Thread 4481100

As a relative noob to photography, I'm afraid I may have made an early overcorrection. There's a style I'd like to learn to shoot (picrel), and what I've basically gathered is that in order to preserve the details of shop signs and neon lights in dark environments, you can underexpose your images by 1-2 stops to protect the highlights, and then you pull up the shadows in post.

I was amazed by how much detail was hiding in the shadows when I tried it, despite my photos seeming unusably dark in preview. But now I've gotten into the habit of basically underexposing EVERYTHING regardless of light situations, and I can't help but feel like I'm leaning too much on post-processing. Barring stylistic choices and just focusing on getting photos to be as 'correct' as possible, should daytime photos generally look serviceably decent right out of the camera, or is it typical to preserve highlights to the point of being dark? Is there a typical amount of information loss that's tolerated in standard photography, or is the goal to only allow the sun to be pure white?

>>4481100 (OP)
In my opinion, what the final product looks like is what matters.

RAWs SooC are a tool to help you get there. Unedited raws will always be seen with some programs jpg profile and almost never look good without editing, but there's a lot of information there.

When I shoot, as much as I can consciously be aware of it, I try to make sure the RAW has data for all the shades in a scene, unless it's just completely unlikely one of the two will not be usable - eg a dark figure against a broad daylight backdrop. One of those two is going to be unusable, either the highlights will end up blown out, or the dark part will be so underexposed that when you go to lift it in post, you will get a ton of noise.

Which brings me to an important part - Choosing the right camera and knowing its limitations in the context of dynamic range. There is no magic formula for this, you will just need to use it. I know, for instance, I can get away with a lot more on my R6 II than I could have on my T6i.

I have begun to think about ISO a completely different way. When I started out, I took ISO as a way to lighten photos. Too dark? Add ISO at the expense of adding more noise. Instead, I think of it differently. When approaching a scene where I may need to raise the ISO, I think of it as a benchmark. "What sort of exposure do I need to hit, to get a nice exposure at an ISO I know my camera will still produce a strong image at" - Again this is where knowing the hardware comes in handy. I will go to 800 on my T6i without thinking too much about it, whereas I am comfortable with 3200 or even 6400 on the R6II.

cont.

...

The key here is that learning that noise isn't caused by high ISO, it's caused by lack of light. Lifting dark areas where there is no light will always make a noisier image than properly exposing them, but of course as you know, this runs the risk of blowing out highlights. Again this comes back to knowing your camera and its capabilities.

But to circle back, no, there isn't any specific rule. The rules are set by you and what you want to achieve for your artistic vision in a given scene.

I wouldn't be afraid of post processing, especially if it doesn't inherently change elements in the scene. Up to and including compositing I don't feel bad about. Majorly removing huge elements feels weird to me and transitions more into digital art.

Remember, even back in the film days, the labs would make adjustments during processing to achieve a certain look, I see no reason why we can't and shouldn't be doing the same thing with RAW files.

>>4481116
>>4481117

I actually have the R6 II myself. I think I may not fully grasp the struggle of shooting lowlight without a high-performing full-frame sensor, though my vague foreknowledge of that problem was one of the reasons why I chose it as my first serious camera. I totally get what you mean about just achieving a look I want, and I agree with the idea. Though I'm so new to high-end photography (e.g., deliberately controlling exposure) that I feel like I just want to nail down the 'correct' ways of doing things before I stretch my legs and do whatever I want. Even though I'm aware that there is no such thing as a strict 'correct' way to do things. I'd rather break established norms and rules deliberately rather than simply operate without knowing what those are.

I've got to say, it might be because of the R6 II's dynamic range that lifting shadows feels so magical; I've done casual image processing and design for most of my life at this point, but I've never worked with images near the quality of the RAW shots from this camera, so it's been amazingly fun to tread totally new territory and finally be surprised again by what you can do with image processing. Picrel is a recent one I took where the only light was from a single candle. Not a great example of the style I had mentioned since the light is a bit harsh, but I'm very impressed with what this camera can do, and I don't even really know how to use it yet. This image is brighter here than the actual scene was to my eyes

>ISO 2500 - 50mm - f/1.8 - 1/10 sec

>>4481127
I came from film as a 90s and early 2000s kid. Grandpa turned us loose with 35mm point and shoots. Back then, photography was you get what you get.

The T6i was my first intentional camera, and I took it all over and used it as my primary for 10 years. The R6 II is the nicest camera I have ever had, with good glass to match. Yeah. The RAWs this camera is capable of producing are absolutely unreal. I can get away with so much shit the T6i would not allow.

I don't really think there's a wrong or right way to do things. Again my mindset is just capture the scene in a manner that preserves the extremes as much as possible while still allowing me enough light (in the context of mirrorless) to compose the scene properly.

When I shot this, the driver's side front vent didn't have individual slats, until I lifted those shadows in post. The slats appeared out of nowhere.

>>4481100 (OP)
btw the higlights are blown in this one - look at the ball.
i have also experimented with... severe schizoid highlight preservation, to the point that i sometimes use an edited "isoless" picture profile in my camera (blown highlights show as black, everything else is +5EV; its kinda hard to see anything when youre exposing for the only light point in the room lol), and then process the image with a +5EV mask over the whole thing while using the usual control panel in camera raw (so sometimes im like +10EV compared to the raw)... it can (and it will) get real crusty, but i have never been afraid of noise in situations where you dont want the lights to blow everything out.

>https://github.com/horshack-dpreview/NikonPictureControlsDev

picrel is a shot at 1/500, iso100, f1.8, exposed so that the lights are barely clipping.

>>4481117
>The key here is that learning that noise isn't caused by high ISO, it's caused by lack of light
This took me far too long to realize and put into practice
I avoid auto ISO entirely now, and never use ISO to control for exposure, SS and aperture are for controlling exposure
Pretty much only shoot at the 1-2 efficient ISO for a given body, underexpose and correct in post

It is okay to blow highlights, especially lights, most people are concerned with like overexposing the sky

>>4481145
i also think blown highlights are overrated, but i am an event shooter and a lot of that style is triage

>>4481136
That's really nice. Well, that's heartening to read at least, thanks! I got this camera just in time for a recent vacation and got a chunk of the beginner's stupidity out of my system. Much of the time I was shooting photos was out of the passenger window of a car, or while power walking from one place to another, and I had no concept of how fast the SS needed to be to freeze motion, so I used Tv mode and kept it pretty damn high. I didn't think to change my settings to allow for more light when I could, since I didn't realize how bad really high ISOs were, so a lot of the photos capped out at 25600 when it wasn't bright. I didn't see all of the noise in the preview images, so it wasn't until I opened them on my PC that I saw how noisy they were. I honestly don't mind the film grain look, especially since I'm forgiving of myself for not knowing. My only regret is that I don't get to have fun pulling up the shadows and seeing what all was hiding in them. Though even at 25600, I've found that the photos can often be somewhat presentable with post-processing.

Here's one of those photos resized to 50% but otherwise exported as-is from LR. 25600 ISO, 105mm, f/7.1, 1/2000 (LMAO). I know it's atrocious in a technical sense, but there's enough information here to make it presentable for untrained eyes, so the sensor is clearly doing some incredibly heavy lifting for me.

>>4481145
>Pretty much only shoot at the 1-2 efficient ISO for a given body, underexpose and correct in post
Can you actually do this? My camera has best SNR and DR at 100 and 400 ISO. So you're saying I can shoot a RAW at 400 ISO for example and just up the expo/gamma/contrast/sat and basically have the same thing as shooting at ISO 6400? (provided you dont crush blacks)

>>4481165
Really depends on the camera for how far you can push, but yeah I only ever shoot at 100-200, 500-800, and 6400, depending on the camera
If I'm just using ISO to account for minor variances in brightness, rather do that in post
When it gets dark enough for 6400, I'll just leave it at that and aim for a good exposure for practical reasons

>>4481139
>btw the higlights are blown in this one - look at the ball.
Yeah, this guy's catalog has quite a bit of clipping and crushing going on. I'm mainly just talking about the soft, glowy feel. I really like the overall style of his photos. Guy's name is Casey Matsumoto. Many of his photos are low-light street/architecture shots. I'm a total stranger to photography as an artistic thing, so maybe it's just standard for low-light photos to have more range in the highlights than I'm used to seeing, but his photos are what got me interested in low-light. I personally don't think I'd compress the dynamic range nearly as much as he does, but that just seems like an aesthetic choice he makes. Picrel is another one of his photos.


>>4481139
>shot at 1/500, iso100, f1.8, exposed so that the lights are barely clipping.
Man, that looks nice. Your methods sound a bit insane, but I'm very interested in going down the preservation-at-all-costs rabbit hole.

>>4481186
- what i saw in camera with the isoless profile
- unadjusted raw
- the "result" with a +4ev mask and +5ev in develop tool in camera raw. apply dehancer to cover up/break up the noise with faux film grain.

the fact that you can get such results with basically no visible info in the files is crazy...
but yeah, i am on the schizo side of this, i took the "film has infinite detail in the highlights, digital in the shadows" bit to the extreme once and this is the result lol

>>4481191
also, i dont use any noise reduction, works better that way, no color blotches etc... just cover the digital noise with faux grain

>>4481192
A bit of chroma NR would do you wonders. Nothing too heavy to damage colours but just leave luma at nil and it would like more film like.
The faux grain is doing a decent job at masking the luma noise but the chroma comes through.

>>4481164
Yeah. It's just hard because on film at least with color negative film, they tell you it's better to overexpose, some people even do grossly, than under. Color negative film has a lot of latitude as they say.

But then you get people saying on digital to yeah protect your highlights. But if you go too low, you will end up with noisy shadows.

I guess the takeaway is this for me:

If you care about detail in your highlights (eg sky would be a big one) then expose to protect those. Even if they're overexposed as long as they're not blown out they will be recoverable in post....But if you care about any detail or lower noise in your shadows, expose for that instead and your highlights are going to be a mess.

This is where stuff like HDR merges and using graduated ND filters comes into play.

Also yeah 25600 is completely usable on the R6II. 6400 isn't a hard and fast rule just something I keep in mind to be aware of if I want to expect a pretty nice image out the other side, and I tend not to use a lot of postprocessing denoise. I could. Maybe I should. But I don't right now. And I like sharp images just as well as blurry film shots.

>>4481186
>Casey Matsumoto
i thought these were Liam Wong but turns out they worked togther. have you got any of his books? I recognise some of these from After Dark