I recently was in a situation that required me to use ISO 25600 to get a high enough shutter speed to have any chance of getting hand held shots of some friends of mine playing in a band on a small dark stage lit only with 4 X 100 watt incandescent bulbs and a 24” fluorescent tube providing backlighting. The highest shutter speed I could get with my 18 – 140mm Nikon kit lens was 1/125th of a second.
Of course, when I got back to my computer and imported them into Lightroom I had some pretty grainy images to deal with. Fortunately, I was close to the stage and was able to compose shots mostly in camera and didn’t have to crop to heavily. I got 10 or 15 usable shots out of 250+ images. It took me a while to discover that ISO 25600 even existed on my camera (It’s called Hi ISO 2 on my Nikon D5200). All the useful images were taken at ISO 25600.
I posted a couple of the finished photos here in my albums because I was so pleased at how they turned out after figuring out one little trick. Two of the images are shown here. All of the images can be seen here: https://sarasotabphotos.smugmug.com/Stumble-Creek/Stumble-Creek/
What was the trick to get these shots to look as good as they do? The answer is simple Dfine2 in the NIK suite of apps. The only caveat is: Use Dfine2 before you do anything else! I tried using it after I had cropped an image to remove a stray elbow and Dfine2 had no effect at all on the noise in the shot.
Here is the process I used to make these images presentable for screen use.
• Export the photo to photoshop as a smart object.
• Run Dfine2
• Save back to Lightroom as a PSD file.
• Edit as usual in Lightroom (If you are more comfortable editing in Photoshop that would work too)
• For these 2 shots, I used pretty much the same recipe
• White Balance was done in camera; Set to Incandescent (You can see the lights in the group shot above.)
• Lowered exposure ½ stop
• Slightly increased contrast
• Increased clarity to bring out a little structure on the faces
• Used HSL to lower luminance of Purple. The noise was mostly purple in the darkest areas, so this adjustment gave me purer blacks
• Sharpened a bit to reveal Eye Detail in the subjects
• I discovered that Adobe’s profile for camera and lens combination increased noise, so I did not do any lens correction.
• I then exported as the jpegs you see above.
I hope this information helps someone. It sure saved the day for me. I could share some photos of the evening with the band for them to use in publicity in social media and elsewhere on the web.
@sarasotab Thanks for sharing. When you ran dfine did you alter any settings or just let it run on defaults? I've used it a few times but never found it as effective as this.
Those photos are amazing!!! I'll print this out and run some trials as, over the summer I attend many small musical venues with borderline lighting. I'd be overjoyed to get images like this!!! You've done us all a very nice service! Thank you for offering a helping hand to this community!
@rjb71 - I just ran it on its defaults. Once in Photoshop, There is a NIK menu that appears. I just click on Dfine2 and it does its magic. It is very important that the image is an unedited RAW file in my experience.
@sarasotab I've just looked at all the images on Smugmug and the quality is indeed remarkable. You say that it is important to work with an un-edited raw file - I always import my images into LR in DNG format, would that be an issue do you know?
@vignouse - DNG is one of the File Extensions related to RAW files. I believe it is the Standard file extension, Each of the camera manufacturers have their own Version of RAW files, and give them different extensions. Light Room offers the conversion to DNG on the off chance that at some point in the future one of the proprietary versions ceases to be supported you won't lose access to your images. So, the short answer is using DNG files should not be an issue.
The point I was trying to make - badly! - is that the conversion to DNG is an editing process as it changes the fundamental file structure and if a simple crop prevents Dfine2 from doing its stuff....
@vignouse - I haven't tried it, so I can't say for certain, but I doubt it would be a problem. The edit that messed up my process was a crop, which made the grain larger, so I think Dfine2 ignored it when it analyzed the image in order to make a filter for noise reduction.
@sarasotab Hi Robert - I've now carried out several experiments moving directly to Dfine2 from Lightroom and I can see no difference between processing the native image or one which has had extensive processing, in LR including cropping. I've not tried your open as a smart objective in PS route, Maybe it's that extra step which is causing the malfunction.
@sarasotab For each test, I made a virtual copy, ran Dfine2 on the original and then edited the image. I then edited the virtual copy in the same way and ran Dfine2 after the edits. A side-by-side comparison revealed no discernible difference between the two approaches.
@vignouse - I don't know what the difference is. I only know that it works for me. When Dfine2 is doing its magic, there is a preview and I have it set to be split screen if you drag the slider the difference is obvious. It may be the Smart Object issue. I always use that option when going to Photoshop from lightroom, just because a tutorial said it was the best way to do it. I don't really know all the differences between smart objects and imports into photoshop.
@vignouse -- Also in reading again this conversation, I do not use DNG because it slows down the import process, so that may be the difference that is making our experiences different as you suggested earlier.
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Of course, when I got back to my computer and imported them into Lightroom I had some pretty grainy images to deal with. Fortunately, I was close to the stage and was able to compose shots mostly in camera and didn’t have to crop to heavily. I got 10 or 15 usable shots out of 250+ images. It took me a while to discover that ISO 25600 even existed on my camera (It’s called Hi ISO 2 on my Nikon D5200). All the useful images were taken at ISO 25600.
I posted a couple of the finished photos here in my albums because I was so pleased at how they turned out after figuring out one little trick. Two of the images are shown here. All of the images can be seen here: https://sarasotabphotos.smugmug.com/Stumble-Creek/Stumble-Creek/
What was the trick to get these shots to look as good as they do? The answer is simple Dfine2 in the NIK suite of apps. The only caveat is: Use Dfine2 before you do anything else! I tried using it after I had cropped an image to remove a stray elbow and Dfine2 had no effect at all on the noise in the shot.
Here is the process I used to make these images presentable for screen use.
• Export the photo to photoshop as a smart object.
• Run Dfine2
• Save back to Lightroom as a PSD file.
• Edit as usual in Lightroom (If you are more comfortable editing in Photoshop that would work too)
• For these 2 shots, I used pretty much the same recipe
• White Balance was done in camera; Set to Incandescent (You can see the lights in the group shot above.)
• Lowered exposure ½ stop
• Slightly increased contrast
• Increased clarity to bring out a little structure on the faces
• Used HSL to lower luminance of Purple. The noise was mostly purple in the darkest areas, so this adjustment gave me purer blacks
• Sharpened a bit to reveal Eye Detail in the subjects
• I discovered that Adobe’s profile for camera and lens combination increased noise, so I did not do any lens correction.
• I then exported as the jpegs you see above.
I hope this information helps someone. It sure saved the day for me. I could share some photos of the evening with the band for them to use in publicity in social media and elsewhere on the web.