Three weeks ago I got a new desktop computer to replace my “old” one.  Both were custom built machines, both made by Primisys, a small IT company in Oregon.  My “old” computer was built just over five years back and at the time was pretty much state of the art.  32 GB RAM, a one TB solid state drive for programs, and two 2 TB internal spinning drives for data.  All my images were kept on an external JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Drives) connected by via an eSATA card.  Of course, all the images were backed up — two copies — on other standalone drives.

But…it was getting a bit slow when faced with stitched Nikon D850 files, the graphics card needed to be undated, and the JBOD concept was giving me some worries about future compatibility.   Well, OK, to be brutally honest I just wanted to indulge myself with a new computer.

A few facts:  I’m not a gamer and I don’t do video and have no plans to indulge in either.  Consequently I wanted a computer primarily for running Lightroom and Photoshop, and one that would easily handle very large files.  I wanted a graphics card with enough VRAM for some of the newer third party software based on AI (such as Topaz’s DeNoise AI), and discrete drives for (a) programs, (b) the Lightroom catalog and its ever-growing lr.data file, (c) data (stuff from Office 365, my downloads folder, teaching programs, etc., etc., etc.), and (d) recent images.  And I wanted a quiet machine, since I would be sitting close to it in my office.

After a good bit of discussion with Aaron Welliver at Primisys we agreed on the specs.  I said “do it,” went off on a shoot for two weeks, and got home to the new box.  OK, for the other computer nerds out there — notice that I count myself in that group — here is a list of what I got.

Gigabyte Z390 Aorus motherboard
64 GB Corsair Dominator Platinum RAM
Intel Core i7-9700k processor
OS drive: 1 TB M. NvMe solid state drive
Lightroom drive: 2 TB NvMe solid state drive
Three 6 TB Western Digital Black 7200 RPM drives (one for data, two for images)
Nvidia Quadro 4000 Pro graphics card with 8 GB RAM
Seasonic Prime Titanium 650 watt power supply
All of this in a Fractals Design Define R6 case
Windows 10 Pro

I have the same wireless keyboard and monitors connected (two NEC PA 27-inch displays), just as before.

I’m extremely pleased with my new computer.  It’s exactly what I wanted; it’s fast, powerful, and very quiet.  The only hassle was reinstalling programs and transferring data, which took a couple of days.

I rarely need to open any of my older digital images, so these are now on a couple of standalone USB3 drives.  If I would need access to one of those files, my Lightroom catalog would tell me the image was off-line and all I would have to do is plug in the correct drive.  No big deal for the few times I might need to do so.  I file all my images in a year/month/shoot organization, and the standalone drives are labeled.  After cleaning out my old “data” drives, I realized that I really had less than three TB of “data” that I needed to keep.  Consequently, my new 6 TB “data” drive is now subdivided into two folders, one for “data” one with about two TB of “images.”  I ended up with roughly eight TB of images copied onto the new computer, with the third 6 TB drive totally clean to start 2020.  And, it goes without saying, it’s all backed up (and before you ask, I use ViceVersa Pro, a Windows-only program, for file comparison and backup).

Primisys Computers & Network, www.primisys.com.

A regular lens on a DSLR can be focused near or far, but the axis of the lens is always at a right angle to the sensor.  The plane of focus (the slice of space that is in sharp focus) is always parallel to the sensor in the camera.  No matter what, there is only one plane that is in absolute sharp focus, but apparent sharpness can be increased by using a small aperture to increase depth of field.  With a regular lens, if you need more of the image in a single frame to appear in focus your only choice is to shoot at the smaller apertures.  This has two major drawbacks: (1) smaller apertures mean slower shutter speeds.  Try to photograph a field of flowers where you need f/22 for enough depth of field, but f/22 in turn means a shutter speed of 1/15 second, and that’s not fast enough to stop wind movement.  Upping the ISO means the probability of increased noise.  And (2) while you gain depth of field, small apertures introduce diffraction problems, reducing sharpness.  Current high megapixel cameras, with their ability of record small detail, will all too readily show diffraction.

The solution is to reposition the plane of focus, to re-designate where it lies, and in order to do this you need a tilt/shift lens, which allows the front part of the lens to be moved compared to the sensor plane.  The lens plane and the sensor plane no longer have to be parallel, but can be angled or displaced relative to each other.

Now, a bit of theory.  Imagine three planes extending infinitely: the plane of the sensor, the plane of the subject (the part of the image where you want focus to fall), and the plane of the lens.  With a standard lens only two of these planes can ever have a common intersection, because the plane of focus is always parallel to the sensor.  But if you can tilt the lens all three planes can meet in a common intersection and a photographic miracle happens as now the focus plane has been repositioned.

You will often hear that using a tilt creates more depth of field.  Not true.  What a tilt movement does is reposition the plane of focus so that it no longer lies parallel to the sensor.  This in turn creates a wedge-shaped depth of field which increases further away from the camera.  By repositioning the plane of focus, by tilting the lens, part of the image closer to the camera will be in focus and part of the image further away will be in focus simultaneously.  Depth of field is always on either side of the plane of focus, with less depth of field at close focus distances and more depth of field at far focus distances, hence a wedge shape.  A really common belief is that using tilt movement will bring everything in a photo into sharp focus.  Sorry, not true; you still need to stop down.  The amount of tilt does not control depth of field, the aperture choice does that.

First you need to decide where you want to position the plane of focus.  You always tilt the lens TOWARDS this plane, no matter the orientation of the camera body or the subject.  But how do you figure our how much to tilt?  How do you actually set focus?  Setting a Nikon or Canon tilt movement is not the same as how you would work a tilt movement with a view camera due to the differences in the rotational point of the DSLR lenses.  A lot of what you read on the Web applies mostly to view camera work.

So…step by step, here is what I do.

1. Decide on the most important plane of my subject, where I want to position the focus.
2. Chose a near point and a far point in this plane of focus.
3. Set the tilt on my lens to zero (no tilt at all).
4. Focus on the near point.
5. Without refocusing, slowly tilt toward the far point until it appears in sharpest focus, and lock the tilt movement.  The near point is now out of focus.
6. Without changing the tilt, refocus on the near point.  The far point is now out of focus.
7. Unlock the tilt movement, and slowly move the tilt in the opposite direction than done earlier until the far point appears in sharpest focus.  De-tilting, if you will.
8. Repeat steps 5, 6, and 7 if necessary until both near and far appear in focus.
9. Lock the tilt movement of the lens, and trim overall focus if needed.
10. Select the aperture needed for depth of field.

The two biggest problems I see when people first use tilt/shift lenses are (1) working way too fast — using a tilt/shift lens should be slow and methodical — and (2) dialing in far more tilt than needed.

What’s the best way to use a big lens — something like a 500mm or 600mm — when photographing from a small boat?  Here’s the sort of boat I’m talking about.

Handhold that big lens?  Sure, you can get a shot or two off, but handholding a really large lens is almost impossible to do for any length of time.  The minute you relax and lower the lens is exactly the moment you should be shooting.  Set up a tripod?  A tripod is almost impossible to use, if you are in a situation where you cannot move around.  Try this experiment:  sit with your tripod mounted big lens directly in front of you at eye level, as if you were sitting in a small boat.  Now swing the lens hard right, and without changing your body position, try to look through the viewfinder.  Bet you can’t do it.  And if your tripod doesn’t have a centerpost it’s almost impossible to raise or lower the shooting height.  You’re stuck with photographing to your left side at one camera height.  Don’t even try to aim the lens at much of an up angle, unless you want to turn your body into a pretzel.

My solution may seem a bit strange at first, but it works really great.  Use a monopod with a gimbal head mounted.  My preferred setup is the Manfrotto 681B monopod (the flip-locks make it easy to lengthen or shorten the monopod using just one hand, while you support the camera/lens with the other) plus the Jobu Jr 3 Deluxe gimbal head (the smallest and lightest gimbal, ideal for travel).

I’ve used this combination a lot from small boats, and also from open sided safari vehicles, while working with my Nikon 500mm and both the “old” Nikon 600mm G and my “new” Nikon 600mm FL lens.  Balance the lens in the head as you would whenever you use a gimbal.  Lock the gimbal’s horizontal rotation, as you can just turn the monopod from side to side.  Leave both the swing arm, and the lens’s tripod collar, unlocked.  You can now easily aim the lens in any direction, side to side or up and down, and raise or lower the shooting height.  The advantage of the gimbal head over a “monopod head” is that with a gimbal the lens remains balanced even when the control knobs are loose.   Hold the monopod with one hand, and your lens doesn’t flop forward or backwards as it would with an unlocked “monopod head.”  With the gimbal mounted on a monopod you’re always ready to shoot.

Yes, I know this seems unconventional, but just try it to see if it works for you.  And by the way, I absolutely love the “new” Nikon 600mm FL lens…in my estimation the sharpest long lens I’ve ever used.

I like photographing with my Tilt/Shift lenses.  Besides using them for single image photos, I’ll often use them to make stitched images.  I keep the tilt and shift functions in different axis, so that I can tilt to reposition the plane of focus, and still be able to shift left and right.  If my camera is mounted in a horizontal position, the resulting image when stitched in Photoshop is in a panoramic format.  But if I mount the camera vertically, and then shift left and right, the final image is just slightly squarer than 4 x 5 proportions.  Why do this?  Easy answer: file size.  With my D800E, the final 16-bit file is roughly 400 MB.