Help with starting to process please

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susie

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I went out yesterday to take some pictures of some friends at a show. I took the pictures in raw and would like to try and process some of them (I will use the canon software) as some turned out quite well so it would be interesting to see if I can enhance them a bit. I am about to show them the pics and if they want any printed it would be nice to get them looking better.
This
087R1.jpg

is one that I took (not one of the better ones!) would any of you let me know where I would start and what order I should do things to improve it so that I can learn how to do things. I only did a crop and resize to get it within forum limits.

Thanks a lot for any replies :)
 
I will watch this thread with interest. I too have shot horses indoors and found it hard to get fast shutter speeds due to low light.
I notice you have the ISO @ 1600 and the horses legs still look slightly soft.
Of course the big problem is a flash might scare the horses!
 
Yep, I had the iso as high as I could as there was no flash and this one was about 30mtrs away so not the best conditions :( Last time I used a different lens and the horses legs were blurred so I was really with the improvement from this lens. The other problem is it was handheld so there would have been a bit of a wobble from that as well. Next time I will try taking the tripod even if it means using it as a monopod!

I will try and find the fill llight and see how that changes things.
 
Susie

Just had a very quick look at your image.

It will take a bit more increase in exposure, that'll lighten it up . Don't know if you have a fill light option, but that could help, plus a small increase in exposure
 
Had a quick play with levels and the shadow / highlight tool, there is a bit of detail in the shadows but not much. You can see the noise starting to come through.

susie.jpg
 
susie said:
Yep, I had the iso as high as I could as there was no flash and this one was about 30mtrs away so not the best conditions :( Last time I used a different lens and the horses legs were blurred so I was really with the improvement from this lens. The other problem is it was handheld so there would have been a bit of a wobble from that as well. Next time I will try taking the tripod even if it means using it as a monopod!

I will try and find the fill llight and see how that changes things.
Click to expand...

Turning ISO Expansion (CF I-3) on will give you 3200, enabling noise reduction (if not already set) will help a bit next time though I'm not sure on how it would look on a print
 
Milestone, that looks a lot better I will try it on one when I get home. I have got room to crop along the beam above the riders head which would take out a lot of the darker area. Hopefully I will get to grips with the processing part soon, and be able to do more than crop and resize!

Frank, I will have a look in the manual and try that as well. If I can get the iso up it would really help and I could get sharper moving parts. Noise is less of an issue as they are more interested in what the horse looks like!

Roll on the outdoor shows with better light!!
 
Noise Ninja is great and doesn't always soften the image. Make sure you have your camera profiles loaded first to get the best out of it.

The best way to improve on this type of shot is to use a faster lens in the first place, upping the ISO will get you a shot, but the more light you can get onto the sensor/film at the fastest possible shutter speed in the first place is really going to help you.
 
I will look into noise ninja, the lens is a 70-200 f2.8 which is the fastest I think I can get with the reach. It coped really well considering the light and distance, I will try upping the iso as the camera is supposed to be able to handle it. All good practice for me!
 
susie said:
the lens is a 70-200 f2.8 which is the fastest I think I can get with the reach.
Click to expand...

Wow! It must have been almost pitch black in there.

I can't access exif data but I presume you had the lens set to it's widest aperture i.e. Aperture priority mode?
 
Looking at the exif this was taken at f3.5. Try opening the lens fully to f2.8 before upping the ISO.
 
I was using shutter priority as the legs came out almost blurred when I tried Av. I had to choose between sharper images on shutter speed or almost blurred using aperture. It looks bright, but the actual light is not great, it was taken at about 4.15 so there was no real daylight to come through and help. The lighter coloured horses came out sharper and the black looking ones were not as clear. Probably why the professionals stay at home for the indoor shows!
 
High iso pictures generally look best for noise if well to slightly over exposed. Under exposed and adjusted brighter will show noise in the dark areas quite badly. If you have f2.8 then use it for indoors and just get the best shutter speed you can. Av mode f2.8 and high iso.

As to processing it is a personal preference thing in many ways. I don't do a lot of processing to my shots and I don't use the Canon software. My usual process is -

Look at exposure and adjust exposure compensation slider if necessary (usually no adjustment needed).

Adjust the black and white clip points to the ends of the histogram. Makes the extreme black bits truly black and the brightest points truly white. Like adjusting levels in PS.

Adjust the middle point on the same levels histogram to make the picture pop a bit more.

Look at the colour and use the white point dropper tool to pick something white or grey in the picture to set the white balance if necessary (don't often do this as I don't trust my colour vision!)

Add just a little on the shadow contrast tool slider as it seems to have a sharpening effect.

very small tweak to the colour 'vibrance' to boost the colours subtly.

Process to best jpeg. < those that like editing would choose tiff here and then edit it in photoshop. Tweaking the RAW file is editing enough for me :)

If I want to use the picture on the forum I just resize and sharpen in a basic viewer program.
 
Milestone said:
Looking at the exif this was taken at f3.5. Try opening the lens fully to f2.8 before upping the ISO.
Click to expand...

And the camera is on pattern metering - partial would be better.

Better to use 3200 iso and expose well than 1600 and under expose. (you may have to enable iso expansion in the custom functions fro 3200)
 
RobertP said:
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Click to expand...
Thanks a lot, I think I will print this thread out and follow it tonight to see how much I can do, its given me a run through of what to do just need to sit down and have a go now!

Will have a hunt in the manual and sort out the settings as well, with a bit of luck by next time I may get some better pictures to start with and have learnt a bit about processing them as well.
 
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