Pro Tip #1 Get Level

I thought I would pass along a few tips over the next few weeks of small but important things that have caught my attention when talking or reading about the Pro’s in regard to their equipment tweaks.

On the outside some of these don’t seem that significant but as I have implemented them into my own Image taking, I know that they are worth consideration to benefit your work flow.

For instance, based on a Pro tip, a year ago I refitted my D3 with the Nikon Focusing Screen Type E .  I have never thought anything of how much I used it or the advantages that it has given me until when I received my D3s.  The standard D3d comes with the plain factory furnished screen, yuck, it just doesn’t cut in for my brand of photography. So it was the first D3s accessory that I ordered to get me back in a comfortable place.

The installation process is a bit touchy, and I recommend you wear a pair of latex gloves to  keep oils and dust from straying onto the screen while you hold and position the thin grid screen into place.

What this inexpensive screen ($34) does is give you a few grid lines (Horizontal & vertical) to assist in aligning the camera especial in hand holding situations, which is an excellent feature if you are shooting coastal shots and need a horizon line, or for posts when you need vertical reference, or for diagonal planes.  The grid lines do not ‘light-up’, they are there more for reference but the auto focus area still lights up your red focus point.

Keeping on the theme of proper alignment of your Image, I also use custom settings f4 to assign my function button to virtual horizon so I can reference within my viewfinder that status of my camera to parallel,

Then finally, for tripod situations I have programmed from the Setup menu the Virtual Horizon into MY Menu rank#2 or I use LiveView grids.  Why? When you have your camera mounted to the tripod, you can skip all the leveling if your  in a hurry, and when you press OK in your main menu and your rear display will give you a very cool, internal leveling graphic and it works great !

Why the fastidiousness with leveling ? Well, I really get upset with myself if I come back into the DD and see my shots off of alignment, it is a basic and simple thing to take care of in the field.  I remember reading that our hunter gather human eye have evolved with a very low tolerance for being off parallel.  Going into post and then when you start off using your alignment software it essentially crops something out to put something in, and you’d be surprised what you might loose in the process.  It’s just better to get it right the first time.