Post your ISO 2500 Photos

quadtones said:
Ok, I agree...iso 2500 -1 1/3 ev. 15mm C-V wide open. Some PP in CS3, mainly adjustment layers, no sharpening.
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Great shot but it would have certainly benefited from some sharpening. To illustrate my point, I took the liberty and sharpened the shot.
 

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Actually, it prints fairly well. Most recently, I printed it on Ilford Gold Fibre Silk, and with [a little] sharpening, I am fairly happy with it. It's hard to take a bad photo of this bass player, Walter Savage, originally from San Francisco, and now here in Arkansas [Thought he deserved a plug]. Actually, I like the version with the sharpening [more than I'd used in the original post-processed version] added.

Here is another shot in the same club. i.e. 1250 - 2 1/3 EV, which I am coming to consider as on the ragged edge. I find I am getting a bit better results with these ratings than by increasing to i.e. 2500 - 1 1/3, although in this light, it seems to not matter. The "gesture" and the sense of the moment for these young musicians seems more important. 28mm Summicron @ f2. Shutter speed probably 1/24 sec.

Thanks to all for their comments.

Norm
 
Here is mine from a couple of weeks ago

Here is mine from a couple of weeks ago

At Universal City Walk with my wife and baby boy

l1003346-12.jpg
 
quadtones said:
Actually, it prints fairly well. Most recently, I printed it on Ilford Gold Fibre Silk, and with [a little] sharpening, I am fairly happy with it. It's hard to take a bad photo of this bass player, Walter Savage, originally from San Francisco, and now here in Arkansas [Thought he deserved a plug]. Actually, I like the version with the sharpening [more than I'd used in the original post-processed version] added.

Here is another shot in the same club. i.e. 1250 - 2 1/3 EV, which I am coming to consider as on the ragged edge. I find I am getting a bit better results with these ratings than by increasing to i.e. 2500 - 1 1/3, although in this light, it seems to not matter. The "gesture" and the sense of the moment for these young musicians seems more important. 28mm Summicron @ f2. Shutter speed probably 1/24 sec.

Thanks to all for their comments.

Norm
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Another great shot. great mood. makes me feel I'm right there.
Again, it could benefit from some sharpening. particularly the blurry guy in front.
Don't get me wrong, it's great that he's out of focus. Gives the photo nice depth. Yet you don't want him to disappear either.
 
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Thanks so much for the support. Sometimes folks look at this "stuff" and complain about the grain. I spent too many years pushing Tri-X and HP-5, getting absolutely no shadow detail, completely blown highlights. I love the gritty, grainy look. In fact, I think I prefer the look of my 60's and 70's vintage lenses [field curvature? coma?] to the current crop of Leica optics. These were shot with the 28mm Summicron. I think I prefer my 35mm v4 Summicron for the "look" if not the field of view on the M8. I know I'm pretty happy with the results I'm getting from these files. By the way, was that last shot from Toronto--it's been years since I've been there. LIved there in the early 70's and about half the family is from there. Somehow, I think Toronto really ends at Davenport Ave. Like the shot.

--Norm
 
quadtones said:
By the way, was that last shot from Toronto--it's been years since I've been there. LIved there in the early 70's and about half the family is from there. Somehow, I think Toronto really ends at Davenport Ave. Like the shot.

--Norm
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yes, it's in Toronto at the Distillery District.
 
Tom,
Thank you for starting this thread. It has been a real eye opener. I am convinced now that very high ISO color is not a good idea unless you are after high contrast color shifts. That can be very effective on some subjects such as some of the ones you took. However, for B&W, your results absolutely blew me away.

Once you are no longer concerned with color noise, the pictures look very film like. Consider that the Leica made it's reputation using B&W film in the hands of Fenninger, Capa (both of them) and the like all of whom produced compelling available light photos that were grainy due to the limitations of the film that was then available. Those same photos still grab me every time I look at them.

I guess I am trying to say that you have opened our eyes to the possibility that the M8 can still produce the same type of image. I would be curious to see what results can be achieved shooting with the M8 set on B&W to begin with. I know that we should alway shoot in color to retain as much raw information as possible and do the conversion in post processing. Still, all the same, I wonder how shooting in B&W to begin with would compare when we consider the final images.

Jim Evidon
 
hehe, thanks for the kind words.
It's kind of a weird thing for me...I rarely shoot color...i'm fairly abysmal at composing with colors...so I shoot almost exclusively in b&w. I think that high ISO color shots need to be much more carefully exposed and processed...and i've noticed it helps A LOT if you take careful time to set white balance almost exactly (i've noticed most of the horrible noise in high ISO color shots comes from tweaking WB in PP)

part of the reason for starting this thread was to display a counter point to that over hyped distaste for the noise in the m8's files...especially when there are other issues with the camera that are more important to me (i'm not a huge fan of the battery life, although I realize the battery is sooo tiny that it's actually great battery life for it's size, I suppose that's just a carry over from film...where I only had to worry about the battery perhaps once or twice a year, whereas with digital I have to worry about the battery at the end of every day.)

I'm going to try some proper color 2500 iso shots this week if I can, this thread has been a bit lacking in the color department, and it would be nice to see if I can work in some nice presets and workflow for it in case the need should ever arise for me.
Jim Evidon said:
Tom,
Thank you for starting this thread. It has been a real eye opener. I am convinced now that very high ISO color is not a good idea unless you are after high contrast color shifts. That can be very effective on some subjects such as some of the ones you took. However, for B&W, your results absolutely blew me away.

Once you are no longer concerned with color noise, the pictures look very film like. Consider that the Leica made it's reputation using B&W film in the hands of Fenninger, Capa (both of them) and the like all of whom produced compelling available light photos that were grainy due to the limitations of the film that was then available. Those same photos still grab me every time I look at them.

I guess I am trying to say that you have opened our eyes to the possibility that the M8 can still produce the same type of image. I would be curious to see what results can be achieved shooting with the M8 set on B&W to begin with. I know that we should alway shoot in color to retain as much raw information as possible and do the conversion in post processing. Still, all the same, I wonder how shooting in B&W to begin with would compare when we consider the final images.

Jim Evidon
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Tom,
Still, i would like to know if you're shooting with the B&W option in the camera menu or if you shoot color and then convert to B&W in the PP?
Jim
 
Oh sorry...I was really tired when I wrote that last night.
I shoot raw and convert in lightroom using a preset I made up for the m8 for high iso.

I never shoot jpg...ever...not only does it not give me more wiggle room in the pp, but shooting dng also seems to give a wee bit of extra life to battery performance since it's a quicker write time.

Tom

Jim Evidon said:
Tom,
Still, i would like to know if you're shooting with the B&W option in the camera menu or if you shoot color and then convert to B&W in the PP?
Jim
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Tom,
In reading Sean Reid's new review of the new Nikon D700, which shares menu choices with my D300 plus some additional one's, he commented that he prefers to shoot B&W and sets the camera for B&W shooting Raw with a B&W jpeg backup. He goes on to comment that Raw retains all the data whether you shoot color or B&W, so I guess it is just as easy to shoot B&W to begin with rather than shoot color and do a PP to B&W. I assume that goes for DNG and NEF Raw. Does that make sense to you? It sound right to me.
Regards,
Jim
 
yeah, that makes perfect sense, however it's just not my method for workflow...i've never seen a point to using a b&w jpeg shot along with raw, although countless other people swear by it. I have my entire system set up to copy all dngs from my card to a folder labeled by date and client/event name with automatic generic metadata including copyright and automatic conversion to either a certain color appearance preset or my various b&w presets, after which all my files are backed up to 2 different 2TB servers (one on site and one offsite) and a b&w contact sheet is automatically printed out as well.

this all occurs regardless of whether I am home or on the road, often times after an event occurs I plug in my cards and my laptop has a high speed 3g wireless card connected to it so by the time I drive home I have contact sheets waiting for me and the files already backed up on the 2 servers.

everyone has their own workflow, and I certainly recommend tinkering until you've found one that works right for you.

Jim Evidon said:
Tom,
In reading Sean Reid's new review of the new Nikon D700, which shares menu choices with my D300 plus some additional one's, he commented that he prefers to shoot B&W and sets the camera for B&W shooting Raw with a B&W jpeg backup. He goes on to comment that Raw retains all the data whether you shoot color or B&W, so I guess it is just as easy to shoot B&W to begin with rather than shoot color and do a PP to B&W. I assume that goes for DNG and NEF Raw. Does that make sense to you? It sound right to me.
Regards,
Jim
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Sean Reid wrote that he does it do produce a B&W image on the LCD screen. It helps to visualize the final product. Not having that Ansel Adams eye for previsualization, it makes some sense to me.

For a professional your system sounds very efficient, but as an amateur, it is much to sophisticated for my needs, not to mention budget.

I'll try both methods as I go along and see what works best for me. The bottom line is that since Reid also reconverts his Raw images that survive the cut back to color in PP in order to process with some of the very sophisticated BW conversion programs his method does include an extra step.
Jim
 
so i've finally gotten around to exporting my presets i use for my high iso shots to my website so any of ya'all who use lightroom feel free to see if they work for you if you want.

http://www.tmfabian.com/presets/

happy shooting folks.

edit: PS these presets only work with raw files...sending a jpeg through these will give you a file that looks like an alligator chewed it up and spit it back out.
 
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High ISO presets

High ISO presets

Tom,
I downloaded them but my PC needs to know what program to use to open them.
regards,
Jim Evidon
 
Jim Evidon said:
Tom,
I downloaded them but my PC needs to know what program to use to open them.
regards,
Jim Evidon
Click to expand...

they're lightroom presets.
so, if you have lightroom you just goto the develop module and where all those presets are you can right click and import presets...then just point the program to where they are on your computer.
 

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