I have had my camera for almost a year now and am finally, finally, starting to get shots in low light that are somewhat satisfying to me. The key milestones on this path have been: improving to a good lens for low light (with a low/big aperture), and learning RAW (not only how to process it, but how to shoot for it).
This last weekend, we were invited to the 2yo birthday party for Isabelle, a neighborhood kid. She is seriously one of the cutest kids I know, and you know that's true because I certainly don't have to say that (none of her family reads this blog, as far as I know at least). She is half Chinese, and I think almost all biracial kids are cute. Her party was at the Children's Museum, in some rather poor indoor artificial light.
I mentioned to Amber once that the jpgs that my camera saves are almost always better, right off the bat, than my RAW files (I shoot in the mode that saves both the jpg and the RAW file). I often just use the JPG and don't bother editing the RAW. For this party, however, ALL 91 photos that I took were poor, right off the bat, in RAW and JPG format.
Using my favorite photo from the session, here is an illustration of my improved skills (yep, I'm bragging).
initial jpg saved by camera. When I first got my camera, and shot only in JPG, this is all I would have gotten. I could lighten/brighten it within a small range with my editing program, but I don't know that I would have ever felt happy with the results. It's a very average picture.
Here is the initial RAW photo. Ugh, even worse! Well, sort of...
With that RAW file, which contains oodles of data, I am able to "rescue" it to this following photo. I have to say that I think this is adorable (as do her parents, who have asked me for enlargements):
The thing is that even though the jpg starts out a bit better, you are pretty limited in the potential range of your edits. There is less data to work with. With a RAW file, you can make a lot of more finely tuned adjustments.
In March, Amber gave me a 3 min tour of the RAW processing screen in Elements. Also, for Christmas, Jay had given me an issue of Digital Camera magazine. I never actually read the magazine, but I did read a free insert that came with the magazine just this last weekend. It was a 28 page booklet that was essentially titled "RAW made easy." It has really helped me to understand a lot. Namely, given that the goal is to get as much right during the actual capture of the photograph, there are some things you can fix with RAW processing and some things that you can't.
The big things that you can't fix:
- poor focus
- significantly over or underexposed photos
- depth of field
The big things that you can fix:
- white balance
- exposure
So with that in mind, I decided to concentrate on establishing good focal points. I set my white balance to auto (gasp), I capped my auto-ISO at 800, and then set my shutter to 1/125 and my aperture to f/1.8. The meter told me the shots were underexposed by an EV of approximately 1.0 most of the time, which to me meant that the photos were "rescue-able."
I shot away with no changes to those settings, just making sure that my focal point was directly on what I wanted. I do wish that I had tried setting my ISO to 400 and my aperture to f/2.5. There are some photos with too much noise and some photos with too small of a focal plane (e.g. in one photo, not the one of this post: Isabelle's ear lobe is in focus but her nose is blurry, while I want her whole head in focus). My camera's LCD is pretty sparse in the detail that it can show, so it was really hard to see how blurry, or focused, a picture actually was.
Another thing I have learned is that while RAW rescues are great ... the workflow is SO cumbersome, at least on my computer. I still prefer to just use the original jpgs that my camera saves, when reasonable (which seems to be 75% of the time, or more). I can open RAW only in PSE9 (my CS4 doesn't have my camera definition in its RAW plugin). So I open in PSE9, do the raw conversion, and then can save in various filetypes -- but jpg is not one of them! I feel like I must be doing something wrong. I could save as jpg if I saved for web, but my files are so big that I get errors if I choose "save for web." So, I save as a TIF file, then open Picasa (out of habit) and resize/post/email the TIF photo, converting it to JPG format. Picasa is so efficient at this function. Then I end up with four versions of my photo: original jpg, original RAW, saved TIF, publishable-final jpg. Clearly, I need to get this workflow figured out -- way too cumbersome.
Bottom line: I'm happy with the progress in low light photography. Finally.
That was some great editing, Rachele. :)
ReplyDeleteAre you resizing the RAW photo before saving? Our PSE teacher had us saving multiple files for the same pic (if we were going to upload onto a site and print and ...) and had us resizing everything down, unless you're specifically editing to blow a picture up. When I tested this to see how much smaller the file size was, I went from a 34.5M RAW file that was 17"x11" to a 6.19M files size that had been resized to a 5"x7". After sizing down, I was able to select Save for Web without getting the notice that my file size was too big. Although, I typically don't use the Save for Web option. It's meant to conserve file size and I do this manually by resizing the photo myself. Using Save for Web also strips the EXIF info (at least in PSE8) as a way to reduce the file size even more. And I like to have that info.
And, yes, this does sound very cumbersome. I currently use - insert collective moan from every professional photographer in the world here - iPhoto to house my RAW files and PSE to edit. (I have a few more days left on my Aperture trial and I think I'm going to buy it to take the place of iPhoto.) Not every picture gets edited. When I edit, I open up the file in PSE, make my corrections on the first screen that RAW files open into (I can't remember what this is called - the intro screen?), then click "open file" and fine tune my corrections. This includes sharpening a little here or there, adding the vignetting, etc., and then I resize based on what I think I'm going to do with the picture (typically 4x6 or 5x7). Then I use Save As (I just throw the standard jpg pics on the web instead of actually saving for the web) and call it good.
I see my future workflow going something like this: download photos onto computer, open in Aperture and make corrections, save. Voilà! But that's a long way down the road after I learn how to do the minute corrections in Aperture, which means I'll still be using PSE for a while. Although vignetting in Aperture and Lightroom is a breeze! Hello, slider.
Christie -
ReplyDeleteI am not resizing before saving. Based on feedback from both you and my Dad, I clearly need to do that. I had expected that I could resize within the "save for web" dialog box. Well, it seems that I indeed could, once I get the dialog box to appear. My only hesitation for resizing is that I often crop as one of my last steps. If I resize first then my cropping will probably be less flexible? I guess I could try to move my cropping to earlier in the workflow. First crop, then resize. Anyway, the main reason I even wanted to use "save for web" was just to get files that would be ready for fast upload to FB, email, blog, etc.
I use Picasa in the same way that you are using iPhoto-soon-Aperture. I am very accustomed to the way it handles/organizes photos and I like the easy one-click functions for uploads to facebook, blog, email, etc. I can right click on a raw file in picasa and then choose to edit in PSE9. It will then open in the RAW screen (that's what I call it, at least) where I can make my edits. At that point though, I need to then save/open in PSE proper, only for the purpose of saving the file into a format that Picasa can happily and easily read, since I like all of my Picasa organization functions that I am used to. I guess I should investigate more if I can save the processed RAW file from the RAW screen into a Picasa-friendly format, and thus bypass the detour into PSE9.
Or, I just need to ditch Picasa. sniff.
I haven't played much with adding vignetting though I do want to get there. Picasa doesn't do vignetting. It does sharpening but it's hard for me to see any significant improvement in my photos when I sharpen. I think I need to view my pictures at a bigger size to see that edit really? So, maybe I can't bypass PSE9. I just wish there was an easy way to organize and manage my photos in Photoshop PSE9, but I so very much dislike the organizer. For one thing, it's PAINFULLY slow on my machine.
For the photos that you do not edit, do you use the jpg saved by your camera or are your RAW photos good right off the bat? (Do you shoot in jpg+raw?)
Quite a haphazard meandering typed response! Perhaps we need another photography outing. :)
"If I resize first then my cropping will probably be less flexible?" Why? (Side note: Darr said when he was working in publishing they would crop the image, make any corrections needed, and then resize for output. But that was eons ago so I'm not sure if that is still industry standard or something out of the publishing Dark Ages.)
ReplyDeleteI used to use iPhoto's easy upload to Facebook and Flickr, until I noticed that once an iPhoto library is moved, like to an external hard drive for back up, which I do a couple times a year, it would remove the photos from Facebook and Flickr. Annoying!
As for sharpening, I don't usually see the benefit of this either unless I'm doing extra sharpening in the eye area. When you select the iris and sharpen it, you can highlight the eye in a way that makes it pop.
"For the photos that you do not edit, do you use the jpg saved by your camera or are your RAW photos good right off the bat? (Do you shoot in jpg+raw?)"
I shoot in RAW only so I don't usually have jpgs of the photos I'm not going to place somewhere (blog, Flickr or print). Everything stays RAW. I do think I'm getting better RAW pictures now than I used to but it's not only because of my camera, it's because I'm trying to pay attention to the elements of my shot (background, lighting, depth of field, white balance, etc.) and working to frame the shot so that I won't have to crop it later.
We definitely need another photography outing. Any suggestions?
Well, whenever I crop, I can only go so small before the resulting crop is too poor in quality. It seems like I would want to start from as large of a source as I could, before I crop. The crop could very well be enough to take the picture down to a reasonable size, without resizing first. Cropping doesn't resample the picture (i.e. remove pixels evenly throughout the image), whereas resizing does. Therefore, I think of resizing as more destructive than cropping, and I want to do my most destructive edits at the end of my process.
ReplyDeleteThis is all theoretical. To post pictures on FB / blog / email, however, it seems to be a moot point, so perhaps I need to let go of the theoretical. :)
Thankfully, Picasa has never removed my photos from fb, flickr, or anything! I'd be very very unhappy!
I will have to do a post illustrating the difference in my RAW vs JPG photos produced by the camera. The JPG photos are just so much more appealing, with some (usually minor) amount of vibrance, contrast, brightness already applied. Of course I can edit my RAW to get to that point, but if I am already happy with the JPG, then it is pointless to spend the time editing (as long as my purpose is not to enlarge a print). I wonder if my RAW pictures are so dull because they are viewed through Picasa, which has no true RAW conversion to speak of? I shall have to view my RAW photos through PSE9 or CS4 to see if they are any more appealing that way.
I still feel in some ways like I just moved to Portland, so I'm not too sure of good destinations for photography. I know I'd like to shoot in Hood River / the Gorge (but don't have any idea of a specific/ideal destination to do that) and I would also like to shoot the Japanese Gardens (but might do so later this month when I bring out of town guests there -- possibly). I wonder if there's a site that recommends destinations for photography outings?