Paimpont Abbey - Side Altar of St. John the Baptist
I'm still photographing Paimpont Abbey for our new Visitors' Guide - this is one of the side altars and is dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The statue on high and the painting are of him. The statue on the left is St. Judicaël, the founder of the Abbey: that on the right is St. Méen the founder of the Abbey of Gaël where St, Judicaël was formerly a monk. (To give you an idea of scale, the statues are almost life-size.)
The mixed colour temperature of the new lighting in the Abbey doesn't make this sort of shot easy, so in the end I lit this altar with flash umbrellas, but I'm less than keen on the hard shadows.
Lovely, I agree about the hard shadows, very difficult shoot to make.
with adverse lighting. Well done Richard. Maybe some fixed lights and umbrellas at a lower output and a longer exposure; adjust color matrix in camera to compensate for temp.
some people
The flash does get the detail, but yes the shadows are annoying. If you do want to do something with the hard edges, a layer of Gaussian blur and then a layer mask to apply it just to the edges of the shadows and then adjust the opacity down to taste would work. The Adjustment Brush in Lightroom and its blur might do, but I find I do not like the quality much; the mixing of the original and the blur with masked layers seems to give me a much better result.
But I would have trusted the D750 in natural light though, even hand held. The Tamron 24-70 is image stabilized isn't it? Also the Auto White Balance of the camera seldom is fooled, but you can always adjust that manually for best effect later.
@frankhymus Thanks Frank - these images have only been interim processed to determine which of them might be potential goers for the guide: before I deliver them to the design house on Monday (!) I will do some fine tuning in PS.
There's very little natural light in the Abbey at the end of a Winter's afternoon - we're talking 1/10 sec at f/2.8 and 3200 ISO and lots of noise in the shadows or a 3 to 5 sec exposure on a tripod. I tried both but there was so little contrast that I couldn't make the images pop enough for printing. The other problem is that the light comes through leaded light windows with some coloured glass and is anything but even.
@vignouse OK, but the D750 should handle ISO 3200 OK, and careful noise reduction should clean any problems up OK. My D7100 even does an OK job. And even in what might be flat light Lab color separation and "lightness" sharpening should get you more than enough "pop." Just a thought. I really try to avoid "straight on" full power flash. You might even try two lights, one to the left and one to the right, but certainly cut the flash back, it still should be reasonably comprehensive this close, especially if you move the off-camera flashes around and rely on Post processing to "pop" what you want. Good luck with your project. I am working on one at my parish church of all the stained glass windows, as we apply for foundation preservation grants.
Excellent! Can't wait to show this to Molly. She just did her Saint report on St. John the Baptist. Mixed lighting is so tough, and, to me, the shadows give a nice depth against the wall behind it.
with adverse lighting. Well done Richard. Maybe some fixed lights and umbrellas at a lower output and a longer exposure; adjust color matrix in camera to compensate for temp.
some people
But I would have trusted the D750 in natural light though, even hand held. The Tamron 24-70 is image stabilized isn't it? Also the Auto White Balance of the camera seldom is fooled, but you can always adjust that manually for best effect later.
There's very little natural light in the Abbey at the end of a Winter's afternoon - we're talking 1/10 sec at f/2.8 and 3200 ISO and lots of noise in the shadows or a 3 to 5 sec exposure on a tripod. I tried both but there was so little contrast that I couldn't make the images pop enough for printing. The other problem is that the light comes through leaded light windows with some coloured glass and is anything but even.