It’s been too long

It’s already been a month since my last surgery and I decided to try to work a little bit. I will devote myself to PAP for now but will be back shortly you should hear about me quite a lot in the next few week before the next surgery ( may 30th ).

I wish all my follower the best

Mell

Here’s few picture I took while my recovery with my new Olympus TG-1 (great for the beach)

    

Exercise 2.3 – Your tolerance for noise

For this exercise I had to find an indoor situation lighted with Daylight. (to be note: the curtain were open on the left hand side) An other criteria was some textureless area in the shadow and sharp detail. I have done this exercise with a Nikon brand camera model D7000 (witch is among the best camera as High ISO performance) and a basic 18-105mm lens.

First of all… What is noise???

I found the brand name of the laptop to be the sharp detail with the keyboard. The screen itself was playing the dark, textureless with detail surface.

So I took a total of 23 pictures from ISO100 to ISOH2.0. I have learnt with The Art Of Photography to always keep the ISO as low as possible to get the best quality of image as possible. I found interesting to going back where I have started and voluntary create the mistake that I used to do.

Here is a quick view of the three ranges:   1- low to med (100 – 800) ISO sensitivity     2-high (1000 – 6400) ISO sensitivity      3- Pushed (H0.3 – H2.0) ISO sensitivity

From a low to med ISO the noise is not a very big issues unless the quality is a big deal and  that the photograph must be in High definition. The noise is slowly getting a problem at the ISO800 though high ISO performance varies depending on camera manufacturer and model.

This issue start to be getting in the problem zone at ISO1250, ISO 2000 is getting bad. The image sharpness remain but there is a lots of noise visible everywhere, on the wall, curtain, desk and laptop. At ISO 3200 the noises are getting more important in size and colouration.

Once I pushed the ISO capacities of my camera, the results is similar of a bad webcam 😀 although I found the picture to be quite impressive considering I pushed thru ISO25,600 !! I saw some similar test done that compared the Pro Nikon D3, Semi-Pro D300, entry level D7000 and the Canon 5D Mark II done by Ken Rockwell Here witch is quite revealing. 

Here are nine comparaisons on three pages with a 1:1 sample.

Just for personal knowledge I did further research but I found this website very instructive. Here’s few information witch I took from it that are specific for this exercise.

From Imaging resource using Imatest 

 

 

Question from my friend Eddy Lerp:

Do all those graphs really mean anything to you? I find them all very nice and ‘techy’ but how much of the info they show do you actually take in and use?

 

Actually what I have learn is not just from them but combined with the information “How to read them”! You can find it from this website: Imatest .

It is definitely some pushed information but still I really like to analyse and compare the reaction of my camera sensor as I play with the setting ( the ISO in this case). It really help me to understand the technicality of the digital sensor. Hoping that some day digital camera won’t have anymore secret 🙂

The first graphic is two average of density of the greyscale curve. Itself it tells you the exposure error from the two “order”. With the three tests at different ISO we can notice that the error increase as we increase the ISO. This explain the difference in the exposure of my exercise.

Other information that I discover on the Noise spectrum graph ( bottom left) is the size of the noise itself. At high ISO I would prefer to use a set of camera and lens* that produce greater quantity of Noise at a very small scale rather than less noise but with a greater size of grains. It is very useful when it come to choose a body or lens for a specific work.
I also find interesting to realize once you run these tests with different equipments that the lens we choose can also affect the noise in our images. In the exact same condition using my very fast 50mm f/1.4 would seems to be much more an advantage than a 10-105mm f/3.5-5.6 as I can decrease the aperture / increase my exposure so by the same time decreasing my ISO for the same photograph !
But then… what about if I compare my 105mm f/2.8 micro with my 70-200mm f/2.8 micro at a focal length of 105mm?? Would the longer lens send the same information (light) to the sensor as the shorter one ? I also read that multi-coating can create (at some point) other type of noise.

I think these graphs have a great purpose for those who professionally review new equipments and compare products.

Is it really useful for a student, yes and no. 😀 An image worth thousand of words, we can read a 20 pages test review about a two products compared, witch an other person will have interpreted differently or I can just look at the graph and base my own opinion on the fact and my need.

Basically, I just really like to increase my knowledge ;P Am I a brainy manic ? I don’t think so, just an over powered passionate. hihihi 😛
Have a good one my friend, I hope my answer was helpful.

If you want to know more about these graphs, the Imatest website I put on top has tones of info about their tests and graphs 😀

Exercise 2.2 – Highlight clipping

For this exercise I need to find a scene that has a lot of contrast. Before I started this exercise, I needed to do some research about the highlight clipping warning because I didn’t even know what it was. Here’s my research for this exercise. Overall I have learnt a lot with this exercise one more time.

I did this exercise twice, one with an outside setting just out my porch and inside in my office.

Here is an example of what my camera is showing me; the black flashing spot in the middle of the white window is what we call highlight clipping. Also the “highlight” word in the bottom left is flashing at the same time. It showing me where my picture will be missing some information causing by a located overexposure.

Here is an other thing I learnt .. Showing the highlight with Camera Raw. This new knowledge will give me some very good opportunity to understand where are the faults are and to try to attenuate it.

Here is the first picture the way my camera suggested it with an average overall exposure metered. Actually I don’t think the clipping is that bad here, It is pretty manageable, almost incognito in the background.

The next one is the result when I removed any highlight clipping straight from the camera with only some setting adjustment to remove the highlight clipping warning shown on the first picture. The overall picture looks very dark. I’m also getting some shadow clipping.

In the other hand, this is version that contain a lot of highlight clipping. I have tried just for fun to correct this issue but it is out of the rescue zone. 🙂

A version that is a little bit more exposed than my average but in my opinion, my favorite one would be this next one. The highlight clipping is still manageable and the plant has great colour.

 

This last picture would be my final result of DSC0705 witch was the previous one;

The left one is the original with the overexposed sign in the background. The right one is once I have modified the picture lightly. I used my new knowledge and modified the color curve to adjust the highlight. and to compensate the lost of colour, I add a bit of saturation to get a richer image. I like the result. The background is much softer while the tree pop really has an great color.

 

Tutor report

Exercise 2.1 – Sensor linear capture 1

First of all I have to say that I really struggle with the instruction in the book. I contacted my tutor who confirm that the instruction were not relevant for mac user. He quickly sent me some more specific instruction and so it did’t took me long to understand and apply it to my exercise.

First of all the conversion 8bits to 16 bits as to been done using camera raw. I did heard a lot about it before, but I didn’t want to complicate the course so I didn’t do much research about it. I even tough it was a completely different software (photoshop camera raw) lol.

Here are the right instruction to convert 8 to 16bits and finding the color curve using photoshop elements 9 and a mac 😉

First select open as a new file…

select the image change the format (bottom left) for camera raw then open…

the camera raw dialogue box will open select open image, do not change anything yet as this is not a true 16 bit yet….

To find the color curve, follow the path shown here….

There is your curve, enjoy !

I really learnt a lot with this exercise, and this new knowledge will really follow me for a long time !

Assignment one – Workflow

My references

Here the link to my reference library

My references

Exercise 1.4 – Editing

For this exercise I needed some recently taken photograph so I decide to use those I shoot for the exercise 1.2.

Step one – Technical edit (119 pictures)

To do so, I used the star system with photoshop organizer. I gave one star to any picture that are technically wrong (out of focus, grossly over/under exposed).

Step two – The select (70 pictures)

the second step is two highlight any satisfactory image. At this stage, there will be some very similar shot but here, there is nothing wrong to keep them. The pictures that won’t go step three will get two star.

 

Step three – The first select (43 pictures)

Here is the three star stage. These picture will be open in photoshop to determine the quality of the shot and compare with the similar one from the same sequence. Only very few will pass this stage.

Step four – Group and review (5 pictures)

this is the confirmation of the final choice. Usually these picture if my son is figured on them, they will make it to my facebook for my family :).

 

Step five – Final choice (2 pictures)

Here are the shot I would keep if I had only two to pick.

 

This picture has been taken at the sunset.

hum.. strange things happen

sorry for some reason I’m not able to upload the histogram right wierd. but if you click on them they will appear right, even stranger.

Exercise 1.3 – Histogram

(9 pictures)

shoot the three most basic category of scene by contrast:

• low contrast
• average contrast
• high contrast

I understood the difference as the more contrast there is the wider the histogram will be. When an image only contain a low contrast the histogram will be relatively narrow. A nice example of high contrast in a real life situation will be in the next test I have done… The tree was a good example of this. The histogram is spread all over. The two results are quite different and worth to take a look at both.

test 2