chris_tribble Posted October 12, 2009 Author Share #41 Posted October 12, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) Some very useful comments on related issues by Piero - if you've not noticed, you might like to visit: http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m9-forum/101998-testing-m9-non-conventional-situation.html#post1074943 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted October 12, 2009 Posted October 12, 2009 Hi chris_tribble, Take a look here M9 - learning some lessons. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
sean_reid Posted October 12, 2009 Share #42 Posted October 12, 2009 Hi Sean, me and my family went to Appl picking picking in Connecticut yesterday around noon time. bright sunshine and it was a beautiful day. I took some shots with the M9 and 28mm F8 or 11. the pictures seems to be like they were under exposure. one of the forum member did mention on another thread that the M9 pictures are darker than the M8. what is your opinion on this? Tks DL How did you meter the subject and what adjustments did you make to the exposure? Cheers, Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Leung Posted October 12, 2009 Share #43 Posted October 12, 2009 How did you meter the subject and what adjustments did you make to the exposure? Cheers, I didn't really do anything when I took the pictures. it was a bright sunny day. so I use both F8 and F11. shutter speed about 250 to 500. no EV adjustment. tks DL Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sean_reid Posted October 12, 2009 Share #44 Posted October 12, 2009 I didn't really do anything when I took the pictures. it was a bright sunny day. so I use both F8 and F11. shutter speed about 250 to 500. no EV adjustment. tks DL So the camera set the exposure in "A"? If yes, keep in mind that the metering on all of the recent M cameras use very simple systems that often need input from the photographer. The trick is to watch the histogram and tweak things as needed. None of the M cameras are such that one can set the meter to A and let the camera handle metering on its own. Of course, not even DSLRs with elaborate metering systems will work well like that in contrasty light. I'd suggest treating the metered exposure in an camera as a starting point only. Cheers, Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Leung Posted October 12, 2009 Share #45 Posted October 12, 2009 So the camera set the exposure in "A"? If yes, keep in mind that the metering on all of the recent M cameras use very simple systems that often need input from the photographer. The trick is to watch the histogram and tweak things as needed. None of the M cameras are such that one can set the meter to A and let the camera handle metering on its own. Of course, not even DSLRs with elaborate metering systems will work well like that in contrasty light. I'd suggest treating the metered exposure in an camera as a starting point only. Cheers, Hi Sean, thanks for the information and lesson. will work on this the coming weekend Tks DL Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
robertwright Posted October 12, 2009 Share #46 Posted October 12, 2009 this has nothing to do with the M9 per se, but I have found that it makes a difference who you are shooting for; if you are doing work for news or wire services the whole entre is more informal, the arrangements quicker, and when you arrive the subject expects a few pictures and then you to be gone. Whereas if you are shooting for a national magazine publication the setup is more negotiated, the editor usually communicates to the subject that the process will entail setup(s) and some time, and perhaps a crew with lighting. So the subject buys in to the different requirements ahead of time. What is interesting is that I have worked both ways and once everyone accepts what is going to happen, it has less of an impact on the subject than you would think. But if an editor does not clear a path ahead of time it is very hard to arrive and change expectations. Anyway light is colour and when rooms are neutral they are usually very sterile, so imo colour casts are welcome and can add mood and feeling. If we remember back to film days printing a situation like this neg film gets pretty nasty when you start to remove tungsten and fluorescent shifts. Usually better to print the neg as they say. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lars_bergquist Posted October 12, 2009 Share #47 Posted October 12, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) How the devil did we manage this when we had only daylight and tungsten Kodachrome? We used black and white, is what we did. The old man from the Age of Cooked Tri-X Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_tribble Posted October 12, 2009 Author Share #48 Posted October 12, 2009 Ah .... fond memories of reticulated negatives covered in dust and scratches coming back from Studio Times in Colombo, Sri Lanka in the good old days () .... Photochemical processing - didn't you love it! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tgray Posted October 12, 2009 Share #49 Posted October 12, 2009 Reticulated negatives? Never had those Some of these mixed lighting situations can be helped quite a bit with about 1 minute's worth of work in LAB. I agree that sometimes it helps the mood to have some color casts preserved from different light sources, but toning them down a bit does help a lot of times. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_tribble Posted October 12, 2009 Author Share #50 Posted October 12, 2009 Some of these mixed lighting situations can be helped quite a bit with about 1 minute's worth of work in LAB. I agree that sometimes it helps the mood to have some color casts preserved from different light sources, but toning them down a bit does help a lot of times. Maybe we'll need to shift all of this into the post processing area - but I'd be interested to hear your comments on LAB. It's remained a dark art for me - the same as those PS colour gurus (Margolis?) recommended taking everything across into CMYK and adjusting curve slopes... I could sort of see what they were on about - but then got too busy making photos. Hey - maybe what I really need is an assistant to carry the lighting rig AND a print maker to do all the twiddly bits. Ah well - maybe one day when I grow up ... Seriously though - any advice on LAB in relation to the kinds of mixed light problems we've been having would be interesting... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
skimmel Posted October 12, 2009 Share #51 Posted October 12, 2009 The one I have is the size of a credit card. Don't know if that is the pocket or keychain. Sounds more like a pocket-size. Smaller than that would cause you trouble. Thanks. Sounds like the one I'm thinking of (3.5x2" ). Are you able to use that size to set manual WB within the M9 (i.e., take picture of card with M9 when set to manual WB)? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tgray Posted October 12, 2009 Share #52 Posted October 12, 2009 Well, I just got finished reading Margolis's (sp? ) book on LAB. Quite interesting. I was already correcting some color casts from mixed lighting in LAB. Since I still shoot film, I was stuck with basically daylight since there are only 1 or 2 tungsten films left, and they are SLOW. I had started to correct some casts and crossover using LAB and I decided to check out the book. Very good stuff in there. Anyway, the gist of it is this. Convert your photo into LAB. Look at the A or the B channel. The A channel is going to be the magenta/green channel, and the B is the yellow/blue channel. If the channels are 50% gray, that means there is no color. This lets you pick apart mixed lighting. In your example of the kid on the light box, the kid is white balanced, but the back wall is green, as is most of the room. While playing around with that image, I decided to use the A channel since I was going after green. Select that channel (apple-option-4 will make a selection from the A channel) and make an adjustment layer - I used curves. The selection will be made into a layer mask for the adjustment layer. It's pretty ineffective at this point since it's such low contrast, so option click the mask to view it and apply Levels to it to raise the contrast. I used something like 125 and 155 for the end points of the Levels command. Then blur it and invert depending on what you are going to correct - I did in this case. At this point, you are ready to go. Go start editing the A and B curves. If you used the color correction tool instead, you can work with that. I got better results on your image with curves. Then you are basically done. Since it's a low light shot, the boy's skin tone is a bit anemic to me. You can punch that up some in LAB to give it a bit more life, though you need to be careful because the woman's pink shirt goes electric, so you need to de-emphasize that, which is easily done with blending options. I've attached the curves I used. I can upload the edited pic if you want. 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 Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/99755-m9-learning-some-lessons/?do=findComment&comment=1072518'>More sharing options...
Steve Pope Posted October 12, 2009 Share #53 Posted October 12, 2009 Anyway light is colour and when rooms are neutral they are usually very sterile, so imo colour casts are welcome and can add mood and feeling. Yes, well said. Despite not being a strictly accurate representation (you could say the same thing about grittily 'realistic' black & white photography) colour casts have become an integral part of the aesthetic of verite and reportage. Dodgy white balance is bound up with a stylistic convention that has come to denote 'truth', as demonstrated by many a nocturnal 1980s BBC documentary shot in the London Underground system...or that moment when heroin-chic broke through in edgy fashion photography. Maybe advances in digital technology will gradually alter this expectation and documentary 'real life' will increasingly need to conform to the correct colour temperatures in order to look satisfyingly convincing and contemporary? I'd argue you can see something of that shift when you compare the look of today's generic reality TV with its classical fly-on-the-wall predecessor... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gravastar Posted October 12, 2009 Share #54 Posted October 12, 2009 Am I correct in assuming this is the book that people are referring to: Photoshop LAB Color - The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace; Dan Margulis (Peachpit Press, 2005) , ISBN-10: 0-321-35678-0 and ISBN-13: 978-0-321-35678-9 Thanks. Bob. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tgray Posted October 12, 2009 Share #55 Posted October 12, 2009 Yes that is the book I read. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_tribble Posted October 13, 2009 Author Share #56 Posted October 13, 2009 Thanks. Sounds like the one I'm thinking of (3.5x2" ). Are you able to use that size to set manual WB within the M9 (i.e., take picture of card with M9 when set to manual WB)? Absolutely - this was one of the major learning points for me. To set Manual Exposure, walk over to the the area where the light's going to be tricky, hold the card at an angle where you'll get good illumination from the major light source(s) and you can set Manual WB (without bothering about focus) by shooting at a distance of 5 cms or so, so that the card fills the frame. It works! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_tribble Posted October 13, 2009 Author Share #57 Posted October 13, 2009 I've attached the curves I used. I can upload the edited pic if you want. Yes please... Really interesting to see! Best. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tgray Posted October 13, 2009 Share #58 Posted October 13, 2009 Ok, here you go. It's not perfect I for one don't have a calibrated monitor here. But you get the idea of how you can affect one color cast and not the other. I used the curves in the previous post on an adjustment layer that had the A channel as a mask. I leveled the mask to make it contrasty, and blurred and inverted it. I think I might have brought the blacks down just a tiny bit too since there was some nasty noise under the table from compression, etc.I probably should have left that alone... 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 Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/99755-m9-learning-some-lessons/?do=findComment&comment=1073234'>More sharing options...
skimmel Posted October 13, 2009 Share #59 Posted October 13, 2009 Absolutely - this was one of the major learning points for me. It works! Awesome, thanks! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexanderruas Posted October 14, 2009 Share #60 Posted October 14, 2009 ....Sh*t - I'm clearly still feeling defensive!... don't feel defensive! you are doing us all a great service by showing us the pics and describing the situation. it's totally great that we can all come together like this and problem solve. all of us working photographers run into situations like this. too little time, too much to shoot, terrible lighting...! thanks!! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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