Extreme Window Shopping : E-3 3200 in the dark

[Robert Watcher]

Went out tonight armed with my Olympus E-3 with tack sharp 12-60 f2.8/4 mounted. A couple of years ago I did a couple of Window Shopping series (London Ontario Richmond Row) shooting with my Nikon gear and Sigma 2.8 lenses. All shots were handheld and taken at extreme settings of 1600-3200ISO. The end result is that several of those images are in peoples homes - some prints canvas mounted to 24"x36" sizes.

My goal tonight was to only use the 3200ISO setting of my E-3 and walk around the dark streets of Bayfield and Goderich Ontario - looking into dark cubbyholes and unlit windows for many of the shots. A couple of times my Auto Focus was stumped from such extreme dark with little contrast - but many times it locked right on alowing me to take the shot instantly.

These are images that I will be printing and usingas Art Prints and so I have cleaned them up by cropping, reducing noise and sharpening, along with adjusting contrast density and colour.

This first series (#1 to #3) I took in the dark streets of Bayfield, just after the sun had set. I decided to set Noise Filter to "OFF" for these to maintain sharpness at the expense of more grain. The second one (#2) has had no noise reduction added in post processing - while the others have using Neat Image with E3 profiles

1 )
E-3 : 12-60 @ 43mm : 1/10 @ f3.9 : 3200ISO


2 )
E-3 : 12-60 @ 35mm : 1/8 @ f3.7 : 3200ISO


3 ) This statue gave me the greatest trouble with Auto Focus as a result of its lack of definition and it blending in with the dark surroundings under a porch
E-3 : 12-60 @ 14mm : 1/5 @ f2.9 : 3200ISO

[Robert Watcher]

Heading up the road 15 minutes to Goderich Downtown Square, I decided to set the Noise Filter for this series to "LOW" - and believe that I prefer the results and will use this setting when shooting 1600 to 3200 ISO in the future.

WINDOW SETUPS

4 )
E-3 : 12-60 @ 12mm : 1/25 @ f3.5 : 3200ISO


5 )
E-3 : 12-60 @ 17mm : 1/50 @ f3.5 : 3200ISO


6 ) There were no lights illuminating this window setup
E-3 : 12-60 @ 12mm : 1/5 @ f3.5 : 3200ISO

[Robert Watcher]

7 ) Shooting with the camera at my hip - through glass front door, resulting in reflection of buildings on the other side of the street.
E-3 : 12-60 @ 12mm : 1/5 @ f3.5 : 3200ISO


8 )
E-3 : 12-60 @ 12mm : 1/1000 @ f3.5 : 3200ISO


9 ) Plaque mounted on the side of a building
E-3 : 12-60 @ 12mm : 1/15 @ f3.5 : 3200ISO

[Robert Watcher]

10 ) The lamp post was not lit so I lightened the area, added some blur, applied warm colour, Rendered a light effect and lens flare - - - the whole scene had Heavy Gaussian Blur added to a duplicate layer using Overlay Blend Mode
E-3 : 12-60 @ 12mm : 1/8 @ f3.5 : 3200ISO


11 )
E-3 : 12-60 @ 12mm : 1/50 @ f3.5 : 3200ISO


12 ) As I was leaving I shot this Law Office front, as it lay in the shadows - played heavily with the contrast, toning and vertical grain layers for effect
E-3 : 12-60 @ 12mm : 0.4 sec @ f3.5 : 3200ISO

[Robert Watcher]

I also wanted to mention that I have come up with a method that applies to Olympus high ISO images. I find that on both my E-510 and my E-3, I end up with white spots with many of my high ISO shots and those spots become even more visible after clean up in Neat Image. It seems to be the way with the Oly sensors. Now the thing is that while these white specs (sensor noise) show on screen, I have found that they do not show when I print the images so it's kind of non issue unless I only view on screen or judge them in that fashion.

Even so, I played around with a bunch of different noise filters to see if I could get rid of them with having to put a lot of much effort into the process and something that was effective - - - and this method I came up with seems to work pretty well. What I did (in Photoshop) was create a duplicate layer of the image : apply Filter > Noise > Median and set the Radius to 1 pixel. This eliminates the specs and slightly softens the noise on the whole image which may be fine for some shots. However I wanted only the white specked areas affected while leaving the rest sharp - so changed the Blend mode of the duplicated layer to "Darker" - - - VOILA.

It works perfectly on most images. I did find that on the odd one, it would leave a very slight black outline around where the white spec was - but it is hard to see and would not show up in normal printing. At any rate - I applied it to all images here. I have made an Action so that it can be applied quickly to my image files.

I have a 100% crop from a file to show the effect:

This is the the crop straight from the 3200 ISO camera file with no processing:


This is what it looks like after Noise Reduction (the white specs become more noticable:


And this is the final result after applying the Median filter:


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This is the FULL FRAME image that the crop was taken from - shot at 3200 ISO : 1/125'th @ f4 :



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[Bill Gordon]

Well, there certainly isn't anything wrong with that camera!! Great shots and thanks for sharing.

[Mr. Pickles]

Good job on pumping up the abilities of the very good E-3. A fine camera for sure, and the images here show it pretty well....

[Paul Shields]

I'm always interested in reading posts from your good self Robert. I like the treatments you've applied. It's impressive that they were handheld looking at the shutter speeds .

[Mr. Pickles]

The Duplicate Layer - Filter - Noise - Median - 1 pixel radius then Darken blend mode actually does work pretty well.

[Robert Watcher]

The Duplicate Layer - Filter - Noise - Median - 1 pixel radius then Darken blend mode actually does work pretty well.

I was hoping someone would actually give it a try instead of just relying on my words.

[Vjim]

Interesting ! Thanks.

Also, interesting, that the white "noise" does not show up in prints; is it possible, I think Ken Rockwell mentions it, that printing tends to add slight sharpening and contrast, just in the process of printing itself.

Love, Vjim

[Robert Watcher]

You're welcome

Also, interesting, that the white "noise" does not show up in prints; is it possible,

I thing that it is mainly due to the bleeding of the inks that is part of the inkjet process. When we are talking single pixels, then they would be obscured by any bleed.

[Mr. Pickles]

Originally Posted by Robert Watcher

I was hoping someone would actually give it a try instead of just relying on my words.

It is part of my job to make sure you aren't trying to pull the wool over others eyes