Shadows recovery: a remarkable experience

[Samir Jahjah]

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I took this picture at night, at ISO 160 with a Leica M8 and the Elmarit-M 28 mm coded and with IR filter. I pushed it in Lightzone 3.1, first by 2 stops, then 4 (then corresponding to about ISO 2400). The results are amazing. The histogram shows how much information can be recovered from the shadows.

[dugby]

Very good............

 

Interestingly you might get even more without the IR filter...........

 

(now that will cause red-eyes to roll)

[bbodine9]

Great recovery but my question is to what do you attribute this to, the M8 or LightZone ? Or is it a combination of both ?

[sdommin]

Most digicams give more detail in the shadows than what you might expect - even those taken in JPG instead of RAW. The problem now is getting info back from those highlights.

[erl]

Most digicams give more detail in the shadows than what you might expect - even those taken in JPG instead of RAW. The problem now is getting info back from those highlights.

 

It's worth a try of C1 Beta4. My preliminary foray into it seems very promising. It has tools to control the highlights when recovering the shadow detail. One mistake is to attempt too much shadow detail recovery. You can uncover noise and ends up looking 'unreal' because your eye expects to lose some detail in shadows with pics like the above.

[Samir Jahjah]

It's worth a try of C1 Beta4. My preliminary foray into it seems very promising. It has tools to control the highlights when recovering the shadow detail. One mistake is to attempt too much shadow detail recovery. You can uncover noise and ends up looking 'unreal' because your eye expects to lose some detail in shadows with pics like the above.

 

Obviously there is noise, but much less than if I had taken the picture at ISO 2400, which is interesting enough.

 

I have not tried C1 yet.

[Samir Jahjah]

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Great recovery but my question is to what do you attribute this to, the M8 or LightZone ? Or is it a combination of both ?

 

The M8. I can replicate this in Aperture as well.

[stunsworth]

You can get similar recovery with other digital cameras. Certainly my Canon 5D can do similar. As Erl says the trick is not to overdo the recovery. In Photoshop you can use the shadows/highlights adjustment.

[farnz]

Samir,

 

I notice that your recovery of the shadow detail has unfortunately further blown out the highlights in the wall lights - perhaps this is to be expected since you're altering the exposure so all levels will be adjusted by the same amount.

 

If you use shadows/highlights adjustment in Photoshop you will be able to hold the highlights at the same time as recovering the shadow detail.

 

Pete.

[Samir Jahjah]

Samir,

 

I notice that your recovery of the shadow detail has unfortunately further blown out the highlights in the wall lights - perhaps this is to be expected since you're altering the exposure so all levels will be adjusted by the same amount.

 

If you use shadows/highlights adjustment in Photoshop you will be able to hold the highlights at the same time as recovering the shadow detail.

 

Pete.

 

You can do the same here too, I was just showing the impact of the shadow adjustment.

[gogopix]

There have been several suggestions that using 160 and pushing is less noisy prone than 1600. It may be a resuklt of the Leica mapping to 8 bits!

In their scheme, on the M8, there are more bits allocated to the darker tones than to the lighter tones (arging that once at a certain brightness, one cannot distinguish as well as in the darker shadows.

Whether true or not from a vision POV, it seems it has the side benefit of allowing more 'push' for shadow recover.

Nice example!

 

Victor

[jrc]

I don't even mind the blown highlights. In that sort of situation, I expect my naked eye to be somewhat dazzled by the light, if I've been looking into the dark; somehow, it almost looks more natural to me.

 

JC