p.1 #1 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
Dark-skinned clients. Imagine this: White suit, white dress, very dark African-American skin. Now, add this: Some daytime shooting, some total nighttime shooting.
Huge contrast, skin tones are dark no matter what...pushing them to show SOME skin detail is resulting in a lot of noise. A LOT...having to do my added luminance NR + grain effect to limit the visibility of banding. In a large number of these photos, the white dress is burned out beyond RAW recovery.
Just a comment as I'm working on one of my latest weddings...
p.1 #2 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
Sounds like exposure issues. Our first wedding featured a black groom in a white suit. If you're having to choose between blowing out the clothing or blacking out the person, you're overexposing skin.
p.1 #4 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
form wrote:
Dark-skinned clients. Imagine this: White suit, white dress, very dark African-American skin. Now, add this: Some daytime shooting, some total nighttime shooting.
Huge contrast, skin tones are dark no matter what...pushing them to show SOME skin detail is resulting in a lot of noise. A LOT...having to do my added luminance NR + grain effect to limit the visibility of banding. In a large number of these photos, the white dress is burned out beyond RAW recovery.
Just a comment as I'm working on one of my latest weddings...
I am a bit confused that you are having issues with banding at high iso. The noise floor should be high enough mask most of the banding. (and leaving you with little dynamic range)
p.1 #6 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
Sounds like inexperience in finding proper exposure and or utilizing adequate fill in harsh sun. Go out and practice with the contrasted situations instead of waiting until the wedding day.
p.1 #7 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
These are 5d2 images, shot somewhere between ISO800 and ISO1600 around f/2-f/2.8, 1/125-1/250 sec to avoid camera shake blur.
I am finding both blown highlights and crosshatch shadow noise, sometimes in the same images. Huge contrast. To avoid blowing highlights I have to underexpose the skin at least 1 stop, sometimes more.
I am thinking that if I was using the D800, a ton of these images would have no pattern noise and less shadow noise overall. However, I didn't take the D800 because I only have 1 lens for it and it wasn't (and still technically isn't) ready for wedding use. I needed to be very lightweight on that shoot because there were supposedly going to be permission issues (I was to pose as a family friend because professional photographers were not allowed to shoot the ceremony). I just bought some batteries and 64gb of SD cards for it a week ago, after I shot this wedding I am working on. I also sent that D800 in for AF issues and replaced it with the one I currently have (which is much better in AF department).
So...it would have been nice to have had the D800 for the file flexibility, but I still needed more than just 85mm.
Incidentally, working on these images in post, to get the highlights down below pure white and have the skin bright enough for prints, I am often having to use the exposure/highlight brush on the groom's suit - because no amount of highlight and shadow recovery combined will bring them into an appropriate range at the same time. Shadow recovery can go too far and look really unnatural.
p.1 #9 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
That's after shadow recovery to prevent excessive highlight blowing. I also notice that the noise looks worse when put on a contrastier LCD instead of my CRT.
p.1 #10 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
maxwell1295 wrote:
That can't be 1600. It looks like the noise I get at 12,800 on the 5D3.
If you notice, the noise is mostly on the darker textures. I bet the shadows are pushed >2 stops in that shot, which will lead the shadows to have a worse quality noise than an iso 12,800 shot. (with a 5d mkII)
Form, Mind giving a before/after luminance value for one of the black ice trays (the one on the lower right would be great)?
p.1 #11 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
It's not going to show in a quality print. (at least, not worth worrying about) You're peeping and worrying too much. It also looks like you're pushing the shadows too much because you're underexposing the true subject. 5DII's tend to shoot about 2/3 under anyway. (when you don't use an accurate metering spot) You need to take that into consideration. It looks to me like it's off at least that much. I'd venture to guess you pushed in post about about a stop... maybe more.
This actually just makes me believe more that you don't do much printing. If you did, you wouldn't be too worried about this.
p.1 #12 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
I'm not worried about noise much in THAT image. There are worse ones I am more concerned about that show crosshatching. I was just showing the dynamic range, his skin vs. his suit. Based on what I have seen, to get useful detail in his face, it needs about that much exposure. This takes shadow boosting if I choose to preserve the highlights of his suit.
The original is significantly underexposed, 1 stop below where I could have set it to preserve highlights. Perhaps the camera screen was throwing me off again. I have trouble judging exposure from the camera LCDs.
Here is another exposure in different situation outdoors, this is a baseline exposure:
http://www.joeyallenphoto.com/SC-0003-3.jpg - No exposure changes or other editing. On my main display, over half the groom's jacket is just pure white. On the LCD, it's about 20-30% blown. I estimate that the print will have contrast that causes the whites to be blown sooner than my LCD screen shows, so for safety purposes I try to bring them down:
http://www.joeyallenphoto.com/SC-0004-4.jpg - this is recovered (plus contrast to make it less flat-looking). The original exposure is about the limit before highlights start to be unrecoverable. However, I would say the skin is underexposed slightly in the original. Dad's skin is darker, about 2/3-1 stop.
I'm not really complaining about this, I'm only pointing out that recovering highlights in many of these photos is requiring that the skin be boosted to make a decent exposure for print. With the especially dark skin, it starts in the shadow range and gets worse more quickly than lighter skin. That...is where better shadow noise would be more useful. That is where I was originally going with my first post.
p.1 #13 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
^ Your original exposure looks better than your recovery in terms of skin exposure (though still slightly overexposed), which supports my original theory that you're overexposing their skin to begin with, which is leading to your overexposing their suits.
p.1 #15 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
^ Hmm. If the skin looks good in print, then don't worry about the suits and dresses (besides in shots where you mean for those to be the focus). Also, in prints, everything's going to get squashed DRwise anyway, so I wouldn't stress too much about it as long as the people look normal.
p.1 #16 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
They look fine. You are obsessing with things that honestly don't matter. Do yourself a favor and get a 4x6 printer, edit an image and print it out. Looking at anything zoomed in on a monitor is always going to look worse than it really is. No other camera or piece of equipment is going to change the fact that you criticize everything you do to a near unachievable standard, then you come on here and post about it. You are a good photographer man but you are going to drive yourself out of this business because you can't get out of your own head. Shoot more, worry less.
p.1 #17 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
Not a huge sample here, but what you have here doesn't look unmanageable at all. I shoot an awful lot of different ethnicities over the course of a year, and I find this "problem" to be far overblown. Don't get me wrong, there is a consideration, but I think that limo shot looks more like a blow exposure do to the window light. That couple isn't that dark skinned. Afternoon direct sunlight, un-flashed, almost always results in some blown highlights. I think you're freaking out unnecessarily .
p.1 #18 · Realizing another limit of shadow noise...
She's not dark, but he is. The situation was manageable throughout the set, but it was a bigger PITA and the skin has some detail loss from noise reduction in many photos.
