Jump to content

not impressed,,


nerve

Recommended Posts

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Well, I'm currently shooting a long term project to do a book on breakdancers using medium format b&w film. So far it's taken me about 5000000000000 pictures and might take about another 300000000000 before I'm done. But that's the way most photographers work. At least most of my peers. Doesn't matter whether it's film or digital. There's no way I could shoot such a fast moving subject, on MF at that, and not just shoot and shoot and then edit edit edit. In a work situation you've got to switch yourself on. Yes, sometimes you've got to sit back and wait for the moment but more often than not you've got to make the moment happen just by taking pictures - lots of them!

 

And 90% of the time I'm not even looking through the camera with this project (using Mamiya 6/7 with 50 mm lens and a Hass SWC). How about that Vic? The ultimate in insensitivity!

 

Gary Winongrand would go to a party and shoot off 30 rolls with his Leica. But I guess he was just some sort of unknown hack you'd probably never heard of......

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • Replies 128
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

Posted Images

I also feel that film is vastly superior to digital

 

I'm with you on that as well. I have always much preferred the look of film to digital. But the reality, as you know, is we don't have the choice anymore except for our personal work.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Guest Essemmlee
I once saw a film of some supposedly good photographer named Richard Avedon shooting Nastassja Kinski with a snake

 

I have never heard of anyone being shot with a snake, but I'll look our for it.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I have never heard of anyone being shot with a snake, but I'll look our for it.

 

Now you have.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Link to post
Share on other sites

Avedon, what a hack.

 

Back to noise. It's raining so I tested the 5D for high speed noise since that was the whole point of the op - that the 5D had less noise at high ISOs.

 

I got very good results at 3200 using DxO by being careful not to add much DxO lighting and keeping the local contrast setting very low. (DxO has global and local contrast controls.) I also reduced the saturation from the camera default to medium/low. (I normally do that for my interiors.) And I used the default DxO noise reduction.

 

I shot a room interior with just the windows and light fixture - no supplementary lighting. I used the 45mm TSE lens at f8 and just varied the time and ISO.

 

An overall shot and 100% crop are below.

 

I also posted on my website a series of examples from ISO800 - 3200 that show what happens when you use the DxO fill lighting or noise reduction controls. (other conversion software should be similar.) The DxO fill lighting definitely adds some noise so using supplementary lighting would work better. The samples on the website are made at standard saturation (which is a little too high) and with standard local contrast. I used minimal compression on the jpegs. And I used the automatic white balance and didn't adjust it on the conversions. (I think it is not bad for mixed lighting.) I did not adjust the exposure in DxO. I used "slight" highlight recovery. No sharpening.

 

http://www.goldsteinphoto.com/5d3200/

 

And a full size (large jpeg file) image is available here: (This shot and the ones posted on the forum - the "ideal one" in terms of noise had the highlight recovery off and a few other changes from the ones on the website - med/lo saturation, very little DxO fill lighting, local contrast - zero. (zed for you in UK.)

 

http://www.goldsteinphoto.com/New%20photos/3200idealff.jpg

 

I think this should provide a baseline for any comparisons people want to do.

 

I hope someone will provide a similar test with the M8.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Link to post
Share on other sites

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I should note that the crop above is not 100% to original size due to the site limit. You have to download the full image or look follow the link to that section on my site for 100%

 

I also converted the same 3200 ISO image in C-1 and when I used its noise processing, the noise looked pretty similar (perhaps a bit worse) although the tone curves and other aspects are a little different so that becomes another factor.

 

All of the images get crisper when sharpened but that accentuates the noise slightly so I didn't want to throw still another variable into the mix.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Alan--Your results look highly acceptable on my monitor, even at ISO 3200. One thing baffles me: You have what appear to be tungsten lights on in the room, and quite a bit of daylight coming through the window blinds. These are two very different Kelvin sources, yet both are balanced to appear white in your photo. How did you manage that?

 

ps--Time to get a universal remote. ;-)

Link to post
Share on other sites

These are two very different Kelvin sources, yet both are balanced to appear white in your photo. How did you manage that?

 

ps--Time to get a universal remote. ;-)

 

They are all universal remotes! I'm trying to get the one that came with my digital cable box to control everything but that is just a theoretical possibility at this point.

 

The color balance with daylight and tungsten mixed is one of the very interesting things about shooting digitally. If you look closely, you'll see the grey leather is a little warmer where the light is aimed right at it. But that's usually a nice effect. I've never quite been able to understand why it works so much better than when I shot film. But it does, and I've shot a lot of mixed lighting home interiors on film and digital. (I used to replace the tungsten bulbs with blue ones when I shot film using strobes.) Often I have daylight, strobe, and tungsten mixed. It think the key in this shot is that there is enough daylight filling in the area that also has tungsten. If it were tungsten alone in one area, you'd see it looking a lot warmer.

 

This is a bit off topic but did you know that the old Polaroid 669 and 59 color proofing film had a peculiar reciprocity failure characteristic so that it shifted towards tungsten balance at exposures around 1/2 second? This was localized to the lighting, so mixed strobe and tungsten would work great on it. I always wanted color transparency film that would do that.

 

This was the first time I ever shot on 3200 with the 5D. (I only occassionally go to 400 and rarely to 1600.) I was very surprised that the result can be that good. Part of the reason was that I didn't underexpose and I think I figured out how to get the most from the converter. I wish I had shot some in-camera jpegs for comparison. I'm sure I'll shoot more at 3200 now that I'm not afraid to use it.

 

One other note - if you look closely at the table in any of the 100% shots you'll see it has some uneven color. Like a very subtle blurred moire caused by the whicker pattern. Conversions in C-1 don't have that. This is about the only thing I don't like about DxO.

 

And all of those pillows are from Ikea so anyone in the world can buy them for a color reference in their own tests.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...