I wish I knew what you see through your eyes

[kramer1982]

I shot this picture at a recent event (I was there as a guest, not as the photographer). I liked how the children were looking at the lights, and I thought the picture would make a nice candid.

From a compositional point of view, I would have liked to leave a bit more room on the right, at the place they are looking at, but that would have meant showing the light stands, and I think that the image would have lost the mystery element.

The picture was taken in manual mode, and I had to underexpose (in order to obtain the 1/50sec shutter speed and prevent shake motion blur), shot in RAW, adjusted in LR3.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this - thank you.



EXIF:
Nikon D90
Lens: Nikkor 50mm f/1.8
1/50 sec
f/1.8
ISO 1600
Manual, no flash

[sabrina860]

There is a TON of noise...did you have to shoot in 1600iso? Since you shot in raw get rid of all that color noise and some luminance noise. Also the dude in the background is distracting maybe you can crop him out, plus the left side of the picture since its pretty useless. The cropping alone changes the whole composition for the better. I also adjusted the wb a bit. Heres my edit:

[kramer1982]

Hello @sabrina860,

Thank you for your critique, I will try to answer things in detail:

>> There is a TON of noise...did you have to shoot in 1600iso? <<
Unfortunately yes, the light was very low and I don't have an external flash (or a way to bounce the light from the on-camera flash). I try to use the color-washer (on-camera flash) sparsely, if I can. Btw (off-topic), I noticed you use an SB-600, would you recommend that for low-light conditions?

The bad thing about ISO 1600 (on a D90) is when you shoot dark objects, bringing the exposure back really increases the noise levels (this image was brought to +1.95 exposure in LR3). And since I was underexposing... you get my point . However, I still believe in the "it's better to get the shot as you can, then no shot at all", right?

>> Since you shot in raw get rid of all that color noise and some luminance noise. <<
Interesting point, not sure how you do that, but I will look it up. From what I've seen so far, the "denoise" adjustments in LR3 actually bring more noise or make the image loose on the clarity side.

>> Also the dude in the background is distracting maybe you can crop him out <<
So true, thanks.

>> plus the left side of the picture since its pretty useless <<
I liked the pattern of the floor and I thought it added to the overall image, but indeed, from a compositional point-of-view, it places the children in the center of the image. I should have "zoomed-in" on the 50mm (aka move my feet ), but man, are children fast

Again, thank you for taking the time to review and adjust the photo, it really helps.

Cheers!

[TBrown00]

Originally Posted by kramer1982

...
>> Since you shot in raw get rid of all that color noise and some luminance noise. <<
Interesting point, not sure how you do that, but I will look it up. From what I've seen so far, the "denoise" adjustments in LR3 actually bring more noise or make the image loose on the clarity side.
...

Any noise reduction will result in a picture becoming soft. The trick is to find a compromise between lower noise without making the picture too soft and then attempting to combat the resulting softness by increasing the sharpening.