Dreary Day Surprises

[KurtM]

Other side of town, 1 1/2 to 2 hours away. The Clear Lake area is between Houston and Galveston, on Upper Galveston Bay, notable for being where NASA's Johnson Space Center is located, and where so many astronauts live(d).

If you can tell me how to get my 100-400 to go f/2.8, I'll be your best friend.....

[dvtldav]

I guess I won't be your best friend. All I can say is shoot at whatever aperture and shutter speed you are comfortable with and let the ISO vary. It works well in some situations.

I was in that area over Christmas. My son took us to Moody Gardens.

Dave

[KurtM]

Well pftftftftfttt.

I'll be sure to explore the method you suggest, appreciate you posting.

Moody Gardens is next door to the Lone Star Flight Museum, practically a home away from home. I need to go check out the MG rain forest and aquarium again, it's been too long.

[Michael_2010]

Speaking of Auto ISO, at what point do you start seeing degradation in your shots? I'm sure that varies from camera to camera to a certain extent, but there should also be a degree of commonality amongst them.

How much does bad lighting play into the scenario? I've set the ISO at 800 on occasion and gotten some really noisy shots. Then again, I've left it on Auto and did pretty well when it ran up to an ISO of 3,200.

[KurtM]

That's a good question - beats me. I know that we tend to associate high ISO numbers with excess noise, but the pros say it's not necessarily so if images are properly exposed. Below is a photo I shot at ISO 3200 by accident (I had set such a high # earlier when shooting indoors and forgot) on a clear sunny midafternoon, and it's very noisy. I hope someone answers the question -- I know what I got, but don't understand the technical explanation for why it ended up looking like it does and it'd be interesting to know. Thanks for asking!



American Kestrel with Small Snake

Camera Canon EOS REBEL T3i
Mode Av
Exposure 1/4000 sec
Aperture f/8.0
Focal Length 400 mm
ISO Speed 3200

I'm sure that if I could've figured out any other ways to F/U the exposure for this shot, I would have jumped on it.

[Michael_2010]

LOL

The lack of consistency creates the headache. If you could count on an ISO up to a certain value producing reliable results, I guess we would all go for the speed more often than not. But alas, it is just a part of the Holy Trinity of Aperture, Shutter and ISO coming together to capture that fleeting moment in time.....

[jerome.oneil]

That's a good BIF capture, you may get rid of some noise with the PS bandaid tool. The shadows look underexposed, I wonder if overexposing the image +1/2 or a little more when shooting would reduce the noise?

Jerome

[dvtldav]

A lot of it has to do with the camera. The higher end cameras seem to deal with noise better than the lower end ones. With my 60D, I don't really start seeing noise until about 1200-1600 unless it is really low light then I start seeing it around 800 that is the reason I set my max ISO at 3200 because after that it can get pretty bad. I think the brighter the scene the less noise.
They say high ISO and long shutter speed lead to digital noise so theoretically I would think that if you increased the ISO from 800 to 1600 and increased the shutter speed from 1/250 to 1/500 (to eliminate blur from camera shake) and leave the aperture the same that the noise should be the same because you have cut the time the sensor is exposed to light in half, but maybe I am all wrong on this theory.

Dave

[Michael_2010]

I think you are onto something. I was trying to get some bird shots on a very gray, wet day and had the ISO around 800. The noise was visible in the shots and if you did any pixel peeping they looked awful. Sharpening the image only compounded the problem, because the software ends up sharpening the digital noise. In good light I know I have really cranked up the ISO and still gotten some pretty decent shots.

[STB]

Originally Posted by KurtM

Susan, that brings up another little trick ....... if your camera supports it. Spot metering.

..

Kurt, yep. I just read up about spot metering and turned it on.

My brain is overfull. Learning the camera, learning the birds, and now, learning Lightroom.
ugh.