It seems a little odd that one can take a photo in pitch black and boost exposure to the point where one can actually see the subject... The quality ends up rather iffy, of course ;p
Thank you so much for all the views, comments and favs on my recent photos... you guys are so awesome and i'm feeling really badly for being so far behind in commenting back on your shots... really hoping to find some time tomorrow and then on into the weekend...
It is incredible how much detail you can recover from the shadows, especially when shooting in RAW!
Again, I would briefly point out that the nifty fifty at f/1.8 rather than f/7.1 would have gathered four times the amount of light for the same shutter speed and ISO settings, meaning there would have been a lot more detail in the final image and you wouldn't have had to pull the exposure up anywhere near as much in post-processing. Equally, it's well worth knowing how to recover images like this as you never know when you might need to!
@abirkill good point... and may i ask a question that i was wondering about this evening? if i had used f/1.8 (i did have my nifty fifty ;p) i would have had to be sure to be focussing on him... and it was so dark, the autofocus would not have worked... so my choices would be manual focus (which i could do in a pinch, but prolly wouldn't want to rely on) and presetting the focus and locking it... is there any magic to using the infinity focus? that is, if i prefocus to infinity and lock, can i assume that as long as i am X feet away from the main subject, that they will be in focus? and are there rules about what X is depending on the selected aperture? (and i really hope you don't mind me asking these questions - it's just that you are such a fount of knowledge!)
@abirkill I know you were talking to Northy but this was useful information for me too. I am hoping to someday get one of those 50 lens.
@northy Fantastic low key - these are the shots I should spend more time practicing to get the wonderful detail that you could get. Now you don't use a tripod for this? I don't knwo how to get night shots without a tripod (or at least rest it on something).
@myhrhelper no tripod... i totally cheated... look at the exif 1/10 of a second at ISO 800... the guy was totally invisible in the original... when i converted to bw in nik silver efex II i used the doohicky that let's me brighten just one part of the image...
@northy Did you try autofocusing on him using the nifty fifty? I would have expected, estimating how dark it was based on the settings you were using, that your camera would have focused OK.
A fast prime gives a lot more light to the focusing system, so it can focus in surprisingly (amazingly!) dark conditions. I would have used the centre focusing point (as it's the most sensitive) and tried to lock focus on his glasses, the near edge of the bench or the back of the bench, all of which have light reflecting off them.
If the camera absolutely won't focus, then you are slightly stuck, unfortunately. Old lenses used to mark both distances on the barrel (so you could estimate how far away he was, and set the focus to that distance) and also mark how wide the depth of field was at a given aperture. Unfortunately cheap lenses like the 50mm f/1.8 have neither of those, and even expensive lenses these days often only have the distance markings -- a real shame.
There are calculators that will calculate the depth of field for a given lens at a given setting, such as this one: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
Unfortunately, at infinity focus and f/1.8, the nifty fifty will only be in focus from 100 feet and beyond -- and the man was clearly closer than that! If the camera won't focus automatically, you really need to get it fairly close using manual focus, either through the viewfinder or using live view. If you can't do that, then using a narrow aperture as you did here is the only option. But try autofocusing with the 50mm attached -- it will blow you away compared to how the 17-85mm behaves.
I know you have lost quality here Northy, but I really think that that somehow adds to the mood of a shot like this.
@abirkill Alexis, when are you going to write a book? I love the clear way you explain this stuff. I have bookmarked so many of your explanations, if my husband ever sees them he is going to start to wonder!!
Again, I would briefly point out that the nifty fifty at f/1.8 rather than f/7.1 would have gathered four times the amount of light for the same shutter speed and ISO settings, meaning there would have been a lot more detail in the final image and you wouldn't have had to pull the exposure up anywhere near as much in post-processing. Equally, it's well worth knowing how to recover images like this as you never know when you might need to!
@northy Fantastic low key - these are the shots I should spend more time practicing to get the wonderful detail that you could get. Now you don't use a tripod for this? I don't knwo how to get night shots without a tripod (or at least rest it on something).
A fast prime gives a lot more light to the focusing system, so it can focus in surprisingly (amazingly!) dark conditions. I would have used the centre focusing point (as it's the most sensitive) and tried to lock focus on his glasses, the near edge of the bench or the back of the bench, all of which have light reflecting off them.
If the camera absolutely won't focus, then you are slightly stuck, unfortunately. Old lenses used to mark both distances on the barrel (so you could estimate how far away he was, and set the focus to that distance) and also mark how wide the depth of field was at a given aperture. Unfortunately cheap lenses like the 50mm f/1.8 have neither of those, and even expensive lenses these days often only have the distance markings -- a real shame.
There are calculators that will calculate the depth of field for a given lens at a given setting, such as this one:
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
Unfortunately, at infinity focus and f/1.8, the nifty fifty will only be in focus from 100 feet and beyond -- and the man was clearly closer than that! If the camera won't focus automatically, you really need to get it fairly close using manual focus, either through the viewfinder or using live view. If you can't do that, then using a narrow aperture as you did here is the only option. But try autofocusing with the 50mm attached -- it will blow you away compared to how the 17-85mm behaves.
@abirkill Thanks for all of your info, I have stored it all in the vault for the right moment.
@abirkill Alexis, when are you going to write a book? I love the clear way you explain this stuff. I have bookmarked so many of your explanations, if my husband ever sees them he is going to start to wonder!!