Random Trek (with a fellow photographer friend)

Well, that's what I like to call it, because if you ask her (my friend – Swati) she would say we went for bird watching! And the reason for difference of opinion? Well – We both had 35mm equivalent of 100-400 lens - me, with my reliable and fast ZD 50-200 and she with with her Canon EF 100-400. But the big difference was the bodies. I had my old E-330 and and she had EOS 7D! .

So the advantage she had was 2 fold. She could crank up her ISO and thus get a decent shot of birds without worrying about the noise, i.e. was able to shoot at fast shutter speed. Also her lens had IS (Image Stabilization), which ensured that she didn't have to worry about camera shake, especially when using longer focal length.

I, on the other hand, didn't have either of these. My E-30 had gone for repair, and my E-5 was in transit (both have in body IS). And I was not sure of the high ISO performance of my E-330 (which incidentally had max ISO rating of 1600). So i decided to play it safe by keeping the ISO around 800 and shooting at max aperture. Also, the morning was overcast which made it impossible to get fast shutter speed in shades with above settings.

Having said this, I think I made a blunder. I made a mistake of not trusting/testing the ISO limit of my E-330 . I was too afraid of getting too much noise. In the process, I ended up getting with quite a few shaky photograph pics of the birds (which i had to discard). As you may be aware E-330 doesn't have in body IS, and a 50-200 on it doesn't make the whole thing light. As a result, you have a lot of camera shake with lens fully extended, which could only have been negated by fast  shutter speed. But for most shots in shade, I was not able to get fast enough shitter speed with ISO 800 (even with aperture wide open), ISO 1600 may have fared better . So in the hindsight, I did not make a very wise decision of not testing the ISO limits of E-330.

Bottom Line – A very wise advice from a very unwise man – If you have to make choice between shaky picture and a grainy one – always go for the latter, crank up the ISO as much as you can to get fast shutter speed. Remember – A grainy picture is a thousand times better than a shaky picture.

So we started our day with rendezvous at the regional engineering college (VNIT), Nagpur. This college is surrounded by marsh lands and lots of dense trees, like a mini forest. So its has lot of bird population of various kinds. I am not an avid bird watcher, I wouldn't know a crow from an owl. But the people who gathered there seemed to be very excited about spotting quite a few of them (they were refering to bird watchers guide and making notes). I tried to follow Swati’s lead and point and click wherever she was pointing and clicking, but unfortunately after a few shots, I realized that it was becoming tedious for me to get decent non-shaky pic. I was frustrated! So in order that I don't waste an opportunity which i had for some good photography, I decided to do some random clicking! and hence the name for this blog – Random Trek :-)

Here are some of the shots I took on that day! Hope you enjoy them.

At the entrance of the college a MiG-23 fighter plane. 5 frame HDR from single RAW (+2 to -2EV) in Photomatix Pro (Base RAW ISO 400, 1/80, f/5)
Another view of MiG-23. Same HDR processing as above.
My friend - the ever calm photographer – Swati
A lamp…
A Lantern! Kept finding interesting things to click once I stopped worrying about the birds! :-)
A loner! B&W processing in CS4. Added grain F/7.1, 1/2000, ISO 800
The National Cadet Corps – Girls battalion on march.
A Young bird watcher :-)
Serious bird watchers!
Labourers on their way to start another day at work
Yeah…. we are still in the wired world, still!
Only one decent bird catch. Not sure which is this. F/5, 1/2500, ISO 800.
An interesting art in front of one of the buildings…
And finally…I thought trash bin IS for the trash! no?

Nice, carefree trek… loved it!

 

Ciao!

High ISO Shooting

First of all – Apologies for not writing for almost 2 months. As most of you know, I am now in India and the move was extremely hectic and overwhelming! I am now settled though, and hope to continue my blog as before!

So, coming to this blog. Lets first understand why HIGH ISO is even a topic and what ISO and high ISOs are.

As many of you would have noticed something labeled as ISO on your cameras. But most people I know have hardly used this feature because they either don’t know how to use it or don’t know what it means or both.

In simple terms – ISO is defined a film or the image sensor speed. It defines how fast or slow the film or image sensor is. In other words it is simply a measure of sensitivity of the film or the image sensor to light. So higher the ISO, greater is the sensitivity of the film or image sensor - which is what is called fast film or sensor. If the ISO is low then its the slow film or image sensor which is to say its less sensitive to light.

If you own a digital camera, then ISO speed are marked as 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200 and so on…

I will not touch upon the how the ISO affects the exposure stops as its much more involved subject. For the time being its enough for you to understand that the following

• A low ISO say 100 or 200 will make your image sensor less sensitive to light. So you will need more exposure time to shoot a scene. Slower shutter speed.
• A high ISO of say 800 or 1600 will make the image sensor more sensitive light. So you will need less exposure time to shoot the same scene. Faster shutter speed.
• To be exact – every doubling of ISO speed, you double the sensitivity of the film or sensor. So you will need a faster shutter speeds as you increase the ISO (assuming your aperture or f-number is constant) to get the correct exposure.

So, when do you need high ISO? – In most daylight situations, an ISO of 100, 200 or 400 should be enough. But things change when you have following scenarios and that is when you need higher ISO

• You cannot use or do not have a flash and you are shooting indoors under natural or artificial light
• You want to use fast shutter speed to freeze an action.
• You are in an aquarium or a museum. Now you may say you can use flash. But you will get horrible pics if you choose to use external flash in aquarium unless you do a professional setup. So I would rather go with high ISO to get faster shutter so that I reduce shake
• Remember – as a general rule you should have the shutter speed which is at least reciprocal of the highest focal length of the lens. So if you lens is 50mm then you should have the minimum shutter of 1/50 so that you don’t get into camera shake effect. So increasing ISO in such a situation to get optimum shutter speed is desirable.

Now having said this, if you are shooting in a lowlight without tripod then you better have a very good reason for doing so. But like we all know, its not practical to have tripod every where you go, even if you have it, its not practical to set it up everywhere. High ISO will come to the rescue for you.

Those were the advantages and ways to use high ISO, of course as with everything else in life, all good things come with a price. So does high ISO.

A high ISO makes the image sensor very sensitive to light, which in turn introduces digital noise in the picture. As seen from the picture below, use of ISO-2000 has allowed me to use a shutter of 1/500 inside a mall. However it has lots of tiny specs. This is noise.

  

However there is way to get rid of digital noise during post processing. I use a software called Noiseware.

The corrected image in Photoshop and using Noiseware to reduce noise.

But such software have their limitations. They work best when your exposure is spot-on. If your picture is under exposed, then you are in trouble. The noise reduction software will do more harm then good.

This is because any image sensor/processor has a higher latitude for over exposure in low light than under exposure. So if you over expose your pic then you may be able salvage it even if it has lot of noise. But if you under expose, then you are definitely in trouble.

I will show you an example. Here are 2 pictures.

Both are shot @ ISO 3200. The first picture is terribly under exposed. So it had a lot of noise and even with a lot of post processing in Photoshop, I couldn't get the exposure right nor was the Noiseware able to remove the noise properly. The result – bad picture, terribly underexposed, no clarity what-so-ever, bad noise. You can see the noise even after processing with Noiseware.

Second picture was over exposed by 2 stops. I could salvage this picture in Photoshop and get almost correct exposure. I could also remove almost all noise and picture is perfectly clear. Although you do see some camera shake in it, that's because of slow shutter as a result of over exposure. Also there is some loss of details in the bright areas, but who cares….I got the subjects nice!

 

So, if you want to shoot in low light with high ISO, always remember to ensure your exposure is right. One way of ensuring this is to use SPOT metering on the subject and adjusting the EV (Exposure value) to get the appropriate exposure.

Remember over exposure is better than under exposure any day when shooting in lowlight.

Some High ISO examples

ISO-3200

 

ISO-2000

 

 

ISO-1600 for 1/8000 sec to freeze the bird. Broad daylight.

 

ISO-2000

Hope this was helpful!