Last year, I went to an anime convention called Uchi-Con that's at a university in downtown Chicago. I wanted to see if I could take and post photos directly from the camera without editing. After each convention it usually takes me multiple days of editing, so I'd like to avoid as much extra work as possible.
For this event, I was using the Nikon Z5 and the Nikon 40mm f/2 lens.
The reality is that the editing process afterwards is a massive amount of work. Ultimately, having ready-to-post photos right out of the camera would be a huge time saver, but as we will see throughout this article it isn't realistic without using your own lighting.
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| I adjusted the photo afterward so that the cosplayer is brighter. |
The main issue I ran into was white balance. At least on Nikon Z5 camera I was using, the auto white balance just did not seem good enough to handle the varied lighting environments all the time. Though, being true-to-life of the environment and getting a look that feels "correct" are two different things.
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| White balance is always a challenge when using only natural light. |
I had the picture control set to "Portrait" with the hope that people's faces would be exposed properly. There might have been some settings I missed to make that work perfectly. For example, I had the exposure prioritized for the face and background instead of just the face, which was probably not ideal for what I was trying to do but that might be a setting meant for flash use so I'm not sure how it applies.
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| Photographing a Frieren group in the artist alley. |
I was shooting mostly in Aperture Priority mode, using single release, and Auto Area AF with AF-C. I also always use focus priority over release priority with AF-C mode. I feel like the Z5 needs as much accuracy as possible rather than speed.
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| Using Nikon's software and checking my camera and lens for firmware updates. |
In the video, I mentioned that firmware updates for the camera and the 40mm f/2 lens seemed to improve the autofocus performance for me. While the official firmware notes for the lens do not explicitly list autofocus improvements, anecdotally, the eye-tracking feels more reliable in practical use since I updated everything.
AF-C (Continuous Servo Autofocus) is a focus mode that allows the camera to constantly track and adjust focus on moving subjects as long as the shutter release button is pressed halfway (or if you are using a dedicated focus button). Active D-Lighting is a proprietary Nikon processing feature that automatically optimizes high-contrast scenes to preserve details in both shadows and highlights. Furthermore, RAW image files contain uncompressed and unprocessed sensor data, which means lens distortions and vignetting are often visible until corrected in post-processing software. JPEGs have these optical corrections applied and baked in directly by the camera's internal image processor.
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I set my minimum shutter speed to 1/200th of a second and my maximum Auto ISO to 16,000. That is admittedly pretty high for the Nikon Z5, but I am not super particular about noise. As long as the photo is decent and clearly shows the subject, I am fine with some grain. I also turned Active D-Lighting to Auto. I am not entirely sure how much of an impact it made, but I assumed it would benefit the out-of-camera JPEG output.
To make sure the JPEGs looked as good as possible, I turned on all the in-camera lens corrections. Vignette control was set to normal, diffraction compensation was turned on, and auto distortion control was enabled. I normally focus on RAW images and leave these settings off to keep the camera operating as fast as possible, but since the goal was to use the JPEGs directly, it made sense to turn them on. The 40mm f/2 definitely has some inherent distortion and vignetting that needs correcting.
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| Photographing a friend's booth in artist alley. |
When I brought the photos into ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate to review them, it became clear that I wouldn't want to post most of them without additional editing. The in-camera adjustments I selected didn't make enough of a difference.
Some of the photos looked usable, but many had a really strong difference in light between the subject and the background.
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| Using Acdsee Photo Studio to look at the photos. |
In the dealers area, for example, the photos had a really strong, unpleasant golden cast to the foreground that didn't work out well enough to post unedited.
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| A shot of the dealers area that suffered from a strong golden color cast. |
It is just the reality of light in convention centers, hotels, or in this case a university. You are dealing with so many different situations, and even simply turning around or pointing your camera in a slightly different direction in the same room can completely change the look.
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| Side-by-side comparison showing a processed JPEG image on the left and the uncorrected RAW on the right. |
When looking at the basic JPEG next to the RAW file of the exact same shot, there is a noticable difference. The RAW file is darker in the corners due to the natural vignetting of the lens, and the framing is even slightly different because of the distortion corrections being applied to the JPEG.
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| A detailed close-up view of the JPEG and RAW comparison to see the finer differences. |
The camera is actively lifting the luminosity values in the corners of the JPEG to compensate for that vignette.
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| Viewing the histogram differences between the uncorrected RAW and processed JPEG images. |
While the JPEG is generally more pleasing to look at right out of the camera compared to the RAW file, it still lacked the overall look I wanted for a final image.
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| Holding up a set of basic white balance cards that could be used to improve white balance in the field. |
So how can this be improved in the future? One option is to use physical white balance cards to set a custom white balance in the field. I do not tend to use these, but I definitely should make an attempt at some point to see if it actually speeds up my workflow.
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| Another example of after editing. |
There are also physical color accuracy tools that you can use to help later on. But using these for every photo taken in a variety of locations isn't realistic.
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| An example photo from a different convention where we used a friend's external lights for a much better result. |
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| Another photo example showing the clean look you get when utilizing your own lighting setup. |
By controlling the light yourself with a flash or constant LED lights like what we were using, you overpower mixed lighting of convention centers or other places like the university for Uchi-Con. The obvious trade-off is the extra bulk, weight, and effort of carrying lighting gear around.
This leaves me with a choice. Do I want to spend the time, effort, and money dealing with external lights, or do I want a fun, simple experience taking snapshots but likely with more editing afterward? Honestly, I prefer the simple approach when I am just asking random cosplayers for a quick photo at conventions. Better software processing could fill the gap in many lighting situations most likely.
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| Looking at the Ricoh GR website as a potential compact alternative for future events. |
I think my ultimate preference might be to go in the direction of something like a Ricoh GR camera. It would be really small and compact, and paired with a tiny external light, it could be a great setup. But even then, small light sources just will not look as good as a nice large softbox or bigger tube lights.
There are always trade-offs in photography. This was an interesting test, and while I wouldn't call it completely successful, I am trying things out and seeing what I can do with camera setting adjustments.