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ETTR #1
John James's picture
by John James
December 17, 2013 - 4:14pm

So does anybody have a work flow in Aperture for processing RAW images after ETTR at high ISOs?

Any tips would be appreciated. I always have issue with extreme noise indoors in low light situations and it was suggested to me that I should be shooting over exposed of 1/3 to 2/3 ETTR and then deal with the image in post. 

Any help or ideas would be appreciated. 

Butch Miller's picture
by Butch Miller
December 17, 2013 - 7:32pm

It has been my experience, with most modern DSLR cameras, if your exposure and focus  is precise, there is quite often little to no need for extensive noise reduction after the fact. Both under and over exposure can cause real problems with noise issues which sometimes create even further issues in the processing pipeline. This is coming from someone who has his camera set at ISO 3200 (or higher) much of the time from August through April) as I shoot an abundance of night field sports and small high school and college gyms where lighting, is not of the utmost importance to the folks that design or maintain those venues.

To elaborate … Adjusting auto exposure over/under 1/3 is of little use … if … your exposure is still not on the mark. I would not recommend arbitrarily adjusting auto exposure … rather, I would recommend nailing the exposure exactly at the time of capture. I rarely, if ever, use auto exposure indoors using high ISO. Strictly manual exposure based upon the light value of what is falling on the subject. That way, the camera can’t be fooled by overly bright or dark backgrounds into choosing an inaccurate exposure value. Once you do that, your noise woes will decrease exponentially … You must also nail focus as well because extensive sharpening/detail/clarity adjustments can also exacerbate and complicate noise issues.

Now, achieving pleasing color in mixed lighting conditions … that is a whole other issue.

John James's picture
by John James
December 17, 2013 - 9:40pm

I was shooting some of my wife’s Christmas decorations and the light was very low requiring ISO 6400 on my 70D. So the noise was brutal. 

The exposure was fine it’s just that the noise level is awful. That is why somebody suggested ETTR. Removing the noise is not easy. Aperture seems completely useless. I was able to get rid of some of it in Camera RAW but I want to use Aperture. Unless I’m missing something the NR feature does virtually nothing. 

Any ideas? 

Walter Rowe's picture
by Walter Rowe
December 18, 2013 - 4:32pm

I shoot concerts and I NEVER shoot ETTR. Every adjustment you have to make degrades an image. I prefer to get the exposure as close to accurate as possible in-camera. High ISO is especially sensitive to exposure adjustments in post. Making them darker is less of an issue than making them brighter, but ETTR in high contrast / high ISO settings can produce blown out highlights that may be totally unrecoverable. At concerts I tend to go for correct exposure and I set the camera to lower contrast. I can add contrast in post more effectively than I can remove it.

You also have to know the ISO limitations of your camera. My older D300 had terrible noise beyond ISO 1000 or so. My D800 can go to ISO 3200 with relatively little noise. Nikon’s D4 camera can go well above ISO 12800 and produce usable images. Test your camera at various ISO values, all of the same scene. Compare the images to see where your camera starts to fall off in image quality / noise.

This article from Sept 2013 may be of some help to you .. CANON 70D RAW HIGH ISO FIELD TEST

gfsymon's picture
by gfsymon
December 21, 2013 - 2:05pm

Walter,  unless I’m misunderstanding you, I think you’re perhaps not fully aware of how ‘non-destructive’ imaging works.  I still use the original non-destructive software, Live Picture.  It was a revolution in the 90s because images didn’t have ‘that digital look’.  That digital look was, as you say, each and every image edit resulting in a degradation from the original.  For example, in Photoshop, just opening an 8bit image would reduce it to 7bits.  Add sharpening and perhaps a curve adjustment and you are at 5bits!  That’s what you got in those days.  Most photographers were unaware of why this was and just thought it was what you got with digital, but it wasn’t.  Adobe of course didn’t enlighten anyone.  LP is totally 16bit internally but crucially, only ever made 1 adjustment.  This was when your edits were applied to the image when you output in order to do something with the image.  This could mean printing (LP is also a beautiful rip) or making a tiff for repro etc.  This is the same as what happens in Aperture.  Whenever you need to do something with the image, say send it to a client, then Aperture applies your edits to the exported image in a single step.  Since the time PS got layers with flattening, it amounts to much the same thing … but you must do everything on a layer and flatten.  It’s no good just working on the ‘background’ layer.  Also, when computers became fast enough to catch up with LP’s clever maths, photographers started working in 16bit and this makes a gigantic difference, because you have huge latitude.  Aside from that, I’m slightly surprised with your concern for quality when you are shooting to jpeg and later making adjustments in post.  Now that is a recipe for loss of quality.  I’m assuming you’re working in jpeg because you mention applying contrast settings in camera, as obviously these have no bearing on a raw file.

Regarding ETTR  (I had to look up what this is) I don’t know how far back people’s experience go on this site, but I expect many have never shot film, but myself, having spent a very long time in this business, I’ve always taken ETTR to mean working in the same way I used to do on 5x4 and 10x8 ektachrome, which were my daily tools throughout the 80s and 90s.  We used to refer to ‘pegging the highlights’.  This was so important, because you could perhaps push ektachrome 1-stop in processing, but that was really the absolute limit before getting into noticeable degradation.  ’Holding’ the highlights was very important, but equally, we worked with a narrow latitude, hence all the complex lighting we used to use to reduce dynamic range to workable levels.  So we always ‘exposed to the right’ although we didn’t have histograms, but it was the same thing.  Expose for the highlights, which ensured they had detail.  Light or fill into the shadows the reduce the dynamic range of the image.

Walter Rowe's picture
by Walter Rowe
December 22, 2013 - 1:55pm

I’ve been working in digital imaging for a decade and shot film since I was a kid (born in 1965). I’m well aware of non-destructive editing. That term only means the original image file is not touched. All adjustments applied via bricks in Aperture, layers in Photoshop, develop settings in Lightroom, etc are all transforming the RGB output value of pixels. What I meant by degrading the image was that all the transformations change the original pixel values on output.

gfsymon's picture
by gfsymon
December 23, 2013 - 10:25am

Right Walter.

Just to be clear for those that aren’t old timers like us, :)  the difference between destructive and non-destructive (aside from the original remaining untouched) is that destructive editing (PS without layers) is cumulative (each and every step is destructive and adds to the overall loss of quality) whereas non-destructive editing has a single effect, applied once and therefore edited pixels are only changed one time.

John James's picture
by John James
December 20, 2013 - 1:45pm

Does anybody have any comments on how awful the NR feature is in Aperture? I find it to be totally usless. Am I missing something? From the tutorials I’ve seen and read about, LR seems to have much better noise reduction features. Camera RAW too for that matter. 

I wonder when Apple is going to update this? I’m on the edge of moving to LR

Butch Miller's picture
by Butch Miller
December 20, 2013 - 5:03pm

First off … the NR element in Lr and Adobe Camera RAW are identical … the Develop module in Lr IS ACR …

Secondly, even though NR in Aperture is not as capable as using other options, I find when  comparing base rendering of the same images in both Aperture and Lr/ACR, the Aperture rendering shows much less noise from the start. In that respect, there is far less for Aperture to “repair” …

Thirdly, while I agree that it is high time Apple step up to the plate, when it comes to NR (or a myriad of other features), the best defense is to do your best to “remove” the noise at the time of capture … as Walter and I have both already recommended.

Fourthly … There are some very affordable plugins for Aperture (several also work with Lr/Ps) for very controlled and detailed NR … When I have a very troublesome image I usually employ Topaz DeNoise. Others prefer Nik Dfine … 

Lastly … you can always fall back on the Blur brush in Aperture to smooth out noisy backgrounds … though judicious brushing in/out will be called for …

John James's picture
by John James
December 20, 2013 - 11:29pm

@ButchMiller…

I know you want to show me how adapt you are in photography by immediately pointing out that if my photo was properly exposed noise wouldn’t be an issue. WRONG.

The noise in the photo is a result of a very low light situation requiring ISO 6400 to get a decent exposure. Coupled with a crop sensor no amount of “correct exposure” will reduce the noise to an acceptable level with out some manipulation. This photo requires noise reduction and Aperture is woefully inadequate to help out.

So I asked in my OP if anybody had a work flow for ETTR since it helps a lot in this case. Nobody seems to get it…instead folks here seem to want to point the finger at the photographer as not having any idea what he’;s doing.  I take your comments as condescending and rude. 

Thanks for nothing. This site has really outlived its usefulness for me. 

Butch Miller's picture
by Butch Miller
December 22, 2013 - 5:50am

John …

I meant no offense. I merely pointed out that that no matter your good intentions ETTR, while a good starting point for many situations, may not always be the correct technique for all situations. I only shared my observations based on working as a full time professional photographer for 38 years … most of that time pushing my tools to the extreme to meet my needs. I know all about “crop” sensors … I’ve been using DSLR cameras since the Nikon D1 in 2000 and have yet to purchase a full-frame DSLR.

Noise is the result of the internal camera firmware recording pixel data through pumping up the gain when exposing the sensor with less than adequate light. When this method is applied, the firmware has to sometimes make a best guess for the the tonal and color value recorded by the individual sensor photo sites. The “wrong” or less than accurate guesses result in what is perceived as noise. When you “expose to the right” … often, mid and lower mid tones as well as shadow areas suffer through a loss of detail the sensor ignores because your exposure is clipping those portions.

What I pointed out, when you expose the image by giving the sensor a more correct amount of light for those tones using a more neutral method - maybe sacrificing the highlights and deep shadows just a bit - but preserving the quarter, mid and three-quarter tones … the firmware has to guess less often resulting in less apparent noise. It all boils down to the physics of light. If you push the sensor and firmware to extremes … it is very likely no amount of post-processing is going to save the image and address the noise issue without losing detail, dynamic range and color integrity.

Kodora's picture
by Kodora
December 24, 2013 - 7:51pm

Your understanding of noise is incorrect. Sorry, I feel compelled to point this out because there may be people reading this who would be misled. There is always noise in the digital imaging process, and it comes from sources other than what you’ve explained (I also find it weird that you use the term “firmware” as synonymous with the internal processing of the camera). The real issue is signal-to-noise ratio, i.e. how much useful data you have vs noise.

Butch Miller's picture
by Butch Miller
December 24, 2013 - 8:40pm

That’s ok … you are entitled to your opinion. Though my understanding, semantics aside, is not incorrect … While it may be true that the resulting issue is signal-to-noise ratio … inaccurate exposure can and does exacerbate the apparent noise in an image … extensively so, the further you stray from the native ISO for any given camera.

The whole point I have tried to make in this thread … Nail the exposure … Nail the focus … and you will have far less issues after the fact … and have a better image for your software of choice to enhance.

Walter Rowe's picture
by Walter Rowe
December 21, 2013 - 4:36pm

Here is an example from a Howie Day concert I photographed over the summer.

Nikon D800, ISO 3200, 70-200/2.8 VR @ 170mm, f/5.6, 1/60s, no flash, manual exposure

Howie Day - Baltimore Sound Stage
Richard Harrison's picture
by Richard Harrison
December 21, 2013 - 10:07pm

 

10

That’s a good shot Walter, I’m curious how much post-process might have been applied - so far as NR is concerned. I do not deliberately use ETTR - also had to look it up :) - but I do check for volume of light around the subject, not just on the point of focus, in an attempt to gain a more balanced lighting. By that I mean I expose and focus to the point of interest and then check the readings in the areas around it to gauge variations. If the lighting round the subject is overexposing I might drop my meter a third of a stop or so; underexposing;the opposite. Doesn’t always work but then nothing in this game always works. Skills and techniques aside I think that good low light shooting is highly dependent upon the body unless you’re dealing with long exposure on a tripod - even then the sensor is going to have great influence on the final outcome. I had the opportunity to shoot a professional ballet alongside its credentialed photog not long ago. Rapidly moving subjects lit almost entirely by moving spot lights. He shot a 1Dx using 100-400 mm L f4.5 - 5.6 IS. I shot a 7D using a 70-200 mm L f2.8 IS. He’s a great photog; I’m passable. But we’d done outside daylight event shooting like this prior and the results were comparable. Not this time. Not even close.

 

10

 

 
10

- Loving Life On The Edge Of The Milky Way

Walter Rowe's picture
by Walter Rowe
December 23, 2013 - 1:06pm

Here is the Adjustment panel for the Howie Day shot. Several bricks have adjustments, but none of them are heavy. I collapsed them all just so they would fit onto a single image I could display here. If you are curious about specific adjustments I can show them for you.

For comparison here is the Original display.

Kodora's picture
by Kodora
December 24, 2013 - 7:54pm

ETTR is meaningless for high ISO settings (see www.clarkvision.com/articles/iso/index.html;  lots of excellent, but very technical, articles on that site). In a nutshell, setting ISO high means your camera will dial in more digital gain to amplify the signal, and also the noise. So, there is no gain in signal-to-noise ratio. If you have a choice between increasing exposure via (1) larger aperture and/or slower shutter speed, and (2) higher ISO setting, always go for (1). Above medium-high ISO settings, (2) is equivalent to increasing exposure in post, in terms of SNR.

Second, ETTR doesn’t mean overexposing an image. Please read www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/optimizing_exposure.shtml. IMHO, with the cameras we have today, it is not something we need to worry about too much too often. That is, except when you are dealing with a very low contrast scene under good lighting conditions.

NR is a tough subject for Aperture users. Like everyone else, I thought this function in Aperture was completely useless, until about 3 months ago. I’m still experimenting with different approaches. It works differently for different cameras, and it starts at an early stage of RAW development. In any case, you have to start with the RAW Fine Tuning brick.

Disclaimer: I’m no expert in Aperture, digital photography or photography in general.

 

 

Kodora's picture
by Kodora
December 24, 2013 - 7:59pm

All these apply equally to “cropped” and “full frame” sensors. Noise is noise. It is there, always. If you think that an ff camera will give you better images with lower noise, please go ahead and get one. An alternative is to get a faster lens. Good luck!

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