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honez
Registered: August 2008
Posts: 705
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This was one of my son's Xmas presents, which took (both of us) quite a while to put together.
The purpose of the shot is to try to learn a bit more about indoor lighting and "studio" type shooting. I'm quite disappointed with the result as there was a fair amount of noise and the clarity and crispness wasn't what I expected.
The set up I had was two off camera lights to the left and right of the model, and a speedlight on the camera bouncing off the white ceiling.
I had to crank up the speedlight to be +3 EV to get anything like the shutter speed I was expecting. Without cranking things up it needed a 1 sec + exposure even with the flash triggered, which really confused me. I really need to do some more reading up on this kind of stuff. The camera was probably about 2 metres away from the model.
Any ideas what I'm doing wrong as far as clarity/crispness, etc for the image? The camera was tripod mounted and nice and steady, I used a shutter release cable, so I really don't know how to account for the amount of noise in the shot. I originally had this on ISO 100, but that made the exposure times even longer (4+ secs).
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| · Date: Thu January 21, 2010 · Views: 2203 · Filesize: 62.5kb, 248.3kb · Dimensions: 1500 x 1000 ·
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Keywords: Excavator
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Kev
Registered: February 2008
Posts: 2,722
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Fri January 22, 2010 6:08am
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Bin playin' wid yer toys again - Honez? 
Well, first off - I think it looks a lot better than you are making out here...the colours look good form where I sit and the shadows are pretty well controlled, etc.
With regard to the lighting & exposure....there's nothing wrong with a long shutter speed IF that's what the camera requires under a given scenario. Many of my studio flower shots are 4, 6 or even 8 secs long. With a still-life like this you don't need a fast shutter speed...coz it's 100% stationary. I always use ISO 100 when I shoot subjects like this....thus the camera is forced to long expose.
Hence, it doesn't matter IF you use 4 secs, or whatever. There's many ways to peel an orange...I prefer a soft, continuous, diffused approach...others may like to use diffused softbox's, or studio flash, etc. Pro product studio guys who use the medium format digital scan backs also use 'continuous' lighting coz the backs require an exposure of about 2-3 seconds, so the flash method won't do. They also shoot at ISO 50 all the time for minimum noise and optimal resolution.
The reason I like 'continuous' lighting is because you always get what you see.
IF you are using a tripod, shutter release cord, mirror up, and a precise manual focus - that's all you can do to ensure a crisp/sharp photo. Maybe you now need to invest in a tack sharp pro grade 2.8 fast lens?
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honez
Registered: August 2008
Posts: 705
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Fri January 22, 2010 6:23am
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I've got to admit Kev, it cleaned up in post (a lot) better than the RAW looked. I sharpened and upped the clarity in ACR before photoshopping, and applied Noise Ninja and some more high pass sharpening in P/E. So the end result isn't as bad as I first thought (especially after reducing size and again sharpening for JPEG.
The lens I've got (2.8 60mm macro) is sharp enough, I was just left scratching my head over what looked to be softness and noise in the RAW and the fact that the exposure I used was the fastest I could get. I understand what you're saying about longer exposures, but I was specifically trying to get something quick to try to reduce the noise as much as possible.
In hindsight I think I should have gone for f3.5-4.0 ISO 100 and -- egad now you mentioned it -- mirror lock up. The larger apperture and lower ISO would have probably kept the shutter speed around the same or thereabouts. Having a dig through the 7D manual, I think there's some more tweaks I can do around noise and light-enhancement/optimisation I can experiment with, so I think I'm gonna have to have a little bit more of a play around indoors before I'm completely happy with how I've got things set up.
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Kev
Registered: February 2008
Posts: 2,722
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Fri January 22, 2010 6:31am
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I know that F/4 to f/8 is probably your lenses best MTF aperture range, but for still-life I'd go f/16 for something like this to maximize DOF. A longer exposure won't increase the noise factor...so long as you are getting enuff total light to the sensor.
My Nikon RAW files are always 'soft' straight out of the camera - coz I shoot with ZERO "in-camera" sharpening...I always apply pp USM, etc at the final output stage.
I never need to apply 'noise reduction' via software - I just don't like using it - coz ultimately it degrades fine detail - which I just wont/can't tolerate 
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kbirdd
Registered: October 2008
Posts: 595
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Tue January 26, 2010 1:02pm
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Very nice, Honez. And thank you both for the discussion, very helpful information
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