Shutter speed – aperture – ISO determine exposure, Subject distance – aperture – focal length determine depth of field. Leo and Chris discuss those two very important relationships in photography.
Show Links:
» Download the MP3 for this episode
» Get the show for free in iTunes
» Get the show for free using RSS
After showing you how for high-ISO shots today’s cameras rely more and more on noise reduction, no matter if it’s done in-camera, or in post processing by the camera manufacturer’s RAW development software such as Capture NX or DPP and after explaining how to save ISO-dependent development settings in Lightroom, one question is still open:
How do we make Lightroom mimic as close as possible what the manufacturers do in that respect?
Or even more important, let’s first have a look at what they actually do when reducing noise. I don’t have in-depth knowledge of any of the camera manufacturer’s specifics or how Lightroom exactly does it, but based on what I’m seeing with my own eyes and based on my knowledge about noise reduction, the least I can do is try a sophisticated guess.
After receiving a ton of great feedback on the last article in this Lightroom Workflow series, I decided to take some time over the weekend and quickly go over one more important piece in the puzzle: ISO/camera dependent development settings.
Why would you want to do such a thing? Simple. Let’s say you’re totally happy how Lightroom treats the pictures from your camera on all ISO levels up to 800, but starting from ISO 1600 you need that slight tad more noise reduction on all images. But just up there, all other images should be left alone. Or imagine you have two cameras, a DSLR and a point-and-shoot, and you import pictures from both cameras into Lightroom, but they both have very different noise characteristics, so you want to treat their respective images in a different way.
Has this ever happened to you? You have a photography workflow that actually works like a well-oiled machine. Shoot -> import/tag -> select/prune -> rate -> post process -> export. Lather rinse repeat. Wonderfully reduces the hassle of getting lost within those thousands and thousands of images. All from within one single application. Maybe two if you count an external image editor that gets involved every now and then, but then nicely hands the edited image back to Lightroom.
And then.. all of a sudden things “happen”, for example in the shape of new cameras and you realize that Lightroom has its shortcomings in one or two areas. Or is that so?
Let’s explore my little adventure involving Lightroom 2.2 and the new 5D Mark II.
I have just finished my first test run of the 5D Mark II video function. Click here to watch my test video in HD.
(Update: [Jan/13/2009] after digging deeper, it turns out there are mainly two ways the camera gives me control over the video. First is the thumb wheel, which lets me dial in exposure compensation and second is the * (asterisk) key that lets me lock the exposure. The key right of the asterisk key (the focus point key) unlocks the exposure lock again. Do you know any other ways to manually control any other aspects of the video, such as shutter speed or aperture? If yes, please leave a comment)
The video function of the 5DMkII doesn’t give me as much control as I would like, but after the first couple of hours of playing with it, I know that even though it’s not perfect, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II is as much a game changer as the 300D was five years ago.
Cinematic depth of field, access to all your lenses, superb low-light performance and more.