Newbee questions about flash and black & white

I just bought a Nikon digital SLR D70s camera (my first digital camera) and
have a couple of questions.

1. Can the flash be "disabled" when taking pictures? e.g., low light, fast
speed, wide aperature, etc
2. Can black and white pictures be taken with the D70s? If so, how?

"Sidney Friedman" wrote in message
...
I just bought a Nikon digital SLR D70s camera (my first digital camera) and
have a couple of questions.

1. Can the flash be "disabled" when taking pictures? e.g., low light, fast
speed, wide aperature, etc
2. Can black and white pictures be taken with the D70s? If so, how?



Didn't you say that the D70 was your "first digital camera"?

In article ,
Sidney Friedman wrote:
I just bought a Nikon digital SLR D70s camera (my first digital camera) and
have a couple of questions.

1. Can the flash be "disabled" when taking pictures? e.g., low light, fast
speed, wide aperature, etc

Yep. Switch from "Auto" to "P" (Program mode) on the dial to
the left of the prism housing. This will turn off the flash, unless you
*explicitly* turn it on by pressing the button on the left hand side of
the prism housing to pop up the flash. To turn the flash back off --
just push the pop-up flash back down.

This also lets you have better control over other things, such
as where the autofocus works. (You can move the autofocus zone using
the four-way tilting switch to the right of the LCD display, if you set
the right options in the menu.) With the camera on "Auto", it will
automatically select the closest object to focus upon -- whether this is
what you want or not.

Also -- the 'L' switch below the tilting switch lets you lock
the autofocus zone where you put it, so an accidental pressure on the
tilting switch won't change it.

2. Can black and white pictures be taken with the D70s? If so, how?

Processing in the computer, after you have the image downloaded.
Exactly how will vary from program to program, and some may not allow it
at all. Look for a way to turn the color saturation all the way down as
one way to do it.

List the programs which you have to post-process the images, and
those who use them will tell you how to do it.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

"Sidney Friedman" wrote in message
...
I just bought a Nikon digital SLR D70s camera (my first digital camera)
and
have a couple of questions.

1. Can the flash be "disabled" when taking pictures? e.g., low light,
fast
speed, wide aperature, etc
Avoid Auto mode. In P S A & M modes it only comes on when you activate it.
2. Can black and white pictures be taken with the D70s? If so, how?
Convert to greyscale image in your photo editing program.
Jim

You bet. I know, a D70s is a quantum leap for me.

"Morris Sachs" wrote in message
...

"Sidney Friedman" wrote in message
...
I just bought a Nikon digital SLR D70s camera (my first digital camera)
and
have a couple of questions.

1. Can the flash be "disabled" when taking pictures? e.g., low light,
fast
speed, wide aperature, etc
2. Can black and white pictures be taken with the D70s? If so, how?



Didn't you say that the D70 was your "first digital camera"?

Thanks for your reply Don.

I don't have much in the way of post-process programs yet. I have Nikon
Picture Projest, Nikon view, and Epson Photo Center. Still getting my
digital act and programs together. What would you recommend?


"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Sidney Friedman wrote:
I just bought a Nikon digital SLR D70s camera (my first digital camera)
and
have a couple of questions.

1. Can the flash be "disabled" when taking pictures? e.g., low light,
fast
speed, wide aperature, etc

Yep. Switch from "Auto" to "P" (Program mode) on the dial to
the left of the prism housing. This will turn off the flash, unless you
*explicitly* turn it on by pressing the button on the left hand side of
the prism housing to pop up the flash. To turn the flash back off --
just push the pop-up flash back down.

This also lets you have better control over other things, such
as where the autofocus works. (You can move the autofocus zone using
the four-way tilting switch to the right of the LCD display, if you set
the right options in the menu.) With the camera on "Auto", it will
automatically select the closest object to focus upon -- whether this is
what you want or not.

Also -- the 'L' switch below the tilting switch lets you lock
the autofocus zone where you put it, so an accidental pressure on the
tilting switch won't change it.

2. Can black and white pictures be taken with the D70s? If so, how?

Processing in the computer, after you have the image downloaded.
Exactly how will vary from program to program, and some may not allow it
at all. Look for a way to turn the color saturation all the way down as
one way to do it.

List the programs which you have to post-process the images, and
those who use them will tell you how to do it.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

In article ,
Sidney Friedman wrote:

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Sidney Friedman wrote:
I just bought a Nikon digital SLR D70s camera (my first digital camera)
and
have a couple of questions.

[ ... ]

2. Can black and white pictures be taken with the D70s? If so, how?

Processing in the computer, after you have the image downloaded.
Exactly how will vary from program to program, and some may not allow it
at all. Look for a way to turn the color saturation all the way down as
one way to do it.

List the programs which you have to post-process the images, and
those who use them will tell you how to do it.

[ ... ]

Thanks for your reply Don.

I don't have much in the way of post-process programs yet. I have Nikon
Picture Projest, Nikon view, and Epson Photo Center. Still getting my
digital act and programs together. What would you recommend?

Well ... you have to bear in mind that I avoid Windows when
possible, so I don't know the Windows programs as well as I do some unix
based programs. For general image browsing, I use "xv", and for serious
manipulation, I am using "the Gimp" -- both came in source code form
originally, although my current version came with the latest version of
Sun's Solaris 10 -- free for the (very long) download. I also use, from
time to time "Image Magick" -- a suite of programs to do various image
related tasks.

I've used Picture Project for a while before I got a good SCSI
PCMCIA card reader for the unix system, and I now just pop the CF cards
from the camera into a PCMCIA adaptor, pop it in, make a directory for
the images, and then type:

../GET-THEM

to run a script which does everything else for me, including copying the
images into two separate disk drives, just in case.

FWIW -- so far, the only time I have converted a D70 image to
B&W, I happened to be playing with xv, so I can say for sure that xv
will do it. But -- it has the disadvantage that it shrinks the image to
fit the screen, and the saved modified image remains that size -- you
can't expand it back to the original size. It is nice for working on
images for a web page, but not for printing to large sizes. For that,
my first choice would be "the Gimp" (unix, remember, not Windows.)

I'm not at all sure that Picture Project can do what you want,
though I've only used it on my token Windows machine (owned mostly to
run the annual income tax software) to read the images from the CF
cards, save them, and then send them over the (internal) network to the
unix systems.

I think that it is reasonable for getting the images from the
D70(s) and storing them on the computer in project-oriented files
(sequentially numbered filenames), but I don't think that it is really
much for processing the images. I *think*, but I'm not sure, that it
has a limited way to process the RAW files from the D70.

I've used PhotoShop Elements (the inexpensive version) in the
past to run a plug-in needed to read the RAW images from a NC2000e/c
(Nikon N90s film camera which was converted to digital for the AP by
Kodak.) I'm sure that has the capability, to convert a color image to
B&W, but I think that you may want the current version of the full
PhotoShop, as it has the ability to use better plugins for processing
the D70 RAW images. I'm not sure what other capabilities that it may
have over the PhotoShop Elements which I have used. But I do strongly
suspect that it may have a steep learning curve to use *all* of its
features.

There are other Windows based programs which can do it all,
including processing the RAW files from the D70.

If you happen to be using a Mac instead (though you probably
would have specified, if you were -- it seems to be only Windows users
who don't think that it necessary to specify which OS they are using),
then it will take someone else to list what programs are available,
though I believe that PhotoShop is available for the Mac as well.
(However, it is not available for my Sun workstations, and once upon a
time it was - but at a price *way* out of reach. The pricing assumption
seems to be that only companies run Sun workstations, not individual
hobbists. :-)

Other programs for the task may be available -- a different set
that Windows has available -- and I'll have to leave it to others to list
those as well -- since I know less about most of the Mac than I do about
Windows. (But recent Macs do have a unix core hiding under the GUI.)

Yep -- a quick check shows that the current one (Creative Suite
2) is available only for Windows and the Mac -- so I stick with "the
Gimp".

Since I forgot to look at the headers of your article to try to
figure out what OS you are using, I have to only guess.

Good Luck,
DoN.
--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---