I’m incredibly excited and honored to be asked to lead an epic photographic workshop experience this fall on the Boy Scout Philmont Ranch in New Mexico, 19-25 Sept, 2021. The Ranch which is on part of the historic Santa Fe Trail is unspoiled vast landscapes with historic buildings and amazing critters making for a super week. You will not have any problem finding subjects from Elk and Deer, Turkeys and fifty other bird species, we will have buckskin clad reinactors firing black powder rifles and if all else fails, there are the spectacular New Mexico sunsets just to mention a few subjects. In between all this shooting will be daily classroom sessions covering post processing, workflow and image review. I’m getting all worked up just thinking about it cause it’s a once in a lifetime photographic event taking you back in time to bring back the memories with your cameras. The price for the week is $995! Registration is through The Ranch and you might need to click on the Assistance button to make it all happen. It’s going to be a marvelous time and hope you’re able to join us for all the fun and photography!

That’s right, our Z Bodies just got that much faster, more efficient and most importantly, funnier with this latest round of firmware updates. I spent last week shooting the D6 with it’s new firmware update blowing the doors off low light AF performance. I can’t wait until tonight to see the same thing in my Z 6II. Here’s some of the new updates for the various cameras. And remember after you do your firmware update there is a feature to delete if from the card right in the menu!

Firmware Updates

Firmware Ver. 1.20 for the Z 7II and Z 6II will offer increased AF performance, including faster focusing when shooting with AF in low light situations. Further, AF usability when using an external

Speedlight will also increase, through improvements to detection performance in scenes where it was difficult to detect faces and eyes, as well as improvements to subject visibility during live view shooting. In addition, tracking frames used for face and eye detection, as well as subject-tracking AF have been improved, enabling smoother and more stable shooting.

Additional firmware updates will also be available on April 26 for other Z series cameras. These updates include firmware Ver. 3.30 for the Z 7 and Z 6, as well as Ver. 2.10 for the Z 50, which will add the Save Focus Position option that allows the current focus position to be saved when the camera is turned off and restored when next turned on. The new firmware for the Z 6 will also add the voice memo recording/play function^*, popular with the D6. The addition of the voice memo recording/play function is also planned for the Z 6II in a future firmware update.

Further, firmware Ver. 1.10 for the Z 5 will include faster AF detection speed during low light situations when shooting in the Low-Light AF mode, thereby improving usability. The Z 5 will also gain the Save Focus Position option.

How do I go back and look at what I’ve done in the past photographing a particular subject when I’m going to photograph that subject again? I’ve mention this a few times of late and I’ve been asked just what am I doing, why and how. In order to learn from my own photographs, I first have to have them organized. Then I need to finish those I like, have those organized and searchable. There are many, many ways you can do this, what’s here is simply the way I prefer. All my finished photos are PSDs that I save in folders separate from their original Raws. I view these finished files, what I call my Gallery Images using Bridge. This is the only way and time I use Bridge and I depend on it as an essential tool for our business.

I have opened my folder called Statics in Bridge (above). The one I’ve mentioned of late is my folder, Locations (not above). The folder doesn’t matter, what does matter is the tab you select once you have a folder opened. You want to use the Filter tab which you might have to go to Window > Filter to find and open if not a tab. Filter has what seems like a gazillion options to then “filter” the images in the folder you have open. What I do to research how I’ve photographed a subject in the past, I select Lens from the filter options. As you can see when it comes to Static aircraft, I’ve used a few lenses. If you look at a particular focal length on the left, above, you’ll see after the lens a number in parenthesis. That’s the number of photos in that folder shot with that lens. Why do I do it this way?

I want to see my finished photos because those are the ones from a shoot I liked the most. The heavily lifting in my research into my own photography has been done for me, by me. This is why I work so hard and quickly to finish images from a shoot. Then Bridge helps me for my upcoming shoot of the same subject informing me what focal length and how often I used it for that subject. This information does not dictate what I’m going to do with a new shoot of an old subject, it’s just my starting point. I can look at my images and see what worked, what didn’t work and what lens was part of that. I don’t like trusting my memory to these things, there are too many moving parts. So I simply use technology to filter for learning yourself.

Nikon has dropped firmware 1.20 for the D6 today and it has some great new features and improvements. Here’s the list:

• • A Recall shooting functions (hold) item has been added to Custom Setting f3 Custom controls. Assigning this role to a control lets you recall previously-saved values for settings such as exposure and metering by pressing the control once during viewfinder photography. The previous values can be restored by pressing the control a second time. Recall shooting functions (hold) can be assigned to the Preview button, Fn1 button, Fn2 button, Fn button for vertical shooting, AF-ON button, Sub-selector center, AF-ON button for vertical shooting, Movie record button, or Lens focus function buttons.
• • A new option, Prefer sub-selector center, has been added to the Custom Settings menu at position f13. Although at default settings the sub-selector cannot be used to position the focus point while the center is pressed, selecting Off for Prefer sub-selector center lets you hold the center and still position the focus point by pressing the sub-selector up, down, left, or right. You can, for example, assign AF-area mode to the center of the sub-selector and then use the sub-selector to position the focus point while the center still serves in the AF-area mode role.
• • A Focus point selection speed item has been added to Custom Setting a17 Focus point options. The speed at which the focus points for viewfinder photography can be cycled by holding the sub-selector or keeping the multi selector pressed up, down, left, or right can be chosen from Normal, High, and Extra high.
• • Ratings are now displayed at all times during playback zoom, even when None (image only) is selected for playback display options.
• • The camera can now more reliably focus on poorly-lit low-contrast subjects when dynamic-area AF is selected for AF-area mode.