Project 52: Week 47, Cathedral and Choir and adventures in high(ish) ISO

[billtils]

I've had the pleasure of enjoying the Rosenethe Singers at their Christmas (2017) and Spring (2018) concerts. "Enjoying" is somewhat double edged as the admission price was that I had to take photographs of the occasion. The Spring concert was at the beautiful Dunblane Cathedral and I was delighted to be asked back for a repeat performance at their Winter Concert on Sunday. However ...

Previously I was able to attend the rehearsals, check out angles for the best shots of choir, orchestra, and soloist, and of course, the light. It also let me get some safety shots, moving around unimpeded by any audience presence. This time I couldn't make it to the rehearsal and being winter it was dark well before the start time - very dark.

There were two pieces performed, firstly the Mozart "Great Mass" and after the interval, the Haydn "Nelson Mass". For the Mozart, I set up to shoot with the D810 and Nikkor 24-85mm F3.5-4.5, but for the Haydn decided to try something different and mounted the 300mm PF.

Did I mention it was dark? To keep a decent shutter speed for hand-held and people who were moving (albeit standing in one place) and an aperture that had some DoF meant a minimum ISO of 4000, going up to 10,000 at times. I played around with the in-built nose reduction in Capture One, with Prime NR in DxO PhotoLab, and Dfine2 in the original NIK suite. The last two were better than the Capture One options but if there was any difference betweeb DxO PL and NIK it wasn't obvious to me and certainly didn't make me want to change the workflow from the simple and fast round trip to Dfine.

Anyway, enough of that, here are some shots.

1: Nikkor 24-85, f4.0, 24mm, 1/50s, ISO 6400





2: Same lens, f/5, 28mm, 1/100s, ISO 4000





3: Nikkor 300mm, f4.5, 1/60s, ISO 8000




4: Same lens, f5, 1/80s, ISO 8000

[Shadowman]

Nicely exposed images, that first one is just a bit too tight but not much you could do except get in tighter but you'd lose most of the ceiling.

[george013]

It's amazing what you archived in that circumstances. The 300 with VR I presume?

George

[billtils]

... that first one is just a bit too tight but not much you could do except get in tighter but you'd lose most of the ceiling.

Thanks John, and that is indeed the reason for the tight crop. However, your comment made me look again and I could probably have shaved a bit off the top without losing anything much in regard to the ceiling.

[billtils]

It's amazing what you archived in that circumstances. The 300 with VR I presume?

George

Thanks George. Yes, VR was on.

[skitterbug]

Hi Bill - Your photos are well done especially given the circumstances you had for capturing them. Lucky you to have the pleasure to do the photography work.

I really enjoy the b/w image but it is unfortunate you had two heads interfering at the bottom of the photo. You should have told them to move! <LOL> Like that's going to happen. I think over all the second image is my favorite of this nice series. And the first one is strong for second place! <smile>

[billtils]

Hi Bill - Your photos are well done especially given the circumstances you had for capturing them. Lucky you to have the pleasure to do the photography work.

I really enjoy the b/w image but it is unfortunate you had two heads interfering at the bottom of the photo. You should have told them to move! <LOL> Like that's going to happen. I think over all the second image is my favorite of this nice series. And the first one is strong for second place! <smile>

Thanks Sandy. Ah yes, the heads - aside from not wishing to disrupt the paying customers (my fee was 2 free tickets ) - I liked the effect, giving a "spectator" view of things.

[Manfred M]

Given the shooting conditions, you should be quite happy with these results. The setting, the ambient light and the subject matter all add to the challenge of getting a good result.

In your shoes, I would have been tempted to tell the organizers that I would be shooting with a tripod, just to get that little bit of an edge to nail a slow shutter speed / long focal length shot. You are right at the limit in some of the shots as depth of field and motion blur (due to slow shutter speed AND camera movement) have definitely forced your hand in what you could do.

I find that I only have to resort to PhotoLab when the digital noise is extreme and there, in my testing, PhotoLab can get significantly better results than with Nik Dfine. I probably use Dfine in 90% of my noise reduction and only go to PhotoLab when the Dfine results are not good enough.

Most of the comments I would have made have already been made by some of the other posters. The two things that strike me about the first image is that it is cooler than the second two shots as well as being a bit "hotter" in places as well. I suspect warming it up a touch to get closer to the warmth of the other two images might we worth considering.

[billtils]

Given the shooting conditions, you should be quite happy with these results. The setting, the ambient light and the subject matter all add to the challenge of getting a good result.

In your shoes, I would have been tempted to tell the organizers that I would be shooting with a tripod, just to get that little bit of an edge to nail a slow shutter speed / long focal length shot. You are right at the limit in some of the shots as depth of field and motion blur (due to slow shutter speed AND camera movement) have definitely forced your hand in what you could do.

I find that I only have to resort to PhotoLab when the digital noise is extreme and there, in my testing, PhotoLab can get significantly better results than with Nik Dfine. I probably use Dfine in 90% of my noise reduction and only go to PhotoLab when the Dfine results are not good enough.

Most of the comments I would have made have already been made by some of the other posters. The two things that strike me about the first image is that it is cooler than the second two shots as well as being a bit "hotter" in places as well. I suspect warming it up a touch to get closer to the warmth of the other two images might we worth considering.

Thanks Manfred.

Using a tripod was not an option, the Cathedral was completely full and I was asked to be as unobtrusive as possible. You are correct in regard to the first image - the WB was cooled in all the shots and deliberately a bit more in the first just to get a different look, but the stone walls would indeed benefit from warming a tad.

[MrB]

I like the compositions in these images, Bill, and I'm with you regarding the heads in the mono - I like the effect and that's my favourite photo of the set. Manfred has mentioned the "hot" parts of image 1 and I agree. The processing has made the stone pillars in particular, and also the people's heads, unrealistically bright - one would expect them to look more like they are in image 2.

Philip

[billtils]

I like the compositions in these images, Bill, and I'm with you regarding the heads in the mono - I like the effect and that's my favourite photo of the set. Manfred has mentioned the "hot" parts of image 1 and I agree. The processing has made the stone pillars in particular, and also the people's heads, unrealistically bright - one would expect them to look more like they are in image 2.

Philip

Thanks Philip (and Manfred). I have looked again at the image and edited it:

.

[MrB]

I was visualising just a modest toning down of the brighter areas, without much change of the colour balance, e.g. perhaps -



Philip

[billtils]

Philip, that's closer to what I was after in the original (and better!) but the warmer treatment in my edit brings it closer to the others in the series.

Thanks for the suggestion and the follow-up.