Grainy when shooting in fog/deer

[Dave Humphries]

Hi James,

Firstly; may I wish you a warm welcome to the CiC forums from me.

I would be wary of free-form Googling as a learning path for you - sure; there's a lot of good stuff on the internet, but also some 'less good' and finally some is just downright wrong. If you don't have much of an understanding, I fear you risk wasting time learning from what I'll call 'well presented fluff' (or even rubbish), rather than fact, because you won't be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. I recommend you find somewhere reliable, for example the tutorials on this site and work through them - there's much to be said for receiving a consistent approach. Random internet readings and viewings may confuse, due to the different presenter's differing styles of writing and presentation and emphasis on what they think is important. If you find a presenter of YouTube content that you 'get on with', stick with them, for consistency, there are a few I could recommend.

If you teach Skiing (from your web site), you probably know the point I'm labouring to death here


If these were shot before sun up, in mist, I'm not surprised there wasn't much light, resulting in a high ISO being needed - and that still not being enough to expose properly given the effect of mist/fog on metering.

I assume the head shot is just showing us a 100% view to demonstrate the noise. It does show that noise is compounded by cropping - if you look at the whole image (in post #7), the noise isn't nearly so bad, is it?


As Terry has demonstrated, it is possible to shoot at high ISO and get great results, but only if you know what you're doing and also to know when you're expecting too much/not going to succeed due to bad light (not just low light) combined with other factors. Also of course; how to make the most of it regardless - and not be too disappointed with the (to be expected) sub-optimal results.

With experience, you'll learn that in the scenario above, you would need to use positive Exposure Compensation to counter the effect of the mist on the camera's meter to achieve a good exposure to make the most of the light.

Also that high ISO is OK as long as you;

do not under expose AND
you will need to be close enough to subject so that cropping the images to achieve a good composition is not necessary AND
you shoot RAW AND
you know how to Post Process (PP)

In this shooting case, in PP, the contrast range needs expanding to bring the black point down (using a Dehaze feature should work well) and it also needs some decent Noise Reduction, plus the usual workflow.


However, all that said, in the precise shooting situation you faced above, another two stops exposure would have meant a shutter speed so low that the shot would almost certainly have been even more spoiled (blurred) by camera shake and/or subject movement. Your best bet might have been to get in to a better/closer position to shoot from as the light level increased.

Don't be discouraged, we all learn far more from our mistakes, so this was a valuable learning experience - and I commend you for getting up and out so early, that shows dedication.

PP of course, is another whole area of required expertise if you have any desire to become competent and achieve great results.

As are the skills necessary to stalk deer successfully, even in (my guess) Richmond Park - not to mention "luck" - although that usually improves with experience

It's a long journey, you'll never stop learning, but it can be fun.

All the best, Dave

[Mike Buckley]

...I'm underexposed (close to three stops). Now the question is if I was to go shoot the same subject again in exactly the same condition what set up would I need...???

If you review the histogram after taking the first set of shots in this basic situation and if you have a command of using the histogram to your advantage, you can then change the exposure before taking the next set of shots. You can then review the histogram again and adjust the exposure accordingly, if needed. You make all of that happen until your camera is generating the ideal histogram for the scene you're shooting.

[DanK]

It seem all of you are prodding the same pig here and saying that I'm underexposed (close to three stops). Now the question is if I was to go shoot the same subject again in exactly the same condition what set up would I need...??? As i'm fairly new to this game I understand the concept of three stops but sometimes struggle to process that through this brain and on to the camera.

As Izzie suggested, you need to learn about control of exposure, the so-called exposure triangle. A very good place to start is with the tutorials on this site. The second one in the first section deals with exactly this. I suggest you read it over and then post any questions it doesn't answer for you.

[jcuknz]

Others have elaborated on what was wrong in the first place so I will just say what I did to the 'two deer' to make it more acceptable in view of the conditions.'
Adjust the black and white points, selected the deer and foreground and sharpened just that area.
Though of course better to do it better in-camera

[Stagecoach]

Hi James, and welcome to CiC.

So I was looking for some advice in what I may have done wrong!!! ]

I don't think you have done anything wrong. With the circumstances you had your options were limited, low light, moving subject, hand held and fog/mist, you did very well.

Noise and exposure has been covered in detail already so I will not repeat anything.

In one of my books guidance is given for shooting in mist/fog in that you point into the fog, take an exposure reading then add 1 stop. It is suggested that this will retain that foggy look (which I suspect most would want to retain).

But this disregards any allowance you wish to make to increase exposure above this to enable compensating for a very high ISO later in post.

[DanK]

Re John and Grahame's comments: shooting into a foggy scene, if there is no point source of light, will often produce a relatively narrow tonal range. That was the case in this photo, as the histogram posted earlier shows. One consequence of that is that you can often add a stop or more of exposure before clipping highlights. IMHO, I think the best way to handle this when there is time (there wouldn't be in this case) is to take a test shot and check the histogram. Without time, one could just add a stop of EV, as Grahame's source suggests. The second consequence is that the image is likely to lack 'pop' because of the limited contrast. That's what John's post addressed, by moving the black and white points.

All bets are off if there is a point source in the image, or a very large tonal range for some other reason. For example, in the case of this image:



the histogram before editing was the following. With the thin tail on the right, the histogram extended about as far as possible in both directions without clipping.

[Mike Buckley]

I'm surprised it took me so long to remind you that minimizing or eliminating the effects of the fog can be done with the various post-processing products that have recently added a Dehaze capability. Personally, I prefer the look with the fog but not everyone would agree.

[JwPhotography]

Thank you all so much for you help,

As always there's more to learn and a lot of reading to be done. I appreciate all the comments and all the help and hopefully bump in to some of you guys some day when out shooting!

James