop dimensions and another for crop rotation and then use my mouse to drag the image into the crop rectangle. While scrolling through images using the mouse I can quickly adjust 8 attributes like contrast, exposure, highlights, shadows with the fingers of my left hand. It is hard to describe how much more efficient this has made my bulk image editing.

I use LrC sync to sync my develop setting to multiple files. I then only need to tweak settings on a few files. I even at time will sync crop on an action sequence and then only adjust the crop on each individual images slightly.

This is not the way I edit my wildlife photos or even my family photos but I have to edit more files in a limited amount of time when shoot sports so efficiency is important.

I am heading out to a football game with my Z6iii this evening and I am excited to see how it performs.

 

[Juliette]

I shoot a lot of sports and my editing for sports has to be much more efficient than it does for wildlife. I usually have to edit several thousand images into a few hundred images or less for upload usually within 24 hours. Here are my thoughts.

I don't see how shooting in DX mode would save any time except on the rare occasion where DX mode eliminates any need for cropping in post. DX can improve focus acquisition but I wouldn't think that event shooting would benefit much from that. My problem with switching to DX mode is forgetting to switch it back to FX mode.

I shoot in HE* RAW, the files are smaller and I adjust my FPS for the sport. No need to shoot at 20 FPS if the action is not fast enough and there is nothing to be gained from faster FPS. Shooting at 15 FPS reduces the number of images you have to cull by 25%.

I copy all of the images from the card onto an external scratch storage drive. I then use Photo Mechanic for the first round of culling. I rate the images I want to import into Lightroom as a 3 and then use PM to ingest those images to my work drive. The files in the work drive are then imported into Lightroom Classic. I keep the images on the scratch drive until the end of the season in case there is a need to find images of certain athletes or I need to complete a good sequence and then they are deleted. I then cull a second time in LrC and rate the images I want to edit as a 5. Photo Mechanic has gone to a subscription model that I think is expensive but a program like Faststone Image Viewer or FastRaw Viewer will do basically the same thing but I have not used them for this purpose. RAW viewers save a lot of time in the initial culling process.

There are a number of controllers that work well with LrC to speed up editing. I have used a plugin called MIDI2LR that allows you to use an inexpensive midi controller to adjust certain properties in LrC. I purchased the LoupeDeck Live last season and it has worked wonderfully. It has keys and buttons that you can program to perform certain tasks in LrC. I can even use it to crop by programming one knob for crop dimensions and another for crop rotation and then use my mouse to drag the image into the crop rectangle. While scrolling through images using the mouse I can quickly adjust 8 attributes like contrast, exposure, highlights, shadows with the fingers of my left hand. It is hard to describe how much more efficient this has made my bulk image editing.

I use LrC sync to sync my develop setting to multiple files. I then only need to tweak settings on a few files. I even at time will sync crop on an action sequence and then only adjust the crop on each individual images slightly.

This is not the way I edit my wildlife photos or even my family photos but I have to edit more files in a limited amount of time when shoot sports so efficiency is important.

I am heading out to a football game with my Z6iii this evening and I am excited to see how it performs.

all good stuff, thank you! Tomorrow's my first event with the Z6iii as well. I won't be shooting DX unless it behooves me to do so. I have the joystick press mapped to it. We'll see how I go. Thanks!

 

[John Navitsky]

sidebar: i’d be much less likely to use crop mode running a 2x megapixel body

 

[Juliette]

Well, I am back from shooting my event with the Z6iii, Zf as a back up (used sparingly) and never once felt the need to use DX.

And this statement is not one I could make with my Fuji system before: I have about 75% of my photos ready to go just by using my back up JPGs - with no edits needed - and this system is so kick arse that is a first! Very excited about the Z system!

 

[Ken Miracle]

Sounds like your are well down the road.

Some extra thoughts. I photograph birds for ID for citizen science via e bird etc.. I use Z9's most of the time always in raw and at 20fps. I have a Z6III that I use for very low light birds and for photographing indoor and outdoor events (with people) for my church crazy indoor lighting and no supplemental lighting possible and do not control the action. I also use the Z6III at 20 fps.

I use Light Room Classic(LRC) for editing and cataloging since I need the robust keyword structure to retrieve specific birds quickly for ornithologists, journalists and my non profit clients.

When I went to the Z9 from D6 and D850 I started using Photo Mechanic 6 for my intial culling and it was a huge improvement in time spent on the thousands of images I could have from a birding outing.

I have fewer from my church gig but it still greatly speeds up culling and the Z6III smaller files sizes are fast.

I have LRC set up to use my camera settings. I edit, if needed, the first image in a sequence and then as noted by others just sync that image to the rest in the string or even mutliple strings if lighting and ISO levels are the same or close. I then take the time to let LRC make 1:1 previews and then quickly go through and pick the ones to keep. The people images are much more likely to be homogenous than the birding ones so very much like processing jpgs and they are off to my clients the church secretary, pastor and IT guy quickly. I notice that the Z6III is slightly faster to process, just fewer mega pixels to deal with

I use a Z800 mm f/6.3 or Z600 f/6.3 as my primary birding lenses and have a button on the lenses set to toggle between FX and DX and I use that a lot for birding with the Z9 (yes it can help with AF on distant subjects) and much less with the Z6III (but still do if not to dramatic of a difference in how much of the frame the subject takes up).

For my church gig with people involved I frequently use a two camera set up on a Hold Fast Money Maker double carry strap. Z9 with a Tamron z mount 35-150 f/2-2.8 and Z6III with Nikon Z24-120 f/4. I have to move quickly all over the church even up into the loft with the organist and audio video control crew. and with individual and group subjects. The two camera set up gives me a lot of fast flexibility indoors and out.