Noise in church shots and speeches

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missmoloko

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If I shoot a wedding in dark church where flash isn't allowed I normally just out the images in black and white same with the speeches. As I see a lot of other photographers do also. But if a customer complains about them all being in black and white and want them in colour what do other photographers generally say to that.

I've tried explaining to the client about the noise which personally I don't like but they didn't seem to understand. Have I just made things worse.
 
Best bet is surely to give them a sample of a colour shot and see how they feel about it, maybe include a crop showing a noisy area so they know what you mean...
 
You show them the colour, your only problem is if they are awkard buggers and say "well why is it like that?"

You wouldn't think it but we've had people at previous weddings say "oh my nikon dxxx is a higher priced model than your Canon 6D"

My reply to that is, laugh and know they don't really have a clue as its an epic wedding camera but there are plenty of bad customers out there if they don't deem the gear "good enough", they cant see that the person behind it makes the image

My way around would be to ramp the noise reduction up, rid of the noise if its that bad and just make do with a relatively soft image.

What gear do you shoot with?
 
I know I personally don't like noise. But think I've given them something to be picky about now. Will have to show them an image with and without noise reduction.

Canon 5d. And 5d mark 3
 
If you're making a living from or even charging for your work its up to you to make sure you have got the gear to do the job,there are a lot of cameras out there with very good high iso performance :)
 
Most clients or should I say 'non photographers' don't even notice noise in my experience
 
Swissy said:
Most clients or should I say 'non photographers' don't even notice noise in my experience
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exactly, and if they are photographers that did notice, would expect it anyway in such conditions.

Also, to the OP, why not shoot the speeches with flash if you feel they too noisy without?
 
Yv said:
exactly, and if they are photographers that did notice, would expect it anyway in such conditions.

Also, to the OP, why not shoot the speeches with flash if you feel they too noisy without?
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And if your 5dIII images are too noisy to deliver how the heck have we managed to shoot anything for the last 30 years.

And do I need to give all my customers their money back?
 
They should be clean as a whistle to be honest I think, the high iso is nigh on the same as the 6d and if you wanted you could get away with colour at 25000 to be honest
 
missmoloko said:
I've tried explaining to the client about the noise which personally I don't like but they didn't seem to understand. Have I just made things worse.
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in a word, Yes.

You would have been better to just give them the colour shots, cleaned up as best you can and not even mentioned noise unless they did ( I guarantee they wouldnt have and would have loved the photos) Clients generally dont give too much credence to ultra sharpness and low noise and just want nice shots of the day.
Its photographers who strife to produce stunning, technically excellent shots, (as they should) but clients favourite shots are often ones you would deem just average or okay. Wedding clients dont look at them with your professional detachment, they look at them from a very emotional standpoint.
Just look at the quality of photos that the average Joe (or Josephine) posts on Social Media taken with little or no technical ability on low standard phones and are poorly composed, underexposed and out of focus etc, which get dozens of "OH WOW! Gorgeous pic mate/babe." type replies.

BTW I agree with the two replies above.
 
Are you using really crap glass or something? The 5d3 is amazing in low light.
 
If there's noise in the colour image, then there's still noise in the B&W image.... LOL


I know the 5D MkIII isn't in the same league as a D8xx of D750 but come on!... It's still MUCH better than cameras used 10 years ago, and still so much better than film.

Anyone would think shooting weddings is a new thing.

You sure you're just not being too fussy about noise?

Still.. B&W doesn't reduce noise.
 
Like I mentioned earlier think I'm just being too picky with it and have shot myself in the foot really even mentioning to the client.
 
missmoloko said:
Like I mentioned earlier think I'm just being too picky with it and have shot myself in the foot really even mentioning to the client.
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Frankly yes!

If this isn't some kind of wind up, you seriously need a rethink before you shoot any more weddings.

A re-think of how to talk to customers and what constitutes 'acceptable' image quality. And what it is that a customer wants and how you go about supplying this.

To paraphrase @Pookeyhead it's not just amateur photography that's eating itself due to the Flickr generation, it's spreading into the professional sphere too.
 
If you want the most noiseless colour photos when you can't avoid shooting at high ISOs then you should be shooting RAW, not using the camera's jpeg noise reduction, and instead using a very good post processing noise reduction editor or dedicated noise reducer which you carefully adjust to the noise characteristics of those particular conditions. It takes time, but may give you an extra stop or two of better noise performance. Where the customer doesn't want original size resolution, e.g. maybe just an A4 print, you don't need to take all the noise out, because the final size reduction can be used as the final noise reduction phase.

It's extra work, and I usually charge extra if people want me to go to such lengths. Plus the customer often loses interest in better image quality if it's going to cost more :)

A more sophisticated alternative to "use B&W if it's noisy" is to use high noise reduction on the colour channels but as low as possible on the luminance channel. That reduces colour resolution of small details, but preserves higher detail resolution, and lets you leave some fine grained luminance noise along with the extra detail. Luminance noise is much more visually acceptable than colour noise, which is one of the reasons noisy images look better in B&W.
 
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was going to say surely processing images is part of the price.... it is for us and as above, we batch an automatic noise reduction of 25 over all the raw files and tweak each as individuals where needed.
 
I quiet like the idea of charging extra for processing. If I thought I'd have any clients left anyway. You could have a menu to pick from:

Levels 50p
Sharpening 25p
Cloning £1
Noise reduction 30p
Custom profile 75p
Convert to JPEG 60p

You get the idea.

(As it seems to be silly season, this is very tongue in cheek before anyone thinks otherwise)
 
If it was really dark when we shot weddings on fillum, we used to use Fuji Superia 1600 35mm pushed to 3200 and deliver 9" x 6" prints off that. Grain the size of golf balls would be an exaggeration, but not much of one. Did we ever get complaints? Nope.

Same with shooting a 10D at ISO 1600. It was rubbish, but with a touch of NR in the processing, plenty good enough for wedding photography. Nobody ever mentioned image quality - even when we felt that it was embarrassing.

I wouldn't want to shoot a wedding with the (early type) 5D I now have, but that's not because of any noise issue. It's fine at 3200.
 
It's me just being too fussy I pick holes in everything I do but I really don't like any noise. There isn't that much. It doesn't help that I view the images on a 27 inch screen and zoom in just me being too critical.

And I response to me thinking twice before reshooting weddings there isn't an issue with my photography just the fact that I'm too critical as many of us are.
 
missmoloko said:
It's me just being too fussy I pick holes in everything I do but I really don't like any noise. There isn't that much. It doesn't help that I view the images on a 27 inch screen and zoom in just me being too critical.

And I response to me thinking twice before reshooting weddings there isn't an issue with my photography just the fact that I'm too critical as many of us are.
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if its any consolation, a few years ago I hated noise... then started shooting weddings and discovered that churches aren't as 'quiet' as you would like them to be. I also realised very quickly there was no choice. I then realised that actually, B&W is ok, but weddings are about colour. Finally I printed a few high ISO pics and saw that what everyone said was true, unless you are printing huge, you can't see the bloody noise anyway when printed and your clients certainly won't notice it, not even in the digital versions.

You might have dug a bit of a hole with this one, but a valuable lesson learnt, shoot at whatever ISO you need, apply a weeny bit of NR if you want in PP but beyond that, stop worrying about it, because no one else is and certainly not your clients. Offering every church photo in B&W is MORE likely to make them ask questions than just a few in line with the rest of the day.
 
Thanks guys do you know what I've never had a conversation with a client in the 10 years I've being doing weddings and don't know why I mentioned it this time think they caught me at the end of a long day. Anyway I'm putting a bit if Nr on now and their fine.
 
missmoloko said:
It's me just being too fussy I pick holes in everything I do but I really don't like any noise. There isn't that much. It doesn't help that I view the images on a 27 inch screen and zoom in just me being too critical.

And I response to me thinking twice before reshooting weddings there isn't an issue with my photography just the fact that I'm too critical as many of us are.
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There was nothing personal, and certainly no reference to your photography (I have no idea what the quality of that is).

However telling customers that you don't want to deliver pictures because they're noisy is a very real issue. As Yv has said (and everyone else) noise is a fact of life, and it's not an issue in printed pictures, and your cameras are more than capable of delivering results that'll make your clients cry in a good way. You just need to stop reading gear forums. Like I said, the internet will eat 'photography' if we let it.

Viewing your images at 100% is equivalent to looking at prints the size of your living room wall - you're not printing at that size. I have A3 images shot at 1600 ISO from a 300d, you might think they're noisy, but no 'ordinary' person would see anything other than the subject.

In fact I think there's still a 1600 ISO image from the 300d from my wife's first time as my 2nd in my portfolio.
 
boyfalldown said:
Really?

You charge more for noise reduction during processing? Wow
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I'm not talking about the simple kind of noise reduction where you simply run a slider along until it looks nice. That's a trivial piece of normal workflow.

I'm talking about the kind of carefully customised noise reduction which uses a high quality specialised noise reducer and usually has to be done individually for each image, involves carefully adjusting and readjusting at least half a dozen interactive sliders, sometimes involves difficult calibration of the noise characteristics of the image to begin with, and which can easily take more than ten minutes for a particularly awkard image. That gives clearly better results than simply pushing a slider to the optimum position or batch processing all the (say) church interior shots.

I don't make a specific charge for specially good noise reduction. It's included in the extra charge I'll ask for doing the best I can for a particular image. That most often arises when someone wants something special not originally specified, such as a large gallery quality print, or a head portrait cropped out of a group shot, where spending a lot of extra time can result in worthwhile improvement.
 
dalegt4 said:
you could get away with colour at 25000 to be honest
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I find discussion of needing mega high ISOs laughable. My father shot thousands of weddings on ISO 160 (and sometimes 400) film. If there was no need to use ISOs in the thousands back then, there's no need now.


Steve.
 
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Steve Smith said:
I find discussion of needing mega high ISOs laughable. My father shot thousands of weddings on ISO 160 (and sometimes 400) film. If there was no need to use ISOs in the thousands back then, there's no need now.


Steve.
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TBF wedding photography has changed a lot over the years and what was expected now is very different
 
Steve Smith said:
I find discussion of needing mega high ISOs laughable. My father shot thousands of weddings on ISO 160 (and sometimes 400) film. If there was no need to use ISOs in the thousands back then, there's no need now.


Steve.
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Steve, every time you say this we tell you it's poppycock.

There are many here who also shot weddings on film, and what I shot 20 years ago on film and what I shoot now are different enough to be different genres.
I never shot bridal prep in dark hotel rooms. The only shots inside the church were the signing, or set up shots of a kiss at the doors (using flash), the only indoor shots at the reception was a fake cake cutting. All done on 3 rolls of 15 on. Everything else was shot in daylight with fill flash. 160 in the summer 400 in the winter.

I gave it up because it was all staged and because after 100 weddings I'd developed a 'style' that worked for me, but did very little for the customer. I got bored.

Nowadays most of what I shoot is unposed,indoors in crappy light. In the winter I might max out my ISO, in the summer hopefully I will get away with 3200. And what makes the long days worthwhile? No 2 customers get the same set of photos.

Short answer - What Hugh said!
 
Steve Smith said:
I find discussion of needing mega high ISOs laughable. My father shot thousands of weddings on ISO 160 (and sometimes 400) film. If there was no need to use ISOs in the thousands back then, there's no need now.


Steve.
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Yea just like people used to shoot with glass plate cameras on huge tripods with a team of assistants. I always laugh when I see photographers using handheld cameras at weddings - don't they realise there's just no need to be running around like that?
 
Not that I've ever shot a wedding.... but on the film and dark places thing...

I shot a lot of gigs in relatively dark clubs, basements, barns and tents etc with an f4 lens and 1600 film and no one ever complained, far from it, but I'm pretty sure that one of the biggest reasons they didn't was that the prints were relatively small and small size hides a lot whereas these days I think more people have bigger prints. I can't remember anyone having a large photograph on their wall back then maybe because they were expensive and if they did maybe they were few and far between and staged studio type shots. Maybe these days more people have at least one... in fact I think that just about everyone I know has at least one large photo on their wall, maybe done at home with an A4 printer, and then of course there's on screen pixel peeping.

Maybe the same is partly true for wedding, maybe the relatively small prints back in the film days hid a lot.
 
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Phil V said:
Steve, every time you say this we tell you it's poppycock.
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You do... but this is a forum so I'm allowed to have an opinion too!

Jayst84 said:
Yea just like people used to shoot with glass plate cameras
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Now you're talking. Glass plate photography for hipster weddings.
Actually, my father did use glass plates for his first few weddings. Ten per wedding!


Steve.
 
Steve Smith said:
You do... but this is a forum so I'm allowed to have an opinion too!
...
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Yes Steve.

But it's not an opinion, it's a question (even when it's couched as a counterpoint), and we keep telling you the answer. :)

It's different requirements for a completely different job.
 
boyfalldown said:
I quiet like the idea of charging extra for processing. If I thought I'd have any clients left anyway. You could have a menu to pick from:

Levels 50p
Sharpening 25p
Cloning £1
Noise reduction 30p
Custom profile 75p
Convert to JPEG 60p
)
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fantastic idea

we could have

colour popping £300 (it kills kittens)
bride in a wine glass £125
Congregation being chased by Trex £250
tiny groom in brides hand £250

or we could go the cryptolocker route and encrypt the final cd and charge then an extra £500 for the password :LOL:
 
Steve Smith said:
... Glass plate photography for hipster weddings.
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Nah. Plates in a mahogany and brass field camera for steampunk weddings.

For a hipster wedding you want a Rolleiflex T in grey, with lens hood. That's cool, man. An ordinary Rolleiflex TLR would possibly cut the mustard too, but only if it was in the kosher leather never-ready case with the front off. Having the little leather case on the strap for the lenshood might get you a bonus cool point.
 
missmoloko said:
Thanks guys do you know what I've never had a conversation with a client in the 10 years I've being doing weddings and don't know why I mentioned it this time think they caught me at the end of a long day. Anyway I'm putting a bit if Nr on now and their fine.
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So you've been doing weddings for 10 years and only now, with today's cameras which deliver superclean images at stupidly high ISOs, you suddenly have an issue with noise? With 10 years of experience that's bonkers, as is your client management to be honest. If your client is wondering why the ceremony shots are in black-and-white then all you have to do is say "it's normal practice to provide ceremony and reception photographs in black-and-white whenever we encounter particularly low light conditions, or the effects of mixed interior lighting which can cause conflicting colour shifts within colour photographs. For this reason conversion to monochrome is deemed to produce the most pleasing results. For explanatory purposes I have attached a sample in colour".

I bet I'm not the only one thinking this thread is a windup. If you think a 5D mkIII (I own one) produces noticeable noise (at pretty much any ISO value) then you want your head feeling.
 
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