Beginner What Im I doing wrong?

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Mark65

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Name
Mark
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Yes
Hi all,
So Im back to the rubbish pictures again, sometimes I get razer sharp images and others meh! I managed to salvage a few today with photolab 7 but the rest were too bad. I used a tripod with remote cable and eye focus as I always do and was about 2.5-3m away, not sure what the problem is here if any one can tell me I would be grateful , in daylight the camera is great but here there were double patio doors just to the right for light.
Im again at the point of looking for something else possibly the R6ii , pointless trading in mine as with the inflated prices her in the UK I would be lucky to get a grand for it and the new price of the R6ii being £2700 against Panamoz £1800 its pointless selling mine.

Any way before I pull what's left of my hair out from frustration I would like to find out was is wrong if possible and save my money. Iso 1800, 1/250, f4, heres a link of the nef file if anyone could help.
Thanks
Mark

www.dropbox.com

_DSC0362.NEF

Shared with Dropbox
www.dropbox.com www.dropbox.com


_DSC0362.JPG
 
I can't see the picture in any great detail but I assume your issues are sharpness and the picture generally looking flat?

I assume this is a raw and if it is you still have to process the picture and that will possibly include tweaks to contrast and colour and other things including sharpening.

Could you describe what you've done to the picture?
 
Mark65 said:
Hi all,
So Im back to the rubbish pictures again, sometimes I get razer sharp images and others meh! I managed to salvage a few today with photolab 7 but the rest were too bad. I used a tripod with remote cable and eye focus as I always do and was about 2.5-3m away, not sure what the problem is here if any one can tell me I would be grateful , in daylight the camera is great but here there were double patio doors just to the right for light.
Im again at the point of looking for something else possibly the R6ii , pointless trading in mine as with the inflated prices her in the UK I would be lucky to get a grand for it and the new price of the R6ii being £2700 against Panamoz £1800 its pointless selling mine.

Any way before I pull what's left of my hair out from frustration I would like to find out was is wrong if possible and save my money. Iso 1800, 1/250, f4, heres a link of the nef file if anyone could help.
Thanks
Mark

www.dropbox.com

_DSC0362.NEF

Shared with Dropbox
www.dropbox.com www.dropbox.com


View attachment 413905
Click to expand...

In all honesty the photograph is just underexposed.

_DSC0362-.jpg
 
Here's what I did...

Whole picture...

_DSC0362-1.jpg

100% from that. I hope the posting process retains the sharpness.

_DSC0362-2.jpg

Here's what I did,,,

First I applied my preset noise reduction and sharpening settings and then I went into curves and did this.

Untitled-3.jpg

I'd be happy with that. Are you? If you are all that picture needed was minimal processing.

What do you think?

Actually you could maybe have shot at a slower shutter speed and reduced the ISO a bit.
 
Last edited:
Hi woof woof, that's the jpeg, I've attached a link to the raw, yes sharpness and noise, its the same place I've done previous images which were ok, I just expected more as the camera is touted as a low light model, I didn't even think it was dark. Some images i can count her eye lashes others its like an old film camera, very hard to get any consistency no matter how hard I try.
Thanks
 
Mark65 said:
Hi woof woof, that's the jpeg, I've attached a link to the raw, yes sharpness and noise, its the same place I've done previous images which were ok, I just expected more as the camera is touted as a low light model, I didn't even think it was dark. Some images i can count her eye lashes others its like an old film camera, very hard to get any consistency no matter how hard I try.
Thanks
Click to expand...

When I processed the raw I could indeed count her eye lashes.

I think it just needed some minimal processing. I wouldn't worry too much about minor differences in exposure when taking the picture unless we're at the extremes of what is possible so all in all I think you took a perfectly good picture which just needed a bit of tweaking.
 
Yes thanks, I did that in the post but still needed to rely on the sharpening to make it look ok, if I had a camera shop near me I would try another make to be honest, the auto focus is not that great, it didn't help she wasn't in the mood starting the terrible two`s now.
Appreciate the help all.

Mark
 
Noise tends to be worse with under exposed pics, if you can nail the exposure in camera it meakes a big difference. (easy to say) The original (havent seen the raw) doesnt look too bad though.
 
Mark65 said:
Yes thanks, I did that in the post but still needed to rely on the sharpening to make it look ok, if I had a camera shop near me I would try another make to be honest, the auto focus is not that great, it didn't help she wasn't in the mood starting the terrible two`s now.
Appreciate the help all.

Mark
Click to expand...
Z6 ii is a great camera and is indeed excellent for low light images.

Are you using the same settings for the poor images as the good ones???? especially in the focus modes as they can be a little misleading.
 
The settings don't make a lot of sense to me... Manual exposure with auto ISO (2000) and a SS of 1/250 (auto) w/ 50mm @ f/4.

The Z6II is (essentially) completely ISO invariant at IS0 800+ (and below as well); so the ISO you used doesn't really matter as long as you don't clip any highlights; and you didn't. But what does always matter is how much actual light was recorded. No ISO invariant camera is really a "low light model;" the Z6II has fewer pixels so the recorded noise is less apparent at 100% zoom, but it isn't actually any less noisy.

The 1/250 (auto) SS sounds like it was expecting/using flash; although I see no evidence of it? Either way, I would have risked a slower SS with a tripod and 50mm. A lower SS would result in more light, which would result in less noise. And detail is lost to noise.

But, are you using LR for your edits? If so, I suspect at least some of the issues are due to LR's default interpretation of the camera's picture control settings... it's a well known issue. I got very decent results using NX studio with just a couple exposure tweaks.

Untitled-1.jpg
 
Hi, yes same settings, processing was Photolab 7, and I couldn't use a slower shutter speed as the little madam wasn't interested in her birthday images lol.
 
Personally, I tend to take such valuable family shots using aperture priority and preferably spot focussing with the spot on one eye. I would choose greater depth of field then f4 so probably F5.6 or even f8 in this case.

Dave
 
If you genuinely want to produce studio quality images (as you appear to have set up here) then you need studio quality lighting.

Without that, you’re going to have to work hard and so is your camera.

Despite the marketing - we really can’t expect a camera to produce the same quality images at ISO2000 as we do at ISO200.

Simply - there’s nothing wrong with your gear, it’s doing what it was designed to do. However, you need to learn exposure, and to build realistic expectations of what a lack of photons means to a sensor or frame of film.
 
@Mark65 it's simply underexposed as mentioned above. The raw file indicates the exposure program and exposure mode were both manual and exposure compensation was 0. The scene has a lot of white in it. If the ISO was in auto mode, the camera would underexpose because it does not assume so much white. To overcome that use the exposure compensation, in case approx 1.5, to get the brighter image straight out of the camera without editing. You can check this with the camera histogram when you're taking the picture, in this case you should see the white walls as a peak on the right-hand side. I would practice using the exposure compensation or setting ISO manually to get the exposure you want.
 
I'm wondering if the reason it's under exposed is because the camera is looking at a white subject against a white background and thinks it needs less light. I haven't looked at the raw settings so don't know if any kind of auto was involved but Steven's post leads me to believe it was. If you take a photo that has lots of mixed tones (lights & darks) then it will usually get things right. But it will always struggle with scenes that are naturally very bright, or very dark. A black cat on a black carpet would net you similar poor results as the camera tries to increase the exposure to make the black "grey". As Phil said, learning about how the camera exposes will help with this as you can add exposure compensation to make up for the camera's "dumb" meter when faced with situations like this. If that wall had been dark green, I suspect you may have got a different result.
 
Regarding sharpness. Do not have image stabiliation on when using a tripod.

Two screen dumps attached showing the metering and focussing modes. I would go for centre weighted metering and either of the first two focussing modes.

focus.jpgmetering.jpg

As you are shooting raw images be prepared to adjust and tweak the image to your liking. If you don't know this, use the highlights in the histogram to very subtlely alter the tonal range.
 
I don't want to be harsh, but I think you're approaching this from the wrong direction - you're seeing the solution in terms of equipment and software, but should instead concentrate on adding light when there isn't enough (allowing you to use a reasonably small aperture and an adequate shutter speed without using very high ISO) and making sure that you don't create noise by underexposing your images.

You can prevent underexposure using nothing more than your own understanding, which is much better than the built-in exposure meter of any camera, which has to make assumptions about the scene and which, in this case, has assumed that the scene is "average" instead of actually being lighter than usual.

You could of course buy yourself a light meter, this would allow you to measure the incident light (the amount of light incident upon or reaching the subject) which is very much more accurate than camera reflected light meters, but you don't need to do this, common sense will, to a very large extent, do the job for you. And your camera probably has a histogram, which will clearly show you whether or not the exposure is acceptable.

Knowledge and care always trumps equipment:)
 
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