What happened to my photo? (background is pixelated?)

Hi,

Looking for a little help here. I've been experimenting with strobes and setup a softbox here, triggered wirelessly. I'm shooting RAW at f/5.6 I believe, 1/250 (sorry, first post, I think EXIF should be included?). So.. this is how the background looks.. very very pixelated. It looks the same in Lightroom.I was trying to get the background completely black, but this just looks like a very low-quality image (in the background anyway).

Thoughts? Any help appreciated, thanks!!

I wanted to ask this same thing for a long time. I had this happen to me with studio strobes too when aimed directly at the background with no softbox on. I never knew how to word it or what to call it. I even googled it and could never find a full explanation or even a partial one. I would also like to know what can cause it.

No Text

Do you have a strobe meter? How did you measure the exposure? I would say this image is grossly under exposed - many stops. The background has become posterized. See how the blacks are layered in waves? Did you use 16 bit when you converted to tiff from the raw? You simply ran out of information. Next time:

1- Meter your exposure with a flash meter.

2- Convert your raw to 16 bit tiff.

3- Shoot head and shoulder shots in the vertical mode.

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Steve Bingham
www.dustylens.com
www.ghost-town-photography.com

Thanks for this information. I didn't meter - I was just bringing up the level on the strobe one stop at a time.

Can you tell me, how would I make the background completely black? The light on the face is all I'm concerned about.

Also, I've heard people speak of quantity of light in terms of f-stops.. does anybody know where I can learn more about this? It's very foreign/new to me.

Thanks!!

How did I get it if I was shooting white background and used two strobes to cross light it? The background was not underexposed yet when I did a print I could see posterization. I did not know this offical term.

Looks like a basic jpg saved at low quality jpeg compression.

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Everything happens for a reason. #1 reason: poor planning
WSSA #44

Downloaded, whats with the bitmap format? April fools day is two months away

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Everything happens for a reason. #1 reason: poor planning
WSSA #44

Yes though - I shot these pictures RAW. Maybe there is some difference between how I exported them from Lightroom, but the effect is the same.

What is the purpose of the bitmap format?

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Everything happens for a reason. #1 reason: poor planning
WSSA #44

Sorry, I'm not sure the relevance of the bitmap format - beyond my knowledge..

Try moving the bg further from the subject, it looks like some light spillover onto the bg--
Have Fun!
Steve
http://stevequad.smugmug.com/photos/476767353_j7E44-Ti-0.jpg

I know this sounds silly, but have you tried printing this photo? I bet it'll look great. When I had a digital back for my 'blad I found something similar and found that when I printed it everything looked fine. Of course I could be wrong, but that's what I found.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathantw/
Always have a camera with you and make sure you use it.

I posted the same question on Nikon Cafe. Few steps to prevent it; get better graphics card, develop your files in CaptureNX, layoff heavy post-processing. You will see it more often in deep color gradients and where there are more hues than your hardware can handle.

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-sergey

F stops are only a very minor part of the lighting equation. Go to Strobist.com and find the Lighting 101 section. Don't just read, do the exercises. One after the other and religiously. And here is a blog post I wrote with learning roadmap and additional resources.

http://ohnostudio.com/2012/05/about-lighting-part-deux/

You have to work at it, you just can't point equipment and guess at it.

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Don't aspire to be like someone else. Be better.

The background has so little light that the total amount of light available as the function of distance from the background light source varies on the order of 1 count in the 14-bit ADC of the sensor. As the result the color representation of the background looks like a step function, not like a smooth curve as a function of distance from the light source. These steps is what is giving you the stripes of shades.

Try converting the raw to highest quality, largest size jpg. I can get the same effect on any picture with blue sky if I convert to lowest quality jpg.

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Everything happens for a reason. #1 reason: poor planning
WSSA #44

Here is an example, a pic somone posted here awhile back. I converted their jpg to lowest quality, highest compression. Same effect you are seeing.

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Everything happens for a reason. #1 reason: poor planning
WSSA #44

I had a very similar problem, shooting raw and converting through LR, CNX, acr... The effect is visible on raw files when viewed through any of these softwares, on jpegs max qualities created by any any of these softwares, and on both MBPretina and super spec'ed pc... Sent everything to Nikon and hardly got any answer.

got much more help at the time from the forum, but still could not find the solution.

one of the issues was that I only want to post photoshopped pictures in order to hide people's faces, so the raw files could not be analyzed by others but me (which I did under their guidance)

i attach a pic but you can also find some raw file anlysis in my gallery



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FTD5

Nothing has happened here its the result of very bad raw conversion!  if you check the original raw out and develop it without doing too much this effect would not be there.....look around the ear, its full of digital uglyness!  if you want a black background just stand futher away from the background -  and use a black background!  No camera looks like this maybe an Iphone but no real dslr!  Check your work flow and dont push your files too much.....i have seen this effect on a few backgrounds but only before you look 100 percent then it is totally gone!