Confused

[Dulaigh]

Kartik, I like the natural look of your shots.

[jcuknz]

You ask why people 'upgrade' ... for a long time I have held bridge cameras as a replacement for my SLR in high regard and kept on replacing the 5MP with an 8Mp and then a 10Mp but while it did most of what I wanted to do there was a restriction that I felt I could not use faster than 100 ISO for IQ reasons [ I guess your reason for staying at 500 ISO ], no great problem for somebody who used 125 ISO film. I behold DSLRs with distaste for their bulk and cumbersomeness, I bought one for a specific task but my other gear is so capable that after a brief enthusiasm for the 'new toy' it hasn't been used in years. Then MFT came along which permits me to use higher ISO and the larger sensor permits cropping ... it is also 16Mp but with drawbacks like I have less depth of field with the longer lens it uses. If you went to full frame you would experience the same.

I rarely use flash becuase I simply do not have the gear and a lot of people are dissatisfied with it. It is probably the easiest way to get a record of the subject but like all lighting hard to use it creatively. You really need to know and appreciate the nuiences of light to be successful like Colin frequently demonstrates, and with his non-flash work. His last offering appeals to me for the way he used the tree to hold an otherwise boring flat subject, however appealing the colours, together ... connecting ground and sky ... emphasising depth which the foreground mudflats don't, if you crop out the tree.

I take your point about the artificiality of Colins rework and note he didn't apply that degree to his own

You have not mentioned your lenses ... if you have VR type there should be no problem with using 1/20 shutter with a 35mm [50mm AoV] so long as you exercise reasonable care in how you press the trigger, caressing it etc. Using some form of support is obviously better if making A3 prints and bigger but for web use and small prints should not be a great problem as an experienced film user I'm sure you know.

It will help if you say what you are unhappy about with the shots you post ... we can have differing views as to artistic merits but technical aspect are the same for all of us. White balance can usually be sorted in editing even if like me you shoot jpgFINE Does depend on what sort of editor you have .... rather than a new camera perhaps a new editor is called for?
Cheaper too if time consuming to get to know Colin tells us he uses Photoshop, I have used Paint Shop Pro since almost starting digital, others say Lightroom is the bee's knees and does 95% of their workload. Currently after playing with LR 5 briefly last night I suspect it would be good for you and your needs ... As a Beta programme it is a free download until the end of June.

[Manfred M]

Looking at the images that you have posted (and the metadata as well) is that I wonder if you are not constraining yourself too much on ISO levels and that is forcing you to shoot too shallow a DoF at too low a shutter speed, which in turn is giving you images that are not sharp enough.

Unless you stick your nose right up to the image (a.k.a. "pixel peeping", the noise from high ISO settings on the D90 are not too bad, even when you push into the ISO 1600 or 2000 range. Here are a couple of hand-held images taken with the D90; the first one is shot at ISO 1600 with the cheap 18-55mm kit lens at f/10 @ 1/400. The focal length is 26mm.


Seal Cove Seaplane Base - Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada by The Grumpy Diver, on Flickr

The second one was taken at 1/125th sec at f/9 ISO 2000 at 400mm, again with the D90. I was focusing on the bird, but wanted out of focus background. It is sharp where it needs to be and I have printed it to A2 size. The image noise is only visible if you get very close. This lens is known to be a bit soft at the focal length I was using, and for the focal length (600mm full-frame equivalent), I was using an extremely slow shutter speed.



!Bald Eagle by The Grumpy Diver, on Flickr

Now, here is a mixed light shot, taken with a pro camera (D800) and a f/2.8 24-70mm pro lens at ISO 2000 at f/2.8 at 1/25th sec. Again, everything is nice and sharp, but the colours are strange. This is a sunset shot, so you see the blue sky after the sun has gone down and the yellow cast of the tungsten street lights. I personally think this shot works well, but as you can see, getting a white balance is impossible given the lighting situation, so a pro camera does not fix this issue.


Quebec Night A by The Grumpy Diver, on Flickr


I think you would have gotten images that you would find more acceptable if you increased your ISO, increased your shutter speed to at least 1/60th with the 35mm lens and stopped down to f/16 to increase your DoF.

[Adrian]

Kartik, no doubt some of the confusion has been removed and you have a clearer insight. It may be that exactly what you need is a new camera to re-invigorate your enthusiasm. I wonder if it is also worth finding a photography course, or a club perhaps, near where you live.

[kaushikkartik]

Hi, I must confess the third image is extremely good, brilliant.
But I dont agree with ur other two. I have used the D90 at high iso in fairly dark situations and i can tell u the results are not so good....
For example I was in London, took a shot of the tower bridge at High iso, f/5 plus and ended up with such low shutter speeds that hand held became virtually impossible. then went to manual settings and with a higher shutter speed and ended up obviously with a dark image.
in the end I had to get the iso to 1000 and ended up still with a lot of noise.

[William W]

we're starting to get a bit off-track here.

Forum conversations often go off track when there is limited engagement for example when there are not answers provided to specific questions asked of the OP.

Bye-bye from me.

WW

[Colin Southern]

Forum conversations often go off track when there is limited engagement for example when there are not answers provided to specific questions asked of the OP.

Bye-bye from me.

WW

Think I'll join you for a glass ...

... Cheers!

[Stagecoach]

For example I was in London, took a shot of the tower bridge at High iso, f/5 plus and ended up with such low shutter speeds that hand held became virtually impossible. then went to manual settings and with a higher shutter speed and ended up obviously with a dark image.
in the end I had to get the iso to 1000 and ended up still with a lot of noise.

Kartik,

With regard to the image of London Bridge you have posted;

As you were using a 'higher' ISO did you ensure that you overexposed rather than underexpose ? From what I have gathered it is better to overexpose (histogram to the right) and then reduce exposure in PP.

I note from the EXIF that whilst you were in 'manual' you also had an EC of -2 dialed in ?


Grahame

[William W]

Think I'll join you for a glass ...

Back from Adelaide, literally got out of the cab from the airport and checked the emails, (always live in hope, but . . . sigh), but other email thread alerts were just so wonderful!

Unscrewing the bottle now, been looking forward to this reward for 11 days. . . day off tomorrow, thank the Lord.

CU guys and girls at CiC sometime next week.

Cheers Colin,

Bill

[Colin Southern]

day off tomorrow, thank the Lord.

Praise the lord, pass the ammunition!

[Colin Southern]

Hi, I must confess the third image is extremely good, brilliant.
But I dont agree with ur other two. I have used the D90 at high iso in fairly dark situations and i can tell u the results are not so good....
For example I was in London, took a shot of the tower bridge at High iso, f/5 plus and ended up with such low shutter speeds that hand held became virtually impossible. then went to manual settings and with a higher shutter speed and ended up obviously with a dark image.
in the end I had to get the iso to 1000 and ended up still with a lot of noise.

Kartik,

I've written about using high-ISO modes quite extensively here in the past, but the following copy/paste might give you a bit of a primer ...

Hi Ali,

What Manfred said, but it's really quite a complex issue with a number of variables.

Higher ISO modes use less and less of the sensor's potential - but - whether or not noise is visible depends on the ISO used for a given camera (or more specifically the signal-to-noise ratio, which varies between cameras), where the image is exposed within the range of possible exposures for that ISO setting (which also affects the signal-to-noise ratio), and to what degree one is magnifying the image to look at it, and the dynamic range of the scene being shot.

Without getting too complex - basically - normal camera metering usually leaves a 1.3 to 2 stop "safety margin" in a RAW exposure (ie an area that highlights can be exposed into if needed). At low ISO settings where the dynamic range capability of the camera is huge - there is still a huge margin between shadow detail and sensor noise -- so the safety margin doesn't make things visibly worse (thus ETTR doesn't gain you anything in most cases). At higher ISO modes though, the effective sensor dynamic range capability is reduced - and at very high ISO modes having a 2 stop safety margin (or two stops of potential highlight storage space wasted) pushes everything else closer and closer to the noise floor - at which point it may well become a problem. Put another way, at high ISO settings it becomes more and more important to push exposures to the limits of clipping to minimise noise.

The other issue is just how visible is the noise when looking at the shot at a whole? If one is going to pixel-peep then it'll look bloody aweful - but - when looking at the entire shot chances are it'll look just fine. So normally my advice is to just not worry too much about it.

So to answer the question - Yes, an "correct" exposure (in the sense of "looking correct on the camera") will give you more noise at high ISO settings than an "incorrect" exposure that looks over-exposed (but is not blown).

Does that make sense?

In real-world terms, it's often a compromise; in your case you can only open the lens to a certain point before you risk DoF issues, and you can only lower the shutter speed to a certain point before you risk camera shake or subject motion ruining the portion of the shot lit by ambient light. After that, ISO is the only other variable. In practice, crank the ISO up (for your chosen shutter speed and aperture), and if it's going to be a very high ISO (say 6400 or above) then give some serious thought to adding some +EC (but just ensure you don't blow the highlights in critical areas).

High ISO is a bit like heart care in the elderly in that the margin for error gets less and less the higher the numbers go.

The short answer is - for high dynamic range scenes like night shots with point light sources - shoot them at base ISO, and use a tripod.

[Colin Southern]

His last offering appeals to me for the way he used the tree to hold an otherwise boring flat subject, however appealing the colours, together ... connecting ground and sky ... emphasising depth which the foreground mudflats don't, if you crop out the tree.

It's been quite a popular print -- looks quite spectacular as a 66 x 22 inch canvas; wall mounted. Sold another copy the other day - another $599 in the bank

I take your point about the artificiality of Colins rework and note he didn't apply that degree to his own

No need to apply the same techniques; Kartik's shot was 1/40th of a second. Mine was 12 MINUTES. 28800 times longer!

[Manfred M]

Hi, I must confess the third image is extremely good, brilliant.
But I dont agree with ur other two. I have used the D90 at high iso in fairly dark situations and i can tell u the results are not so good....
For example I was in London, took a shot of the tower bridge at High iso, f/5 plus and ended up with such low shutter speeds that hand held became virtually impossible. then went to manual settings and with a higher shutter speed and ended up obviously with a dark image.
in the end I had to get the iso to 1000 and ended up still with a lot of noise.

Kartik - the main reason for the high noise in this shot is simply that the predominant sky colour in this image is close to black. Digitally black means a "0" value = pure black and that means no photons have been detected by the camera. Any electronic noise is much more likely to show up in the darker parts of the image simply because there is so little data in dark parts of the image. This is of course the premise behind ETTR (expose to the right), so a simple exposure adjustment with a ETTR shot in post production to darken the shot is going to give you lower noise levels than trying to get the same adjustment in camera. Understanding how cameras and sensors work help one make these decisions.

Frankly, I agree with you. The latest generation of cameras has far lower high ISO noise than the previous generation. That is one of the reasons I upgraded to the D800 from the D90; BUT for prints at normal viewing distances (a good rule of thumb is that the closest viewing distance for a print is about twice the diagonal of the image) and a good hand in post-production I can get more than acceptable prints out of my D90. I have printed the eagle shot at A2 / 17" x 22" and at normal viewing distances the image looks quite clean. If I pixel peep, yes, it is noisy.

[xpatUSA]

• - All need post production sharpening (I concur with the previous comment by Grahame)

WW

What about that third image, though? The tree trunk against the sky shows quite excessive sharpening (IMHO) indicating sharpening of over 1px radius at what looks like over 100% - so I'm not sure why the image would need further sharpening. The impression I get is that the image out of the camera was soft and needed that much to get in the ballpark, so to speak.

[xpatUSA]

[An Adobe RGB-profiled image] should [indeed] look OK, but since most monitors are still only physically capable of displaying an sRGB gamut, the reason it may look OK in a colour-managed environment is that - in essence - the colour management software is simply converting it back to sRGB.

Or put another way, one may just as well convert it to sRGB in the first place.

Yes, I always save as sRGB after processing - because of unknown web users' equipment.

But, is there not a trend toward fuller gamuts for more modern monitors such as the LED back-lit type? In fact, the e-sRGB spec. to suit such technology is now about 12 years old!

http://www.13thmonkey.org/documentat...a7667-2001.pdf
.

[kaushikkartik]

I agree that this post is now going in the wrong direction. We have had few fruitful and some useless discussions.
But in the end if it is worth anything I have made up my mind to stick to my d90 for a little bit longer, not bother for a new camera... I may start buying new lenses.... may be Fx so that when eventually i do upgrade i dont have to completely change.
And yes I am finding all the tips on WB usefull, though the iso is still not up to the mark.
Will continue to ask for help, to improve my photography... hope u guys will be happy to help.
Thanks for all the posts...
I appreciate.

[Dave Humphries]

~ took a shot of the tower bridge at High iso, f/5 plus and ended up with such low shutter speeds that hand held became virtually impossible. then went to manual settings and with a higher shutter speed and ended up obviously with a dark image.
in the end I had to get the iso to 1000 and ended up still with a lot of noise.

Hi again Kartik,

You say you ended up in manual with a dark picture, i.e. you under exposed the shot - which in turn means you must have brought the exposure up in PP and along with it, the noise - this is the classic "wrong thing to do" (but everyone one does it until they learn).

You should not under expose when shooting at high iso.

I have a D5000, same sensor as your D90 and about the same weight camera, with practice, and ideally bracing against something solid, I can hand hold at 1/10s*, sometimes less - I shoot multiple shots and in PP, use only the sharpest and discard the rest. So there's a method of not under exposing by two stops straight away (you tookthe pic at 1/40s).

* this is dependent upon focal length, the wider angle the less camera shake blurring you'll see


You May find these helpful, especially the bold ones.
Night Photography
Reducing Camera Shake
Expose to the Right, Clipping & Noise


However, all the above said - looking at the shot at 100% as posted here, does not show the noise, does it?
I don't know whether you treated it with something in PP, but more likely just the downsizing has removed the problem for you. In other words; don't 'over obsess' on noise you see at 100% when pixel peeping the full resolution image at 100% - because that is not how it will be seen by everyone else.

Hope that helps,

[William W]

What about that third image, though? The impression I get is that the image out of the camera was soft and needed that much to get in the ballpark, so to speak.

Agree.
That’s very good possibility of what happened specifically in that third sample image.

Note that image three was singled out and there were several (still unanswered) questions about it.

We should add to those questions:
Was there any post production sharpening done to image 3

***

Importantly, note posts #1, 2 & 10:

Posted by kaushikkartik
I am now not satisfied with the Image quality, WB and low light performance of the D90 specially when I compare it to the other new cameras. I also own a Nikon Film SLR, and I got stunning results from it, which unfortunately i dont get with the D90.
Could i get similar results from a full frame without postprocessing . . .

Posted by WW
Have you used these new cameras and compared what you shoot and get SOOC (straight out of the camera) or are you just referring to the 'specifications'?

Posted by kaushikkartik
I have tried a couple of other cameras namely D7100, D300s, Canon 7d, and i have found the results better. I dont know how good a photographer i am but i am sure the results were better.


On the basis of the responses to only some of the questions asked: I was (and still am) working on the premise that we are discussing images which are shot as JPEGs and are presented as SOOC (Straight Out Of Camera) and that was the basis of how the OP was comapring the different Cameras.


WW

[Colin Southern]

But, is there not a trend toward fuller gamuts for more modern monitors such as the LED back-lit type? In fact, the e-sRGB spec. to suit such technology is now about 12 years old!

Yes there is a trend towards increasing monitor gamut, but (a) you can't guarantee it for any given numbers of viewers, and (b) the colours in the extended gamut aren't usually significant for most images and (c) Adobe RGB is more than just a few extra colours; it's a different encoding system that affects everyone and (d) even if someone has an Adobe RGB capable monitor, to be able to see the image correctly they STILL need to have a colour-managed browser AND a system that's using the correct profile for that monitor ...

... and I'd suggest that that's very very few people indeed.

[Colin Southern]

I agree that this post is now going in the wrong direction. We have had few fruitful and some useless discussions.
But in the end if it is worth anything I have made up my mind to stick to my d90 for a little bit longer, not bother for a new camera... I may start buying new lenses.... may be Fx so that when eventually i do upgrade i dont have to completely change.
And yes I am finding all the tips on WB usefull, though the iso is still not up to the mark.
Will continue to ask for help, to improve my photography... hope u guys will be happy to help.
Thanks for all the posts...
I appreciate.

It seems to me that the thing you need most is a tripod and remote release.

High ISO modes don't create noise; under-exposure is responsible for placing image data closer to the noise floor which is then REVEALED in post-production when an attempt to restore the correct levels is made. What high ISO modes DO do though is reduce the camera's dynamic range (because physically the sensitivity of the sensor isn't changing - and neither does the noise floor - and with each increase in ISO (in stops) you're effectively using less and less of the sensors range).

Most cameras leave about a 2 stop safety margin with general metering (when shooting RAW) - you MUST over-ride that at higher ISO settings. High ISO settings are also challenged in high dynamic range scenes (eg night scenes like the bridge where you have pin light sources - midtones from light reflected from surfaces illuminated by the pin light sources - and shadows created by "the black of night"). In those situations the best thing you can do is stick the camera on a tripod - use the camera's base ISO (for maximum dynamic range) - and expose for the mid-tones (most camera metering will under-expose scenes like the bridge scene because it's trying to protect the point light sources, which is futile because they're incident light and are always going to blow anyway).

Also, with many cameras, you're better off NOT using intermediate ISO settings (like you appear to be doing). Most cameras amplify the sensor shot in fixed stop amounts (analog gain), but for intermediate steps they digitally shift the "odd stop" amount, which amplifies the noise by the same amount. So you're likely to get MORE noise at ISO 1000 than you would at ISO 1600.


Hope this helps.