artsy-fartsy or just weird?

[forestgnome]

Moose at Lilly Pond at Sunrise. I actually got this off a tripod, but the light was scarce and he was far away. I shot at 1600 and the grain is ridiculous, but then I thought it looks a little like some of those funky images on the photo websites.

Comments? I don't mind if it just doesn't work

happy trails

 

[Grumpy]

I don’t see your photo as being either artsy or weird. I think it reflects the nature of the beast.

The “beast” in this case is the low-light-high-ISO situation.

Whether done with film or electronics, at high ISOs the image can tend to break up due to “noise” or grain. Couple this with a relatively long exposure (slow shutter speed) and you get the possibility of subject or camera movement, or both, to further degrade the appearance of detail in the image.

Of course, not all color films or black & white film-developer combos are equal, nor are all electronic sensors and digital in-camera image processors equal when it comes to grain or noise.

Back in the good old days of B&W, we occasionally talked about something called “acutance,” also known as “edge sharpness” or “edge contrast.” Some film-developer combinations produced high acutance, with very crisply formed grain; others produced grain with a softened form.

At high magnification (large print size), guess which images often looked sharper: It was the high acutance images, in which the grain could be (and was) rendered very crisply on the print. Slight degrade of sharpness due to camera or subject movement sometimes could be offset visually by producing a very sharp print.

So we get back to the moose image, where we started.

The crisply rendered “grain” restores an impression of sharpness that would not be there if the grain were allowed to go mushy and soft. My guess is that electronic sharpening was done on this image, either automatically in camera or during post-processing, to increase the acutance. If that’s the case, it worked.

Just for fun, step back from your monitor about 5-6 ft and look at this photo. You probably will see the moose and its surroundings much more clearly than at more ordinary viewing distance. I think this just reinforces the old idea that viewing photographic prints (enlargements) with a loupe or magnifying glass does the picture (and the viewer) a disservice.

BTW, I’ve enjoyed looking at this photo at normal viewing distances and from farther back. I think it’s a pretty cool and authentic shot.

G.

 

[dvbl]

To me, it looks like a nice painting

 

[DougPaul]

Just looks noisy to me. What model camera did you use?

You might be able to reduce the noise somewhat by adjusting the postprocessing, particularly if you started with a raw file.

Doug

 

[dr_wu002]

if it was a little grainier, you coulda claimed the moose was "big foot" and been an overnight billionaire.

-Dr. Wu

 

[Rob S]

I like it!

Kinda reminds me of the one of those impressionist paintings.
Monet, eat your heart out!

 

[JohnL]

Grainy and impressionistic. I am thinking that with the moose out of the photo and some more color action (but not too much!) in the upper center of the frame, you'd have a more interesting image. There's a time when grainy works and with the smattering of colors and tones you have here, it works.

JohnL

 

[NewHampshire]

I don't mind the grain, but the noise is a bit of a killer. The heavy grain gives it almost a stippled look. I like it.......just with less noise.

Brian

 

[HuiYeng]

It reminded me more of Pointillism, like Seurat. To me this picture works better if the rocks in the foreground was cropped.

I personally really like grainy effect, when I was in college, I deliberately developed the film with warmer solution to achieve that (and ISO 800).

 

[Kevin Judy and Emma]

Moose

I am always impressed with your photos and ability to get out there in the bogs and shoot excellent quality photos. I'm sure I've stated this before.

There's many times when I don't get a good shot of something I was really hoping for and I want to some how make it work, but I never can. Not even with the magic of photoshop.

To me, and this is my opinion only, this is one of those times.

With every photo I try to be my own worst critic. Would I show this in a slideshow? Would I print it and try to sell it? The answer for me to both of these questions would be no. Especially when you have so much other excellent material.

Do I always show only my very best when I post photos to my website? No. I post a lot of stuff that should be trashed. (How many pictures of my wife and dog do you want to look at, anyway?) With my website I am trying to record the moment. Something so that when I am too old to go out and climb mountains I can look back upon and say, "See, we had good times out there." So, for sentimental reasons I post a lot of pictures that maybe won't appeal to everybody.

To me it's a question of "What is your goal?" with this picture. Is it a record of "Remember that day I looked across the brook and that moose was there, but I didn't get a shot of him as good as I would have liked?"

I'm afraid that if I had shot this picture, I would have trashed it. Not because it was bad, but because it wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be.

Remember, this is just my amateur opinion, and I am just another guy who wishes he could shoot like you.

KDT

 

[Grumpy]

Kevin, Judy and Emma provide(s) some interesting perspective on this. I can't really disagree with the point of view expressed.

But I also would again recommend stepping back from your computer monitor about 5-6 ft and looking at this photo from that distance. It really becomes something quite different from what we see while seated close up at the desk.

Try it. Try it, please. (Not for me. For you. You may learn something, or get an idea.)

G.

 

[DougPaul]

But I also would again recommend stepping back from your computer monitor about 5-6 ft and looking at this photo from that distance. It really becomes something quite different from what we see while seated close up at the desk.

This does spacial averaging or smoothing in the eye. It reduces the noise at the cost of losing resolution (sharpness). One could also smooth and downsample the image to get the same effect.

Forestgnome hasn't answered my question about what model camera was used. My XTi DSLR takes pictures at ISO 1600 with far less noise so I suspect this was taken with a small sensor P&S or the noise was accentuated in postprocessing (perhaps by over sharpening).

Doug

 

[forestgnome]

Dougpaul, it was my new XTi. It was also dawn. I am never sure about how much noise/grain I'll get with these high ISOs. I've seen shots at 1600 that were quite crisp. Must be more variables involved.

Grumpy, I did step back and you are right. People often look too closely at an image and judge based on sharpness of edges. I agree that images should not be viewed from too cloce.

KDT, amateur? Gimme a break! You're probably further along than I am, but thanks for great compliments. I'm often a bumbling fool who wiffs at great opportunities. Recently, I saw a fisher cat heading my way up an grassy logging road. I ducked quietly into the ferns on the side and had plenty of time to pull the camera at set dials, but I had it in the wrong mode and took a 2" exposure when the fisher cat came right by me and filled the frame at 24mm lens. This thing happens all too often.

I agree about it being a subpar image. Just looking for comments. I always learn from this type of thing and subsequent comments by our members.

Thanks, all

 

[forestgnome]

New Hampshire, what's the difference b/w noise and grain and pixelation?

Thanks

 

[NewHampshire]

New Hampshire, what's the difference b/w noise and grain and pixelation?

Thanks

"noise" is when your pixels come out a color they are not supposed to be. If you look at the rump of the moose you can see what I mean. Instead of being all brown/black you see some pixels are red and green. "grain" as we know, is just more pixles used to expose for a given spot, thus we get the splotchy, "chunky" look. (does that actually make sense!? )

Grain and pixelation are basically the same thing, except grain was used to describe the same phenomena with Film that you get on DSLRs, so they are used interchangeably.

Brian

 

[DougPaul]

Dougpaul, it was my new XTi. It was also dawn. I am never sure about how much noise/grain I'll get with these high ISOs. I've seen shots at 1600 that were quite crisp. Must be more variables involved.

Interesting.

I just took a look at some of my images taken with an XT: 4sec exposures at ISO 1600 and default JPEG output. It looked less noisy than your image.

Is your image the default JPEG or did you process a raw file? What was your exposure time?

Doug

 

[darren]

Yah, can you post the full EXIF data of the shot?

Did you add more grain / noise in PS afterwards to try to make it more "artsy"?

Or did you crop it big time?

It just seems very grainy / noisy, even for ISO 1600.

This shot was at ISO 1600 on my D20 (which is now 2 models "old").

- darren

 

[Rob S]

This shot was at ISO 1600 on my D20 (which is now 2 models "old").

Dang, .... I wish you'd stop posting your photos. Makes me want to throw my camera in the garbage.

All kidding aside, I have a new Canon SD800 IS .... and I'm getting better ..... just haven't learned how to take shots like that yet.

 

[Grumpy]

High school football games played at night are, for me, a photographic nightmare. So it was last night that I returned from a game to the office with many, many images that looked eerily like forestgnome's moose.

In almost all cases, four factors were in play:

1) High ISO.

2) Flash failure.

3) Resultant underexposure

4) Cropping

To explain ...

I shoot at a high ISO (1000 - 1600) so the flash is working more like a fill light than primary source. The camera is set in "manual" exposure mode, with shutter speed up at 1/250 sec (max normal flash synch speed) and aperture at f/2.8. Color balance is set on "flash" (to be adjusted later -- I shoot in RAW).

Trouble is, the flash -- even with a booster battery pack -- frequently fails to recycle quickly enough to keep up with the repeat exposures I make during the action. That is how the underexposure happens.

Also, since things are happening pretty fast, I often shoot a little "loose," planning to crop later. We all know what that does, right?

Underexposed photos can be "brought back" through the magic of Photoshop. But they invariably, nonetheless, look awful -- grainy or noisy or whatever you call it -- when viewed up close. Sharpness and detail are lost. Colors also get distorted and have to be adjusted.

So what I really see in the moose photo is an underexposed image that may also have been cropped.

There really is not much more to it than that.

Except to figure out how the underexposure happened so it can be avoided in the future, if you don't like this result. Good luck.

G.

 

[DougPaul]

All kidding aside, I have a new Canon SD800 IS .... and I'm getting better ..... just haven't learned how to take shots like that yet.

The SD800 is a perfectly good camera. However, it has a small sensor (crop factor ~6) so the sensor pixels are pretty small. Small sensor pixels tend to be noisier than larger ones. So you may not be able to take pics at ISO 1600 like Darren's--they may all come out looking more like Forrestgnome's pic.

Doug