Low light--lets make this an example/technique thread

[Priscilla Turner]

At 77, I've found Google Earth to be a delight looking at places I've been, and so many others that I will never actually visit. But there are surprises... looking at the streets in my childhood San Francisco neighborhood... poor Irish in the 1950s, screaming expensive high-tech expensive boutique today... probably best to just look at it on the computer, as visiting in real life might be totally confusing.

We Pentaxians are all so terribly old ...

 

[Priscilla Turner]

A note on filters and filters:--

I've mentioned above the little matter of mixed lighting, either mixed interior/exterior or mixed within an interior with or without any exterior lighting in the frame. Simple balancing in post is easy if you just identify something that ought to be neutral. In a large place I normally make the first frame a graycard shot using any balancing filter I think right, which may be an FL-Day in season. I then extend that 'look' to all subsequent shots. My initial graycard shot will normally be made smack in the middle of the nave of a big church, for instance. Then any special local lighting e.g. of an altar when you get to it will fall into place as not quite the same, which is on the whole how our eye-brain combo 'sees' it. This technique means that one can just fire ahead for all other shots, which are usually too many to be fiddling with the balance all the time. This will yield a different tonality from a shot without any filter, and if well done any daylight of whatever kind, sunshine or shade/ overcast, that's coming in from outside will be reasonably well rendered.

You do not get the same tonality or accurate rendering of the exterior light if what you do is say, "This interior is lit with incandescent, so to get a good rendering I'll set that ab initio". You cool everything that way, including what is already cool: cooling that more distorts the colour balance of the cooler areas. The same applies to correcting in post. You must filter when shooting.

I've had public arguments here in this space and elsewhere about tweaks such as PS's so-called photographic filters. Use of these may rescue people-pictures, giving you decent skin hues, but doesn't really do more than put a layer of colour over your whole image. I so wish that I'd understood that when I made an unfiltered portrait of my dear husband in his fluorescent-lit office with daylight outside the window, or of my two little girls under the apple-tree with their great-grandmother, with sunlight behind the people in the cyan-tinted shade.

 

[RBIV]

A note on filters and filters:--

... You must filter when shooting.
I've had public arguments here in this space and elsewhere about tweaks such as PS's so-called photographic filters. Use of these may rescue people-pictures, giving you decent skin hues, but doesn't really do more than put a layer of colour over your whole image. I so wish that I'd understood that when I made an unfiltered portrait of my dear husband in his fluorescent-lit office with daylight outside the window, or of my two little girls under the apple-tree with their great-grandmother, with sunlight behind the people in the cyan-tinted shade.

I have no argument with the idea of trying to get overall white balance as correct as possible in mixed lighting situation. But it *is* mixed lighting and so color balance will be correct for one, not the other, or it will be a compromise. I think we'd agree on that?

So, if shooting RAW with a modern digital camera, in post processing, I know that with several modern editors one can color correct specific areas of the image. It is not an "all over the image" filter. It is "masking" certain portions of the image and changing the color. Edge blending can also be accomplished.

It requires time, patience, and practice, as all skill sets do. I'm not so good at it but have played with it in some images improving things. However, I have watched accomplished lab technicians do amazing "spot" and/or "local" color corrections during the time that I was employed at Ilford, and the post processing tools have improved since then.

Again, not meaning to argue, and not implying that all images can be "saved." I too have some older film images that I wish I could make better, but really can't. I love them anyway.

 

[Jon Donahue]

Well said. I use an inexpensive British program, Xara Photo & Graphic Designer, to add or modify color casts on different areas of a photo. Much faster and easier to use than Photoshop. Indoor-outdoor lighting is always tough. I tend to expose for the outdoor window light... not totally, but enough to have some color and detail... and then bring up the indoor shadows later in Lightroom, and adjust the color in Xara if needed. Isn't it amazing how much trouble we go through to get a result our eyes just do automatically?

As for getting old... it feels good, mostly. Except when I get coerced to help out at a nearby ranch... new cattle time, branding, inoculating, castrating, ear-tagging. Am not a cowboy, and come crawling back to town after only one day out there. But it is wonderful, here in the high desert, to drift off for a nap on a warm afternoon. No work to wake up for, just a bit of part-time stuff helping with tourism, and an article now and then for the city paper. But no. Life is slow and easy here in Tombstone. As for others... I am truly amazed that Trump and Biden, both roughly my age, would want to be President... taking on so many new responsibilities at an age when most of us our dumping ours. Unbelievable!

 

[anware]

Sandtoft Trolleybus Museum just outside Doncaster in Yorkshire, UK.
Two ex Huddersfield Trolleybuses.

 

[Holger Bargen]

please delete

 

[Holger Bargen]

Very nice photo!

Did you use K3iii inside image stabilisation or the image stabilisation from the lens. I know that the Sigma image stabilisation is very effective.

I often don't know if it is better to use the low light cabability of the camera in terms of high ISO performance or if I should trust image stabilisation. For an object that does not move, image stabilisation seems to be the better decision.

Your photo is a very good example for a well made low light photo.

 

[anware]

Thank you, Holger.

The camera was tripod mounted with the 2 second timer used, so the in-body image stabilisation was turned off. My Sigma lens has no image stabilisation - as far as I am aware Sigma remove the image stabilisation feature on all of their Pentax mount lenses.

 

[Priscilla Turner]

Well said. I use an inexpensive British program, Xara Photo & Graphic Designer, to add or modify color casts on different areas of a photo. Much faster and easier to use than Photoshop. Indoor-outdoor lighting is always tough. I tend to expose for the outdoor window light... not totally, but enough to have some color and detail... and then bring up the indoor shadows later in Lightroom, and adjust the color in Xara if needed. Isn't it amazing how much trouble we go through to get a result our eyes just do automatically?

The only painless way I know of doing it thoroughly is filtration. It takes care for instance of the daylight spilling in over a windowsill into an incandescent-lit room. Exposure will also be better for all areas, with the un-useful light cut out.

One helpful modern change is the advent of daylight-balanced LEDS for interiors. Also they are MUCH cheaper to run than even fluorescent (which incidentally is not full-spectrum).

Yes, our eyes do that colour-balancing instantaneously, just as we focus sharply on a given point.

The only time when I want to see in my shot the lighting mixed as it really is, is in a view with sharp shadows, e.g. landscape on a bright day. The shadows will be a strong French Navy blue, but our vision does not register both that and the neutrality of the sunlit areas simultaneously, it oscillates depending on where we focus. For people in shade an 81A, even B, is good.

--
'To see, not with, but through the eye.' [William Blake]
'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' [Edmund Burke]
'Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.' [Lord Acton]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22905474@N06/
http://priscillaturner.imagekind.com/store/

 

[Priscilla Turner]

A note on filters and filters:--

... You must filter when shooting.
I've had public arguments here in this space and elsewhere about tweaks such as PS's so-called photographic filters. Use of these may rescue people-pictures, giving you decent skin hues, but doesn't really do more than put a layer of colour over your whole image. I so wish that I'd understood that when I made an unfiltered portrait of my dear husband in his fluorescent-lit office with daylight outside the window, or of my two little girls under the apple-tree with their great-grandmother, with sunlight behind the people in the cyan-tinted shade.

I have no argument with the idea of trying to get overall white balance as correct as possible in mixed lighting situation. But it *is* mixed lighting and so color balance will be correct for one, not the other, or it will be a compromise. I think we'd agree on that?

Not exactly. I filter so as to filter out one or more colour-casts, e.g. so as to make a cathedral interior lit by the daylight that is coming through the windows. That way the priceless stained glass will be 'accurate' and the interior will not look orange or yellow-green. Don't I wish I could go back to some places to practise my theory? A violent orange instead of the 'real' light beige is SO unfortunate in King's College Chapel, Cambridge, and there's NO way of correcting just the stonework but leaving as is the ubiquitous glass. In ALL these shots that are interior the multicoloured glass is much too blue because I've chosen, with no 80A used as it ought to have been, to make the stonework 'accurate' rather than hideously lurid orange in post: http://priscillaturner.imagekind.com/store/images.aspx?GID=8bc6771c-4b70-4932-b9ad-1d49444b9b90

That of course applies more at some angles than at others. The North Side is in shade on a bright day, so can tolerate the 'blueing' even less than the others.

To arrive at a proper balance I made an initial graycard shot in the middle of the nave, and all the rest were processed in DxO to that standard. Reassuringly the (black &) white marble flooring in the Chancel is then white, and the scattered incandescent lamps are yellow, as one's eye sees them.

--
'To see, not with, but through the eye.' [William Blake]
'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' [Edmund Burke]
'Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.' [Lord Acton]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22905474@N06/
http://priscillaturner.imagekind.com/store/

 

[Holger Bargen]

Thank you, Holger.

The camera was tripod mounted with the 2 second timer used, so the in-body image stabilisation was turned off. My Sigma lens has no image stabilisation - as far as I am aware Sigma remove the image stabilisation feature on all of their Pentax mount lenses.

Thank you, anware,

the tripod is still the most reliable solution for longer exposures and the 2 second timer was always good for my work, too. If you have a good tripod and tripod head, it's enogh time to get the camera vibration free.

I have the Sigma 17-70 mm second generation which had the internal lens stabilisation. I used it with K5 and the Sigma lens stabilisation did a better job than the K5 internal stabilisation. However, it was not possible to combine the systems and the Sigma lens stabilisation consumed a lot of energy if turned ON. That's my experience with Sigma lenses and stabilisation in the lens. I have a couple of old Sigma lenses that still do a good job which have no lens stabilisation like 12-24 mm first generation or the 70 mm and 105 mm macro lenses.

Aside of technical aspects I like the content and the composition of your photo. Those busses are simply nice and the rainy night and the reflections in the puddles add a very special mood.

 

[RBIV]

Priscilla, thank you for your explanation. Putting issues of white balance and color correction aside for the moment, I viewed the gallery you linked. Your interest and passion for those cathedrals certainly stands out. Impressive.

 

[Priscilla Turner]

Priscilla, thank you for your explanation. Putting issues of white balance and color correction aside for the moment, I viewed the gallery you linked. Your interest and passion for those cathedrals certainly stands out. Impressive.

Thanks for your kind remarks. This was just the humble K-x in action. Our modern means are truly wonderful: one can walk about a place like that and make tack-sharp handheld colour images of great windows several hundred feet away, then straighten and tone them in post. This where my dear Father got only B&W on plates, with a huge tripod which had to be elaborately set up for each shot.