M8 at 2500

[chris_tribble]

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I'd not needed to use 2500 for real before, but did a shoot last week for my son and daughter-in-law's band in North London. Worked mainly with the 28 cron f.2 and an older model pre-asph 75 lux. Very pleased with the results in colour or black and white. Meterinw was spot on with EV compensation set at -1 (how nice to have the histogram to check things out before starting serious work).

 

Very pleased with how easy it was to focus in very low light and without using the magnifier on the 75... SO much better than my M6 TTL.

 

Post process was in Lightroom and I'm pretty satisfied - sharpening and noise control could be better, but the B&W process is the best I've worked with. Colour and B&W versions of one shot here. A B&W set can be seen at Infants at the Artrocker.

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[wparsonsgisnet]

Chris, I have used 2500 many times with great success. It beats hi-speed film, cold!

 

I find that Neat Image does very well with the noise in images of all iso rating, but particularly with the higher-iso ones.

[chris_tribble]

Bill - I've not tried this. I played with Noise Ninja and still found that there were a few strange artefacts in shadows - but this may be the way Lightroom deals with luminance noise. I'm going to play C1 on the same files and see if there's a difference...

 

re the comparison with film - yep! Remember trying to shoot Provia 1600 (and get hold of it!) and remember all the fun and games with processing Delta...

[wparsonsgisnet]

Chris,

 

I'm processing in C1, with Edmund's profiles, doing wb, crop, and any curve shifting I wish.

I move the resulting tiff to PS and use Neat Image in there, along with any other changes I might like. Then I print from within PS.

 

Neat Image takes most of the nasties out of the shadows. I think I've got some examples that I will post.

[chris_tribble]

Bill interested to see. I hate the work flow in CS Pro, but might be persuaded for these jobs... hoping also that LR gets better!

[wparsonsgisnet]

Chris et al,

 

Here is a crop of an iso 2500 pic that was also underexposed. I have cranked up the exposure curve in C1 (LE) and cropped it.

 

The first pic is the for-web reduction of the crop; the second, with Neat Image applied. At viewing distances, I am delighted with the results.

 

I goosed the exposure curve so much that the right third is mostly at the max.

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[wparsonsgisnet]

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Here is another image in 2 versions.

 

M8, 24mm, 486 filter, iso 2500, cropped.

All images using the relevant profile from Edmund.

First, no NR; second, Neat Image.

 

This image was not underexposed and has not had the exposure cranked up.

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[LJL]

Bill,

Nice stuff. The Neat Image rendition is obviously taking out a bit of detail in things, but honestly, I think it is not objectionable at all. And it makes a nice capture far more usable for printing and especially online viewing. I have been using Noise Ninja with success before the M8, but Neat Image looks like it is doing a very nice job and not as brutal as NN would be for the same level of noise reduciton on an underexposed shot.

 

Thanks for posting this....

 

LJ

[wparsonsgisnet]

My take on noise reduction, at least using Neat Image, is that the roundness of Leica-made images returns, as a result of removing lots of dots that got in the way (the noise).

 

I apply noise reduction to all my digital images, even those shot at the lowest iso setting. I do not use any sharpening at this time, and have turned it off in C1 and any other process applications. I find that it introduces artifacts that I am not pleased with and I'm not screwing around with the images from my kilobuck lenses.

 

After the NR, there is "grain" remaining in the hi-iso shots, but it looks like grain to me, that is, it's not pernicious or annoying.

[wparsonsgisnet]

What I really like about Neat Image can be seen in the second pair of shots.

 

Look at the shadowed portion of the leg under the dancer. In the first shot there is black mange all over the leg (tights and skin). In the second, it more realistically resembles a shadow.

 

We will always miss what film did in this circumstance, but the multiple advantages of digital more than make up to me for what has been lost when using film.

 

I would have shot these with Fuji NPZ (or whatever designation refers to their iso 800-pro color neg film, this week). I found their 800-pro neg film could be pushed a stop without losing saturation and also tolerated incandescent light very well.

 

I'm a digiguy, now.

[wparsonsgisnet]

... The Neat Image rendition is obviously taking out a bit of detail in things, but honestly, I think it is not objectionable at all. And it makes a nice capture far more usable for printing and especially online viewing...

 

LJ, part of the loss of detail is due to the Extreme gain applied in the exposure crank. Part is due to the 2500 setting. We know that there is a lot of noise when we goose the sensor.

 

Hre's a comparison using iso 160. As I have indicated above, the rendering is much to my liking.

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[LJL]

Bill,

I understand that part, but was referring more to how Neat Image was hadling both the luminance and color noise. The loss of detail comes with the required smoothing in the noise reduction algorithm, and also a bit of a contrast reduction that suppresses some edges a bit.

 

The point I was trying to make is that Noise Ninja, even with its ability to adjust the various parameters, still tends to take out a bit more detail when it is cranked up to get more noise reduction. Just how the different apps do their thing. I like how Neat Image is not clobbering too much detail while still getting most of the ugly luminance noise, plus most of the color noise too.

 

LJ

[wparsonsgisnet]

Well, that's hard to see. However, it was version 1.102.

 

Here's a 1.092, still using Edmund's profiles, with and without Neat Image, again at iso 160.

 

When this is printed (with the immense amount of detail available when not squeezed into a web-size image), I refer to it as my cousin rendered a-la Richard Avedon.

 

To me, the image is more immediate with the NR.

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[woodda]

Many Thanks for doing the test. This is just my opinion but is not the Neat imaged file soft and has lost detail. I see it is smoother and misses the noise but I miss the contrast of the original, shame about the noise though

[wparsonsgisnet]

Many Thanks for doing the test. This is just my opinion but is not the Neat imaged file soft and has lost detail. I see it is smoother and misses the noise but I miss the contrast of the original, shame about the noise though

 

Darrell, yes it is smoothed. You just have to take my word for it that it looks really good when it hasn't been downsized as much as is necessary to get the image here.

 

In my process, Neat Image makes the pix more immediate and skin looks more skinlike (softer, more touchable -- gotta stop here before the skin police show up).

 

I think you can get trial versions of all the NR programs. Nibble at one. Then you won't have to take anyone's word.

[chris_tribble]

Bill - interesting and useful. What's now happend is that I've gone back and reviewed C1 output alongside LR and I actually prefer what LR is doing. I'm getting more detail in shadows and (for this kind of shot) don't really feel the need for any additional noise reduction. I'm attaching 100% crops from LR (first) and C1.

- though when I look at these I realise that there are other issues with the way the highlight recovery in the LR version is a problem, so maybe the comparison isn't fair... difficult isn't it!

 

On the way Neat Image had softened the images, I tend to agree with some of the other comments - but it's always difficult to judge on screen compared with the final print, so I'd rather take your word for it!.

 

Best

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[wparsonsgisnet]

Chris, I prefer the C1 version.

 

In the pix I posted above, here they definitely look like they have lost detail. In fact, the jpg for the NR'd version is smaller than the one that has no NR.

 

But, these are the jpg's. On screen, in PS, the image is much better with NR and doesn't look like it's lost detail.

 

I'm going into a holding pattern. I've blown money on two up-sizers, and then decided I like PS at least as well (at no cost). It looks like a shootout between all the raw processing guys, so I'm gonna wait to see how it goes.

 

I didn't used to use PS because it was no counter-intuitive. I went to it when I started using RAW because I figured that with their market share they'd always be as good as anyone else.

 

 

This could still be true. If that turns out to the be case, I'll be looking for profiles for PS. At that time, the M8's firmware may be stable, and life will get easier for all concerned.

[Jamie Roberts]

Here is another image in 2 versions.

 

M8, 24mm, 486 filter, iso 2500, cropped.

All images using the relevant profile from Edmund.

First, no NR; second, Neat Image.

 

This image was not underexposed and has not had the exposure cranked up.

 

Bill--a couple of points.

 

First, it's crucial you expose "to the right" at ISO 2500. This image *is* underexposed... quite a lot, actually... if you're exposing for the dancer and not the background organ.

 

So there's way more noise here than there needs to be, and way less detail after you smooth it out than there could be.

 

As an aside, there's also something really funky going on with the skin tones here, which are way too magenta and cyan. I'm betting it's White Balance... do you mind me asking how you WB'd this one?

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[wparsonsgisnet]

Bill--a couple of points.

 

First, it's crucial you expose "to the right" at ISO 2500. This image *is* underexposed... quite a lot, actually... if you're exposing for the dancer and not the background organ.

 

So there's way more noise here than there needs to be, and way less detail after you smooth it out than there could be.

 

As an aside, there's also something really funky going on with the skin tones here, which are way too magenta and cyan. I'm betting it's White Balance... do you mind me asking how you WB'd this one?

 

Jamie, First, the wb -- I used a WhiBal card at the end of the shoot and balanced all the pix with that gray. The overhead lights were some funky combination of incancescant and either fluerescent or something else with a lousy color frequency. When I applied the wb in C1, I thot the colors cleaned up a lot.

 

I agree the organ is blown out (no pun intended), but I really want the dancer to be the focal point, so if I have to bring skin up from the lower zones, it's really going to be noisy. I tried to get the skin in a high enuf zone that they'd look like people.

 

I took these pix for a friend (her dance and dancers) and sat in the front row. If they were for me, I would have come at dress rehearsal and positioned myself where the damn organ weren't in the background -- or maybe had them turn off the lights that show off the pipes.

 

I posted that particular picture because of the way I felt Neat Image cleaned up the shadow on the leg. I am really pleased at its ability in that part of the image.

[DaveEP]

Firstly, for 'some' shots I find the M8 very usable at ISO 2500. Other shots ...hmmm... not so usable. I think a lot depends on the viewer perception of the shot, an comparing it to what they have seen before. For instance, a band in low lighting their brain is some how automatically trained to know that there is some noise in 'all' shots (regardless of camera), so it seems more acceptable in the first place. If however you had left ISO2500 on by mistake and shot outside on a sunny day, things would not seem so pretty....

 

As for C1 vs LR, I think a lot depends on the shot. I have not used C1 much recently, but go back to it from time to time with a particular shot if I feel there is more to get from it than I am getting from LR or ACR. Some times it's better, and some times I prefer the LR/ACR version. It really is shot dependant. I am however looking forward to v4. I saw an early beta running some time ago and it was MUCH faster at processing than v3 is. I am also waiting to see how they have improved the raw converter, and user interface. I was assured that the interface I saw was not final - and they were still making changes..... I hope so !

 

Regarding noise reduction, for some shots it really works well, but I hesitate to use it on all shots. I read with interest that Bill uses it on 'every' shot. Perhaps you can explain more about 'why' you do this Bill, and how much difference you can see on regular prints (I typically only print up to A2+).....