Home · Register · Join Upload & Sell

Moderated by: Fred Miranda

New fredmiranda.com Mobile Site

New Feature: SMS Notification alert

New Feature: Buy & Sell Watchlist

FM Forums | Canon Forum | Join Upload & Sell

2 3 4 end

Archive 2016 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

billsamuels
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

I've been taking photos of the ducks in a wildlife area here in central California, but the weather has been rather stormy. I think it adds to the photography, but it also adds to the challenge because the lenses I'm using are slower than some others. I'm using:
Canon 5DSR but I also have a
Canon 6D;
EF 70-200mm F/4L
EF 400mm F/5.6L
Canon 2x extender III

I've been using the 5DSR because of the higher number of auto focus points and the superior auto focus over the 6D anyway, but it's also been really dark and with the 2x extender on the 400mm lens, I'm getting a minimum f-stop around F8. I can still take photos around 1/250 - 1/350 at ISO 400. ALSO, I like being able to crop in on a duck that's pretty far away and with the 50mp camera, I don't lose a lot of sharpness or get too much pixellation so I still get a nice photo of the duck with all its colors even though the 400mm doesn't have as much reach as I'd like. The 2x extender on the 400mm gives poor sharpness compared to the 400 by itself or the 70-200mm + the 2x extender.

Here is my question.

My photos are coming out a bit dark. Would it be better to use the 6D because the sensor is more sensitive than the 5DSR and if I have to crank up the ISO, would it be more or less grainy at a higher ISO than the 5DSR? The sacrafice is the 6D's autofocus, but dark photos aren't great either.

Thanks.
Bill

Does anyone know what kind of birds these are?

Dec 08, 2016 at 08:24 PM

billsamuels
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

Notice the loss of details in the two bird's feathers, it's hard to see what kind of birds these are. Anyone know though?

Dec 08, 2016 at 08:26 PM

snapsy
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

Play around with dpreview's studio sample to see how the 6D and 5DSR compare at various ISOs. Here are a few links I generated for you:

6D vs 5DSR, ISO 1600, native resolution
6D vs 5DSR, ISO 1600, resolution normalized to 8MP

Dec 08, 2016 at 08:29 PM

Pixel Perfect
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

Against an overcast sky like that I would always use at least +1.67 EV EC.

Dec 08, 2016 at 08:32 PM

arbitrage
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

The picture is severely underexposed. First you need to expose properly. The 5DSR does fine at high ISO if you don't have to crop. But in an image like this you'd probably want to crop into the birds. If you have to crop a lot (like in this image) the 5DSR will still beat the 6D even though the 6D has better high-ISO it will not have much detail once cropped into those tiny birds.

But back to the start....why did you expose the way you did? Why are you at ISO 200? 5DSR is totally fine up to 1600 if you are cropping hard and fine up to its max 6400 if you aren't cropping much. I shoot above ISO 400 in 90% of my shots and most of the time I'm at ISO 1000 or above. You should bump up that ISO to get a proper exposure....Canon bodies (unlike Nikon) are not ISO-less. That means you must use the correct ISO for a proper exposure or you will get a much worse image if you change it in post production. (With Nikon you can take a picture like this and when you bump it to a proper exposure in software you get an equivalent IQ and noise as if you had just bumped the ISO up to start with). But with Canon you will get a much better image by pushing the ISO as high as you need for a proper exposure. Obviously lowering SS and opening up to f/8 will also gain you some light but 1/320 is probably as low as you want to go if handholding at 400mm.

If you are shooting at ISO 1600 and above and not having to crop much then the 6D will give you a less noisy image. However, if you downsize the 5DSR file it will likely be close to equal.

Dec 08, 2016 at 08:41 PM

Pixel Perfect
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

5DsR is no worse than 6D/5D3 at high ISO, eg like 6400 when resampled to same res, and shows more detail and at lower ISO when you get the full benefit of the resolution, it is much better than either.

Dec 08, 2016 at 09:14 PM

gdanmitchell
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

Probably red tailed hawks? (Possibly Swain's hawks?)

For photographs like this — birds backlit against bright sky — it is frequently a good idea to push the exposure compensation perhaps a stop brighter. The camera is likely trying to meter the sky to a neutral luminosity, and the shadow details on your birds will suffer. (I'll bet that if we looked at your histogram we would see a curve that goes no higher than perhaps the middle of the range.)

I'd even go so far as to allow the background to blow out in some cases if the subject is very dark — though you need to balance that against a desire to hold color and/or texture in the sky.

This isn't a 5DsR versus 6D issue.

By the way, I second the motion regarding ISO. I use a 5DsR for landscape, where I typically use ISO 100. But I also use it for wildlife, where I more often use ISO 400-1600.

Dan

Here is a rather different bird, but with a similar challenge.

http://gallery.gdanmitchell.com/gallery/var/resizes/NaturalWorld/Nature/Wildlife/Birds/BaldEagleBranchesFeedingKlamath20160213.jpg

And another...

http://gallery.gdanmitchell.com/gallery/var/resizes/NaturalWorld/Nature/Wildlife/Birds/BaldEagleWinterSnagSNWR20160108.jpg

Dec 08, 2016 at 09:51 PM

dgdg
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

As said above, your image is underexposed. It's not a 5Ds vs 6D issue. Your metering tries to put the sky towards a neutral grey since that is the majority of the image. Not much different from taking an auto exposed image of a white fence or snow. It never turns out white, but neutral grey.

In challenging light you need to set the exposure manually or with exposure compensation. As Whayne suggested, some will memorize how to expose off the sky to render the subject properly.

This image would, like Dan suggested, would not have worked using auto exposure. I set the mode to Manual and used my camera's meter on a patch of snow and probably over exposed 1.5 stops since the bird is brighter than the snow. I took a quick test shot and adjusted my settings after looking for highlight alerts and both sides of the histogram.

http://davidsphotography.zenfolio.com/img/s/v-2/p1967541538-5.jpg

Edited on Dec 08, 2016 at 11:16 PM · View previous versions

Dec 08, 2016 at 11:08 PM

OntheRez
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

Obviously a large raptor that doesn't mind people. In my experience, that tends to rule out red tails. I've seen Coopers and Swainsons in more populated areas. Working against the size of the insulators don't think it's an Applomado (sp?). Too small.

As others have mentioned and it has taking me a while to realize that there are times when the light meter lies. This is classic. It responded to all the sky, not the darker birds. Given they were stationary, I'd suggest pushing well into the "over exposed" range. Also, if they stayed around, I'd try a variety of settings hopping to hit the right one. I've gotten better cause I've learned to try cheating in tough light conditions.

Robert

Dec 08, 2016 at 11:15 PM

billsamuels
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

gdanmitchell wrote:
Probably red tailed hawks? (Possibly Swain's hawks?)

For photographs like this — birds backlit against bright sky — it is frequently a good idea to push the exposure compensation perhaps a stop brighter. The camera is likely trying to meter the sky to a neutral luminosity, and the shadow details on your birds will suffer. (I'll bet that if we looked at your histogram we would see a curve that goes no higher than perhaps the middle of the range.)

I'd even go so far as to allow the background to blow out in some cases if the subject is very dark — though...Show more →

Thanks for the explanation. My concern is that once I upped the ISO to about 6400 and while I wanted to crop the photo because of the camera's high MP, but what I got instead was a very grainy photo as I cropped and enlarged the subject that was moderately far away, such as these birds. So I've been a little gun-shy to crank the ISO up if I'm going to crop a far-off bird because it would seem to create its own problems.

I'm going out this weekend and try again, so I'll try it with a higher ISO.

Dec 08, 2016 at 11:18 PM

dgdg
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

Low light is low light. Combine that with f/9 and things get even worse. Then capture a subject that barely fills your frame and it all falls apart to the recycle bin.
If your ISO is too high, then you need to stabilize your gear, turn on IS, and shoot from a tripod. For slow moving subjects I comfortably use a shutter speed of 1/250, but that is at f/4. For a perched bird, try going even slower with a cable release.

When it's dark and you are at f/9, it's tough. You need a larger aperture or more light.

Dec 08, 2016 at 11:23 PM

billsamuels
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

Here are a couple of other photos of raptors, one of him flying away, which didn't turn out that bad once I used LR to pull in the colors that were too dark, and the second while another was hanging in the trees, though the photo was a bit blurred from moving the lens.

The second set are some ducks just down the road about 1/4 of a mile. All three sets are from the same photo, but I cut out the two sets of ducks separately and sharpened them. This was why I used the 5DSR instead of the 6D because the photo is relatively sharp and well held together, whereas I don't think the 6D photo would hold up if I cropped this much. The last photo is the actual photo uncropped so you can see just how much I zoomed in. All of these photos were a bit under-exposed, but the duck photo was less.

I think Canon still does a good job holding onto the data even when the photo appears to be under-exposed.

Dec 09, 2016 at 12:30 AM

schlotz
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

800mm but @1/250

Dec 09, 2016 at 07:47 AM

gdanmitchell
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

OntheRez wrote:
Obviously a large raptor that doesn't mind people. In my experience, that tends to rule out red tails. I've seen Coopers and Swainsons in more populated areas. Working against the size of the insulators don't think it's an Applomado (sp?). Too small.

As others have mentioned and it has taking me a while to realize that there are times when the light meter lies. This is classic. It responded to all the sky, not the darker birds. Given they were stationary, I'd suggest pushing well into the "over exposed" range. Also, if they stayed around, I'd try a variety of settings...Show more →

Actually, if you are working from a blind or are in a vehicle and using long lenses, you most certainly can get this close and closer to such raptors... including red tails, which I frequently photograph. In fact, just last week I was able to photograph a red tail from perhaps 15-20 feet from my vehicle as it perched on a fence post at a refuge. With my 100-400mm lens the bird turned out to be much, much larger in the frame than in these examples. I'm also sometimes able to photograph then through the open sun roof of one of my vehicles as I pass beneath trees in which they perch. I will admit that they have a tendency to quickly become skittish and take off.

A quick hint. Taking time to carefully meter a scene like this in order to calculate how much exposure compensation to use can be unrealistic in the moment. From experience I have learned to make educated guesses. When doing this I tend to err on the side of underexposure in most cases, since today's cameras often provide a good amount of shadow recovery potential while a blown sky is a blown sky. My go-to adjustment is about 1 stop of exposure compensation.

(I also tend toward perhaps 1/3 stop of underexposure by default when photographing birds with bright areas of feathers, and perhaps a bit more in sunny conditions.)

Thanks for reminding me that the name is "Swainson's" and not "Swains!" I know these birds by experience, but I'm often terrible at recalling names without looking them up.

billsamuels wrote:
Thanks for the explanation. My concern is that once I upped the ISO to about 6400 and while I wanted to crop the photo because of the camera's high MP, but what I got instead was a very grainy photo as I cropped and enlarged the subject that was moderately far away, such as these birds. So I've been a little gun-shy to crank the ISO up if I'm going to crop a far-off bird because it would seem to create its own problems.

Noise reduction in post is your friend! Think of it this way: Would you rather have a motion blurred and underexposed photograph with very low noise... or a sharp and well exposed photograph that can be improved by using noise reduction in post?

Also, there are limits to how much cropping you can do, even with a very high resolution sensor camera. Too many other factors eventually begin to impinge on image quality.

Dan

Dec 09, 2016 at 09:34 AM

arbitrage
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

billsamuels wrote:
Here are a couple of other photos of raptors, one of him flying away, which didn't turn out that bad once I used LR to pull in the colors that were too dark, and the second while another was hanging in the trees, though the photo was a bit blurred from moving the lens.

The second set are some ducks just down the road about 1/4 of a mile. All three sets are from the same photo, but I cut out the two sets of ducks separately and sharpened them. This was why I used the 5DSR instead of the 6D...Show more →

Thanks for sharing more examples. All you have to do is up the ISO in these to 800 and things will look a million times better.

If you aren't shooting in M mode I would highly recommend trying to learn to do so. I made the switch to M mode a couple years ago and it was a bit of a learning curve but it is so much better now. Basically you start to learn exposures way better. Easy to do as you set something close and take a shot and review on the LCD...histogram should have lots of data in the right side. Make sure you turn on the highlight alert so it blinks at overexposed areas. Try to have no blinkies other than in a bright sky. In your first photo of the thread the proper exposure would have the whole sky blinking but that is okay. On a very white bird a few small blinkies are also okay.

Dec 09, 2016 at 10:05 AM

gdanmitchell
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

arbitrage wrote:
Thanks for sharing more examples. All you have to do is up the ISO in these to 800 and things will look a million times better.

If you aren't shooting in M mode I would highly recommend trying to learn to do so. I made the switch to M mode a couple years ago and it was a bit of a learning curve but it is so much better now. Basically you start to learn exposures way better. Easy to do as you set something close and take a shot and review on the LCD...histogram should have lots of data in...Show more →

Learning to shoot in M mode is, indeed, instructive. I recommend it for subjects such as landscapes, where I use it exclusively.

I don't recommend in any but a few very rare cases for wildlife photography, however. Things just happen too fast and exposure variable are too large. Imagine a bird tracking across the sky, moving from in front of you with the bird front lit against a relatively dark sky to circling around to the side with side light and perhaps a foliage background, and then continuing so that it is starkly backlit against a bright sky.

Which brings up another point. One must be prepared to miss a lot of shots when photographing wildlife!

Dan

Dec 09, 2016 at 10:20 AM

billsamuels
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

schlotz wrote:
800mm but @1/250

I admire your attempt but the result... well, blurred. Just maybe with 1/500 but I would be higher than that. Bump the ISO! Ignoring IS, the normal rule is SS=1/mm

The raptor above: a max 400mm rig but shot at 140mm... is this SOOC or cropped? Still under exposed IMO. ISO of 200 should be around 640 maybe higher.

Know you are trying to get clean shots but learning how good the Canon's are at higher ISO can really help. Many above have provided spot on suggestions. With Canon it's best to get the exposure right, i.e....Show more →

Here is where I don't understand how to get such a CLEAN and sharp photo out of LR in post. If you look at the photos I took, there is some grain even at ISO 400. This is why I was hesitant to use 800 or 3200 or even something higher than 3200. And I'm somewhat new to the Canon 5DSR as I've been using the 6D for many years. I'm still trying to figure out how it works. These photos are blurred, and they seem to be grainy, a little, but still grainy despite the lower ISO of 400.

I play around with the "noise" shifters, but what combination, if there is one, seems to produce the best noise reduction without removing sharpness? I usually pull the sharpness (top one) button all or mostly all the way to the right.

---------------------------------------------

gdanmitchell wrote:
Actually, if you are working from a blind or are in a vehicle and using long lenses, you most certainly can get this close and closer to such raptors... including red tails, which I frequently photograph. In fact, just last week I was able to photograph a red tail from perhaps 15-20 feet from my vehicle as it perched on a fence post at a refuge. With my 100-400mm lens the bird turned out to be much, much larger in the frame than in these examples. I'm also sometimes able to photograph then through the open sun roof of one...Show more →

---------------------------------------------

The raptors where these were taken are really skittish - they allow hunting down the ways a bit so I'm sure when they see a long 400mm lens w/ that 2x extender on it and it looks a lot like a shotgun!

arbitrage wrote:
Thanks for sharing more examples. All you have to do is up the ISO in these to 800 and things will look a million times better.

If you aren't shooting in M mode I would highly recommend trying to learn to do so. I made the switch to M mode a couple years ago and it was a bit of a learning curve but it is so much better now. Basically you start to learn exposures way better. Easy to do as you set something close and take a shot and review on the LCD...histogram should have lots of data in...Show more →

Actually, the past couple of years, I always shoot in Manual Mode and I generally shoot about a 1/2 to 3/4 stop below, especially if I'm using the Zeiss 25mm ZE because if I don't, it's bleached out. I got it used so I don't think there's a defect I could do anything about, but when I under-expose about 3/4 stop, the photos are great w/ the Zeiss. But with the Canon lenses, I also notice that the photos seem about 1/4 stop brighter than they need to be if I put it right in the middle.
---------------------------------------------

gdanmitchell wrote:
Learning to shoot in M mode is, indeed, instructive. I recommend it for subjects such as landscapes, where I use it exclusively.

I don't recommend in any but a few very rare cases for wildlife photography, however. Things just happen too fast and exposure variable are too large. Imagine a bird tracking across the sky, moving from in front of you with the bird front lit against a relatively dark sky to circling around to the side with side light and perhaps a foliage background, and then continuing so that it is starkly backlit against a bright sky.

Which brings...Show more →

Dan - thanks for the excellent point. I'm fairly new to photographing birds. I have been photographing landscapes for 38 years, but landscapes usually don't get up and fly away. Only recently did I decide to start getting serious with bird photography, in part because I want to go to the NE and photograph Loons, my all-time favorite bird. I've only seen a couple in real life, so if I could get it down, that would be great to go out east and get some really good stuff!

Dec 09, 2016 at 02:17 PM

gdanmitchell
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

billsamuels wrote:
Dan - thanks for the excellent point. I'm fairly new to photographing birds. I have been photographing landscapes for 38 years, but landscapes usually don't get up and fly away. Only recently did I decide to start getting serious with bird photography, in part because I want to go to the NE and photograph Loons, my all-time favorite bird. I've only seen a couple in real life, so if I could get it down, that would be great to go out east and get some really good stuff!

I also photographed landscapes for a long before relatively recently developing a passion for photographing birds.

One of the things that I didn't mention earlier is that photographing wildlife takes a lot of practice!. Even once you get rather good at it you will still have a lot of failures, and failures that thud harder than a typical landscape failure: missed focus, bad exposure, motion blur, empty sky full of no bird at all (!), and much more.

When I first photographed birds I really did not know what I was doing. At first it was nearly impossible, for example, even to track a moving bird and keep it in the viewfinder. With practice I got better at that, but the shutter press often disrupted my flow. Eventually I got past that. (These days my touch on the shutter is very light and quick.) Then, as the process of learning and practice continued I began to be able more reliably keep the bird under the AF point(s). Then I got to the point where I could maintain and awareness of the background sky and landscape while tracking the bird, and even think about composition in those terms while tracking. (This stopped my from madly firing at anything that moved.)

Practice, practice, practice!

Dan

Dec 09, 2016 at 04:15 PM

arbitrage
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

gdanmitchell wrote:
Learning to shoot in M mode is, indeed, instructive. I recommend it for subjects such as landscapes, where I use it exclusively.

I don't recommend in any but a few very rare cases for wildlife photography, however. Things just happen too fast and exposure variable are too large. Imagine a bird tracking across the sky, moving from in front of you with the bird front lit against a relatively dark sky to circling around to the side with side light and perhaps a foliage background, and then continuing so that it is starkly backlit against a bright sky.

Which brings...Show more →

Shooting in M although not perfect for changin light is much better for changing size of the subject (like bird flying towards you) and changing backgrounds. In those cases having a set M exposure ensures no matter how the camera meters with differing amounts of subject/BG the bird is properly exposed. With changing light even shooting in Av or Tv ain't going to work most of the time unless you get lucky.

All serious bird photogs that I know use M for 90% of the time. There are some situations where Av and Tv make some sense but those are few and far between. IMHO, YMMV

Dec 09, 2016 at 05:39 PM

dgdg
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · 5DSR vs 6D in dark areas but cropping photos

My 5D3 does not have exposure compensation in manual mode which is nice for times when the light keeps changing on me (passing clouds or sunrise/sunset) while photographing animals behind the same background. In this situation Av mode works well for me.
If I'm using both my 1Dx and 5D3, then for simplicity, I'll put my 1Dx in the same Av mode as well. Otherwise, I prefer either manual with auto iso plus exposure comp, or full manual. Just depends.

No matter which method used, one needs to look at the histogram with a test shot and adjust. Under exposure with high iso is not a good thing.

Dec 09, 2016 at 05:55 PM

1 2 3 4 end
FM Forums \| Canon Forum \| Join Upload & Sell 1 2 3 4 end

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.