Crystal & Lilyan

Angelo · August 4, 2009

this is a very casual shot I took of 2 friends (sisters actually) while enjoying lunch on Saturday.

besides mediocre composition, what else do you think is wrong with this image?

I've not been happy with output lately and I don't know if I'm slipping in my old age or if my camera is in serious need of a tune-up or replacement.

thanks in advance for your comments.

the EXIF:

exp. 1/15, Ap. 3.5, 18mm, iso 200, manual, no flash

shot in natural light, indoors

http://angelo.smugmug.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID=610949254&ImageKey=eKXRU

sweet caroline · August 4, 2009

It looks a bit soft, and lacks contrast. There's no pop.

Caroline

Angelo · August 4, 2009

sweet caroline wrote:

It looks a bit soft, and lacks contrast. There's no pop.

Caroline

Caroline:

Thanks for commenting. I sort of already know that which is why I've posted. I'm not sure but I won't argue "soft" but it appears OK to me but what, given the EXIF, is the cause of the dullness of the picture?

Wil Davis · August 4, 2009

I'm not sure about the background; the texture is distracting. I'd crop like mad; something like (with your permission):

Wil Davis · August 4, 2009

…or even:

Angelo · August 4, 2009

thanks Wil but again, composition and cropping isn't my concern. I'm trying to determine what, if anything, I did wrong with the exposure.

Based on the EXIF - is there any direction anyone can give to correct the flat, blandness of this shot, or do I have to accept that only PP will solve its ills?

.

pathfinder · August 4, 2009

The light looks pretty flat, Angelo.

Was this a jpg, or an edited RAW file?

Llywellyn · August 4, 2009

I see a bit of softness, too, which I'd attribute to the 1/15 exposure combined with a slightly opened aperture at close range. For more contrast, a slightly higher shutter speed could help increase the shadows a bit (and lose detail in the black shirt), but the biggest culprit is the flat light. Since you can't move the sun, I would reposition your subjects to try to eek more out of the light and create angles. As it is now, it looks like sun is streaming in directly from the right, causing a subtle "half in shadow" effect down the middle of each face.

...but that's being really nitpicky on my part.

PP magic could make it pop just fine.

Qarik · August 4, 2009

Angelo wrote:

thanks Wil but again, composition and cropping isn't my concern. I'm trying to determine what, if anything, I did wrong with the exposure.

Based on the EXIF - is there any direction anyone can give to correct the flat, blandness of this shot, or do I have to accept that only PP will solve its ills?

.

not really sure you can do much with natural light and that shot. I mean..the light is what the light is..all you can do get the exposure in the ballpark and that's it.

Angelo · August 4, 2009

pathfinder wrote:

The light looks pretty flat, Angelo.

Was this a jpg, or an edited RAW file?

a raw file simply saved as a jpg for uploading purposes, no adjustments made

Angelo · August 4, 2009

so it seems most agree the light is the culprit.

i think the (2nd) crop by Wil is a marked improvement as it allows more facial detail to shine through - thanks Wil

I've always struggled with my camera - I often rely on the viewfinder meter (in manual mode) to tell me if the exposure is good. I've learned from experience to underexpose by 1/3 to 1 full stop, otherwise my images appear overexposed and I have to tweak them down in post - arrrrrrrrgh.

this image did not appear overexposed, in fact it really kind of appears to be exactly as the live scene on Saturday - the flat brownish-red brick and concrete wall, Lilyan really has porcelain skin - she's a natural brunette who dyes her hair "goth" black, which is so difficult to photograph because there is NO light reflection - and wears black clothing almost exclusively.

So - I'll just keep shooting and trying my best.

Thank you all for taking time to help me out.

.

Angelo · August 4, 2009

Llywellyn wrote:

I see a bit of softness, too, which I'd attribute to the 1/15 exposure combined with a slightly opened aperture at close range. For more contrast, a slightly higher shutter speed could help increase the shadows a bit (and lose detail in the black shirt), but the biggest culprit is the flat light. Since you can't move the sun, I would reposition your subjects to try to eek more out of the light and create angles. As it is now, it looks like sun is streaming in directly from the right, causing a subtle "half in shadow" effect down the middle of each face.

...but that's being really nitpicky on my part. PP magic could make it pop just fine.

I'm still struggling to find any soft spots (time for my eye exam?) but I actually expected as much considering the 1/15 shutter.

and opening the lens all the way at such close range was just stupid on my part - I just wasn't paying attention.

I'll concentrate on tamping down the ap and upping speed next time. thank you.

pathfinder · August 4, 2009

Can you make the RAW file available, Angelo?

You say you under expose your shots almost 1 full stop, but in that flat light, there is no reason not to shoot "to the right" on the histogram. Under exposing increases the noise in your image, and I think there is a lot more pop available from your RAW file simply using the sliders in the RAW converter.

If you can email the RAW file to me, I will see what I can do with the RAW file. I'll see how much sharpening can do in the RAW converter, as well as correcting chromatic aberration if present.

Angelo · August 5, 2009

pathfinder wrote:

Can you make the RAW file available, Angelo?

You say you under expose your shots almost 1 full stop, but in that flat light, there is no reason not to shoot "to the right" on the histogram. Under exposing increases the noise in your image, and I think there is a lot more pop available from your RAW file simply using the sliders in the RAW converter.

If you can email the RAW file to me, I will see what I can do with the RAW file. I'll see how much sharpening can do in the RAW converter, as well as correcting chromatic aberration if present.

pathfinder7048 at gmaildotcom

I'll email it to you tomorrow afternoon when I get back to my office. The file is on my server. Thank you. I'm looking forward to delving further into this.

pathfinder · August 5, 2009

Angelo,

I opened your NEF file in Adobe Camera RAW in PSCS3 , and switched the camera profile from ACR 4.4 to Portrait and found a lovely improvement. Camera standard is a choice I frequently prefer in Canon land also, but in this case, I prefered to start with Portrait for the camera profile. It was a bit warmer and with better shadow detail I felt.

It was still under exposed significantly with the histogram only covering the left most 3/4 portion of the histogram and densely crowded to the left side with lots of black blocking up.

The image seemed a bit warm, but AUTO was too blue, so I finally used an eye dropper on the border of the leftmost picture in the upper left hand corner and this seemed a reasonable place to start, which resulted in 4900 Temp and +3 Tint

Next I dragged the Exposure slider to the right to + 0.75 for the highlights, and the Black sllder to the left to 4, to recapture a bit of the shadow details in the very darkest tones.

I then dragged the Recovery slider to the right to +30 to recapture the blown highlights in the ear rings lost to the increased exposure slider.

I slid the Fill Light slider to the right to 15 to brighten the lower quarter tones, and slid the Brightness slider to the left to darken the overall image a bit at this point. - to about 38

To begin to gather the pop, I raised the Clarity slider to +14, and the Vibrance slider to +25

I kept the Curve at the Medium contrast setting.

I then moved on to sharpening, and chose Amount 75, Masking 35, Radius 1.0 and Detail 32. These are numbers that I use quite a bit for my images. Some folks use less in ACR, preferring to sharpen further in PS, but I find these numbers work pretty well for my images.

I left the Luminance at 0 and the Color at 25 which are the stock settings for Noise Reduction which I rarely change in Photoshop. I prefer to kill noise with NoiseWear, but this image does not need that treatment at all.

At 300% the image did not display terrible chromatic aberration, altho there is a small amount in the silver earrings , but I just Defringed All Edges and left it at that.

I did no further local editing with this image in ARC, but opened it in PS CS3 as a 16 bit Pro Photo jpg as per my routine. In ACR associated with CS4, the local adjustment brush could be used here, but I started in CS3 and just stayed there.

Once the image was rendered in PS CS3, I surveyed the faces with the eyedropper reading pixel data in CMYK and the numbers looked reasonable for Caucasian skin tones, with Cyan about 1/2 the Magenta, and the Yellow > than the Magenta. I decided to accept the basic color and cropped the image a bit in 3:2 ratio with them slightly off center.

I saturated the blue irises slightly + 12% and decided to add a little local contrast Amount 18, Radius 50, Threshold 2 and then Fade this in Luminosity Mode via Edit > Fade Unsharp Mask Mode

I checked Levels and decided there was still room to move the Highlight slider to the left to increase the brightest parts of the image a bit, and slid the slider to 234 without noticealby blowing any highlights. One could do this in Curves also, but Levels seemed satisfactory here, and no curve needs to be displayed for you to replicate what I have done.

At this point I was about done, but thought that perhaps a vingette would punch this up a notch more, so I selected them with an Oval Selection, Inverted it with a 200 pixel Gaussian blur, and then used Brightness/Contrast at -35, +35 for this final image.

I saved this as an 8 bit jpg in sRGB and uploaded it to Smuggy for you to see here. I can email the final file if you wish, Angleo, or can give you the link to download it from via PM.

The lower image is the NEF file ANgelo sent me, opened CS4 with no adjustments in ACR whatsoever - I accepted the defaults, dropped the file into PS and saved as an 8 bit jpg in sRGB, and uploaded to Smuggy for comaprison.

If you read the numbers in the image data in this file, there are no whites, really. The print borders read around 117,117,117 which is a grey. The silver earring reads about 230,230, 230 but this is a specular reflection and should read 255,255, 255 or very close to it, unless capturing the detail in this earring is critical to the image, and I submit that it is not. This image is dark, under exposed, and appears flat as a result.

There are lots of choices I made in my editing, Angelo, that folks can argue about, but I think it pops more than the unedited RAW file as shown in the comparison here.

I will answer any questions that I can, and try to defend the choices I made

Has this been helpful to you?

Angelo · August 5, 2009

Jim -

I am so thankful for your assistance. I am not a PS guy so most of what you wrote above will take some time to digest and understand but I will do a "follow along" in PS to see if I can emulate your results.

Bottom line: I hate that digital imaging requires so much post work. :cry

Thanks again for all your help.

.

BenA2 · August 6, 2009

Popular misconception

Angelo wrote:

Bottom line: I hate that digital imaging requires so much post work. :cry

If you consider this an inappropriate thread hijack, then, by all means, ignore it. But, I cannot help but comment on your statement, which I feel to be a popular misconception about digital, held by many who spent so much time shooting film.

I don't believe digital imaging "requires" any more post work than film imaging. In the days of film, you would have taken this image to a developer. That developer would then develop the film, generally to his or her taste. In doing so, in all likelihood, they would "correct" the exposure and contrast issues in this image with the development process. You would then receive a print from the developer that looks significantly better than your unprocessed RAW file. So, it's not that less post-processing was required, you just didn't have to do the post-processing.

Similarly, with digital today, you can have the printer make standard (almost always computer automated) corrections to your files before they are printed. SmugMug/EZ Prints does this with I2E software. The Walmarts and Costcos of the world also have their own automated correction software. So, when you use these services to have your digital images printed, it will be similar to your film experience in that, in the end, your print will probably look significantly better than the original RAW image file.

What digital has done is given the power of the development process to the photographer (yes, some photographers had their own dark rooms, but you get my generalization). So, those of us that are interested in the post-processing (development) process can tune our images to our liking and usually produce a final result we prefer over the computer-automated methods.

I think, perhaps, that because we so rarely print our digital images, and more often use them for screen/web display, we expect to be able to post good images right from the camera. Well, the reality is that in the film days, we never did anything "right from the camera." So, in order to display a "good" image, one must find a way to get one's images processed without it being done by a printer.

It's overlooked a lot, because most of us here on Dgrin love taking an active role in post-processing, but for those that don't, there are automatic options available out there. First of all, you can experiment with the various shooting styles most cameras offer for in-camera JPG processing. SmugMug has a basic autocorrect feature built right into the site. Or, you can purchase a program like I2E, or even Photosohp to autocorrect you files before displaying. Just think of it as taking your electronic negatives to the electronic developer. Will this produce the same post-processing results you see around here? No, definitely not always, but the overwhelming majority of the time, it will get you very close--exactly the same as in the days of film.

pathfinder · August 6, 2009

Those of us who had a darkroom remember the hours spent processing film or prints, whether black and white or color. I still have some 16x20 Cibachrome prints hanging around, but they pale in comparison to new modern digital prints.

I think digital has let us get sort of lazy about exposure accuracy also, Ben.

I believe that good digital images are as demanding, or more so, than positive transparencies were, but I doubt most of us are that careful in shooting. I am certainly not at times.

I found when shooting jpgs that 1/3 stop + or - really decreased the quality of the color accuracy of the image. RAW gives us more of a margin, but correct exposure is still important. Shoot a 16 step gray scale and you will see what I mean.

Most of us shoot with a dash of under exposure, as Angelo mentioned, to avoid the blinkies, but we really want to capture our image as far to the right on our histogram as we safely can, to diminish the noise in the image.

LiquidAir · August 6, 2009

Angelo,

I know this is the finishing school, but here's a few suggestions for how to shoot this differently:

Background separation:
The background is rather dull and, IMO, doesn't deserve to be in focus. If I could, I would move them away from the wall before shooting. I'd also back up a bit and shoot at 35mm instead of 18mm (assuming APS-C format sensor) and at f/2.8 instead of f/3.5.

Exposure:
This shot feels a touch underexposed to me. Maybe 1/3 or 2/3 stop brighter would be better.

Light:
The angle of the light is good for the girl on the left, but leaves too much shadow on the girl on the right. Rotating the pair of them so they face a bit more into the light would help.
Also, a simple piece of white paper held to camera left would improve the quality of your fill quite a bit. To me it looks like the fill has picked some color from the surface it is bouncing from, and the white paper would give you a bit more fill with better color.

Crystal & Lilyan

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