Indoor light photography advice

[Neel]

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I used my new M11 with 35 summicron to take some holiday party pictures. Samsung and iPhone pictures put my $9k camera to shame. I need help please. 

[Dazzajl]

Without knowing what you don’t like about your pics, it’s hard to give specific advice. I would say generally you have two paths ahead. One is learn the principles of exposure, so you can use your camera to its strengths and not its disadvantages. The other is to use your phone when the situation is more tricky. They are incredibly powerful tools now and can often be a great choice. 

[Neel]

Agree, I’m still learning this camera. I had my camera set to f5.6, minimum shutter 4x (160) and auto ISO. Situation was indoor lighting. My pictures were shot with varying ISO 1000 - 10000 depending on the subject lighting. I selected f5.6 for approximately 10feet of dof with subject distance around 10 10feet for group shots. 

Edited November 29, 2024 by Neel

[JNK100]

I suggest you post some examples.

I may have misunderstood, but didn't you focus the camera?

Which WB setting did you use also?

[evikne]

Smartphones are made to do all the work for you automatically (HDR etc.), but the M11 forces you to do the thinking yourself. And the post-processing.

One thing to keep in mind is that the light should hit the main subject from the right angle.

[S Maclean]

25 minutes ago, Neel said:

Agree, I’m still learning this camera. I had my camera set to f5.6, minimum shutter 4x (160) and auto ISO. Situation was indoor lighting. My pictures were shot with varying ISO 1000 - 10000 depending on the subject lighting. I selected f5.6 for approximately 10feet of dof with subject distance around 10 10feet. 

This is where the issue is.  ISO being the variable you are choosing the one element that degrades quality.  If light is low and subjects are in motion choose aperture as the main variable and set speed at 70 to 125 ish (on a 35mm) or as close to it to avoid blur and set exposure as low as possible, If subjecgts are not in motion then you can have a lower speed.

As a rule of thumb when in low light my first step is seek the fastest aperture (F2 in your case) then I get set the speed at 125 or close (with a 35 mm not bellow 1/35 speed and possibly good at 1/70.  Next step is to test either on the RF or screen what the exposure is and start modifying ISO until I get the exposure I need.

I typically expose to the highlights, meaning I want the highlight area to be well exposed.  Alternatively I expose to the center of the focus point (basically my main subject)  I do this manually but you can work on automatic modes if you want by spot exposing, highlight exposing or center exposing.

Exposing to the Highlight indoors will often give you high contrast with dark areas being quote dark.  Exposing to the subject will vary depending on the light around the subject, but generaly you'll get some blown highlights and some lost shadow areas IF there is a strong variable of light in the room.  Exposing multi zone will probaboy mean the camera will have to stretch the ISO a little to meet all needs, but then you will start getting some noise.

Phones, etc, expose the image normally, with multi-exposure.  The images may seem more clear because of that, and you can expose on a similar fashion with the m11 on either automatic mode or manually with your eye, but, it's a waste of ANY good lighting condition.

 

DON"T be discouraged. the M11 has a sensor much more capable of taking images of great quality than any phone.  Phones often have large MP counts that are deceiving because of the size resulting of the split pixels.  Often 40MP on a phone is still closer to 12 on a 35mm camera.  You have a great camera and lens, just need practice using it.  It's like someone getting a Ferarri and blowing up the gears becasue they are used to a VW Beatle (also a great car, no shamingg) 

 

[S Maclean]

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13 minutes ago, evikne said:

Smartphones are made to do all the work for you automatically (HDR etc.), but the M11 forces you to do the thinking yourself. And the post-processing.

One thing to keep in mind is that the light should hit the main subject from the right angle.

Why does the light have to hit from the right angle?

[Neel]

Here is a picture from my M11. Thank you for your feedback. 

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[evikne]

42 minutes ago, S Maclean said:

Why does the light have to hit from the right angle?

When shooting in available light, it's important that the light source hits the subject in the right way so that it stands out. If it falls in the shade, the image is ruined. This is of course important in all types of photography, but perhaps even more important when shooting indoors.

Looking at the image above, I don't think that's the problem in this case though, but rather the unnecessarily small aperture and too fast shutter speed, as already mentioned.

Edited November 29, 2024 by evikne

[david strachan]

29 minutes ago, Neel said:

Here is a picture from my M11. Thank you for your feedback. 

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Neel

That's a nice picture to me.  Good colours, nice composition and all focused.

Please tell what you find so problematic with the image.

All best..

[Derbyshire Man]

It doesn't look too bad to me, you've front focussed a bit. The peace lily is in focus more than the rear most subject. You've got them in a line so at that distance you'd have got away with f2.8 probably.

If you turn up the sharpening, vibrance, and every other setting (or click on auto in lightroom) you'll get a photo that looks like a phone photo. What you've got there is basically a pretty raw image ready for turning out to your own style. If you don't want to do that there are a million presets, many of which mirror old film stock.

It is the case however that a phone is auto everything and although the £8k camera has great potential it's only that. Owning a scalpel doesn't make anyone a surgeon! When a tool doesn't have auto you need to learn how to use it.

Definitely don't be disheartened, a few tweaks and you'll be getting there.

All the best.

Edited November 29, 2024 by Derbyshire Man

[S Maclean]

28 minutes ago, evikne said:

When shooting in available light, it's important that the light source hits the subject in the right way so that it stands out. If it falls in the shade, the image is ruined. This is of course important in all types of photography, but perhaps even more important when shooting indoors.

Looking at the image above, I don't think that's the problem in this case though, but rather the unnecessarily small aperture and too fast shutter speed, as already mentioned.

LOL, I thought you where saying it has to hit from the right side.....I was thinking that was rather specific.  But yes, of course, I agree, it has to hit the right way.

Quote

 

 

[Derbyshire Man]

Yes, 'correct' rather than right!

[S Maclean]

The pic is fine. but it looks like you where focusing more on the food than on your lovely family. Which is fine if intended, otherwise focus tack sharp on your family and allow the turkey to loose a little definition...it's a turkey.

 

From a purely aesthetic POV and to my eye it may be a little flat (light sources are very even throughout so there's not much dynamic range).

It looks like there was plenty of light so no need for such High ISO either.  I am guessing you chose 5.6 aperture because you wanted everything in focus, remember that when you stand too close to part of your composition (foreground food) it is going to be harder to have the DOF  cover the background or even mid range image.  If you stand a little further away you can then crop and you have a better chance of getting it all in, even at a smaller aperture.

Iphones shoot around 21 to 28mm btw, which gives them an edge when getting this close. Try the same exact image with either of those lenses and you'll get more in focus. (or take a step back

 

[evikne]

1 hour ago, Neel said:

I selected f5.6 for approximately 10feet of dof with subject distance around 10 10feet for group shots. 

It sounds like you've made use of zone focusing. But here I would much rather use the rangefinder and focus on the people's eyes, which is the most important thing to keep in focus. Zone focusing will never give as good a result, even with a large depth of field.

[evikne]

17 minutes ago, Derbyshire Man said:

Yes, 'correct' rather than right!

Sorry, my English is not so good (in my language these words can be easily confused). 😄

[jaapv]

Don’t forget that your iPhone does extensive processing to the image. Including multishot exposure stacking, noise reduction, colour and contrast balancing etc. It takes quite a bit of postprocessing expertise to get close and in my case the first camera to be able to beat an iPhone 15 is the SL2S with AI processing. 
On top of that, high-resolution sensors are not really low-light champions. 

[jaapv]

1 hour ago, evikne said:

It sounds like you've made use of zone focusing. But here I would much rather use the rangefinder and focus on the people's eyes, which is the most important thing to keep in focus. Zone focusing will never give as good a result, even with a large depth of field.

Agreed. Zone focusing is no more than acceptable misfocus. There is a reason that Leica provides an expensive rangefinder for their M cameras.
For zone focus four settings on the lens would have sufficed: cartoon face, stick man, stick family and  mountain symbol.
A Kodak Brownie was quite good at the discipline. 

[Neel]

Here is the same picture taken standing right next to me from a Samsung phone. My picture is grainy and noisy… when I enlarge to double the size. The one take on the phone, no noise. 
 

Thanks for all the comments. I acknowledge smart phones do a lot more processing. I take from all the feedback, for indoor photography, where you are not in control of lighting, smart phones are probably better. 
 

I also acknowledge I have a long way to go;  new to manual focus Leica system; I have had it for just two weeks. 
 

 

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[Derbyshire Man]

1 hour ago, evikne said:

Sorry, my English is not so good (in my language these words can be easily confused). 😄

Much better than my Norwegian. When I was there earlier in the year everyone assumed we were a Norwegian family. For about 5 seconds each time😂