This last weekend I got to visit my folks and attend an unusual reunion.  All the classes from 1970-1979 gathered in OK, for a big party.   Because I took my “real” camera, I wound up as the photographer for many of the events.  It was a blast.  One of the things which really distinguished McAlester during this period was an incredible choir, music and theater program—No I did not sing.  The organizers arranged for the choir director to come back and for volunteers to perform at one of the many large churches on Sunday morning.   For some reason, churches really object to shooting with big booming flash units, so I knew I needed to plan for shooting, hand held with a long lens in low light.  So, today we are going to talk about strategies and tools to help, both in shooting and in post processing.

First, let’s talk about your ability to adjust your ISO settings.  ISO is how the camera’s sensitivity to light is measured.  All camera’s have optimal settings where the sensor has the lowest noise profile.  For my D300®, that is at ISO 200.  It is the same thing as the film speed.  A lower number meant that you needed more light, but that the pictures were sharper.  With a digital camera you can change the sensitivity on the fly.  Many camera’s have auto-ISO settings.  I prefer to adjust mine manually.  When shooting indoors, my camera is good up to around ISO 800.  The noise there is visible, but manageable.  Above ISO 1000, it looks very grainy.  The newest Nikon cameras have really broken through with new sensors and they can be used at settings of ISO 3200 or greater.  How much greater? All the way up to ISO 102,400, this is almost like shooting at midnight.

So what is the impact on your pictures?  Less light means your shutter has to stay open longer at a given fstop.  If you are shooting things that don’t move and are on a tripod, that might be ok, but trying to shoot people moving, well it means that they will be fuzzy at best and uselessly blurry at worst.   Fast glass, i.e., f2.8 and better really helps, but that kind of lens get pricey quickly.  Even at ISO 800, I the picture was shot at 1/10 of a second, really too slow to handhold. 

Lightroom 3.x has dramatically improved our ability to get cleaner images.  Nothing yet, although there are algorithms in development, can correct an out of focus picture.   There are still plug-ins available that do this as well, but in the new release of LR, they added a new Noise Reduction module just below the sharpening module.  It has two different sets of sliders, one for Luminance noise—random flecks and the second for Color noise—the banding which can appear around objects. 

From the Adobe Community Lightroom Help Pages at   http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Lightroom/3.0/Using/WS67a9e0c3a11b149632d4213d12864349b1a-7fff.html

Luminance

Reduces luminance noise.

Detail

Controls the luminance noise threshold. Useful for very noisy photos. Higher values preserve more detail but may produce noisier results. Lower values produce cleaner results but may also remove some detail.

Contrast

Controls luminance contrast. Useful for very noisy photos. Higher values preserve contrast but may produce noisy blotches or mottling. Lower values produce smoother results but may also have less contrast.

Color 

Reduces color noise.

Detail

Controls the color noise threshold. Higher values protect thin, detailed color edges but may result in color speckling. Lower values remove color speckles but may result in color bleeding.

There are no right answers to the settings, play with them with the image at 100% until it looks right. It makes a difference as can be seen from these two segments of the image above.  The first has no noise reduction applied:

The same image with NR cranked up to 89 (Yes it goes past 11).  Edges are much crisper. 

You will often hear photographers talk about the perfect histogram while they’re checking the back of their cameras.  If you’re new to digital photography, you may think this is just another example of something you need to learn.   Just as soon as you learned the difference between an aperture and ISO, some smart-alec throws in a new term – what the heck is a histogram?

A histogram is a simple graph, displaying the levels of brightness in your photograph.  You read it as the darkest levels on the left to the brightest on the right.  The height of histogram is a reflection of the number of pixels that fall within that brightness level.  Almost every digital camera can display the histogram.  Here is a “normal” histogram.

"Normal" Histogram

The distribution pixel brightness in many scenes, at proper exposure, will be even, but you need to consider the image. You can, instantly, get good information about your photo’s exposure values by checking it often.  But, like many so-called rules, there are exceptions.  With no knowledge of the corresponding image, you’d think that these histograms are bad.  The first one is too dark and the secpmd is obviously too bright, right?

Too dark?

Too bright?

Not necessarily true.  If your scene is dark – and it’s supposed to be – the majority of your pixels will fall to the left side of the scale.  Think of a black cat, lying on a piece of black velvet.  Not too many bright pixels in that scene.  The top histogram is from my day my grandkids took me to Luray Caverns.  I’ve told you (quite proudly) that the oldest occasionally has an interest in cameras.  She borrowed the point-and-shoot and went crazy down there in the caverns.  I caught this one as she paused to admire her photos.  There was very little light down there, and her face was dimly lit by the LCD on the back of the camera.  It is a dark photo, resulting in a histogram that is skewed to the left.  I wouldn’t want to brighten this just to make a “normal” histogram.

Likewise, a bright scene will have pixels that fill the right side of the scale.  In this photograph, there is still quite a bit of dark pixels, but the majority are clearly on the right. 

There are other ways to use the histogram as you work on your photography.  There is plenty of information  on the web if you want to go to greater depths.  We’ll get into some of them on another day.  I hope that answered the question.  You can always ask questions here or on our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/efcubed.

To apply this feature, you just need to be in the Develop module and work your way down the menu until you get to “LensCorrection”.    

Just select the check box for “Enable Profile Corrections” and if it has a model for that lens, it will apply the correction. They keep adding new profiles and release them with the updates.

The model for each lens from each manufacturer has to be built separately.    Here is a link to the current list of supported lenses http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/846/cpsid_84666.html . 

The Nikon lens list includes the most popular models. 

” The beauty of Adobe’s tool is that you need no fancy equipment whatsoever. In fact the only requirements are that you can mount the chart flat (can be as small as 8 1/2″x11″) and that you can provide constant illumination (doesn’t have to be superhomogenous just constant between shots). Larger charts can be print out for little money using labs like costco’s for almost nothing ($9 for a 20×30 nowadays!). Then shoot a minimum of 9 shots of the chart at several focal lengths for a zoom lens at a single aperture (11) in manual mode which you can do handheld without a loss of quality of the profile, it really doesn’t matter. Then load those shots into the lens profile creator app and let it crank away. I’ve done this for a few of my unlisted lenses and the profiles work excellent. I’ve also submitted these profiles to Adobe, but unfortunately, the Lightroom engineers did not yet build in the feature you have access to in the lens correction filter in Photoshop CS5 where you can download the user submitted profiles for a lot of lenses from Adobe. This should be fixed in an upcoming update to Lightroom. For now, you either have to use CS5 to download profiles or profile the lenses yourself, which is easy. Adobe really did a great job on this tool to make it usable for folks without any special equipment. “  http://www.flickr.com/groups/adobe_lightroom/discuss/72157624239647554/

Although it exists in Photoshop CS5, there is not yet a way to share or retrieve profiles others have created online.  It is coming, at least according to Adobe.

The work actually begins before Lightroom when you scan those old photos.  You can purchase scanners that handle negatives, slides and prints.  As with everything, quality varies with each scanners (as does price).  I try to get the best quality and details I can, and this, generally, means that I will create TIFFs, rather than JPGs. Scanning is a complex topic in itself, so take some time to learn how your scanner works before you head down this rabbit hole.  There are many companies that will do all this tedious work for you.  Again, if you ever want to produce large, high quality images, have them create the files in TIFFs, and expect the cost of the scans to increase in line with your quality demands.

The workflow for my genealogy pictures is the same as my normal family workflow: import into family database; keyword all images; enter all known metadata; apply develop module changes. I save all my images in a single subfolder, inside my “Photos” folder.  This ensures that my regular photo back-ups include the scans.  You wouldn’t want to lose all these files, would you? 

Import your scans as you would any new photos; Lightroom can read TIFFs without a problem.  Once they are imported, I keyword all images.  In the Keyword List, I use the nesting capabilities in Lightroom to identify them as “Family,” then their last name, “Atkins,” and then their full name, “Thomas T. Atkins.” 

Sounds complicated, but you only have to set it up once, and then it becomes one simple click on “Thomas T. Atkins.” Lightroom will add the photo to “Atkins” and “Family” because of the nesting.  In genealogy databases, women are listed by their maiden names, so I include those in the full name keyword as you can see below.  Catherine (McLaulin) Dallman photos were taken after our marriage.  Photos of her before our marriage are listed under “Family”, “McLaulin”, Catherine L. McLaulin. 

The next step is to fill in all the additional facts about the photo in the Metadata section.  You can add a title to the photo if you want one.  I use the caption field to further explain the image or event occurring in the image.  This is important information for family historians because it adds to the information on an individual’s life and lets descendants know more about the experiences of their ancestors.  There is so much more to their history than their birth, marriage, and death dates. The date of the image and locational data  are also key metadata and have their own section.

Now that you have entered all the data, you can do some basic editing in Lightroom.  Most of the images you scan will have problems due to their age: discoloration, scratches, and tears.  Lightroom can handle some of the easy stuff, but you need Photoshop or some other editing tool for the heavy duty lifting of restoration.

Here is an image I received from a relative.  The photo wasn’t square to the edges when it was scanned and has a heavy yellow discoloration with plenty of surface flaws.  Lightroom can fix the tilt and yellowness and the major flaws. 

I’ll clean up the background and bring out more of his suit in Photoshop.  Until then, go find some old photographs and add them to your photo files.  Don’t forget to capture all the information – we’re trying to preserve the data, not create a new, digital shoebox.

Self-portraits are nothing new and have been done throughout antiquity by artists in painting and sculpture.  The artists would often incorporate their own images in major works that were not specifically about themselves.  Michelangelo, Leonard da Vinci, Rembrandt, and many others have created many self-portraits.  Of course, photographers through the years have continued to use their cameras to shoot themselves.  So, it’s an old tradition, and I figured it made for a fun little self-assignment. 

The funny thing is – and this may be why I never did it years ago – when you start thinking about how you want to be depicted, it gets more complicated.  What kind of pose will you choose?  You may want to highlight your various skills or possessions; you may want to portray a mood or emotion. You are doing a self-assignment, so you don’t want to just shoot something silly like this.

You can make your own choice without the discussion of all the psychological rabbit holes that surround your personal decision.  I chose to show some of my musical instruments because the music room gave me control and had the space to move around. 

I put my camera on a tripod and made sure the field of view allow plenty of room.  I bounced a flash into the ceiling and used a reflector to bounce light back from the front window.  I wanted to reduce the shadows because I was going to be standing in different locations in the final composite.  Four different shadows would have caused more post processing.  I shot four different photos in manual mode to keep the aperture and focal point constant.  If you tried to shoot something like this in one of the automated modes, you would have had obvious photographic inconsistencies. Since everything, except my position, was consistent from photo to photo, I didn’t have too much work to do in Photoshop.  Mostly, I added masks to allow only the appropriate part of the four layers to show through.  Here are a couple of the original shots and the final composite.

The entire process only took a couple of hours.  It provided practice in several techniques: planning the shot; working through the photography set-up; and working through the post-processing.  Give your self-portrait a chance to help you learn and have fun.

We stayed in a nice hotel, with all the modern amenities.  The buses you see are your transportation within the park.  You should book early because it gets very busy.  There are several good restaurants within walking distance.

The roads inside the park are dirt and very narrow.  If you’re a nervous rider, you’ll want to close your eyes in several places.  The picture below is from my window, and that river is about 1000 feet down the cliff.  At the time, our bus was waiting for another bus to pass in the other direction, so we had to wait.  Our guide was great.  One rider asked if they had ever “lost a bus on these roads?”  MJ answered immediately: “No, we always find them at the bottom.”   

The drive takes you as close as 35 miles from Mt. McKinley (Denali, to the Inuits and Alaskans).  Clouds usually obscure the view of the summit, and our luck was no better.  I’ve seen clear views of Denali many times when we lived in Anchorage, but not this time. 

Most folks go to see the wildlife, and we saw plenty: grizzly bears; caribou; moose; and even a wolf.  Since this is a preserve, the animals are completely wild and unassisted by the rangers, except that hunters are not allowed.  You can see from the photos that I had to crop in to get a semi-reasonable image.  I had my 70-200mm zoom, but I really wish I had rented a longer lens.  I guess I need to go spend some time with Moose Peterson before I go back up there.  

We were very fortunate in staying there for 3 nights.  The cruise ships would come in for a few hours and the tourists would flood through the streets and then they would have to ride down the hairpin turns and take the boats back to the ships and get underway.   Of course they make a nice background for the restaurant next door to our hotel.   Everywhere you looked, sculpture and art were out on public display.

Shooting at sunset really requires a tripod, or a wall to get the full range of colors.  It was pretty hazy while we were there and our sunset colors were pretty muted.  I want to apply for the position of official sunset photographer in Santorini. 

The barrel roofed churches provide good structural protection against the many earthquakes that still shake the island.  Often when shooting sunset, just waiting a few minutes can really change the mood of the image as the light changes hue.  Moving a few feet left or right also can help you frame the pictures that you like.  I shot a sequence of 45 pictures in 20 minutes and these two are the ones that spoke to me.   That is an important part of shooting travel shots, always move around, to change the angles and shoot lots of pictures. 

Don’t forget to turn around often.  Sometimes there are great shots where you just walked past.

Well that’s all the light, so the sun will set peacefully on the Aegean Sea.  You don’t have to go that far to capture the light; it’s all around, just take your camera and find it.

We started the morning in Georgetown, arriving early as usual, and snapping a few shots as we waited for the rest of the group to meet at the rally point.  There were about 35 walkers in our group. We even had Kathy, our buddy from the Reinventing a Boomer blog, join us while she was visiting her son; he came along, too.

We took a group photo and began our walk along the old Chesapeake and Ohio canal.  President John Quincy Adams ceremoniously began digging on 4 July 1828, and it was finally completed in 1850.  In Georgetown, you can take a short ride on the canal boat, still. 

We walked up M Street, with cameras snapping away in countless directions, making the tourists and locals wonder what was up.  You can see the group’s photostream here.  There are almost 200 photos there now, and photographers can add more until this weekend. 

After cooling off in a local establishment with some lovely stout, I went home for a cold shower, so I could be ready for the Warrenton evening walk.  The town of Warrenton is the county seat of Fauquier County and a town full of history from its 1810 incorporation.  We had a smaller group of about 20 folks, but had just as much fun.  For this walk, Mark and I limited ourselves to only one lens, the 105mm.  Besides constraining our views, it also meant we didn’t carry any heavy bags.  There was still plenty of heat and humidity to drain my reserves, but I managed to get a few more shots.  The walk ended at the ice cream stand (it was packed with overheated folks).  You can look at the Warrenton photostream here.

It was a long hot day, but I’d do it again next year.  Mark and I have participated in all three of the Worldwide Photowalks, and my only complaint is that Scott Kelby needs to move the date to a month that isn’t so hot.  Or, maybe, I need to join a walk in Alaska next year.  Anyone up for a roadtrip?