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Dennis Rogers | profile | all galleries >> A Collection of my Favorites from the Early Days tree view | thumbnails | slideshow

A Collection of my Favorites from the Early Days

The vast majority of the images in this gallery were taken in and around Helena, MT. Cameras used were the point & shoot Nikon Coolpix 4200 and Nikon Coolpix 3700.
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Soft Blues
Soft Blues		 Spring Meadow Lake
Spring Meadow Lake		 Fall's First Colors
Fall's First Colors		 Fall's First Colors (2)
Fall's First Colors (2)
Placid Water
Placid Water		 Grand Cannon View
Grand Cannon View		 Evening Rays
Evening Rays		 Lavender Shadow
Lavender Shadow
Sharp Bloom
Sharp Bloom		 Blue & Violet
Blue & Violet		 Yellow Flower
Yellow Flower		 Fuschia
Fuschia
Burgandy
Burgandy		 Calm Evening Lake
Calm Evening Lake		 Red, White & Blue
Red, White & Blue		 Red and Green
Red and Green
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amigo 29-Dec-2006 21:40
Hi cool site friend!
Guest AM 07-May-2005 07:10
Beautiful photographic work. Some of the most mood inducing pictures I've seen. I'll be returning to your art gallery.
Guest 22-Apr-2005 23:30
Thank you Dennis for sharing your beautiful work with me, and everyone else that sees these photos. You are obviously very gifted. You know how to bring the pictures to life and make me think.

Angalique
Natalie 14-Jan-2005 15:52
Your pictures, Dennis, are fantastic. I was researching Helena, MT, because we may be moving there, and your pictures made me fall in love with MT all over again (I haven't been there in 8 years). I had forgotten how peaceful and time-and-life-giving it was over there compared to living in Suburbia here. Thanks for the beautiful pictures.
Peggy Miller 03-Dec-2004 14:58
I was led to your gallery from your River Ice photo on Weather Underground. You are an aratist with a good camera. There are many exceptional photos here. I recognize a little of myself in you: I walk through life focussing on tiny details most people don't see. Beauty among the weeds and unnoticed nooks. Sadly I don't take pictures to preserve, as you do.
Congratulations: yours is a vital occupation and your photos are gorgeous.
Peggy
Guest 17-Nov-2004 14:05
Hi Dennis,

I have posted a few photographs on pbase.U can check out the same here http://www.pbase.com/rupak/inbox&page=1 .Those are my experiments and I am unable to make any opinion about it.I would appreciate if you could leave your feedback/suggestions on my guestbook.

Thank you,

Rupak Joe
Dennis Rogers 06-Nov-2004 19:52
Hey Joe,

Glad you are happy with your camera and thank you for your comments. I look forward to seeing some images in your gallery.
Joe 05-Nov-2004 14:28
Hi dennis,

I liked your picture gallery and more than that the review was quiet helpful in terms of selecting a "perfect" Camera. I did a month research on P&S cameras before finalizing my Nikon Coolpix 4200.at some point of time I almost decided to buy a Canon A 85.But after seeing a demo on Nikon CP4200, I decided on it. I don't know much about photography (all I did was one month research after e-learning some basics of photography).I took some test shots.. the picture quality is amazing. .it's a little cute thing with powerful feature packed. Thanks for your recommendations. Hope I will post some pics soon on pbase.

Rupak Joe
dm 23-Aug-2004 14:33
hello there! THE VIVIDNESS, SHARPNESS AND DETAIL ARE INCREDIBLE IN THESE PHOTOS. I NBELEIVE I WILL GET THE 4200 AS I DON'T NEED THE 5 MEG REZ AND THESE IMAGES ARE CONVINCING, tHANK YOU FOR POSTING THEM!
Guest 02-Aug-2004 23:15
Thanks for your words Liza, excuse me being so negative, that's me :-).
Well, are you really serious about visiting my town after looking at my pictures?
They may show nice things, but this city is a dirty old town, once a big industrial city in a famous huge industrial area in the west of germany.
You'll find more streets and grey buildings here than anywhere else in Germany, that's for sure. I shall move to the area of Hamburg or Munich in 2 or 3 years...






liza 02-Aug-2004 21:47
I think you are very negative Norman...I like your pictures, they are very artistic and I may say I like your town as well...after seeing the nice park you have there I decided I will visit the town in a near future...

So I looking forward for your new pictures...bye liza
Guest 01-Aug-2004 12:45
Hi again Dennis,

Thank you so much for that quick and high quality answer.
As i mentioned in my first comment, this is my first camera ever - what a shame to say this at the age of 31 :-). Thus i am sometimes a bit puzzled by all these settings and features, allthough i read the manual twice.
Thank you very much for the nice hints on sharpening and exposure. I will try it out for sure.
As to your words about my pictures, you are one kind man, don't make me blush i know the majority is booring (unspectaccular local home area) and of lower quality (in my eyes). I really have to learn more about the setting up this camera to get ready for my first real shots on any kind of oncoming trips. I just figured out that i am stupid enough to sometimes ignore even the most basic rules of photograhy, e.g. shooting against the bright sun :-).

One thing i forgot to say in my first posting was my frustration about the fact that you cannot adjust ISO settings in scene modes. The auto-gain-up makes it nearly impossible to take very dark nightshots or indoor shots w/o flash (to get nice warm colour) because ISO will be set to 200 or 400 which leads to big time noise you can never ever eliminate by any postprocessing. I fear that nightshots must be taken in auto mode with ISO manually set to 100. Sadly you then have to suffer from very dark underexposed picures.
Oh well, again i reveal myself as a fool who wants a digital SLR cam for 300 bucks :-).

One last word: You are a happy man, such lovely areas you got over there and such beautiful lights. It's getting time to spend some time in the alps here again *rubs his hands in greedy anticipation*.

I will surely keep an eye on your your galleries.

My best wishes,

Norman.
Liza 01-Aug-2004 12:37
Hello Dennis...I just read your message...thank you very much for your detailed and long answer...as I already noticed Nikon 5200 does not produce very good pictures and now I am sure about it....I am looking forward to see more pictures in your gallery...the only two cameras I am considering now is the Nikon 4200 or the new Kodak DX7440.

However thank you again....

Have a nice summer...

Liza
Dennis Rogers 01-Aug-2004 01:26
Hi Norman,

I took a look at your galleries. You have some fantastic pictures! I'm also glad that you like your Coolpix 4200. You are right that all of the small point and shoot digital cameras have some drawbacks and I considered about 4 other P&S cameras in this price range before choosing the Nikon.

First, your comment on sharpness. Both the Coolpix 5200 and 4200 have very conservative in-camera sharpening. Dave Etchels of http://www.imaging-resource.com, in his review of the 5200, suggested setting the in-camera sharpening at high and leaving it there. This is also what I do with the 4200. Keep in mind that when using the landscape mode or other scene modes that the camera reverts to auto-sharpening. In postprocessing the images I just about always apply at least low sharpening. I don't use Nikon's PictureProject software anymore. I used it for a while, but found it very cumbersome and counter-intuitive, so switched back to NikonView 6 (available for download from http://www.nikonusa.com). It is much more user-friendly.

In pictures that I particularly like, I will only use NikonView to adjust contrast and brightness and sometimes the color. I will then put the image through Neat Image http://www.neatimage.com) to remove any noise and then sharpen the image with Neat Image's more sophisticated sharpening ability. Otherwise, I don't do anything else with the images. (I don't have photoshop).

Regarding saturation, I have very rarely gotten oversaturated images, but sometimes undersaturated images when taking landscape shots in less than ideal light. Now that I've taken enough pictures to know what the camera will do under certain lighting conditions, I will adjust the in-camera saturation accordingly. In landscape shots with flat light I set the in-camera saturation to high and it works real well. In situations where you are getting oversaturated pictures, I would suggest setting the in-camera saturation to low. It should really help.

Regarding exposure, when taking shots outdoors in sunlight, I set the exposure to at least -0.3. If the sunlight is creating very high contrast, I will set the exposure lower or set the in-camera contrast setting to low. With a little trial and error, you'll get used to what settings work in a particular situation. The lower exposure setting will also help when the sky is overcast. If you just aren't sure what exposure setting will be best, I strongly recommend turning on the 4200's bracketing feature for tough shots ~ the camera will take a shot at its "ideal" exposure and also an overexposed and underexposed shot. You can choose later which image has the better exposure.

Before I started bracketing shots and lowering the exposure and contrast settings for outdoor shots, I also got a lot of overexposed skies when it was overcast. This seems to be very common in small point and shoot digicams. There are a couple pictures in my Gates of the Mountains gallery where you can see that the sky is overexposed ~ it was this experience that taught me to start setting the exposure and/or contrast lower for outdoor shots.

Finally, it is true that most images from these small cameras benefit greatly from a bit of postprocessing ~ which translates into taking a bit of time to touch up every image. I don't know how much time you are spending editing the images in photoshop, but in NikonView 6 (or even PictureProject), although they are simple programs, require very little time investment to improve each image. You can then reserve more time-consuming editing for your best shots.

Hope this helps. You do indeed have some great pictures in your gallery and I hope you keep enjoying your Coolpix 4200!

Dennis
Guest 31-Jul-2004 21:36
Hello Dennis.

First of all, nice pictures. Some weeks ago i was spending most of my time searching for the "right camera" to buy (my first ever btw). At that time i found your galleries at PBase and i liked them very much. So after weeks of studies i decided to just buy this new little camera.
Well, generally i like this little thing. It takes good quality pics while it's a real pocket cam. There are also some little drawbacks like the lack of sharpness and over saturation sometimes. So i would like to share some experience with you. Do you use the internal sharpening option? How do you deal with overcast skies, hardly saw them on any of your pics while i still have to deal with them. Have you any hints on how to influence the exposure the right way?
I use photoshop a lot and it looks like i have to really edit each single picture besides of resizing. I _have_ to resharpen them and readjust exposure. But maybe that's a common thing for all small compact digicams? I am totally new to this.
Anyway, woule love to hear some hints from you about the handling of that camera.
Oh and don't get me wrong, i really like the camera, it just has it's small drawbacks, but then i guess every camera within that pricing range has some problems here and there.
My first shots can be viewed at http://www.pbase.com/m_e_d_u_s_a
They are nothing special, i just ran around my local area as soon as the rain stops to get any shots at all. BAd summer here :-(

Have a nice day and keep on shooting,

Norman.

PS: Please forgive any mispelling, etc. since i am not a native english speaker.




Dennis Rogers 23-Jul-2004 19:35
Hi Liza,

I do have a gallery up of unpostprocessed pictures from the 4200. Just click on "all galleries" and then look for the gallery so labeled. The only thing I would keep in mind while viewing that gallery is that a majority of the photos were taken on an overcast day. I'm hoping to put up an entire new gallery of unpostprocessed images in the next few weeks.

Regarding my opinion of the 4200: I have also viewed many, many photos from the 5200 and have concluded that the 5200 is softer and noisier than the 4200. If you were choosing between the two, I would urge you to buy the 4200, as I believe it has better image quality.

The 4200 also has impressively quick startup and shutdown speeds. Twice as fast as the Coolpix 3700 that I've also been using recently (which is also a great camera by the way), and 3 or 4 times faster than my previous 2100.

The construction of the 4200 is very solid (metal instead of plastic body) and the zoom is smooth and quiet. Because of the Nikkor ED (Extra-low Dispersion) Glass, there is no purple fringing in the photos. The Indoor/Party Scene Mode amazes me with how well it captures the true lighting and colors of indoor shots. I tested the in-camera red-eye-reduction on my girlfriend, who has the worst red-eye I've ever seen in flash photos. It completely eliminated her red-eye without any postprocessing needed (remember that the in-camera red-eye-reduction is only turned on in conjunction with the red-eye-flash).

I also really like the saturation adjustment, allowing colors to really come through in lower light settings or wide landscape shots. The battery time averages a respectable 160 to 200 shots when utilizing the LCD, allowing lots of time to review the photos also.

Anyway, I could go on with other things I like about the camera, but suffice it to say that I really like it.

The image quality of the 4200, in my opinion, is on par with its competitors with one exception. I think that Canon, at the current time, has a slight edge in sheer image quality. You should check out lots of photos from the Canon Powershot S410 and S500. They don't have the extensive scene modes of the Nikon, don't have the ED glass (therefore suffering from purple fringing in particularly harsh lighting), and are marginally slower, but the sharpening algorithms in the Canon do allow for slightly sharper images. I think in the long run I would've been equally happy with either the Nikon 4200 or the Canon S410 (oh, the 4200 also has a distinct edge in ergonomics).

Hope this helps.

Dennis
liza 23-Jul-2004 00:51
Hello Dennis...I saw your photos and I am very impressed...I really like the quality of your pictures, the colours and the sharpness. Ok...my point is I really want to buy a new camera and after seeing your galleries I decided that Nikon 4200 is the camera I am looking for. Then I also saw the pictures of the Nikon 5200 (similar to 4200) and I am not really impressed with their quality...the colours are very soft and pictures are not very sharp. I am wondering if you can upload some pictures taken with the Nikon 4200 without enhancing with Nikon's PictureProjecte software to see the real quality of the Nikon 4200 pictures. I also wondering what do you really think of the Nikon 4200...is it really a good camera? Do you think it is perfoming well and does the battery last long? I must say I love pictures with well saturated and sharp colours...It is a difficult decision as I found another interesting camera: Kodak DX7440 ...your opinions and some pictures could help me greatly...thanks
Dennis Rogers 25-Jun-2004 04:00
Hi Ken,

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner on your earlier question. I don't know how familiar you are with Nikon digital cameras or the Coolpix 4200 specifically, but Nikon includes an impressive selection of Scene Modes. The 4200 also allows for a fair amount of manual control: various white balances, bracketing (both for exposure and white balance), manual focus, etc.

In the picture you specifically asked about, the picture of the steeple, image quality was set on the 4mp/fine setting. White balance was set on auto, as was exposure. I manually focused the camera so as to prevent the auto-focus from focusing on the trees instead of steeple. All other settings were on auto. Nothing too special really. The camera was even handheld, no tripod for that particular picture.

As far as the software I mentioned, the PictureProject software comes with Nikon's new digital cameras. It's nothing too special and not very intuitive. There are many, many things I would change just to make the software more user-friendly. However, as far as enhancing photos, it does a relatively excellent job just by clicking on the Auto-Enhance button. I've been very happy with the results.

The Neat Image software is available for free from neatimage.com and is solely used for noise reduction and some simple sharpening.

I myself am a relative newbie when it comes to photography. I have no clue how to use high-end photo editing software such as PhotoShop and can't give much advice in that area.

I don't really have much in the way of portraits, although I really like the 4200's portrait setting. I have some generally sloppy "portrait" photos that myself and my friends have taken on hiking trips and stuff, but nothing that I've really thought of uploading onto pbase.

Hope this helps.

Dennis
ken 25-Jun-2004 03:06
Please let me know if you took these pictures on any special setting, or speed. your pictures look great!! Also, all that enhancing software you mentioned, is it fast, and all included with the camera. Thanks ahead, Ken. PS if you have more pictures of people, that would be helpful...so i can see details. Thanks again
Dennis Rogers 25-Jun-2004 02:45
Hi Niteshj,

Thank you for you kind words. Much appreciated! Each photo was enhanced with Nikon's new PictureProject software that is now the standard software that ships with Nikon's digital cameras. Simply clicking on "auto-enhance" really brightens and sharpens the photos.

The only other thing I've done to the photos is put them through Neat Image to reduce any noise in the photos. That is the extent of the processing.
Marc 24-Jun-2004 18:25
Your photos are greats ! I am thinking of buying a Coolpix 4200 or 5200 looking at your photos :)

Hope to see some more shoots from you soon.

Cheers
Nitesh 24-Jun-2004 17:49
Dennis,

Your photos are AMAZING. Apart from your skills, have you done some special digital processing to the photos - almost makes me want to go out and buy a 4200.

Please share with a newbie.
Chris303 from dpreview 07-Jun-2004 06:21
Really appreciate you posting full-size pictures from the 4200. I will have to take a closer look at the pics with my high speed connection at work. Dial-up at home is way too slow.
click on thumbnails for full image