Night Shooting

Night shots are one thing that can be very difficult to try and save.  Lots of people like shooting at night.  When I ask for friends to submit photos to be processed to see how it works more than half of them have a night shot they want to try and save.  Many can be improved, but they could be a lot better if the camera was setup for doing some night shooting.

Setting up for a Night Shoots

(Handheld)

There are all levels of camera.  Some have special settings which can be turned on or activated for low light night shooting.

1. Set the ISO to 1000 to 2000.  This will increase the noise but get the subject matter
2. NEVER HAVE THE CAMERA IN AUTO ISO
3. Set High Noise Reduction to “ON” if you have that setting
4. Don’t go for sharp details.  You will need to remove noise post process, details won’t survive.

(Tripod/Monopod)

This is the way to go if you really want to get good clear, detailed night shots.

1. ISO 200 should provide good clear detail and a minimum of noise.
2. Use a remote to trigger the shutter
3. Set the F-stop between 5.6 and 8.

If you don’t have a remote use the self timer.  This will give the camera time to stop moving from your pushing the shutter before it opens.

If you have a camera with a “mirror up” setting which will let you put the mirror up before taking the image use that as well.  It is called mirror slap which can also add slight movement to the camera.  It might not be noticable at all but taking every step to remove vibration and movement from the camera will get you sharper images.

Long Exposures

The longer the exposure the more noise.  Finding the best exposure time might take some trial and error.  What looks good in the small image view might look terrible once you get the image on a computer screen.  This is why you want to take more than one exposure and change up the shutter speed to let in enough light to capture the image you desire and keep the noise to a minimum.

Go for the Butter

Even in a night shot you can go for the butter.  I call this the creamy pastel watercolor look.  Lines are soft and areas blend together.  You won’t get this look in camera.  In post you can use high noise reduction to get rid of the grain and purple spots and create a smooth watercolor look to your image.

In this example you won’t see a huge difference.  There was quite a bit of noise in the original image.  Using noise reduction the softer look becomes evident.

Some Noise

The Butter Look

Display Small Images

Have you ever been browsing a flickr photo stream and your eye is caught by a picture you really like, but when you go to view it larger it is out of focus, full of noise and in general not a very good photo. But if all you need is a small photo. . .

Knowing what your final product will be helps a great deal.  If all you need is a small photo for the web or on an MLS listing, don’t worry about the noise or how sharp it looks.  The butter look will convey the idea, even a sharper noise filled image small will do the job in many cases.

Setting up the camera before shooting night shots can go a long way in getting the results you need.

Tags: high noise, night shooting

White Balance and Light

I’ve talked before about the advantages of shooting RAW, especially for listing photos.  One of the big advantages is the ability to change the white balance.

White Balance Auto

Most of us don’t want to have to think about the light in which we are shooting.  We move in and out from indoor, outdoor, cloudy, shade and direct sunlight.  We set our camera to White Balance Auto and let the camera make the decision for us.  Sometimes it guesses WRONG.

If you are shooting RAW you can change the White Balance in post processing.  If it guesses wrong and you are shooting in JPG, there is no going back, that white shirt that appears Yellow can’t be made white like it was.  There is no “Bleach” brush to paint on the shirt.  It is possible to tweak it with a little or a lot of work, but why.  Shoot RAW and it isn’t an issue.

Shooting Indoors in Mixed Light

But what do you do when you are shooting a listing and the room has three or more kinds of light?  There are choices to be made.  I’ll give you some tips on what to look for and things you can do when shooting indoors in mixed light in the next post.

Tags: mixed light sources, Shooting RAW, white balance

Re-Imaging Does A Lot But Black is Black

What do I mean by this.  The same way you can blow out details by over exposing there are times when an image, even one shot raw, is so underexposed some of the image detail is black.  Trying to raise details out of black will usually result in a lot of “Noise”.

Lost Detail Creates Noise

If you aren’t familiar with noise it is those speckles of color you get in some of your digital photos.  Some time it is possible to use noise reduction software.  A little noise can be dealt with quite effectively.  But a lot of noise is, a lot of noise.

Here is an example of an image where the camera  light meter was fooled.  It took the reading from the back of the room near the large light source (Large Light Source is technical for Window).

The rest of the room had dark wood floors and limited lighting.  The light that did exist was mixed from several sources.

The end result, an under exposed image.  Even so with Re-Imaging some detail was brought out. However, even with Re-Imaging details can’t be brought out that were not recorded on the camera’s sensor.

The Original Image

As Shot

Re-Imaged

After Being Re-Imaged

Tags: lost details, Noise, Underexposed

HDR Images Don’t Have to Look Fake

HDR Processing Doesn't have to look "Fake"

Are you ready for this one. I’ve never been a fan of HDR. That’s right. Here I am running an HDR photo processing site and I’ve never been impressed with HDR rendered images. Why am I running an HDR lab? Because HDR doesn’t have to look “Fake”. HDR software is, well, software. It can be used to create surreal images, over saturated images, artsy images, gritty images, David Hall looking images, watercolor images, oil painting images, you get the idea.

But it can also be used to create great photographic images as well. Most producing HDR imagery aren’t after a photographic representation. They want the Gritty, the Over Saturated looks they can achieve using HDR processing. The same results can be achieved with Photoshop, but using HDR software it can be achieved very simply.

HDR Processing For Real Estate

In most of the examples I’m trying to show the extremes of what can be done using HDR.  If the camera is getting the exposure right there won’t be a huge swing In  Before and After.  Here are some of the things that will be enhanced.

1. Shadow detail will be brought out.
2. Colors will be richer but not over saturated
3. Reflections will have details in them
4. Same true for window reflections
5. In most cases the windows won’t be blown out (it depends on the number of exposures and if the detail outdoors is lost in the image)
6. Clouds and small details will be enhanced (limbs, leaves, doorways,small objects hidden in shadows, etc.)

HDR processing for MLS photos.

MLS images aren’t to supposed to be “artsy”  they are intended to represent what the outside, inside and amenities of the home look like.  The views from the home and from the rooms in the home.  This is where HDR processing really shines for listing photos.

I’ll say this a lot and often.  The best images for Real Estate are RAW.  Amazing details can be extracted from a RAW file.  Much more so than from a JPG which has already had a lot of data removed from the file, then compressed before saved.

Calling Athol Kay

This post was inspired by a comment left by Athol Kay about not liking HDR.  If I want Athol to see something I’ve written all I have to do is put his name in a post and it is like shining the light in the sky to call Batman.  With his Google Alerts set up he gets these light in the sky requests on a regular basis.  As he said with the name Dave Smith, it won’t work.  It reminds me of a line from “The Land of Point”  that goes like this “A point in every direction is the same as no point at all”.

I’m going to create a Gallery  HDR Photorealistic.  Where you can ask “Is it live or is it memorex”.  Is the photo above HDR?  There are three HDR Galleries already which are a combination of Artsy, Gritty, and Photorealism.  HDR Images Don’t have to look “Fake”.

Tags: HDR Images, HDR Processing

Shooting Indoors in Mixed Light

Mixed Light can be difficult to balance

A lot of people are doing their best to save energy and cut down their electric bills.  In the process there have been some repercussions in indoor photography that complicate taking well balanced photos.  Many homes and rooms in those homes have multiple types of light.  It isn’t uncommon to have lamps in a room with incandescent light bulbs, some overhead lighting using Halogen lights on a track, some spot lights and floods recessed in the ceiling in which there can be energy efficient florescent bulbs, incandescent bulbs and halogen bulbs all mixed together.  Throw in a situation where you have florescent tube recessed in the ceiling or over a work area and you have quite the eclectic lighting situation.  What the heck throw in a brightly lite window and you have up to 5 difference sources and types of light.  Is it any wonder a camera with White Balance Auto is left with flipping a coin.

Strobes

The expensive and huge learning curve approach is to flood the room with a burst of light from multiple off camera flashes located to provide the best light and least amount of cast shadows.  But that is a lot of gear to drag around, I know I’ve done it. It also requires a lot of practice and every room of every house is different.

Natural Light

Stick the camera on a tripod and go for the time of day when you can try and expose long enough to bring out the inside without blowing out the outside. Usually just around dusk or early morning. Sometimes it requires shooting different parts of the house at different times of the day. More on this on “What Time of Day to Shoot That House”

Indoor Lighting

Even if you go for the natural light approach, you have to balance the outdoor natural light with the indoor light.  Here is where it can get tricky.  Very tricky, even if you are in control of the white balance which one do you chose.  Here’s a quick and rather inexpensive work around.

Daylight Balanced Bulbs

I carry with me a couple of packs of those small florescent bulbs and floods which are daylight balanced.  This means the light they put out is the same as natural sun light.  I bring along my light bulb suction cup extension pole and before I shot a room I replace the lamp incandescent bulbs and the overhead floods with my daylight balanced bulbs.  I usually also have a flash on the camera or standalone depending on the shot but have them set to very low output to create a soft fill effect with a diffuser on the flash to spread the light.

Now I have a pretty good shot at getting balanced light.  Once the room is shot I put the bulbs back and move on to the next room.

NOTE:  I only have to do this in about 1 in 10 rooms.  Some homes I never need the bulbs.  Others I’m using them in almost every room.  It depends on the light.

But what if I want that Warm Yellow Incandescent Light

Two options here:

1. If you are shooting RAW you can change the white balance in post.  Since the lighting in the shot is balance you can make it all balanced for incandescent and give the shot that warm yellow glow.
2. Instead of daylight balanced bulbs replace the energy efficient spots and floods with plain old incandescents for your shot.  If the home has those cork screw energy saver lights in their lamps put your own bulbs in for the shot.

ISO Auto No No

Low ISO Low Noise

Don’t ever let the camera pick the ISO. Repeat after me “I will never let the camera pick the ISO.”

Second, “I will always set the ISO to the lowest possible setting when taking Marketing photos.”

ISO Auto

ISO Auto is not your friend. Most cameras come with this as the default setting. This is one of the first things you should change. For me unless I’m going out shooting in the dead of night without a tripod the ISO is always set to the lowest the camera can use.

Low ISO Low Noise High ISO High Noise

That heading says it all.  Noise is filler where there is no data.  When the ISO is set high, it allows the shutter to move faster than the light to sensor.  This means there are gaps in the data being captured for the image.  When you send these images in to be ReImaged those gaps will be enhanced as well as the good data.

There are techniques and filters that can be applied to help remove some noise by finding good pixels around the missing ones it uses mathematics to pick what the missing pixels probably were and puts one in the missing spot that is like the good ones next to it.

If there are a bunch of missing pixels all clustered together there isn’t much that can be done.

ReImaging works best with low ISO

You will have to expose longer, possible use a tripod (you should be doing this anyway) and slow down the shutter speed to allow the data to be captured.  This will produce the best results.  Maybe not right out of the camera, because there is a photo lab in your camera, but if the data is in the file we can dig deep, find it and bring it out.  This is what ReImaging is all about.

Photos Sell Homes

This is not a revelation. Gone are the day when the agent has power over “The Book” Today, consumers look at homes directly on the internet. What do they look at? Data, or Pictures. THEY LOOK AT PICTURES The more pictures of a home the better. The better the pictures BETTER YET.

Back in April of 2008 Realtor Magazine had an article with the statics on how the number of photos available for a listing influences how quickly those homes sell.

“Research reveals that the more photos a listing has, the quicker it sells. A property with

• a single photo spent 70 days on the market (DOM) on average, while DOM fell to
• 40 with six photos,
• 36 with 16 to 19 photos, and
• 32 with 20 photos.

Additionally, listings with one photo sold for 91.2 percent of the original price, while homes with six or more sold for 95 percent of the original price.”

In today’s economy getting potential buyers to click on your listing while looking at hundreds of photos in a single sitting is important.

Do I need to add the commercial line here about using the ReImaging Lab to make them pop off the page?

Tags: Listing Photos, Photos Sell Houses

Shooting RAW

When Shooting RAW

Shoot RAW Leaves Your Cooking Options Open

When shooting RAW all the data from the shot the sensor collected is saved.  When you save in JPG or JPEG there is “clipping” going on to compress the file size so it is smaller.  This compression process picks the data by a mathematical algorithm to decided what data to keep and what to discard.

Among photographers there is an ongoing discussion about the advantages or lack there of of shooting Raw vs JPG.  One of the best I’ve run across is Raw vs JPEG.  But when it comes to creating an exceptional listing image.  There is nothing that can replace the detail garnered from a RAW image file.

While RAW image files are large they provide the best results for HDR processing.  They also allow the greatest flexibility in post processing.  White balance, color settings, just about anything you can think of can be changed (with the exception of focus) and that can be improved when shooting RAW.

If you are only a casual photographer and not interesting in spending time post processing your images, shooting RAW probably isn’t for you.  But if you want maximum ability to post process your images, then RAW is the way to go.

For me, I don’t like having to go back and reshoot a room because I under exposed it in the camera.  When shooting RAW it isn’t an issue.

Tags: RAW Files, Shooting RAW