Beginner Feedback if I may?

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Orbeaboy

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Was asked to take some photos of a baby shower that was inside quite a dark room. I’m not happy with them as they look grainy- I’m guessing it’s because the ISO was quite high as it was inside. Am I correct in saying this, and what could I have done to improve it. Thanks.

Here’s a sample picture



[url=https://flic.kr/p/2nD1in3]BabyShower by Simon Veni, on Flickr[/URL]
 
Yes it's because you're shooting at ISO 12800 which is pretty high, especially an entry level DSLR.

Your settings look a little off. You don't need to be shooting people standing still at 1/2000th of a second. 1/160th would have been fine in this lighting as long as your technique is right and they actually stood still. Just doing this would give you about 3.5 extra stops of light, so your ISO would come down to around 1000, maybe 800.

You're also at f/6.3 which is a relatively narrow aperture. You need to open up your aperture and massively drop your shutter speed to get your ISO down. I'm going to guess your lens goes to about f/4, f/4.5 at 48mm, so again you're giving away a full stop of light by having your aperture narrowed down. With better settings you could have shot this at about ISO500, for the same exposure value, and you wouldn't have the grain.

Looking at your set on Flickr the shutter speed is way too high. I don't ever really go over 1/2000th shooting motorsport outside in full sun, and that's if I want to stop motion in a car on a race track.

Are you familiar with the exposure triangle?
 
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I understand that- I just used this picture as a random example. I actually cropped it to this size because the flower background didn’t go that high and the dark wooden panelling showed behind it. Steep learning curve!
 
Thanks Richard, I am familiar but not very good at the implementation of it! I was shooting in A priority and thought that it was a fair setting. Obviously not. Better luck next time I suppose.
 
Veni said:
Thanks Richard, I am familiar but not very good at the implementation of it! I was shooting in A priority and thought that it was a fair setting. Obviously not. Better luck next time I suppose.
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Strange the camera was choosing such a high shutter speed. Or were you manually setting the ISO? It's the shutter speed that's the root cause of it all, it's open for such a short amount of time that the camera has to bang the ISO up sky high to get the exposure.

They're not bad shots by any means, and most people who aren't into photography won't notice the noise anyway.

If you're going to be shooting this sort of thing regularly, then get a 50mm f/1,8 prime lens. Most manufacturers make one, they're inexpensive and they let in much. much more light than your current zoom lens.
 
Photographers worry unnecessarily about 'noise', the public don't tend to. Noise can be reduced slightly, although your tend to lose detail. Although this image is noisy, possibly not helped by recovering the image to its current state.

Your main problem was inappropriate settings. Whatever mode you were using ended up with 1/2000th second shutter speed and ISO of 12800.
 
I actually took my 38mm f/1.8 and only took a few pictures as I wanted to stand back and capture the shots- should have stuck with that as the few I took are impressive quality. It was the first time I used it as if only turned up the day before and hadn’t had enough practice with it. I’ll check the ISO setting- I assume it should be set to AUTO?
 
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Apart from the settings issue, you need to add light.

At the moment, apart from the ambient, the dominant light source is that neon tube which is cause backlighting.

That's always going to look shoite.
 
Veni said:
I actually took my 38mm f/1.8 and only took a few pictures as I wanted to stand back and capture the shots- should have stuck with that as the few I took are impressive quality. It was the first time I used it as if only turned up the day before and hadn’t had enough practice with it. I’ll check the ISO setting- I assume it should be set to AUTO?
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Not necessarily.

There are times you want the camera to select the lowest ISO possible, other times you want to dictate the sensor sensitivity.
 
Veni said:
I understand that- I just used this picture as a random example. I actually cropped it to this size because the flower background didn’t go that high and the dark wooden panelling showed behind it. Steep learning curve!
Click to expand...
You can crop to any size/ratio :)
 
I don't know what lens you've used and that could be relevant as it could affect the choice of shutter speed. Assuming the lens could be comfortably hand held like a 35 or 50mm I'd be looking at f2.8 or so to get some depth (if the lens is a f3.5-5.6 or f4 zoom then I'd have been tempted to use it wide open) and a shutter speed of over 1/100 (1/125 or 1/160) unless they were particularly still and I was confident of being able to take a steady shot at 1/80 to keep the ISO down.
 
Hi. Been away so just seen the replies.

Yep, I’m relatively new to this-had a dabble a few years ago and am now coming back to it..

I was shooting in Aperture mode on my 18-105 1:3.5~5.6 Nikon lens. I’ve no idea why the ISO was so high, but in the menu settings it was set to 12800, or whatever it was. Does this mean if I select the f/ setting and it doesn’t like what it sees, then it will change/ increase the ISO before shutter time ? It’s the only think I can think of. I’ve now changed it back down to 100- the lowest iirc.
 
The camera has three settings to achieve exposure. Aperture, Shutter Speed and Light Sensitivity (ISO). If you are using a camera in Aperture Priority, you have control of aperture and the camera will try to adjust the other parameters to achieve what it thinks is correct exposure. If you have locked in 12800 ISO, it has one value to adjust, and probably raised shutter speed to 1/2000 to try and acheive it.

At a fixed aperture, increasing sensitivity will shorten shutter speed, and decreasing it will lengthen shutter speed. Too slow a shutter speed (rough rule of thumb 1/focal length of a second) and you start introducing camera shake and subject motion blur. To high an ISO and you'll get unpleasant noise. Noise can be improved, if not fixed entirely, in post processing. Camera shake and motion blur can't.

ISO 12800 is a pretty high setting. There are many on this forum who get the jitters if they have to go over 1000...

Practise indoors in poor light a bit and watch how the settings change and relate to another.

Knowing how each value relates to each other is an important part of photography. It's become known as the "Exposure Triangle" as you're balancing three variables.
 
I like auto ISO. If it goes too high you might not be able to open the aperture any more if you're already wide open but you might have the option of lowering the shutter speed.
 
Veni said:
Hi. Been away so just seen the replies.

Yep, I’m relatively new to this-had a dabble a few years ago and am now coming back to it..

I was shooting in Aperture mode on my 18-105 1:3.5~5.6 Nikon lens. I’ve no idea why the ISO was so high, but in the menu settings it was set to 12800, or whatever it was. Does this mean if I select the f/ setting and it doesn’t like what it sees, then it will change/ increase the ISO before shutter time ? It’s the only think I can think of. I’ve now changed it back down to 100- the lowest iirc.
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Neither 12800 ISO or 100ISO would be correct for that image. If you don't understand what ISO to set, leave it on auto.
 
Suggest looking up “exposure triangle“ on YouTube or Google
 
IMHO Your settings needed more thought beforehand (as mentioned by others) and some practice would certainly have helped. That being said some PP could help improve the image(s) use something like Topaz Denoise to reduce grainy image and then try lifting the shadows, lowering the highlights and reducing the whites.
 
In your previous photo sharing thread, you were using ISO 25,600 and said "It really surprised me the colours that are hidden until you start shooting in a higher ISO....still learning!!"

Those were also shot using a mid range aperture, quite a slow shutter speed and a very high ISO. In those cases, widening the aperture would have helped and allowed use of a lower ISO rating.
 
Veni said:
Was asked to take some photos of a baby shower that was inside quite a dark room. I’m not happy with them as they look grainy- I’m guessing it’s because the ISO was quite high as it was inside. Am I correct in saying this, and what could I have done to improve it. Thanks.

Here’s a sample picture



[url=https://flic.kr/p/2nD1in3]BabyShower by Simon Veni, on Flickr[/URL]
Click to expand...
You need any of these:
More light
A faster lens (lower f)
A longer exposure - ask the subjects to stand still and put the camera on a stable platform; a bean bag or a tripod.

Basically, one way or another you need more light IF you want less grainyness.
 
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