Indoor Macro

[randomeye]

Hello all,

The pictures descriptions says almost all that I have to about it, but in particular could someone please tell me anything that could help improve my macro shots. Also, with my point and shoot camera, I tend to get grainy pictures indoors. This is visible in the darker areas of the picture. Is this with the camera or I am getting some settings wrong? Finally, this pic is as snapped, no photoshop. Is it alright or some editing would improve it?
Thanks a lot.



F-number: F/2.8
Exposure: 1/2 second with a -1 point compensation
ISO: ISO-800

[chicagojohn]

Originally Posted by randomeye

Hello all,

The pictures descriptions says almost all that I have to about it, but in particular could someone please tell me anything that could help improve my macro shots. Also, with my point and shoot camera, I tend to get grainy pictures indoors. This is visible in the darker areas of the picture. Is this with the camera or I am getting some settings wrong? Finally, this pic is as snapped, no photoshop. Is it alright or some editing would improve it?
Thanks a lot.

F-number: F/2.8
Exposure: 1/2 second with a -1 point compensation
ISO: ISO-800

Hi Randomeye,

First, there are some aspects of the composition that I like, mainly in the "story" it suggests, at least to me; that being (and this may not be the truth, but it is my "story" having been dragged to such performances by my wife against my will, that here we have someone working as an usher who is really not into the performance. Like this would be "An Evening with Bela Bartok"... the composer I like less than I like the taste of oil of ipecac (an emetic.) And this at the hands of the Layafette Symphony, no less; Not even the New York Philharmonic, which would be bad enough, but the Layafette Sympnony?? This, I would think, would be the music that would be played continuously to those of us who are unfortunate enough to wind up in Hell!

One sees the stage tilted with a lot of blown out "clipped" highlights that are pretty much unattractive in and of themselves, perhaps symbolizing the unattractriveness of the music to the photographer.

What is the subject here is the role of the photographer, or surrogate if I am mistaken in my assumption that the photographer was the usher. Secondly, we have what is apparently a willful act of civil disobedience in that they always tell you NOT to phograph or record, and we see here an official, an USHER, willfully disobeying that injunction.

I like all that about the image. As to your question about noise; I also have a point-and-shoot 12MP camera. Mine is a Pentax, but relative to a DSLR, it the difference in noise is not too much different among high pixel density models. What is happening here is the effect of two things. First, the pixel sensors in a compact camera are on a sensor that is much smaller than a typical DSLR, (which, in turn, is still smaller than a full frame DSLR). Then 12 million of them are packed into this tiny sensor. That tends to generate false signals or "noise" in addition to the true signals originating from photons of light hitting the pixels. When you have a uniform background, especially a dark background where there isn't much true signal hitting the sensors, much of what is recorded is noise. And, again, part of the problem is the close proximity of the sensor pixels because the electronics themselves can generate false signal.

The second problem is that you were shooting at ISO 800, which you had to do because if you had used a flash, you probably would have been identified for the iconoclast of norms you apparently are. When you turn up the sensitivity of the photosensor, you amplify both true signal and noise, and if there is a high proportion of noise, this makes it even worser.

When I am outdoors in inclement weather shooting with my weatherproof and shockproof Pentax compact, I just use a commercial noiseware reduction program to process all images, and that does a wonderful job for my purposes. You could look into one of those, some have freeware versions. I use it so often, I bought one that can do batch processing.

The ultimate solution to this, however, is to purchase a typical consumer DSLR. I have a low end one, a Pentax K100D Super, and I can take no-flash images at wide aperture even at higher ISO such as 800 with no significant noise. That is largely due to the larger sensor and the fact that it is only 6MP which means they are all further apart and don't produce as much internal circuit noise.

Getting back to your question about post-processing, you do have a big area of unattractive blown-out highlights, but you can't get that back in post-processing because once these little sensor "buckets" are full, they are full and aren't recording any information. You could crop, but that would lose the "story" I outlined above. I can be happy in this specific case with the unattractiveness of the clipped highlights because it fits into my interpretation.

Your camera probably has a "histogram" option. Take a look at the histogram for this image. You will likely see it is piled up against the right (light) side. In "ideal" histogram, with no clipped highlights or shadow will be like a bell-shaped curve, highest perhaps in the center midtone range and just barely touching the left and right vertical edges of the histogram.

Hope some of the above helps, and I apologize for being so wordy.