It's been nice ... but I think we're through!

FrankS said:
Maybe just decline those jobs and your problems go away. 🙂
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Can't do that Frank ... these are my only paid gigs as a photographer!

QUT tantalised me recently with a possible trip to China later in the year to photograph a repeat of the Computer Gaming Project I did for them recently here in Brisbane. Some sort of cutural art and tech exchange programm they have with an equivalent Chinese institution!

It's a remote chance depending on government funding but I have my fingers crossed and I need to show them that I can overcome the odd challenge! 😛
 
Keith,
I think Lyn's suggestion is worth following up. Can you go back to the gallery after the opening night but under the same lighting conditions and run the tests he suggests on film? That way you're not risking an assignment and you have a little time to try two or three lens/film combinations alongside the M8 at the same time and under the same conditions. That would at least tell you if you're heading in the right direction or down a blind alley.
 
With budget being the critical factor, Lynn's suggestion seems the best. Even with a good DSLR, significant processing (PS etc) will be necessary. For the savings from selling the M8, you can upgrade your scanner or software, maybe even hire some assistance with the post.
 
With the excellent high ISO noise performance of a 5d or a d700, you will be able to expose for the highlighted screens and lift the shadows just enough to get detail in them as well. Alternatively you could find a safe exposure where by the screens are just overexposed and the foreground/shadows are just underexposed. In post processing, you could then lift the shadows slightly and recover the highlights slightly. This is what I would do. Would be much harder with the M8 as the files tend to get flaky at high ISO, especially when you try and push them.
 
Don't forget that a scanner is also a digital capture device, and they often suffer the same dynamic range issues that digital camera sensors suffer from. The solution is bracketing - take a number of scans at different levels, one for the shadows, one for the middle tones, and one for the highlights, and combine them as layers in Photoshop. I think it was member JLW who illustrated this technique here a few years ago.
 
ChrisN said:
Don't forget that a scanner is also a digital capture device, and they often suffer the same dynamic range issues that digital camera sensors suffer from. The solution is bracketing - take a number of scans at different levels, one for the shadows, one for the middle tones, and one for the highlights, and combine them as layers in Photoshop. I think it was member JLW who illustrated this technique here a few years ago.
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Right ... I don't know about DSLR bracketing capabilities, but multipass scanning seems more logical. This is why I mentioned scanner and software upgrades as possibly beneficial.
 
Keth

1. rent 5D with lens: shoot an event

2. rent D700 with lens: shoot another event

Decide which camera system focuses best under your lighting conditions and buy that camera. (Both will have great IQ)

Regards

willie
 
Ciao Lynn,
you're right, and I had even read his and your comments but the truth is that - not having much more to say - I just wanted to give him one more reason to consider a DSLR for dimly lit environments in general, not necessarily with messed lightings as he was pointing.
 
I've been having a look at the files from the last one of these low light gigs I did and I've noticed I shot it all at 320 and not 640 like I just did with this one. At 320 I was using shutter speeds down to 1/15 but still getting reasonably sharp images ... I'm not quite sure why I did it at 640 this time but one thing I do know is the 320 files have a hell of a lot more usability shadow wise. Start trying to pull too much information from the 640 ISO shadows and they fall apart very quickly ... I'm also no photoshop expert unfortunately!

Leica really need to adress this situation in future digital M incarnations IMO as a rangefinder's strength is low light photography and to hamper such a fine camera by fitting it with a sensor with crappy high ISO peformance is crazy ... but that's all been said and argued about before!

I think I'll go back to the gallery one evening and try shooting some 800 or 400 colour film and see what sort of results I get. In some ways shooting these things with film would be far easier because it would allow me to use two cameras with different focal lengths ... my 35mm Nokton on my M2 maybe and my 50mm 1.2 Canon on my M3 or Ikon! I generally have to submit between fifty and eighty images to QUT from these gigs and if I can achieve this in say, five or so rolls of film, it doesn't become economically unviable. The scanning can be a little time consuming but then again so is sitting in front of a computer for several hours attempting to get usable images form poorly exposed noisy DNG's!

I also may get hold of a 5D and see how that goes!

I won't consign the M8 to the scrap bin yet ... ie sell it ... but it can definitely sit on the back burner while I sort this problem out and if film does turn out to be the way to go I may turn the M8 into a high end scanner with a roll feed!
 
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If you can use black and white consider xp2, it copes well in high contrast environments



P.S. or fuji 1600 and overexpose it a bit to reduce the “grain”
 
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Sorry if I'm being stupid here, but why can't you just bracket with the M8, it seems to me like an awful lot of work to achieve the same thing with scanning and PSing all that film not to mention the colour balance issues, would you shoot tungsten balanced film or just go with the orange cast? As I say, maybe I've missed something that's been said, and sorry if I have, but going down a colour film route over digital seems a bit crazy to me.
 
You can get the range with digital. Expose for the highlights and pull the shadows out with software. But you have to start with a low noise sensor to get away with it. The 5D allows that. As do recent Nikons.

Keith, beg, borrow or steal a 5D and play with it. ACR can pull some amazing stuff out. And if even that is too much noise for you, Noiseware Professional will fix that, too.
 
it does, but not enough to bridge the typical gap in exposure for a screen or projector and the audience at these events, I've never taken a spot meter reading, but it must be close to about 4 stops +, so the suggestion being made is to shoot film, and the bracket the scan, surely simpler to bracket the initial exposure, and if you're going to do that in a low light environment, then digital does it better and allows control of the WB. I love my film, but in these situations it's just not well suited.
 
I have both marks of 5d, and neither will pull all that info from one exposure, I generally expect to have about two stops of push/pull from a raw file before it all goes a bit tits up one way or another, expecting more is unrealistic.
 
bobbyrab said:
it does, but not enough to bridge the typical gap in exposure for a screen or projector and the audience at these events, I've never taken a spot meter reading, but it must be close to about 4 stops +, so the suggestion being made is to shoot film, and the bracket the scan, surely simpler to bracket the initial exposure, and if you're going to do that in a low light environment, then digital does it better and allows control of the WB. I love my film, but in these situations it's just not well suited.
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Do’no I haven’t got a digital camera, I just do 1/15 at f2.8, with a 35mm lens, and the fastest film I have, it seems to work OK

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The screens don't move, and that's the information your trying to recover, and you don't have to have an exact match with the screens, you can allow the edges, where typically there's no content, to fade out.
 
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