BLOG | mentorgraphy

Oct 18, 2018
4 min

Nikon CoolPix P1000 - a "crazy" bridge camera on Safari

As some of you may know , I was on a photography safari recently in September. In addition to my main camera setup which was the Nikon D500 (flagship DX) with the awesome Nikkor 180-400mm f4E TC1.4 FL ED VR (which retails at USD12.4K on B&H) , I brought along the humble but new bridge camera the P1000 just to try it out. Honestly I was NOT expecting too much from a bridge camera with a "tiny" 16MP sensor even when compared to my DX (1.5x crop) D500 sensor. This meant that I d

639 views0 comments

Nikkor 500mm f5.6E PF ED VR - My Incredible 1st experience

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 9, 2018
3 min

Nikkor 500mm f5.6E PF ED VR - My Incredible 1st experience

The new fixed focal length super telephoto from Nikon. Thanks to Nikon Singapore for the loan and off it went to Costa Rica for some bird photography. Let me first share some physical specification about this very special 500mm. 500mm PF(Phase Fresnel) Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8G ED VRII Weight : 1.46kg 1.54kg Length : 9.3 inches 8.1 inches Diameter

513 views0 comments

Nikon D850 on Safari - Cheetahs Hunting in Masai Mara , Kenya

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 2, 2018
4 min

Nikon D850 on Safari - Cheetahs Hunting in Masai Mara , Kenya

As some of you may know , I was on a photography safari with the fabulous C4 PhotoSafaris Team in Masai Mara , Kenya. On our very 1st Game Drive in the Mara , we witnessed this unbelievable hunt by this coalition of 5 Cheetahs. It's really hard to describe the experience. Coalition of 5 Cheetahs , one not in picture When we hopped onboard our Land Cruiser , our driver / guide Henry sped off. He was driving fast & we started to see wildlife popping up all over the place but He

236 views0 comments

My Nikon Z7 Presentation - Slides Sharing

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 2, 2018
1 min

My Nikon Z7 Presentation - Slides Sharing

Hello everyone. Created a short 4 minutes video to share the slides that I recently presented at the Nikon Experiential event on my brief experience with the Z7. Only a visual video , my sincere apologies for not doing one with an audio commentary. Enjoy !! Andrew #Z7 #Presentation #Nikon

70 views0 comments

Andrew JK Tan

Apr 24, 2018
1 min

"In The Frame" Nikon FB LIVE Session

Nikon Singapore's new initiative to get Nikon photographers to share their photographic experiences and knowledge in a Facebook(FB) LIVE session on 07th Mar 2018 I was fortunate enough to be invited to share in the inaugural session. Here is a video showing the segments where I was sharing in the session. It's about 28 minutes long (didn't know that I could talk so much) which was almost half of the 1 hour 6 minutes session. I had a lot of fun preparing and I want to thank NI

28 views0 comments

Nikon D850 - Brilliant Focus Stacking results

Andrew JK Tan

Dec 7, 2017
3 min

Nikon D850 - Brilliant Focus Stacking results

I have had quite a bit of experience using the Nikon D850's Focus Shift capability on flower photography. To me having the Focus Shift capability in the D850 simplifies and shortens the overall photography workflow so much when I want to employ the Focus Stacking technique. However I have not tried it on animals yet. I had to find live subjects that can remain motionless for a reasonable period of time for the Focus Shift to execute and complete. I decided then that the repti

409 views0 comments

Nikon D850 - Extreme Low Light Challenge

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 21, 2017
4 min

Nikon D850 - Extreme Low Light Challenge

Singapore's Night Safari is the best place to give both the photographer and the camera a tremendous AF challenge in extreme low light / low contrast conditions. The Night Safari's light intensity levels vary probably from 1 EV to about 5EV and the contrast levels with subjects that camouflage so well with the surroundings are extremely low. The Nikon D850 has center AF points that can focus down to a so called -4 EV which on paper should be a non issue even at the Night Safa

4,587 views0 comments

Nikon D850 - Multiple-Exposure has a cool NEW option !!

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 20, 2017
2 min

Nikon D850 - Multiple-Exposure has a cool NEW option !!

The Multiple-Exposure feature has been in the semi-pro and pro line of models for quite a while now. I am not too sure if many of the photographers use this feature but I do actually use it when I photograph different genres to create images that look different and have a different flavor to them. In the Nikon D850 , the mutiple exposure mode has been improved by now giving the photographer the option to save or not to save the individual exposures used to create the multiple

2,663 views0 comments

Nikon D850 - 3D AF Tracking Mode at WTA Future Stars

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 19, 2017
3 min

Nikon D850 - 3D AF Tracking Mode at WTA Future Stars

I already know that the Nikon D850 is capable of photographing sports when I was only using the default 7 Frames Per Second High speed burst rate. The 7 FPS (default) burst rate is of course slower in comparison to my Nikon D500's 10 FPS and my Nikon D4's 12 FPS but the "slower burst rate" is not really a good excuse missing peak action when photographing sports. My main goal was to try out Nikon's 3D Auto Focus tracking mode implementation in the D850. In this mode the Nikon

766 views0 comments

Nikon D850 - New 45.7MP Sensor works wonders in the real world

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 17, 2017
1 min

Nikon D850 - New 45.7MP Sensor works wonders in the real world

In this blog , I just wanted to share what you should experience with the new sensor out in the real world and hopefully you will be able to take advantage of them. EXPERIENCE - EXCELLENT DYNAMIC RANGE - shoot slightly underexposed to protect highlights - above mentioned point works very well if you are using ISO1600 & below - even above ISO1600 up to 12,800 , shadow recovery works brilliantly though noise will increase - shadow details recovery behaves like the D810 which is

101 views0 comments

Nikon D850 - In Camera RAW conversion to JPEG

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 16, 2017
2 min

Nikon D850 - In Camera RAW conversion to JPEG

I have been using the Nikon D850 now for close to a month now and I am still finding some new cool features that are really useful. Here is one in the Retouch Menu called NEF (RAW) Processing , where the photographer can select the number of RAW files to process (if required) and convert to JPEG format. All done in-camera which is much faster if compared to converting during post-processing. Next the photographer can select the RAW files to process The photographer then has t

1,359 views0 comments

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 15, 2017
2 min

Nikon D850 - Bromo Adventure

Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park is by far my favourite photography playground. All my Nikon cameras (D3, D4, D800, D810, D7000, D500, Df) have been with me to Bromo so I am very well aware of the Nikon experience in photographing the numerous aspects of photography that are available in Bromo. This is the reason why the new D850 had to make this visit to Bromo. So how did this Ultra High Resolution 7FPS monster do ? The D850's standard 7 Frames Per Second (FPS) burst rate

86 views0 comments

Nikon D850 - A Milky Way / Night Sky capable camera ?

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 14, 2017
3 min

Nikon D850 - A Milky Way / Night Sky capable camera ?

Yesterday , Friday the 13th , Oct. 2017 was the very first time my D850 was used to photograph the Night sky and I was of course looking for the Milky Way. Well, I was fortunate that the night sky over Bromo-Tengger National Park behaved and I was blessed with a reasonably clear sky. Before I reveal my findings (no punches pulled as always) , I wanted to share a new Night sky photography rule to obtain Spot Stars (not trails) called the NPF rule which is very much tigher than

1,840 views0 comments

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 11, 2017
2 min

Nikon D850 - Stacking Error Example

I wanted to share a post to show an example of how a stacking error would look like and how the stacking error could be fixed during the post production process. As I was capturing the "eye" of this daisy, my setup experienced some accidental "rocking" movement , so a couple of frames were very slightly mis-aligned. Screenshot at 90% magnification to show stacking errors (after Photoshop Stacking process) Screenshot at 90% magnification to show the "corrected" version To corr

108 views0 comments

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 10, 2017
2 min

Nikon D850 - Creative Focus Shift

I have spoken to many photographers and many of them are afraid that if they use Focus Stacking techniques to maximise the Depth Of Field (DOF) of their image, they could lose the "BOKEH" which they also desire. In this post, I hope to clarify that the photographer can actually "customise" how much bokeh they actually want in their image. In this 1st example, I actually wanted to only have the entire centre of the flower aka "disk" or "eye" of the flower to be tack sharp , y

95 views0 comments

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 9, 2017
3 min

Nikon D850 - Focus Shift at the Gardens

The Focus Shift feature on the Nikon D850 had me hooked , so off I went to Singapore Botanic Gardens hoping to find some good scenes / subjects for me to experiment Focus Shift on. I also wanted to create images that would normally not be composed unless some form of focus stacking technique was employed. Here is one scene which I find very interesting. For the scene , I wanted to focus on the TWO main subjects : 1. the frog that was resting on the water lily leaf ....... dis

74 views0 comments

Nikon D850 - Using Focus Shift to get even BETTER BOKEH

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 8, 2017
2 min

Nikon D850 - Using Focus Shift to get even BETTER BOKEH

I hope you do NOT get too surprised with the title of this blog , NO , there is no typo error of any kind !! I just realised that I can actually use the FOCUS SHIFT feature of the D850: 1. to obtain excellent background bokeh while at the SAME time 2. get max. DOF to ensure petal to petal sharpness for the entire flower being photographed. This would be the best of both worlds then, the following example is what I mean .......... Shoot Location : Singapore Botanic Gardens Thi

126 views0 comments

Nikon D850 - A Focus Shift Sharing Session

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 7, 2017
2 min

Nikon D850 - A Focus Shift Sharing Session

I had the opportunity to share the new Focus Shift feature in the D850 with some passionate photographers at our annual MENTORGRAPHIANS Group BBQ at Pasir Ris. There were all pretty excited to witness how this new Focus Shift feature was executed to maximize Depth Of Field (DOF) This candid capture by Gin Tay shows how the D850 was setup to capture the images shared below. The subjects to be captured were the soccer figurines that were used by the game. The width of the socce

55 views0 comments

Nikon D850 - The Incredible Focus Shift feature

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 3, 2017
3 min

Nikon D850 - The Incredible Focus Shift feature

I wanted to play with the Focus Shift so badly that I decided to spend a couple of hours doing some macro photography on flowers in the Flower Dome , Gardens By The Bay. A few tips & lessons that I have learnt from today's session : 1. after composing the shot, prefocus to a point just before the nearest point to the camera that you want sharp becomes in focus. This would then become the start focus point. 2. AF must of course be enabled , use AF-S 3. For smaller size flowers

108 views0 comments

Nikon D850 - Truly something very Special

Andrew JK Tan

Oct 2, 2017
2 min

Nikon D850 - Truly something very Special

This post is probably going to sound very biased ...... but I am still going to post my findings on how amazing the D850 RAW & JPEG FINE file quality really is. Today I was out looking for some birds to photograph and ended up photographing dragonflies flying again. This was the shot of the session (see below) Captured at 600mm angle of view , the Nikon D850 was set to DX mode so this image only has 20 Megapixels i.e only 40% of full resolution. Image Capture Settings : ISO

77 views0 comments