Low Light, High Noise and ISO Invariance

Hi Folks:

It was a dark and stormy night. I’ve always wanted to write that… haven’t you? Okay, in this case it wasn’t night (mid-to-late afternoon) and it was sunny rather than stormy, but it was dark. Marcia and I were on a trip to Tofino, BC and I was wandering along the boardwalk of the Rainforest Trail in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. The elder trees soaring above me blocked out much of the daylight, but they were the reason I was there.

Before we get too far, a few basics to get out of the way. First, I was shooting with a Sony a7Riii camera with the FE 24-105 lens, set to 1/125th second and f/6.3. ISO was set to 5000, but we’ll get to that later. I didn’t bring a tripod that day, but I did have my camera sitting on a Manfrotto monopod. Second, I have no idea what you see when you look at these images. This is partly because I don’t know if your monitor has been calibrated and profiled, and partly because I don’t know if you’re using a web browser that allows colour management and/or if you’ve enabled that. In the end none of that really matters because this is essentially an apples to apples comparison. I should note that this post isn’t targeted toward beginner photographers, but if you read something you don’t understand, please feel free to leave a comment on this post or fill in our Contact Form. The only stupid question is the unasked one.

There are three software packages in this game: Capture One 23 (16.1) is my raw editor. PTGui 12.20 is software for stitching panoramas, and Topaz DeNoise AI 3.7.2 is noise reduction software. AI is a term used ubiquitously these days, but the only intelligence involved here is still with the programmers. AI software uses very large databases of information and certain algorithms to make what one might call educated guesses as to what the user wants. Also, when processing in any of these packages there are what are known as auto adjustments (I’ll refer to them here as AA) and there are also sliders whereby one can tweak the suggested settings. With the exception of the final image, I stuck to AA in order to keep the processing as equivalent as possible.

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Cell Phones, HDR and Panoramas

Hi Folks:

This started out as an idea for a blog post, evolved into a one-hour presentation for our local camera group, and now I’ll try to compress that into a blog post. We’ll see how it goes.

There are several questions to begin with, the first of which is… why do this? The answer is to extend or expand the capabilities of your camera, no matter the camera. There are at least five different reasons that I know of to combine multiple exposures into one image. These are two of them. The second question is, why cell phones? This post doesn’t only involve cell phones, but cell phones are ubiquitous. Some people only make images with their phones, despite the technical challenges, but the bottom line is that it depends on how you’re planning to use your images.

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Why Use HDR?

Hi Folks:

I was at an informal gathering of photographers recently where we were sharing and discussing our work.  I displayed a sunset image that I had made (this one)

Seeing the Light

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Photo of the Month

Hi Folks:

Well, since yesterday was the last day of the month this post may be considered an ‘April Fool’s’ joke, but the only fool in this case is me.  Besides, yesterday was Wednesday and Marcia’s ‘Poetry Corner‘ post and I didn’t want to compete!  Yeah, like that’ll work.  Oh well… 😉

So.  March has been a busy month, photographically speaking.  I made close to 2000 images this month, and while there are those who will shoot that and more in a day, I come from a world of 36 and even 12-exposure rolls of film so I’m still not used to the scattergun approach when it comes to imaging.  Of those 2000 or so images, many were used as the basis for panoramas, or more specifically stitched images, since not all stitched images are panoramas, nor need be. Continue Reading →