You Still Have To Come Back With The Shot! - Super Dim Receptions

Good Afternoon Everybody,

It’s official, Cincinnati has moved fully into the 21th century.  I navigated my car into the parking space, checked the change in my pocket for the meter but then quickly discovered I didn’t need change – THE PARKING METER TOOK CREDIT CARDS!!!   Yep, that’s the meter.

I thought that was so cool till I discovered it cost $2.00 to park for one hour – up about $1.50 when it was just a coin meter – progress, right ;~)

To busy again today – I’ve been up and at the computer since 5 a.m. had a vendor meeting with a client whose daughter’s Bat Mitzvah were photographing in three weeks, and picked up my brand new computer. And, I’m looking at the clock and it’s 3:45 p.m. so here we go.

Today I’m continuing my series I began several weeks ago entitled, “You Still Have To Come Back With The Shot!” Last week we talked about super dim wedding venues – this week it’s about really dark reception venues.  Here we go…

OK, Where’s the Floor Shooting Super Dim Receptions

Way Colorful Setting

I want to talk about one more extremely challenging lighting condition. We recently arrived at the reception venue (we’re shooting in the same place in three weeks) and walked into the main ballroom and we were all blown away by the extraordinary decor - See Figure 1 below. The theme was Willy Wonka and the reception was beautifully and brilliantly colorful. But, it was going to be the table centerpieces that were going to be an issue for some of the photography.

Way Dark Shooting

Even though there was colorful lighting throughout the room, most of that light was blocked from those guests sitting tableside - See Figure 2 below. You're asking, "What difference does that make - just use your flash." The problem for me was that I like to take several photographs at the receptions, whether it be weddings or Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, capturing the faces and expressions of the guests with just the available light.

Here is my challenge. The DJ had just begun to play a slideshow presentation showing images of the guest of honor growing up, as a baby, his toddler years, being with his sisters, parents and grandparents…. and so forth. All the guests’ eyes were fixed to the large projection screen.

As I said earlier, I love to capture the guests’ sometimes joyful, sometimes reflective expressions as they watch the presentation. Granted, light is quite low during these slide shows, but it was even more challenging this particular evening with the very large centerpieces blocking the over-head light.

Kicking In The HIGH ISO Afterburners

My lens of choice for these images is my Canon 70-200mm F2.8 IS lens. I was shooting my Canon 5D Mark II and knew it was good for ISO 6400 shots. This situation called for me to juice that ISO all the way up to ISO 12,800 if I was going to capture any emotional expressions of family and friends. I cranked it up to ISO 12,800 and began shooting away.

I understood the possibility I most likely would be introducing noise into my photographs. I also knew that none of these images were going to be wall portraits; at best maybe a 5x7, 8x10 or 10x10 sized print in their albums. Considering that, I felt comfortable in the fact that I could use my Nik noise reduction software to reduce/remove the noise and still achieve an acceptable/salable photograph for my clients.

As I was photographing expressions of the audience watching the show, the young boy's mom spotted me with the camera and quickly had her son and his friend look towards the camera beckoning me to take their photograph. There was simply no time to grab a flash – I had to quickly take the photograph of them or miss the moment. I knew I was going to have to pull it off not with the camera but with the computer.

I was shooting at some fairly slow shutter speeds hand-held and may encounter a little camera shake so I took several exposures to cover my bases. As it turned out, I captured a great image of all three of them. Processing it thru Lightroom 3, I was easily able to make the necessary exposure/color balance adjustments. A little finishing it up in NIK’s DFINE 2.0 noise reducing software and I had a great image of all three people smiling back at the camera. Take a look at the next image – Figure 3.  It’s a winner!

This solution was simply not only the result of understanding light but a combination of lighting the scene, exposing the scene, and knowing what you want to do with the software tools available.

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Hey gang, that’s it for me today.  I’m whipped and it’s still early.

I hope see a lot of you at our webcast tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. It will be one rockin’ show. 

Till then,  -David

Quick Hit Monday: Zumbrella Makes Scott Kelby’s Gift Guide List; Canon 1D Mark IV – Your Next Wedding Camera; A Cool Digital Frame; And Much More!

Good Morning Everybody,

Last week Hawaii, this week Cabo San Lucas – Ahhh! are my pixels happy today!  After our 60 city tour the R&R is a welcome break.

We are spending the week with our friends, Kent and Sarah Smith, whom I have mentioned several times on this blog so I’ll be reporting from Cabo all week – and yes, I’ll try to get the posts up in a timely manner and hopefully with a little Cabo color tossed in for good measure.

Before we get to today’s news, I have to tell you about my $4500/mo. phone bill – YIKES!!! At least it was almost YIKES.  I’ve heard these horror stories about people using their iPhone while traveling internationally and receiving  horrendous bills after they returned.

I decided to do a little checking before we left and boy, am I glad I did.  Based on my current usage here in the states, my international costs would have been $4,500/mo – or $1,200 for the week we were in Cabo -  unbelievable!!!  I opted for ATT’s international phone and data plan for one week which should protect me from those exorbitant charges.  Anyway, I thought you should know should you be planning any travel out of the country.

OK, time to get on with today’s post – here we go.

My Zumbrella Named One Of Scott Kelby’s Top Holiday Gifts For 2009!

Can you believe it, my specially designed collapsible Zumbrella made Scott Kelby’s Gonzo Gift Guide!  Here is the link to Scott’s story right here.  The cool thing about my Zumbrella is how quickly it works in any shooting situation. 

Want to see what I’m talking about – hit the PLAY button below to revisit my Technique Tuesday episode entitled, “Love Lines – Another Live Wedding Shoot”  to see how efficiently we work with it on the job.

We just got more Zumbrellas in last Wednesday and are shipping them out daily. Here are the links to the Digital Resource Center for the Zumbrella alone, Zumbrella with lighting DVD, and the entire Zumbrella/DVD/Bracket kit. Order right away before we run out of stock again.  The Zumbrella has been a BIG hit among lots of photographers across the country.

Canon 1D Mark IV As A Wedding Camera

I came across this post while on my weekend internet cruise and found it quite intriguing.  It seems that renowned photographer, Jeff Ascough,  got his hands on one of the new Canon cameras and had it long enough to use it to shoot wedding over the weekend.

I am always intrigued by the low noise capabilities of these latest, greatest, anti-noise machines.  Jeff was using the camera at ISO 6400 and 12,800 and was blown away with the results.  You can read the whole story right here.

A Digital Frame That Does Video Too

As you know, I’m a BIG fan of Animoto because of it’s ability to easily incorporate short video clips with still images.  Anyway, we were passing through the Las Vegas airport about 10 days ago and were “killing” some time before we boarding our connecting flight. 

We popped into the Brookstone Store, always a good place to visit, to look over the latest greatest electronic gadgets.  The item that got my attention was a digital frame [link] that they were displaying which was doing the Animoto trick – combining the stills with the video – very cool, I thought.  For $99, I decided to pick one up and give it a try.

I’m thinking this could be a nice add-on product for wedding and family portrait packages. The quality looked good and the image/video transitions were very pleasing, too.  I’ll keep you posted on my further thoughts on this very cool item once we return and I get a chance to “play with it for a while. My “wheels” are turning right now with some pretty good ideas on how we can incorporate the frame into our product mix.

How About Some More Reading Material For Your Spare Time

Over the weekend, I stumbled on Photography BB, a photo e-magazine that seemed to be pretty jammed pack with solid info on many fronts.  The latest issue of Photography BB magazine includes stories on macro photography, Lightroom 3 Beta, a cool Photoshop tutorial, and lots more.  You can check it out right here.  Hey, while you’re at it, you may as well check out the 21 proceeding past issues too;~)

Color Photography Before Color Photography Was Invented

OK, gang, you have to check this out.  I want to point you towards some of the most fascinating photography I have ever seen. It is beautiful color photography from the early 1900’s taken long before Kodachrome film was ever invented!  Many of the images are simply breathtaking and considering the techniques used to obtain the finished result, it makes the imagery that much more remarkable.

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944), a turn of the century photographer from Russia and photographer to the Czar produced these wonderfully amazing images from B&W glass plate negatives.  Here is the main link to Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii photographs.  Be sure to check out all the links on the page.  It’s a wonderful journey back into time.

Hey gang, that’s it for me.  We are off to catch some fun in the sun today.  I’ll see everybody tomorrow for another episode of Technique Tuesday. I just might have a little surprise in store for you, so be sure to check back,  See ya’ tomorrow.  Adios, David

10 Ways To Reduce Noise In Your Images, Plus Two

I am such a sucker for new low noise reducing techniques. The reason for that is because I love shooting those really high ISO's. Man, the new Nikon's really make it a kick, too. But, we all know there are inherently noise issues when pushing the high ISO envelope.

What are some of the best ways to reduce the noise while still preserving, even enhancing the image quality? Here are three links that will show you 12 creative ways to reduce noise.

Sean Duggen over at LayersMagazine.com shows 10 ways to reduce noise from within Photoshop - here is the [link] - definitely worth a bookmark right here.
Rufus Deuchler over at Blogs.Adobe.com has a way to reduce noise with a very cool image stacking technique right here [link].
Corey Barker over at PlanetPhotoshop.com also has yet another method he demos in his video right here [link].

Hey, don't want to do the heavy lifting yourself, then here are three winning programs to do the noise removal for you.
Noise Ninja - The gold standard for the last several years. [link]
NIK's Dfine 2.0 - Another great anti-noise solution and one of my favs. [link]
Imagenomic's NoiseWare - Another great piece of noise removing software that gets great reviews. [link]

A quick "heads up" about tomorrow's Podcast. I talked to my good buddy, Frank Cricchio, yesterday and he agreed to be a guest on tomorrow's podcast. Frank is one of the living legends in portrait photography in our profession. I'll thrilled to share our conversation with you tomorrow.

Hey gang, that's it for me today. We are hoppin' here at the studio again today and the team is calling. See everybody tomorrow for Podcast Wednesday. Have a noise-free day ;~) -David

More Nikon/Canon Surprises At The Party

So I'm a big fan of Nikon's low noise capabilities - ISO 6400 is the old Canon 1600. That super low light sensitivity on the Nikon is amazing, but that's where I was surprised. I put the 70-200mm VR lens on the Nikon D3 - I wanted to roam the party unnoticed trying to get some great dance candids, etc. My experience here was that I (the camera) was having a hard time finding focus in the low light.

I put the 70-200mm IS lens on my Canon 40D and tried the same thing and all worked fine. Flashes were not attached to either camera as I wanted to check the low light focusing capabilities of both cameras without focus assist. I had much better luck with the Canon.

Anyway, back to the Nikon manual to see if I'm missing something here. If anyone has any suggestions for Nikon camera settings for optimum results in low light focusing situations, please let me know.

Size Does Matter - Here's the Proof

Sure RAW is king of the hill when it comes to recovering blown out highlights. We've known that for years, but nobody even wanted to consider the lowly Jpeg's capabilities for highlight recovery - until now, right here on DigitalProTalk, so here we go.

But first to get a little background on dynamic range and CMOS sensors, I'd like you to read Xinqiao Liu's PHD dissertation on, "CMOS IMAGE SENSORS DYNAMIC RANGE AND SNR ENHANCEMENT VIA STATISTICAL SIGNAL PROCESSING" right here . It's only 139 pages long.

OK, just kidding, but you need to know that all the chips in all the cameras out there have differing amounts of dynamic range inherent in their design. This is another way of saying that some cameras do better than others in capturing the highlights without blowing them out. Why is that - it's about the size of the photo receptor - our friend the pixel. A bigger photo receptor, means more light (photons) can enter the photo site during the exposure, and the greater number of photons relative to the inherent noise associated with the CMOS sensor means a higher Signal to Noise ratio - read, higher dynamic range.

You can read a fascinating article on the subject and a lot more on Canon's site right here. Sony's echoes the same claim here for larger pixels. Nikon has a easy to understand article on the dynamic range right here. Armed with this new knowledge, let's see just how far we can push the pixels around in today's video tutorial entitled, "JPEG Showdown - Saving the Pixels" in the next post.

My First Real Peek At Nikon Noise Up Close And Personal

The way things are going with the Canon vs. Nikon, et. al. noise wars, I figure we will all be shooting at about 500,000 ISO in another year or 2. All kidding aside, the reduced noise we are seeing in the new cameras is truly phenomenal. I remember back in the '70's, I loved experimenting with how far I could "push" Kodak Tri-X in Diafine developer. Diafine claimed 2400 ISO, but my results were always way to "grainy" - that's "noisy" these days.

To make a comparison between the "noise" of today's cameras and the push-processed "film grain" of yesteryear, check out this link I found over at Flickr in the Diafine pool. It shows the "grain-noise" levels of Tri-X precessed at 2000 - 6400 ISO in six increments.

My observations - there "ain't" none. The new digital cameras blow film out of the water in the noise/grain department. We had arrived at Maeva resort on Saturday night and the first thing I did was grab the Nikon D3 and crank up it up to ISO 3200.

Nikon D3 at ISO 3200:

The images looked greater on the viewfinder and absolutely wonderful on my laptop as I viewed them on the plane coming home. I took a few more at ISO 6400 and found those very usable as well. Okay, okay, I know Nikon says you can take it up to ISO 25,600, so I did. Things were a bit dicey here. That is not to say that the images were not usable, they just looked like my old Diafine images of the 70's - grainy, but now I'm at 25,600 ISO, more than 10 times the best Diafine speed I got out of Tri-X!

Nikon D3 at ISO 6400:

I've been following the Nikon noise claims since the camera was introduced. If you missed it, here is my most recent article on the subject right here. Rob Galbraith published some hockey pictures he made last year (which, unfortunately, I have not been able to find) at the 25,600 ISO and on the surface they looked fine - all very high tonal values, hardly no shadows to speak of - it was impressive.

Nikon D3 at ISO 25,600:

When it comes to noise, they say "the proof is in the pudding." I'm talking chocolate pudding here - you know, low light values where noise can't hide. Check out the three images in the article, the first at 3200 ISO, the second at 6400 ISO, and the third at 25.600 ISO. Click on the image itself, and you will get a larger view for a closer inspection. I'm going to run the Nikon's through their noise paces this weekend at my wedding and I'll get back to you with the low down next week.

Nikon vs. Canon - Noise Issues

Look, not much noise here - the story I ran last week on the low noise offerings on the new Nikon D3 and Canon 1Ds Mark III - here is the link again to "Not Too Noisy Around Here" - which showed Nikon as the new low noise winner. Over the weekend, I noticed our friends over at Luminous-Landscape happened to run their series of tests and got the same result. They ran their informal tests up to 25,600 ISO! Here is the link to the Luminous-Landscape story. They also pointed to another story over at PhotoBusinessForum that also showed the same result. You can read the in-depth article from PhotoBusinessForum right here. Come on, Canon, let's get cooking on the those higher ISO's.

It's Sooo.. Quiet Around Here - No Noise at All!?

You said what?? - ISO 25600!! The big news this past week has been the "extremely low noise" of the new Nikon D3 camera. Our buddy and Master Photoshop Prestidigitator, Scott Kelby, over at Photoshop Insider, raised the issue last week in his posts. He was amazed at the extremely low noise at ISO 6400. Head over to his site right here to read his remarks. 1001 Noisy Cameras found "very low noise - high ISO" Nikon images that were amazing to see as well. I have to admit, they look unbelievable for ISO 6400. Here is the "Low Noise" link. But wait, there's more - check out this link over at IshootShows.com and look at the Nikon samples with ISO's 1600 - 25600!! Please sit down before you hit this link, or at least hold your hand firmly under you chin as you don't want it to get bruised should it accidentally hit the keyboard once the images pop up.