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socialist1
Mar 27, 2007, 6:02 AM
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Hey all,
Im looking for the best answer to the following situation--
You want a high shutter speed for a super crisp shot but at your lowest aperture you get a shutter speed of 60. This might come out a little blurry for some climbing shots, requiring you make some adjustments to get the speed. The question then becomes: For best image quality, is it better to shoot raw at a fixed shutter speed and bump up 0.5 to 1 stop later OR bump up ISO and get exposure right at the speed you want???
I came across this recently. I had to use a polarizer to make the shot work but I couldnt get the shutter I wanted. I choose to underexpose and bump up a half a stop after. Here are three random shots that resulted: http://www.rockclimbing.com/...y_Raid_-1_86403.html
http://www.rockclimbing.com/..._Raid_-_2_86404.html
http://www.rockclimbing.com/..._Raid_-_3_86405.html
All comments and criticism welcome.
Thanks
Ross
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Brett1234
Mar 27, 2007, 7:59 AM
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Interesting question. What I do in that situation is check my histogram, if pushing the stop would not clip the image on the dark side, I push it till I get at least 1/60 (fast enough for a hand held shot for me). If pushing the stop would clip the image, I force up the iso to the next speed and live with the resulting noise. My Casio EX-Z750 has a live four channel YRGB histogram so I can confirm no clipping of any channel. Honestly, with most my pictures I dont need to do these checks, that camera usually chooses the best combinaion automatically to keep shutter speed high.
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wes_allen
Mar 27, 2007, 11:21 AM
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It depends on how well your equipment handles high ISO. I can go to 3200 on my 5d, or 1600 on my 20d, and the noise acceptable, esp. with a little bit of noise reduction. If you max out your acceptable ISO, then you need to use exposure compensation to get the speeds you want. Just remember that while you can sorta work with exposure and noise in post, you can't really do much with motion blur or camera shake.
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piton
Mar 27, 2007, 12:28 PM
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you can wait for good light
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grayhghost
Mar 27, 2007, 3:58 PM
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I would push the ISO.
Your shots look like a bright and sunny day, how is your shutter speed not 1/1000?
I would also lose the polarizer for sharper images.
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tradmanclimbs
Mar 27, 2007, 5:30 PM
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fast glass won't help if you are seeking greater depth of field. Go with IS Glass to hand hold slower speeds or use a tripod and rear curtain flash or hand held with rear curtain flash.
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pico23
Mar 27, 2007, 6:30 PM
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your asking if you should push process RAW.
Answer, yes and no,
If you know that ISO 3200 is just awful then perhaps a 2/3 stop intentional underexposure at 1600 might yield better results.
However, I've found that intentional underexposure generally causes a lot of color noise in the shadows and even affects the midtones.
I learned this from shooting over 2000images at 2/3 stop underexposure then pushing in RAW. I found in many cases I was better off raising the ISO to shoot even if it meant lossing resolution.
The reason, the increased noise/noise reduction and loss of lines of resolution of high ISO often yielded better results then pushing raw.
The times you should push is when you are at the end of your ISO. If your camera ends at ISO 1600 and you need another 1/2-1 stop to get the shot then you have not choice but to push.
But of course you should test all of this yourself, every camera is different as is the RAW conversion software you use. But below ISO 800 most cameras are clean and higher ISO shouldn't be feared.
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pico23
Mar 27, 2007, 6:39 PM
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brent_e wrote: piton wrote: you can wait for good light although i'm sure a lot of photographers will end up doing this, it's not very "spur of the moment."  OR, you could further develop some gear whoreness, and buy a faster lense! lol
Faster lenses aren't a panacea.
the aperture can only be opened so much and still keep some reasonable DOF. You also lose a lot of lines of resolution the bigger the aperture. most good lenses struggle to get 60lpmm at wide open, while even inexpensive consumer glass gets 70+ at 5.6-11. only a handful of lenses ever made were optimized at wide open for the highest resoltution, truly an amazing feat. I believe 1 was the Canon 200 2.0 and the others were all german glass.
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socialist1
Mar 27, 2007, 10:41 PM
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Thanks for the responses guys!
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brent_e
Mar 27, 2007, 10:54 PM
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pico23 wrote: brent_e wrote: piton wrote: you can wait for good light although i'm sure a lot of photographers will end up doing this, it's not very "spur of the moment." OR, you could further develop some gear whoreness, and buy a faster lense! lol Faster lenses aren't a panacea. the aperture can only be opened so much and still keep some reasonable DOF. You also lose a lot of lines of resolution the bigger the aperture. most good lenses struggle to get 60lpmm at wide open, while even inexpensive consumer glass gets 70+ at 5.6-11. only a handful of lenses ever made were optimized at wide open for the highest resoltution, truly an amazing feat. I believe 1 was the Canon 200 2.0 and the others were all german glass.
NOCT nikkor 58mm f/1.2!!! you missed that one Pico!
Also, some of the telephoto lenses, IE the 300 f/2.8, the 300 f/2.0 (it exists, look it up, oh, these are all nikons) and the longer lenses perform very well wide open or they peak at f/4.
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pico23
Mar 28, 2007, 2:44 AM
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hey brent, good to see you are a nikon fan.
i'm a nikon appologist (no longer shoot it but do appreciate the company and it's legacy and current line of equip).
However, performing very well wide open and being optimized for wide open are two different things. Most good pro end lenses are pretty good edge to edge by f/4.
If you could send me the link to the resolution test of those lenses I'd appreciate it. I'm in the middle of a move and don't really have time to search for this stuff. You don't realize how much stuff you have till it's time to pack and move it. Thankfully all the outdoor gear is permanently packed in rubbermaids. So is the photo stuff.
Anyway, I wasn't busting on any brands, just noting that wide open performance is lower because of optical design (ie very expensive), and stopped down (above f/16) because of diffraction.
I didn't know Nikon made a 300mm 2.0 though, thats got to be an amazing piece of glass and f'ing expensive. A 2.8 300 is a several grand lens, 2.0 most be double that.
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dobson
Mar 28, 2007, 4:03 AM
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I'll start by saying that I bump the ISO in camera and expose to the right whenever possible. This does depend on the camera though. Fortunatley this is very easy to test.
Just put your camera on a tripod and set it to manual and iso 1600 (or whatever is the highest). Properly expose the frame. Now just adjust only the ISO and take a few frames. Put them into your RAW converter and adjust them until they all "match" and compare the noise.
I found that, just as Canon states, there is little difference between pushing 1600 to "H" or pushing it in software; but there is a huge improvement in camera ISO over software at all other settings.
Phillip
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guangzhou
Mar 28, 2007, 10:32 AM
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I am guessing, by I would say he was getting minimum light becasue he focused on the dark section of rock when shooting.
I personally buy the fastest lense I can afford. I don't overlook the used glass of reputable camera shops.
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mtselman
Mar 29, 2007, 5:16 PM
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Looking at the hi-rez versions of your images, I notice that the climber is quite out of focus. As a matter of fact the whole image is very "soft".
Take the second image for example.
Checking your EXIF, shows that you shot it RAW, at 1/500, F3.5, with 28mm focal length (42mm equivalent on film).
Strangely enough it does not show ISO (shows ISO - 0)
1/500 speed is more then enough to "freeze the climbing action" and should not be an issue in this case.
The focus seems to be somewhere in the middle of the wall, not on the climber, but the middle of the wall is not very sharp either.
Have you tried manual focus?
1/500 usually eliminates handshake sufficiently, so I'd say this is a focusing problem. Aslo, at F3.5 most consumer grade lenses are not super sharp, but they should not be that soft either. Finally, when you are shooting RAW, camera does not do any default sharpening that it does when you shoot JPEG, so when you convert and postprocess you need to do some sharpening in your software.
Hope that helps,
--Misha
PS. As for your question on ISO, try both methods and see what works best with your camera/lens combination, but first you may want to understand why you get unsharp photos at 1/500.
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