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

[bob5050]

I would not reduce the exposure anymore as you are limited by the amount of light and for this type of image you want all the exposure you can get. I would ignore using a EC of -1 and raising the iso as you are now prematurely putting a cap on how much DR you can capture when increasing the iso. For this scene you are at the lower limit as to how much more you can reduce the shutter speed.

If you are going to push the image in post I would be using a much lower iso as to reduce the clipping in the stain glass areas and let the DR that the camera has lift the shadows to your liking.

Just remember it is not the camera that captures DR its the size of the exposure and as you apply a - EC or increase the iso you are placing a cap on that DR

My problem here being that removing the -EC increases the light needed for the camera to find a solution, and I'm already shooting about as slow as I can. Similarly, I'm already shooting at F/2 -- so I can't really get more light that way. Intentional under-exposure (the -EC) and ISO are the only tools available unless I want to carry a tripod (I don't).

And, personal prejudice, I like a deeper DoF in this type of shot. The subject, in a lot of ways, is the entire space. So the DR loses out.

 

[Ian Stuart Forsyth]

I would not reduce the exposure anymore as you are limited by the amount of light and for this type of image you want all the exposure you can get. I would ignore using a EC of -1 and raising the iso as you are now prematurely putting a cap on how much DR you can capture when increasing the iso. For this scene you are at the lower limit as to how much more you can reduce the shutter speed.

If you are going to push the image in post I would be using a much lower iso as to reduce the clipping in the stain glass areas and let the DR that the camera has lift the shadows to your liking.

Just remember it is not the camera that captures DR its the size of the exposure and as you apply a - EC or increase the iso you are placing a cap on that DR

My problem here being that removing the -EC increases the light needed for the camera to find a solution,

Adjusting your iso and using a - EC are counter productive in this situation

and I'm already shooting about as slow as I can. Similarly, I'm already shooting at F/2 -- so I can't really get more light that way. Intentional under-exposure (the -EC) and ISO are the only tools available unless I want to carry a tripod (I don't).

But using a - EC and raising the iso will put a cap on how much light your cameras sensor will store, this done by placing a cap on how much headroom you have. Using the same shutter speed and f-stop without raising the iso will increase how much light the camera can store by reduce the clipping found in the stain glass and some of the columns.

For a sensor like the one found in your camera the controls that are being used like the shutter speed and F-stop set your exposure, how light and dark the image will appear is the iso setting. But once you raise the iso your are setting the lightness of your image but also at the same time the how much headroom you have and how much you will clip for that given exposure.

Look at it this way, by using a -ec your are telling your camera to underexpose and by setting the iso at 3200 or 6400 you are telling your camera disregard 4 stops of headroom.

You are better off not using the -1EC and just setting the camera to use iso 1600 or lower

And, personal prejudice, I like a deeper DoF in this type of shot. The subject, in a lot of ways, is the entire space. So the DR loses out.

 

[Priscilla Turner]

Priscilla — when I look at the stonework, the columns... they have color... and I wonder whether they would look like that to your eyes if inside that church. In my imagination, stone is just gray... but we don't have any old churches here to go take a second look. Curious!

Sometimes stone looks a bit muddy when there's been a lot of pollution or use of candles. In many famous churches there has to be a periodical very expensive cleaning operation to deal with it.
I also wondered whether there was some effect from incandescent lighting making grey look a bit brown.
Haven't been to Milan Cathedral since 1961, when my slides show the West Front a really filthy black from gasoline fumes. The inside was dark but the colour of the stonework I don't recall. That can vary a great deal depending where it was mined. My v. recent shots outside and inside the Regensburg cathedral show a quite warm yellowish brown colour.
Inside King's College Chapel in Cambridge I 'see' a light beige, but a daylight-balanced cam sees a strong orange. Our eye-brain combo is very quick to adjust to what it thinks or 'knows' is there.

--
'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]

D'you mind my asking, how did you set the WB? In my experience the interior lighting in such settings can be wildly different from what is coming in at the windows, and to complicate the decision there isn't always just one kind of interior lighting. Did you use a balancing filter? The hue of the stonework looks natural. Is that what your eye-brain combo thought it saw?

Not at all--I do want this to be a technique thread (though WB probably deserves its own attention).

Basically yes--this is how things looked to me, but the story is a bit complicated. I'd come into the cathedral from a trip around the roof (you can get up there), so bright daylight to cathedral interior. Consider these--both are Auto WB:

The difference is something I discovered: that my K-3 determines its Auto WB setting, not for every shot, but essentially when you turn it on (or first shot thereafter). So the first shot was taken without turning the camera off and on again after I left the roof and went inside; the second was taken after being inside and having the camera off/on.

So my learning point was that I could generally trust Auto WB to get it right, but to remember to turn the camera off/on when changing the light environment to let it re-sync to the current conditions. The interior shot in the OP was also Auto WB after the reset.

Another comparison:

Big difference

Yes. I like your adjusted shots, they look reasonable, but suspect that I'd have whipped out my 80A to obtain true colour balance, and of course set Daylight in the cam.

Sad that now I'm old and widowed I'll never have the chance to try it in such a place. I shan't see Europe again, including my native land.

 

[bob5050]

[...] and of course set Daylight in the cam.

One of the tings we suffer from nowadays is the loss of documentation: exactly what does specifying the light source DO? How does it change the camera's response? Wish I knew.

What I've experienced is that forcing the camera to reset WB makes a real difference--and I haven't really played with the light source setting since.

A lot of my frustration there comes from an Easter in Seville, where, at about 5am, I ended up with over 150 pictures that SOOC look like this:



I'd turned the camera on in the lobby, and it never adjusted to the yellow tungsten street lighting. I think this was my first trip with the K-30. As you can imagine, very disappointing.

Sad that now I'm old and widowed I'll never have the chance to try it in such a place. I shan't see Europe again, including my native land.

UK or Ireland? Whereabouts?

I took a look at your website, and love this line: "I think of my scenic shots as a way to remind myself of what it felt like to stand in places where I shall never stand again. They may perhaps enable others to feel that they can just walk through the frame into these same places." http://priscillaturner.imagekind.com/store/about.aspx

I hope you continue to feel that way about shooting. I put my thoughts on traveling with camera here: https://hillfort.com/2019/09/28/general-comments/. We seem to have much in common.

--
bob5050
All pictures I post here are SOOC, downsized 50% unless specifically identified otherwise.

 

[bob5050]

Sometimes stone looks a bit muddy when there's been a lot of pollution or use of candles. In many famous churches there has to be a periodical very expensive cleaning operation to deal with it.

Yes, and like many, I have mixed feelings about it. When I first visited Spain (early 70's), nothing had really been cleaned yet. The Cathedral in Burgos was near black inside, oppressive, dark and foreboding--it made a tremendous impression on me as the place where the god of the inquisition lived.

The last time I was back it had been completely cleaned and was a very different space. The inquisition had left the building. Like the Sistine Chapel, of course it should have been cleaned, but it does take some getting used to...

 

[RBIV]

Jon Donahue...

I never knew Doc Holliday had access to WiFi !!! :-O

Nice image series Jon.

 

[Priscilla Turner]

"One of the things we suffer from nowadays is the loss of documentation: exactly what does specifying the light source DO? How does it change the camera's response? Wish I knew.

What I've experienced is that forcing the camera to reset WB makes a real difference--and I haven't really played with the light source setting since."

Yes, nowhere will you read for instance that setting Tungsten WB for tungsten does not stop the cam from seeing light that is not useful, so you may get hideous underexposure in the blue channel. Or at least this has happened to me with my Pentaxes. Filtration cures that, but I can't get back to try it again in all those great dark places.

Thanks for the kind enquiry: England, East Anglia is my birthplace, followed by education in London, Cambridge, Oxford; but there has also been time in Russia, Finland, Spain, France, Italy and Greece; a two-year sojourn in Munich; and decades of marriage and parenthood in two provinces of Canada; two European riverboat trips with digital. High BP really means that I can't fly now unsupported. The low pressure at altitude for 9.5 hours is too dangerous for people in my condition. Getting across the Atlantic even by the short Polar route is the hurdle.

 

[Priscilla Turner]

Sometimes stone looks a bit muddy when there's been a lot of pollution or use of candles. In many famous churches there has to be a periodical very expensive cleaning operation to deal with it.

Yes, and like many, I have mixed feelings about it. When I first visited Spain (early 70's), nothing had really been cleaned yet. The Cathedral in Burgos was near black inside, oppressive, dark and foreboding--it made a tremendous impression on me as the place where the god of the inquisition lived.

The last time I was back it had been completely cleaned and was a very different space. The inquisition had left the building. Like the Sistine Chapel, of course it should have been cleaned, but it does take some getting used to...

My paternal ancestors were some of them architects, and famous watercolourists as well. We have some art still in the family including one of the interior of Burgos Cathedral, dark because of the structure, but colourful. in 1956 i was inside Notre Dame de Paris, and it was black. My second visit in the 1980s, it was quite bright!

 

[James O'Neill]

[...] and of course set Daylight in the cam.

One of the tings we suffer from nowadays is the loss of documentation: exactly what does specifying the light source DO? How does it change the camera's response? Wish I knew.

What I've experienced is that forcing the camera to reset WB makes a real difference--and I haven't really played with the light source setting since.

A lot of my frustration there comes from an Easter in Seville, where, at about 5am, I ended up with over 150 pictures that SOOC look like ....

The light hitting the sensor is the same (unless you apply a filter). I'm fairly sure that different gain isn't applied to red / green / blue pixels before the A-to-D converter so White balance is just crunching the numbers differently.

I know from diving red light gets filtered out by water quite quickly, yellow and green a bit more slowly but beyond a distance only blue gets through. In shallow water there is still some red but if you shoot something 20 M it gets lost. The brain does a lot to fill in colours which aren't actually there when there isn't a full spectrum of light.

If there is enough red light left to get something white to look white, there is almost always "red noise", i.e. the blue channel isn't noisy at all, green has a little and red has a lot, and often it's beyond what normal WB can handle (it needs different curves for each channel and processing raw files). A filter that takes out some blue helps - near the surface everything looks a bit red but can be WB'd back to normal, and you notice the loss of Red at greater depth.

I wonder how often a light source doesn't give a spectrum which is photography friendly but the brain sorts it out.

This behaviour of the camera not doing auto-WB per shot but going from the first shot (or maybe an average of shots) after it was powered on is interesting. I'd never noticed or checked for that before.

 

[bob5050]

[...] Filtration cures that, but I can't get back to try it again in all those great dark places.

Yes, when one documents travel (or life), one battles against the irrecoverable. Hence my obsession with presets: not getting the shot, or doing it poorly, is irrecoverable. I regret shots I didn't take, but regret even more the shots I tried to take, but was unready or too slow.

Thanks for the kind enquiry: England, East Anglia is my birthplace, followed by education in London, Cambridge, Oxford;

I can't claim to know it (other than as the land of Rædwald and Sutton Hoo). The closest I can come is memories of a wonderful day exploring Lincoln Cathedral on a trip north to York in probably about '79-80, but Lincoln's a bit outside East Anglia proper I believe.

Sounds like the foreign service--a well-travelled life. So much to remember! I can't imagine that being a classical philologist accounts for all that <g>.

High BP really means that I can't fly now unsupported. The low pressure at altitude for 9.5 hours is too dangerous for people in my condition.

I take BP medication as well, but fortunately I'm just borderline at this point and still medically able to carry on traveling. I'm trying to delay my wife's experience of widowhood for as long as I can. You have my respect.

 

[bob5050]

My paternal ancestors were some of them architects, and famous watercolourists as well.

Talent descending from talent... What watercolourist?

We have some art still in the family including one of the interior of Burgos Cathedral, dark because of the structure, but colourful. in 1956 i was inside Notre Dame de Paris, and it was black. My second visit in the 1980s, it was quite bright!

I have pictures of Notre Dame from 2006 on my website, and still bright then. I don't know exactly when they cleaned it, but I seem to remember it being dark in 1972 (the year of my first trip to Europe). The fire was a catastrophe keenly felt.

 

[bob5050]

The light hitting the sensor is the same (unless you apply a filter). I'm fairly sure that different gain isn't applied to red / green / blue pixels before the A-to-D converter so White balance is just crunching the numbers differently.

My surmise would be that the WB settings are simply instructions to the jpg/tiff engine, and the raw file would record the setting but be unaffected by it--but just a hypothesis. Again, documentation fault. I'd like a definitive statement in the manual of what affects raw, and what doesn't. Does anything other than f-stop, aperture, and shutter speed?

There are things in the K-3-3 manual that identify some settings as only applied in the production of jpgs/tiffs (see the memo on p. 81 on lens correction, for example). Other things are subject to some strange caveats: Apparently with HDR and other multi-exposure shots, you cannot change some filters when developing from RAW: see 2nd memo bullet on p. 93). But it doesn't say why.

I wonder how often a light source doesn't give a spectrum which is photography friendly but the brain sorts it out.

Don't know about the first, but the latter is probably like focus: adjusted multiple times a second. Eyes are centerpoint focus zooms <g>.

This behaviour of the camera not doing auto-WB per shot but going from the first shot (or maybe an average of shots) after it was powered on is interesting. I'd never noticed or checked for that before.

Certainly wasn't something I was watching for. But my K-3 at least behaved as if that were the case. Standard practice now when going from outside to a dark inside is to turn camera off. change mode, and turn it back on inside. And the same when I go back out.

 

[RBIV]

My surmise would be that the WB settings are simply instructions to the jpg/tiff engine, and the raw file would record the setting but be unaffected by it--but just a hypothesis. Again, documentation fault. I'd like a definitive statement in the manual of what affects raw, and what doesn't. Does anything other than f-stop, aperture, and shutter speed?

Rawtherapee is an open source RAW editor that many folks swear by for fixing certain problems in troublesome images.

I post the link here because -- use it or not -- there is a lot of information about RAW processing, what it is and what it isn't and how it differs from in camera jpegs. Along the sidebar there should be the option to DL their "book" as a PDF file. Some interesting reading in there... although not exactly what you've asked for, there are sections that approach the topic. Plowing thru this can give hours of enjoyment (haha)...

Loading…

rawpedia.rawtherapee.com

 

[Priscilla Turner]

Sounds like the foreign service--a well-travelled life. So much to remember! I can't imagine that being a classical philologist accounts for all that <g>.

Marry a Byzantinist/Russianist and find yourself first in W. Germany for his PhD research, then emigrate with him to Canada for an income and to start a family ...
From about 1961 on ALL my travel photography has been a matter of being walked rapidly round by someone who liked to see the eventual pictures but wouldn't hang around indefinitely while they were made.

His Russian and Modern Greek were those of a native speaker. But he was virtually colour-blind, as I believe no woman ever is (one of those immutable genetic differences)! No matter, he had, and transmitted, mathematical genius.

--
'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]

My paternal ancestors were some of them architects, and famous watercolourists as well.

Talent descending from talent... What watercolourist?

Two generations of Watsons, practised in London, lived in expensive Hampstead above the pea-soupers, travelled on the Continent painting all the time. That was the colour-photography of the day. No, they didn't take their big plate-cameras with them on holiday!

 

[PentUp]

Sounds like the foreign service--a well-travelled life. So much to remember! I can't imagine that being a classical philologist accounts for all that <g>.

Marry a Byzantinist/Russianist and find yourself first in W. Germany for his PhD research, then emigrate with him to Canada for an income and to start a family ...
From about 1961 on ALL my travel photography has been a matter of being walked rapidly round by someone who liked to see the eventual pictures but wouldn't hang around indefinitely while they were made.

His Russian and Modern Greek were those of a native speaker. But he was virtually colour-blind, as I believe no woman ever is (one of those immutable genetic differences)! No matter, he had, and transmitted, mathematical genius.

Interesting backstory 003, 'M' would approve

- Bluefelt (not my real name)

 

[Jon Donahue]

Our new gas station at sunset. Got crossed up using multi and average metering, until I remembered to take an AE lock spot reading off the sky, and then Lightroom. Light falls off fast at sunset, as our brand-new automotive temple welcomes the night to come.

 

[bob5050]

From about 1961 on ALL my travel photography has been a matter of being walked rapidly round by someone who liked to see the eventual pictures but wouldn't hang around indefinitely while they were made.

My sympathies <g>. My wife's a great traveler, and takes as many pictures on the road as I do. There are probably many more or her pictures on our website than mine.

 

[Jon Donahue]

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.