Grainiess and lighting issues

picturegirl

So I have read up a lot on here about using a higher ISO, larger aperature and less flash. Well I tried that last night and I can't beleive how grainy the pics come out, even at 400 ISO with ISO speed noise reduction set on my custom functions. Here is an example, I lightened the exposure in photos shop and cropped it in a little so you can see how bad the graininess is. Anyone have some advice? I am shooting with 40d, 17-55 2.8is, settings were 1/1600, 4.0, iso 400, 33mm focal length.





Second issue, the lighting at the wedding site is terrible. The wedding parties upper body is in the sun and lower body is in the shade. Any advice? I was going to try and expose the shots so that the sky is not blown out but I am starting to think to get the rest exposed better I may have to blow out the sky?

Scott_Quier

picturegirl wrote:

So I have read up a lot on here about using a higher ISO, larger aperature and less flash. Well I tried that last night and I can't beleive how grainy the pics come out, even at 400 ISO with ISO speed noise reduction set on my custom functions. Here is an example, I lightened the exposure in photos shop and cropped it in a little so you can see how bad the graininess is. Anyone have some advice? I am shooting with 40d, 17-55 2.8is, settings were 1/1600, 4.0, iso 400, 33mm focal length.

You're right - there's significant noise in this photo. However, it's very difficult to determine if it's a problem with the camera or a result of pushing the exposure (you did say you "lightened" it up a little). To help with this one, it would help if your could post the original - that would give us an idea of how much you pushed the exposure to get the end result. As a general rule, when you push the exposure you are going to get a noticeable increase in the noise.

picturegirl

Thanks Scott!

The camera is about 6 months old the lens is a year and a half old and I have had it repaired twice already, I have never been happy with this lens, I know everyone raves about it but I think I've got a bad one. I see photos from other people with the same lens and mine dont even compare.

Here is the original:

Scott_Quier

The image is sharp and well focused. When you say you've had the lens repaired twice - what were your stated issues with the lens and what work did the Canon repair facility perform to correct these issues? I ask because I don't see any problems in this image that can be attributed to your lens. It appears to be nicely focused and pretty sharp.

Thanks for posting the original photo - it allowed for a direct comparison without having to guess what actually happened.

As for the noise - yes there's quite a bit of noise in your modified image. As I suspected, your "lightening" of the photo a little bit is actually something more in the neighborhood of 1.5 to 2 stops. At ISO 400, that's quite a bit of a push on the exposure. I grabbed a copy of the original sized version of the unprocessed image and I don't see any significant noise in the well exposed areas (check out the sky and the white shirt/tan pants of the guy on the right side of the photo) of that image either. What noise is there is about what one would expect for a well exposed ISO 400 photo.

Anyway, that's what I see. There are others here with more experience and a more educated eye than I have who can better analyze your photo for you.

Ed911

Watch your histogram for good exposure...
Even though your were told, or read about using higher ISO's, you should always use your histogram to check the exposure. If you looked at the one for the subject shot, I'll bet that it's stacked to the left...so you should have increased the light, since you were already at 1600 ISO, until the histogram was evenly centered between in the box. (Centering is approximate, and shape and amplitude vary.)

And speaking of brightness, did you use the brightness slider or, did you open up "levels" and move the right hand slider to the left...which will increase the brightness in a picture, and works much better than the brightness slider.

If you haven't tried this, now's the time. Let us know.

jeffreaux2

Why would you use ISO400 if your shutter speed was way up at 1/1600?

You could have shot at ISO 100 at 1/400 at the same aperture with the same results. Your photograph is underexposed...at least for the subjects. That is the issue here.

picturegirl

Scott_Quier wrote:

The image is sharp and well focused. When you say you've had the lens repaired twice - what were your stated issues with the lens and what work did the Canon repair facility perform to correct these issues? I ask because I don't see any problems in this image that can be attributed to your lens. It appears to be nicely focused and pretty sharp.

Thanks for posting the original photo - it allowed for a direct comparison without having to guess what actually happened.

As for the noise - yes there's quite a bit of noise in your modified image. As I suspected, your "lightening" of the photo a little bit is actually something more in the neighborhood of 1.5 to 2 stops. At ISO 400, that's quite a bit of a push on the exposure. I grabbed a copy of the original sized version of the unprocessed image and I don't see any significant noise in the well exposed areas (check out the sky and the white shirt/tan pants of the guy on the right side of the photo) of that image either. What noise is there is about what one would expect for a well exposed ISO 400 photo.

Anyway, that's what I see. There are others here with more experience and a more educated eye than I have who can better analyze your photo for you.

Thanks for taking the time to look at them! As far as the lens it was 1st in for quality issues at 17mm, second time the IS broke.

picturegirl

Ed911 wrote:

Even though your were told, or read about using higher ISO's, you should always use your histogram to check the exposure. If you looked at the one for the subject shot, I'll bet that it's stacked to the left...so you should have increased the light, since you were already at 1600 ISO, until the histogram was evenly centered between in the box. (Centering is approximate, and shape and amplitude vary.)

And speaking of brightness, did you use the brightness slider or, did you open up "levels" and move the right hand slider to the left...which will increase the brightness in a picture, and works much better than the brightness slider.

If you haven't tried this, now's the time. Let us know.

Good tips!! Thanks, I will definitely be trying that out asap, thanks for taking the time!

picturegirl

jeffreaux2 wrote:

Why would you use ISO400 if your shutter speed was way up at 1/1600?

You could have shot at ISO 100 at 1/400 at the same aperture with the same results. Your photograph is underexposed...at least for the subjects. That is the issue here.

Hello! I know this probably looked dumb to you, I am still learning my manual exposures. I usually just use "P" mode at 100 ISO and turn the flash or exposure up or down. I was on another thread where they talked about using the higher ISO and wider ap. and lightening the photo if need be. I will be doing a lot more practice with the manual mode. I appreciate you stopping by to help out

ChatKat

Lighting
Photography is all about seeing and modiifying light!
When is this wedding? You will need to learn to use flash - and how to adjust the compensation because of the variation in light. If you have any input in the event, you might suggest some kind of fabric to shade the area over the trellis'. Otherwise, you have a difficult lighting job, and using P mode will not help in the least. You will still have shade and sunshine all mixed in. Without controlling the light, the wedding dress will not be the correct shade of white. Setting your flash for the distance will illuminate the dark parts somewhat.