Noise in church shots and speeches

Lindsay D said:
... If you think a 5D mkIII (I own one) produces noticeable noise (at pretty much any ISO value) then you want your head feeling.
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Hmmm. [Makes note] Owns 5D3 and into phrenology ...
 
Lindsay D said:
So you've been doing weddings for 10 years and only now, with today's cameras which deliver superclean images at stupidly high ISOs, you suddenly have an issue with noise? With 10 years of experience that's bonkers, as is your client management to be honest. If your client is wondering why the ceremony shots are in black-and-white then all you have to do is say "it's normal practice to provide ceremony and reception photographs in black-and-white whenever we encounter particularly low light conditions, or the effects of mixed interior lighting which can cause conflicting colour shifts within colour photographs. For this reason conversion to monochrome is deemed to produce the most pleasing results. For explanatory purposes I have attached a sample in colour".
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I suppose to be fair it could be that she stuffed up the exposure much worse than usual creating more noise in recovery of dark areas ;) I agree about client management - if i was going to provide all the church shots only in b&W (which I never have even back when using a 20D - I'm yet to meet a client who gives a toss about noise) then i'd have had that conversation with the client before the day, not afterwards

Lindsay D said:
then you want your head feeling.
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*manfully resists the urge to make a smutty remark*
 
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Well, there's nothing wrong with the OP providing those images in colour if the client expressly wishes it, but it is prudent to accompany the photographs with the explanation outlined earlier. But I remain confused as to how noise is appearing (notwithstanding inappropriate exposures are processing) given the equipment in use. I've shot in dark churches with the original 5D and 40D as did pretty much every other wedding photographer back then, and I don't recall the photographs being anything other than perfectly pleasing. Clients do from time to time request colour versions, or black-and-white versions, and this need not be a problem either unless the situation is horrible (reference mixed lighting and lack of colour correction experience).

The client is not going to be pixel peeping on the same 27 inch screen at 200%. And in prints, even decent sized ones, noise is generally difficult to spot.
 
Lindsay D said:
given the equipment in use. I've shot in dark churches with the original 5D and 40D as did pretty much every other wedding photographer back then, .
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Indeed - when i first changed to digital I used a 20D and a 300D and i never had a client who had any issues even with the 300D on ISO1600 - you did get a certain ammount of noise in the shadow areas but clients don't seem to noice or care if they do... i suspect its because they are looking at the actual subject of the photo not pixel peeping round the edges.

I don't know a great deal about the 5D3 as I haven't hired one since i bought the 6D but i tend to agree that you'd have to work pretty hard to get an unacceptable noise level out of one... unless of course someone seriously underexposed a lot of dark shots the cack handedly recovered the detail - that would generate a lot of sparkly noise (especially if the recovery were in photoshp rather than lightroom)
 
Steve Smith said:
I find discussion of needing mega high ISOs laughable. My father shot thousands of weddings on ISO 160 (and sometimes 400) film. If there was no need to use ISOs in the thousands back then, there's no need now.


Steve.
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Steve, the available light doesn't change over the decades, aperture, shutter speed and ISO have always needed balancing, and if there isn't enough light then something has to be done, and even in the old days of film, this meant using a faster film (400/800 and higher), and then asking for it to be "pushed" in the developing stage.
I suppose that you could argue that every shot could be staged, with extra light (lamps and flash), but if you are in a church and no flash is the rule, then unless you are Harry Potter and use the command "illuminati", it is down to high ISO and extremely fast glass.
 
Lindsay D said:
Correct, and in the good old days of film we shot far fewer photographs and there were far fewer restrictions on the use of flash.
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Come now you clearly arent old enough to remember that far back ;)

I just about am and clearly remember the good old days of sticking ASA1600 in my eos 3 and hoping the client wasnt too worried about grain like golf balls
 
:LOL: Oh Pete, you're such a gentleman ;)

Well yes, grain was considered fairly normal back then. These days there is very little noise tolerance - to the point where it can become the sole determiner of a camera's usefulness, often at the exclusion of other key performance parameters. It seems to be newer photographers who get hung up on it which is why I'm surprised to hear the OP has been shooting weddings for a decade. I would definitely like to see an example of where the OP feels things have gone bad.
 
i'm still putting my money on recovering under exposure , IMO there isnt a camera ever made that doesnt show some noise when you underexpose everything by 4 stops then recover it via levels in photoshop (I'm also putting money on the OP never showing us the shot )

(and yes its gentlemanly to tell the truth ;) )
 
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