High ISO shots and RAW images.

[glsammy]

I've got to start eating some humble pie..
Today I decided to go to Rufford Park. I forgot my separate flash gun, which considering the dull weather was a really stupid thing to do.
I thought I should make the best of it, so decided to experiment. I shot in RAW, with a high ISO of 1600. The ambient light levels were very low, as you'll see from these images.
I've been learning how to use Lightroom, so I thought this would be a good test just to see how well it dealt with the expected noise.

Here's a few of the shots I got of my tame Robin. All taken using my monopod.



This one was 1/125sec F9.0, ISO 1600. No noise reduction done outside of Lightroom.



This one was 1/320sec F9.0. ISO 1600, again no noise reduction outside Lightroom.



On this one I used my built in flash. Still ISO 1600, 1/100sec F5.6.

All I can say is I'm really surprised, yes of course there was noise, but the way Lightroom dealt with it was far less destructive than my usual much loved Neat Image.

So for me, especially when shooting in poor light it's going to have to be RAW, and Lightroom.

[Brocker]

Very nice pics Graham. I too have and use Lightroom. It is probably one of the most powerful and versatile programs I have used particularly converting from RAW. I have CS3 also but find after using Lightroom, I need to do vey little, if any more editing in CS3.

[matt_xyz]

Graham, those shots are remarkable for ISO1600. The top 2 in particular have so much detail in them.

I've never used Lightroom, did you tell it to apply noise reduction to the entire image? I've always found Neat Image to be great but I only ever apply it to backgrounds, never to feathers because it does tend to smooth the details.

I use RAW all the time, but I've never had ISO 1600 shots look that good!

Matt

[glsammy]

Originally Posted by matt_xyz

Graham, those shots are remarkable for ISO1600. The top 2 in particular have so much detail in them.

I've never used Lightroom, did you tell it to apply noise reduction to the entire image? I've always found Neat Image to be great but I only ever apply it to backgrounds, never to feathers because it does tend to smooth the details.

I use RAW all the time, but I've never had ISO 1600 shots look that good!

Matt

Yes Matt, the entire image. This was the real surprise. Normally if I'd used Neat Image, it would have smudged the detail on the bird. Lightroom didn't.
The only thing I did after Lightroom, was to apply a light lens blur on the background, which is again something I've learnt to do recently!
All the noise removal and sharpening was done in Lightroom.

[matt_xyz]

yes, a bit of lens blur can help, I do that on occasions.

The robin was clearly very close to you (I remember this robin!) which obviously helps with the detail. I've always found that high ISO images are far less capable of being cropped than lower ISO images so if the robin had been further from you, and cropped, they'd no doubt not look so good. But these still look very impressive. Aside from the noise I just wouldn't expect that level of feather detail from ISO 1600.

It would be interesting to see how Neat Image would cope with this. Given the level of detail I suspect it wouldn't have blurred the feathers too much.

Did you get the exposure about right in camera?

Matt

[Ollie]

I'm impressed with the detail that you have managed to keep with these Graham, never thought I would see ISO 1600 shots with that amount of detail showing. You have done a great job with these.

Just as a matter of interest because I'm not familiar with Lightroom I wonder what these would have turned out like if they had been shot at ISO 1600 in JPEG instead of RAW then put through Lightroom if that's feasible anyway.

Roger

[glsammy]

Originally Posted by matt_xyz

yes, a bit of lens blur can help, I do that on occasions.

The robin was clearly very close to you (I remember this robin!) which obviously helps with the detail. I've always found that high ISO images are far less capable of being cropped than lower ISO images so if the robin had been further from you, and cropped, they'd no doubt not look so good. But these still look very impressive. Aside from the noise I just wouldn't expect that level of feather detail from ISO 1600.

It would be interesting to see how Neat Image would cope with this. Given the level of detail I suspect it wouldn't have blurred the feathers too much.

Did you get the exposure about right in camera?

Matt

Yes your right Matt. These are full frame shots.
Of course the exposure was spot on!

I've still got the unaltered original RAW, I'll have a go my old way and see how they turn out.

[glsammy]

Originally Posted by Ollie

I'm impressed with the detail that you have managed to keep with these Graham, never thought I would see ISO 1600 shots with that amount of detail showing. You have done a great job with these.

Just as a matter of interest because I'm not familiar with Lightroom I wonder what these would have turned out like if they had been shot at ISO 1600 in JPEG instead of RAW then put through Lightroom if that's feasible anyway.

Roger

You can process JPEG through Lightroom, but unfortunately I only took RAW for these.
As I said in my reply to Matt, I'll convert them to JPEG using my old method and see how they turn out.

[naturelover]

fantastic as ever graham,so real feel like you could pick them up little darlings.

[glsammy]

Here's one done through Photoshops Raw converter. I treated it in exactly the same way, only used Neat Image on it in Photoshop.

You can clearly see that the detail has been reduced, especially at the lower edges of the bird, which is where the noise would be most prevalent.
Also notice that the background hasn't worked out so well either, the lens blur this time didn't do such a good job.