Hight ISO and low light

So I listened to a short tutorial the other day about low-light photography. The setting... indoors, no flash available, and not a ton of ambient light to work with... but slow moving subject -- an indoor wedding.

Now how do I make a great shot?   Well, use manual settings, that's for certain.  I want complete control.   I want to shoot manual ISO, manual exposure, manual white balance.  But keep it in auto focus, because you don't want to miss a thing.
1) the option is to lower my fstop to around 1.4-3.0. But the question is, "does my lens go that big"? Remember the lower the fstop number, the larger the aperture, and the more light that is hitting the sensor.  But I have to remember that the lower the fstop, the more shallow the depth of field (DOF). So if I am taking a shot of more than one person, don't fall below f4.0.  Generally speaking, I want everyone to be in focus in these ceremony shots.
2)  another option is the slow down my shutter speed. But I don't want to go too slow... 2 reasons... 1 is that my subject might be moving faster than my exposure and thus be blurry. The second reason is that I will get camera movement that also causes blurriness. A good rule of thumb with that is if I am shooting a relatively slow subject, try to keep my shutter speed around the same value as my depth.  If I am shooting with a 50mm lens, try and keep that shutter speed at 1/50th of a second. If I am shooting a moving subject, double that number (shoot faster) like 1/100th of a second with 50mm lens. Does that mean I need to go 1/600th of a second with your 300mm lens? Try it and see.
3) Finally, to the subject of the day... ISO.  I can increase my ISO. This was mentioned in an earlier post in minimal detail. The ISO essentially defines the quality or graininess of your image. The higher the ISO, the less light that is required to get the same exposure but the more grainy the image will be.
This is where an expensive camera body is enticing.  For instance, the D700 or D3 ($2500 up to $7000) camera bodies handle low lighting great because of their ability to use high ISO values and still look great.


So, I am hopefully going to be shooting an indoor wedding in May.  Last August I used two SB600 strobes (off-camera flashes) attached to the ceiling and pointed toward the ceiling. They were placed just above the action of the wedding, as seen in this image.

And get shots during the wedding, no matter where I was in the room, like these...

It was very convenient, and provided a consistent lighting for me.

But this next time I probably won't have the luxury of strobes in the room. So how do I get those same shots without the added light? So this led me to the high ISO question. Today I have been playing about with high ISO and different length lenses. I also downloaded some noise reducing software trials to see what performed better if I were to need these.

And the results... without using any noise reduction software...

shot at ISO 800shot at IS 640

If I maintained a good original exposure, I found that for my purposes*, ISO of 640-800 worked fine. But when I tried to add fill light or increase the exposure in post-processing, that's where I saw the degradation of the image.

Having said that, I would really like to try and print some of these high ISO images so that I can get a feel for how they look enlarged. That way I can get a feel for how large I can go on the print with what ISO. This is critical when thinking end product... if I just placing the image in a book as a 4x5 image, I should be fine. But what if I am enlarging to be a 2-page spread (22"x8") in the same book? Does is still maintain it's integrity?

So, what have I learned thus far with the high ISO? Make sure my light meter is in the slightly over-exposed region when shooting ISO (not blown out spots, but well exposed). And darker areas show the graininess more than lighter areas.

Stay tuned, I will hopefully be posting re: the orton effect next time.

Pick of the Day...

seen here

Make a photo into a sketch

Kind of a fun trick in photoshop... this has been done many ways many times... but I will give my take on it here. Open an image and make a copy with command J.
Hit the layer style - Color Dodge and then hit command I (for invert)
  Sometimes you will think your image has disappeared here... keep going.
Then on that same layer, select gaussian blur and go medium on that blur.
Come back to layer and choose to desaturate with the hue/saturation slider.
  That's generally where you would be done.

But if you want to try something fun... try motion blur instead of gaussian.  It will give you darker lines.  In addition, you can create a layer from visible layers (as layer 3 in the example is).  And you can then try giving it an effect, like accented edges or something else from the effects menu.

One more thing I tried was to create a layer mask and give the mask a gradient so that I could see through to my original as shown below.  Enjoy. 

Pick of the day:

October Family Shots

A friend of mine likes to cook with his dad. He told me once about something they like to do. If they like a certain dish at a restaurant, they will try at home to replicate the dish with what they have. So that is what I like to do as well. I see a picture, study it, and try to replicate it with my consumer set-up.

I have eye bolts in my ceiling above my kitchen table... I know... weird. But they hold the sky chairs that we use when watching a movie. So I took an old rod that my wife used to use for hanging clothes in our extra room (now a bedroom) and hung a twin sheet from the eyelet bolts. I then placed an SB600 flash pointed into a reflector umbrella directly behind the white sheet. I also placed a shoot-through umbrella on the other SB600 pointed 45 degrees from camera and subject. See the diagram below


Both flashes were set on 1/8 power. My camera was set on Manual (f 4.0 ISO 160 at 1/100sec and auto focus). By the way, I have really become a believer in fully auto focus in lower lighting situations. I have found it has served me well and focuses much quicker than when I try to tell it where to focus.

By the way, these flashes were controlled by the flash on the camera (through Nikon's CLS system). And the camera flash was set down to about 1/128 so that it would be nearly negligible.

And here are the results.





What I would do differently. Get a queen size instead of a twin for larger groups. And something else I have tried was putting a silky material in front of it for a more elegant look.


Pick of the day: I like the warm lighting on the cold snow.

Analyzing and learning

So, probably no one reads this anymore... I know I don't. But I thought I would sit down with no one and analyze some pictures that were really quite noteworthy and talk about what I like about them and why, in addition to how they might have set up the shots, technically and otherwise. Let's get on with it... by the way.. these shots were taken from the website of David Copperfield's Cay in the Bahamas. Obviously catering to the high-end consumers.



This shot is about light and perspective. It says, you are sitting here looking out the window enjoying a perfectly exposed evening dinner on the dock.

LIGHT
I have two settings (speaking of exposure) to think about. I obviously have a strobe (flash) or two camera left aimed at the people on the dock. And I have ambient light (in the room and the water/sky combo). Actually, there may be a strobe in the room as well on a very low setting... let's forget there is one if so.

EXPOSURE
I expose for the ambient light (manual exposure) minus 1.5 stops so that the room and water/sky maintain their evening appeal and allow my subject to be correctly exposed and be the focal point. I want to use an f stop that is going to allow my foreground and my background to be in focus, so f8 possibly. Remember the smaller my aperture (bigger fstop #) the harder my flash has to output to give me the same brightness. So this is a compromise between a small fstop for flash but big enough to keep my background island, my people, and my window ledge all crisp.

IMPROVE
can I improve on this image? Sure... try using one more flash from the right or from above the dock to eliminate some of those harsh dock shadows.
But I wouldn't have taken the flash out to the subjects, or I wouldn't have brought the viewer to the subject.

SETTING
A couple of nice things are my lines in this shot. The consistent horizon lines made by the window pane and ocean line are settling. But the curtain really frames my subject well and the diagonal lines of the dock point me directly to my subjects, which are of course not smack dab in the middle of my shot, but skewed to the right and upper middle of my shot. So well established lines, great balance, and quite decent lighting.

ONE MORE COMMENT
This picture, believe it or not, could have been taken in the daytime... it's not highly likely, but possible. First, why would I want to do that when I could just wait for this perfect dusk lighting? Answer- because dusk lighting only lasts for a few minutes to an hour. That can be a very short window to get the shot set, exposed for and taken. How would I create it in the daytime? Shoot with the white balance set to Tungsten and use a warming gel on the camera. That way you get the bluish look to the ambient light while maintaining correct color on your subject.

So this is longer than I thought it would be... let's just do one more for now...



In this image we also have multiple lighting. We have the ambient light outside where our pool model is really showing off ad we have the indoor lighting including the man in gray shirt. So where is my light source? Well, one is coming from camera right (casting a shadow on gray shirt man's back and lighting front girl's hair). But we also have a light on camera left to light the statues above and front man's shirt and back of head). We again have to set our exposure for the the light we don't control (the sunlight and pool area) and then match that exposure with the lighting on the inside of the covered patio.

I like the vignetting we get from the dark back of the couch and darker parts of the ceiling. But I probably would have softened my light with an umbrella or gobo so that my subjects up front weren't so contrasty (lights and darks are quite prevalent on them).

That's all for now.

Oh, one other note: the first shot was set at a fairly long exposure... so it was probably an evening shot. Can tell this by the fire on the lanterns moving a lot. The second shot was relatively fast shutter speed because the water ripples are frozen in time. Just a thought on what the ambient manual exposures might have been on.

Just passing through

So, it has been a long time... and I have purposefully let this blog sit and marinate for a while. I was watching a www.photoshopusertv.com episode and their guest gave a link to his site that has a free download for Bridge settings. Even though I didn't care for his tutorial on the show much, I really like the settings he has created in Bridge. If you haven't checked out the new CS4 Bridge... I recommend it. Love the brush feature, among others, in the new Bridge.

Here are some shots in the basement with just window light and a reflector on the opposite side of the subject --with a couple of the settings this guy has created.





Pick of the day...
this was shot by Kenneth Linge (who, by the way, teaches photography). He is Norwegian, I believe, but has his studio in Orem, Utah. I really liked the use of tungsten lights in this shot.

christmas morning stills

as I was talking with my wife, I told her I wasn't going to pull out the video camera this year. Firstly, I wanted to enjoy being there, not behind a camera continually. Secondly, I didn't want to edit more video (it takes too long). So here are a few of the pictures from opening presents. And here is the lighting scheme. These flashes were set on TTL (through the lens) so they let the camera do the thinking. The 1st flash through umbrella was set about 4 feet up on a stand and the 2nd one was down at about 2 feet high. This allowed for a dichotomy of light (brighter from the 2nd flash)
And even though I am normally shooting in M mode or A mode, this time I used P mode and was pleased with what the camera gave me.











This shot of Amber was just holding the flash pointing straight up in the room in my left hand.

The shot of Scott sitting on carpet was on camera flash pointed at ceiling.

PICK OF THE DAY

Shooting Tethered

So I have seen lots of people, via the internet, shooting tethered. What is that? Well, here's what it looks like.


Forgive the quick and dirty (GIMP'd) image on the laptop.
What happens is the image you shoot goes directly to a file on your computer almost instantly after taking the shot. This seems to be especially useful for portraits... it is a controlled environment, and you want to ensure you have a well lit, sharply focused shot.
The benefit is that the computer screen gives you a larger viewing area than your LCD on the back of your camera and a more accurate idea of what this end-product really looks like. In addition, your subjects can then come over to the computer and actually see what you have shot as well.
I want to try this with a load of portraits at the ward party this weekend.
So how do you do it?

Well, I use Bridge and a Mac. As I was reading yesterday, it appeared that I needed system 10.5. But after a trial with my 10.4 system at home... it works flawless.

Here's how...

Set your camera (on Nikon it is in the Set up menu; down to USB; select PTP (there are 2 options on mine... one is mass storage and the other PTP).
Plug in your camera via USB to your computer.
Then open Automator which is found in Applications folder. You will need to download this little file which allows your computer to see grab those files from the camera and it will put them in your picture folder.
Open Bridge and select to view the picture folder.
You will see the pictures come onto the screen as you shoot. So cool!

By the way, it still stores the pictures on your camera as well as sending them to the computer instantly and automatically.

If you use Lightroom

If you use Aperture

Sorry, I didn't include PC usage, but I have read that it is equally possible with Windows