speckle issues

Shawnhutch

Hey folks I am fairly new to the community and have been learning alot from all the great stuff posted in here. That being said I am having an issue with my Canon XTI, when shooting in areas with less than perfect lighting I am getting some discoloration in some of my photos. I know that I can go in after the fact and smooth some of the images out but that gets time consuming when you have several hundred images to retouch.

Here are a couple examples of what I am talking about, I am posting links because larger images are easier to demostrate what I am talking about.

Notice the discoloration in the arms.
http://shawnhutch.smugmug.com/gallery/5342610_BjK6A#329664638_HSSGt-X2-LB

Again Notice the dark areas, especially the arms and faces.
http://shawnhutch.smugmug.com/gallery/5342610_BjK6A#328687619_kMkcK-X2-LB

Any thoughts or advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Hutch

Tango

im sure someone with some real knowledge will follow up and really help you....i just wanted you to know it takes days sometimes, but they will show...

my .02 is this is noise from using too much iso.
look into noise ninja or something like that to help this issue in post....

pyry

Shawnhutch wrote:

Hey folks I am fairly new to the community and have been learning alot from all the great stuff posted in here. That being said I am having an issue with my Canon XTI, when shooting in areas with less than perfect lighting I am getting some discoloration in some of my photos. I know that I can go in after the fact and smooth some of the images out but that gets time consuming when you have several hundred images to retouch.

Here are a couple examples of what I am talking about, I am posting links because larger images are easier to demostrate what I am talking about.

Notice the discoloration in the arms.
http://shawnhutch.smugmug.com/gallery/5342610_BjK6A#329664638_HSSGt-X2-LB

Again Notice the dark areas, especially the arms and faces.
http://shawnhutch.smugmug.com/gallery/5342610_BjK6A#328687619_kMkcK-X2-LB

Any thoughts or advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Hutch

I agree with Aaron, that noise seems to be the biggest problem. Maybe a hint of overall lack of naturality of the color, was this in artificial lighting?

Post the exif, lens and camera settings please, that'll help make a more thourough analysis and to give some suggestions.

cmason

Hard to tell without EXIF, but as others say, your noise is high, so you might be at 800+ ISO. What lens are you using, there seems to be alot of CA as well, causing fringing, which the noise is just making worse. Did you use a flash? Tripod? These help tremendously in indoor/wedding shots.

Shawnhutch

Not sure of the best way to post the exif data so I will list it below for each image. I have also opened the camera info portion of the gallery in smugmug in case I forget to list something.

I did not use a tripod.

The lighting came from the lights in the church and from a shoe mount flash.

Image 1:
800 ISO
1.8 Aperture
1/160 Shutter Speed
50mm Prime lens

Image 2:
800 ISO
2.2 Aperture
1/160 Shutter Speed
50mm Prime lens

I know that shooting at 800ISO could cause some noise issues, but the lighting in the church was not the greatest and I was already shutter at 1/160.

Thanks for all you input and help,
Hutch

Scott_Quier

A couple of thoughts and a question or two...

First the question - Are these straight out of the camera or did you boost the exposure in PP? If these were under exposed and you pushed the exposure in post, that would tend to increase the noise in the photo.

The thoughts -

• I regularly shoot weddings and receptions at ISO 800 with my 30D cameras. I sometimes get some noise (usually when I've missed the exposure). It can be corrected with noise reduction software.
• Shutter speed of 1/160 - depending on the amount of motion on the part of the subject, you should be able to get good results as slow as 1/60. If they are stationary at, for example, the alter, 1/30 will work as well assuming you have an IS enabled lens. I've actually done 1/30s with my 70-200 f/2.8L IS at 200mm with very, very good results - granted, both the camera and I were braced against a piller at the back of the church, but it was hand-held
• Are you shooting RAW? I strongly suggest you do so as it gives you a lot more lattitude in which to make adjustments in post.
• If you don't mind me asking, what techniques are you using for your post processing? There might be some easy help there in adjusting you post processing work-flow.

bendruckerphoto

Also, you may want to buy yourself a flash. Many of your shots are very soft, especially group shots. This is the result of using your 50mm f/1.8 wide open. f/1.8 is just too wide for groups. A flash would allow you to have more light and therefore stop down to f/2.8 or f/4.

Shawnhutch

Scott_Quier wrote:

A couple of thoughts and a question or two...

First the question - Are these straight out of the camera or did you boost the exposure in PP? If these were under exposed and you pushed the exposure in post, that would tend to increase the noise in the photo.

The thoughts -

• I regularly shoot weddings and receptions at ISO 800 with my 30D cameras. I sometimes get some noise (usually when I've missed the exposure). It can be corrected with noise reduction software.
• Shutter speed of 1/160 - depending on the amount of motion on the part of the subject, you should be able to get good results as slow as 1/60. If they are stationary at, for example, the alter, 1/30 will work as well assuming you have an IS enabled lens. I've actually done 1/30s with my 70-200 f/2.8L IS at 200mm with very, very good results - granted, both the camera and I were braced against a piller at the back of the church, but it was hand-held
• Are you shooting RAW? I strongly suggest you do so as it gives you a lot more lattitude in which to make adjustments in post.
• If you don't mind me asking, what techniques are you using for your post processing? There might be some easy help there in adjusting you post processing work-flow.

To answer your first question I did not do much in the line of PP, I did open some of them in ACR and boost the exposure a little. I do shoot in RAW or Large+RAW most of the time, and I use ACR to adjust images where the exposure warrants. I am still learning all the end and outs of post processing my images but ACR seems to take most of the guess work out of the PP.

Thanks for all your thoughts and time

Shawnhutch

baseballboy828 wrote:

Also, you may want to buy yourself a flash. Many of your shots are very soft, especially group shots. This is the result of using your 50mm f/1.8 wide open. f/1.8 is just too wide for groups. A flash would allow you to have more light and therefore stop down to f/2.8 or f/4.

I agree that I blew some of the group shots by using f/1.8 instead of a higher aperture for several of the shots. I was using a Canon Speedlite 430EX, but I could not seem to get enough light on the wide shots. On a positive note I have been able to buy a 70-200 F/2.8 IS since the wedding.

Again thanks for all your help and support,
Hutch