High ISO Workflow Techniques and Tips for Epson R-D1 Please!

[edhohoho]

Hi,

I took my R-D1 out last night to try the digital push processing technique that is all the rage now since the introduction of the Nikon D3. I would appreciate your help as far as workflow, techniques, and tips for getting usable images at high ISO.

I am a beginner so I'm not really sure about what I'm doing in the first place. Basically, I was setting the camera to ISO 400 or 800 and then turning the exposure dial to underexpose by 2 stops (-2 EV). I understand that this isn't really pushing the limits of the R-D1 sensor by any means (only getting effective ISO of 1600 or 3200 in comparison to other RFF members who are getting 12800 to 25600), but I was just experimenting. The RAW files were then opened in Epson PhotoRAW and the exposure compensation was increased to +2 EV via the software. The resulting images I was getting were not very good--very noisy and grainy--probably worse than images I would get by manually setting the ISO dial to get an actual ISO of 1600 as opposed to an effective ISO of 1600 (can't say for sure because at the time I didn't think to take pictures at an actual ISO of 1600 for comparison).

Am I doing something wrong? Does digital push processing work best when the ISO dial is set to higher/highest levels possible? And how are people pushing by 4 stops to get an effective ISO of 25600, since PhotoRAW only allows you to compensate exposure by 2 EV in either direction? Are you using a different program to process the RAW files? Does it matter that I only have Photoshop 6.0 for post-processing? Lastly, is it necessary to use a noise reduction program to clean up the image after digital push processing?

I saw some great work using the R-D1 that was posted in the Leica M8 high ISO thread, so I hope some of those members can share their expertise here.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Hultstrom]

If you get Lightroom or Capture ONE you get more pushing power. I find that when you push more than three stops the noise gets really prohibitive, unless you aree using it for creative effect. In addition you will often start cutting the blacks somewhere around there also.

/M

 

[J. Borger]

Most important question is ... how often do you really need iso beyond 1600 or 3200.... i never felt the need during whole my photographic life???
To answer one of your questions ..... your R-D1 also has a manual mode .....so you can also change the shutterspeed/ diafragma instead of using exposure compensation to push the ISO as far as you care to experiment with 😉

 

[edhohoho]

If you get Lightroom or Capture ONE you get more pushing power. I find that when you push more than three stops the noise gets really prohibitive, unless you aree using it for creative effect. In addition you will often start cutting the blacks somewhere around there also.

/M

Ah, thanks. I didn't know about the extra degree of exposure control on those programs. I can imagine the noise levels would get out of hand for larger pushes because I don't really like what I'm getting at only 2 stops. Perhaps Tomasis can help me because his high ISO images looked really good.

Most important question is ... how often do you really need iso beyond 1600 or 3200.... i never felt the need during whole my photographic life???
To answer one of your questions ..... your R-D1 also has a manual mode .....so you can also change the shutterspeed/ diafragma instead of using exposure compensation to push the ISO as far as you care to experiment with 😉

Yes, I know about the shutter speeds as well but I didn't want to bother with adjusting the dial for every shot I took. And I didn't want to deal with the potential noise from pushing more than 2 stops.

As for my style, I walk around at night taking pictures of random things like storefronts and people in restaurants that are often dimly lit. I was using a 50/1.5 Summarit wide open and was only getting shutter speeds of 1/4 to 1/15 sec. in some areas, so it was pretty dark. Even though I was able to hand hold a 1/4 sec. shot with pretty good results, I would prefer to freeze action and take less time to set myself up for the shot, especially when sneaking quick candid shots of people.

 

[J. Borger]

I would do one simple experiment.
In dim light take a well exposed shot at highest iso and the same shot at 2 stops lower iso and -2EV .... if you process you wil find out that with the R-D1 it is better to expose more or less correctly at the higher iso.
In my experience push-processing is not the best way with the R-D1 .
Probably an open door: try to process for a grainy/ gritty look in B&W (if you like that) to get the most out of the R-D1 for your intended application. In all honesty the R-d1 is no competition for the latest Canons or Nikos when it comes to clean high ISO performance .
But the question is do you like clean high iso in dim light in color???? I always find pictures like that odd and highly unnatural looking and prefer a gritty style. But that is very personal of course.
And .. one last suggestion -------print those pictures .... because noise/grain often looks far better on a print than zoomed in on a computer screen.

Good luck with your experiments!

 

[edhohoho]

I would do one simple experiment.
In dim light take a well exposed shot at highest iso and the same shot at 2 stops lower iso and -2EV .... if you process you wil find out that with the R-D1 it is better to expose more or less correctly at the higher iso.
In my experience push-processing is not the best way with the R-D1 .
Probably an open door: try to process for a grainy/ gritty look in B&W (if you like that) to get the most out of the R-D1 for your intended application. In all honesty the R-d1 is no competition for the latest Canons or Nikos when it comes to clean high ISO performance .
But the question is do you like clean high iso in dim light in color???? I always find pictures like that odd and highly unnatural looking and prefer a gritty style. But that is very personal of course.
And .. one last suggestion -------print those pictures .... because noise/grain often looks far better on a print than zoomed in on a computer screen.

Good luck with your experiments!

Thanks for the advice. I finally had time to play around with those pushed images and it turns out that they look pretty bad (large grains and "pixelly") in Epson PhotoRAW, but when opened in Photoshop as a JPEG, they were much smoother and grain was more pleasant. It also helps to change the images to black and white or sepia because the grain gives the images a nice vintage feel.

I'll have to compare the actual ISO setting of 1600 to effective/pushed ISO of 1600 to see if there is a difference and whether one is better than the other. Unfortunately I don't have a printer at this time, but that's good to hear that printing the images may make them look even better.

Thanks again.

 

[jbf]

PhotoRAW is garbage. Plain and simple IMO. It has a horrible interface and in all honest is just a horrible software package as far as usability goes.


A lot of my photography with the RD-1 takes place at night. I'm shooting in less than optimal lighting situations and half the time underexposing at an ISO of 1600 by at least two stops or more.

I simply shoot at ISO 1600 in RAW and take the photos straight to lightroom where I then ad 2 or however many stops of exposure I need. Adjust the blacks, etc and be done with it.

I have numerous examples of it over in the high iso thread:

http://rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?p=902048#post902048

 

[Tuolumne]

I cheat and use Noise Ninja to denoise my jpegs before I do any processing on them. It really cleans up any residual noise and gives you a much cleaner file to work with. It has limits to the magic it can work, but in general it is quite good. It is now part of my standard work flow when I shoot the R-D1 at ISO 800 and above.

/T