Critique How would you have taken this picture?

[AlexStirrup]

• ƒ/11.0

• 67.0 mm

• 30sec

• 100iso

Flickr Link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexstirrup/26493087679/in/dateposted-public/

Is this picture technically sound? (not too interested in composure).

If you were taking this (or a similar picture) what would be going through your mind? - for me, I tried to keep the aperture around where it would be sharpest, iso 100 to reduce noise, let the camera sort the shutter speed, used a remote shutter, turned IS off as was using a tripod?

Any help / advice is much appreciate, cheers Alex.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Was this a full frame camera, APS or 4/3.
F 11 is fine for FF but would be into the realms of diffraction with the others.
The light would have been better for the sky if taken rather earlier.

 

[MatBin]

You will probably find Iso 200 is your cameras native iso rating so moving either side of that is not optimal, which means you could have reduced shutter speed to 1/15th at iso 200 or less had you upped the iso to 400/800.
Even tripod mounted for such a long time as 30secs can result in blur induced by camera shake (perhaps by a strong wind) or subjects appearing to move within the frame (aircraft or stars for instance). Most cameras these days will produce fine results at Iso 400.
Remote shutter release - did you also have the mirror locked up?
Matt

 

[Nawty]

Is this picture technically sound? (not too interested in composure).

Depends on what you are trying to achieve.

If you're asking if it as sharp as it could be then it's impossible to say without a) a kit list and b) a 100% sized version but you're on the right track with your thought process (aside from shooting f/11, I doubt I'd have shot at that aperture on any sensor size).

And aside from that you're falling into the trap of thinking its all about settings, photography is about light and the light, like it or not.

 

[mickledore]

It's hard to avoid the colour cast in the sky because you are shooting towards to plethora of orange street lights in the city centre.

What are you trying to achieve? What, if anything, do you think about it? Do you like it or not? Must admit I've never taken a shot from that position. I'l have to have a wander down.

You don' take a good photo by using some predetermined batch of settings. IS off on a tripod...yes. Remote release maybe. Or you could use 2sec delay but on that length of exposure you ate unlikely to notice mirror slap.
Aperture is probably better at f8. ISO is probably better at 200. But as ever...nothing is set in stone.

To my relatively untutored eye the photo is quite acceptable but I'm not sure that you could greatly improve it because the subject matter is hard to work with. The bridge is an interesting architectural feature but is somewhat lost. Difficult to correct that without a boat - and that will kill your 30 sec exposure!

 

[AlexStirrup]

Thank you for the replies so far.

Was this a full frame camera, APS or 4/3.
F 11 is fine for FF but would be into the realms of diffraction with the others.
The light would have been better for the sky if taken rather earlier.

Camera was FF - 5Dmk2 with a 24-105 lens - sorry should have included this in original post.

You will probably find Iso 200 is your cameras native iso rating so moving either side of that is not optimal, which means you could have reduced shutter speed to 1/15th at iso 200 or less had you upped the iso to 400/800.
Even tripod mounted for such a long time as 30secs can result in blur induced by camera shake (perhaps by a strong wind) or subjects appearing to move within the frame (aircraft or stars for instance). Most cameras these days will produce fine results at Iso 400.
Remote shutter release - did you also have the mirror locked up?
Matt

Didn't have mirror locked up no - thank you for reminding me about this. Everything else you've said makes complete sense too, there's a float/buoy thing on the right hand side that looks a bit blurred which could have been avoided possibly.

Depends on what you are trying to achieve.

If you're asking if it as sharp as it could be then it's impossible to say without a) a kit list and b) a 100% sized version but you're on the right track with your thought process (aside from shooting f/11, I doubt I'd have shot at that aperture on any sensor size).

And aside from that you're falling into the trap of thinking its all about settings, photography is about light and the light, like it or not.

Kit is a 5dmk2 with 24-105 lens. I'm not thinking its all about the settings as much as just making sure I'm along the right lines with my thought processes whilst taking the picture and getting as much correct in the camera as I can, this is my first picture after a long break from photography. I think a 100% sized version is available via the flickr link.

It's hard to avoid the colour cast in the sky because you are shooting towards to plethora of orange street lights in the city centre.

What are you trying to achieve? What, if anything, do you think about it? Do you like it or not? Must admit I've never taken a shot from that position. I'l have to have a wander down.

You don' take a good photo by using some predetermined batch of settings. IS off on a tripod...yes. Remote release maybe. Or you could use 2sec delay but on that length of exposure you ate unlikely to notice mirror slap.
Aperture is probably better at f8. ISO is probably better at 200. But as ever...nothing is set in stone.

To be honest in terms of what I was trying to achieve, it was the first time out with my camera for a long time and I was just trying to get to grips with things again, came here to make sure I'm on the right lines. To my untrained eye the photograph looks technically okay, I personally don't like the composition, it has no interest in the top or the bottom of the photograph and is a bit hectic in the middle.

A couple of people have mentioned 200 iso is probably better, apart from allowing a faster shutter speed, is there any other reason?

Thanks again, Alex.

 

[MatBin]

My understanding is that shooting at "native/base" iso i.e. 200 is better than ramping up or down, as unlike film it requires either boosting or dropping the signal strength from the micro lens/sensor circuit so you get a cleaner image.
Matt

 

[Nawty]

Yes, in most cameras base iso is best as that is how the sensor is designed and using a forced lower iso just reduces the headroom in the highlights without offering any increase in image quality.

However, a few cameras (the Olympus EM1ii springs to mind) respond well to this (but you still need to be careful with the highlights) as by reducing the shutter speed you are letting more light in so the base signal to noise ratio is improved. However, this only seems to work well on a few newer cameras and probably not an older model like yours (although I don’t know what the base iso of your camera is).

 

[Craig_85]

Native ISO on the 5dii is 100 guys, which when exposed to the right will give you the best image quality.

The caveat to that is when you are not working on a tripod, or need to freeze action and your shutter speed drops unacceptably low or your aperture has to be opened too wide for what you want. In those situations if you start getting camera shake, motion blur or insufficient depth of field then up your ISO. Also, because of the way canon sensors work if the choice is an underexposed image at a lower ISO or a correctly ETTR file at higher ISO then go for the higher ISO. This has been called ETTR and ITTR on the net!

For me the limit of these sensors, or where they actually start becoming invariant is ISO1600. Arguably the worst thing about the 5dii files is banding and pattern noise at lower ISO. If you try any Astro work with it in really low light you will notice the random noise overcomes the pattern noise at ISO1600. So there is more of it but is is nicer!

The track you are correctly on @MatBin is the way canon sensors work with 1/3rd stop ISO increments. ISO 125, 250, 500 etc. are digitally pushed 1/3rd stop ISO 100, 200, 400 files so look worse. Conversely ISO 160, 320 and 640 are digitally pulled ISO 200, 400 and 800 files by 1/3rd of a stop so have less noise. This is no different however to shooting at full ISO stops and pushing or pulling them by a third of a stop in your raw converter. Avoid 125 increments if you're bothered by this.

Regarding the photo settings @AlexStirrup I personally would have used f8 for this scene but regularly use f11 where it is required. ISO 100 is also fine. What I may have done differently is taken it at a different time. The real trick with blue hour/night images is to set up early and shoot regularly as the ambient light levels drop and the artificial light strength appears to increase. Then on your computer you can decide which image was taken at the optimum moment to give the best night time feel, meaning good contrast and artificial lights showing well, but with enough ambient light to allow shadow exposure and keep the dynamic range manageable.

 

[mickledore]

Camera was FF - 5Dmk2 with a 24-105 lens - sorry should have included this in original post.

I think native ISO on a 5DMk2 is 100. I always assumed it was when I had one.
If you don't use native ISO then you are relying on inbuilt algorythms to amend the ISO, and that can lead to problems in exposure. How big those problems are depends on how much of a pixel peeper you are.

 

[Mr Perceptive]

Regardless of the f8 v f11 discussion, I would have exposed the image less, so as not to blow out as much the street and car lights on the left, on the bridge and in the office on the right, then I would have brought the shadows up in post processing.

 

[Craig_85]

Regardless of the f8 v f11 discussion, I would have exposed the image less, so as not to blow out as much the street and car lights on the left, on the bridge and in the office on the right, then I would have brought the shadows up in post processing.

What I was going to discuss was the option of shooting auto exposure brackets with this image being his brightest, (or a 30second f8 one as the brightest) and 2/4 shorter exposures to retain the lights you mention. Personally I would not lift the 5dii shadows too much but a simple luminosity mask would let you brush the detail back through locally whilst keeping the cleaner native shadow areas.

But I didn't want to over complicate things !