New to RAW and using Lightroom for Post Processing

[OjaiAnna]

We had a mime performance at my church yesterday and I always have problems shooting indoors without flash and with movement, so I thought I would try to shoot in RAW (for the first time) and then make all the adjustments in Lightroom (also for the first time). Here are two of the pictures I took. What do you think? Any suggestions?

Both pictures were taken with a Nikon D60 camera.

[BK553]

Well...They're very dark. You can try to recover some of the detail by adjusting the exposure in either lightroom or Nikon's program, but honestly I don't think you are going to be happy with the results. You can usually adjust exposure by a stop or two, but your subjects are backlit with no flash, and will probably lack detail no matter what you do in post. Give it a shot though and show the results.

[drr0b]

I'm confused- why is a mime holding a microphone ?


As for the photos: yes they are dark, but they don't appear to be blurry. You might be able to save them by increasing the exposure as mentioned above, but you would introduce a lot of noise; noise reduction in lightroom or in e.g. Neat Image or Noiseware might help with that though. I'd also like to see what you come up with

[OjaiAnna]

Originally Posted by drr0b

I'm confused- why is a mime holding a microphone ?


As for the photos: yes they are dark, but they don't appear to be blurry. You might be able to save them by increasing the exposure as mentioned above, but you would introduce a lot of noise; noise reduction in lightroom or in e.g. Neat Image or Noiseware might help with that though. I'd also like to see what you come up with

Some of the mimes gave their testimony too (and then the mimes did their performances together ... without speaking.

I did increase the exposure a little bit ... and when I tried increasing it too much more it seemed to lose more detail. I think possibly because of the difference between the white faces and the black robes. I'm not sure.

I'm new to RAW, so let me ask you a question if I may. When shooting in RAW do I still need to set my aperature and other setting in the camera. When taking these pictures I put the camera on the "M" setting and the only other setting I used was changing the ISO to 1600. I thought in RAW most adjustments are done post production in a program like Lightroom? Thanks.

[OjaiAnna]

Originally Posted by BK553

Well...They're very dark. You can try to recover some of the detail by adjusting the exposure in either lightroom or Nikon's program, but honestly I don't think you are going to be happy with the results. You can usually adjust exposure by a stop or two, but your subjects are backlit with no flash, and will probably lack detail no matter what you do in post. Give it a shot though and show the results.

I'm trying to understand how I can set the camera while photographing in RAW indoors without using Flash. You do know that these are not posed photos, right? I was too close to the stage and so flash was not an option. I'm having a little bit of problem understanding how to change the exposure in Lightroom that would allow me to lighten it up without making the face too light. Because of the different between the dark clothing and the white face ... it is not coming out right. Thanks. (BTW ... I set the camera to "M" mode and the only other change in camera I made was to set the ISO to 1600)

[Nicole]

Have you tried using "Fill Light" and then increasing the contrast in lightroom? It will introduce some noise, yes, but I find it works great for backlit subjects if you need to fix the exposure.

[drr0b]

Originally Posted by OjaiAnna

I'm new to RAW, so let me ask you a question if I may. When shooting in RAW do I still need to set my aperature and other setting in the camera. When taking these pictures I put the camera on the "M" setting and the only other setting I used was changing the ISO to 1600. I thought in RAW most adjustments are done post production in a program like Lightroom? Thanks.

Basically the three things that MUST be set in camera are aperture, shutter speed and sensitivity (ISO). These are the things that affect the information that your camera is receiving. Pretty much everything else can be changed in programs like Lightroom.

You say that you put the camera on the M setting, so this gives you control of shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Therefore it won't make any effort to produce a good exposure for you, but it will tell you how dark or light the outcome will be using the exposure meter that looks something like

|----|----|----|----|
-2 -1 0 +1 +2


If you see your indicator at point -2, then the image will be dark. If the indicator is at point 0, then the image should be well exposed for typical scenes. Finally, at point +2 the image will be bright.

To move the indicator from right to left (increase brightness), you can increase the ISO, decrease the shutter speed and/or increase the aperture (make the number go down).

It might be better for you to switch the camera to "A" mode; you can then set the aperture to as low as it will go, set the ISO nice and high, and the camera will work out how long to expose the image.

I'm quite a newbie to manual cameras, and spend most of my time in "A" mode

Hope this helps