# Poor Lighting



## dolina (Jun 10, 2014)

Now for a little break.




Kim by alabang, on Flickr


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## Besisika (Jun 10, 2014)

With a great posture, expression and DOF like this I wouldn't mind spending 15min in post. She deserves it. Shot in raw?


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jun 10, 2014)

Direct sunlight is really difficult, nice subject, Some reflectors would fill in nicely.


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## Marsu42 (Jun 10, 2014)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Direct sunlight is really difficult



The shot has an interesting look, but this is when high dynamic range (i.e. little shadow noise and banding) helps. I'm sure after heavy postprocessing with some locals the hard contrasts in the image can be recovered unless the whites are blown. This works better in dxo pro optics "single shot hdr" than lightroom, the latter struggles with high dr highlight recovery.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jun 11, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> Mt Spokane Photography said:
> 
> 
> > Direct sunlight is really difficult
> ...


 
DXO does indeed make it easier to save a image like this one, but in some cases, their formula also ruins a perfectly good image. There is something to be said for having the ability to control the parameters, but it takes time and skill..
There seems to be no single piece of software that does everything I'd like, and no single camera either. The best we can do is to pick a system that works for the majority of the photos we take. Individual images can be helped by post processing, I do it all the time, but when there are a lot of them, its best to get it right and avoid / minimize all that work.
Of course, there are cases where there is no choice, you just do the best you can with what's available.


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## Marsu42 (Jun 11, 2014)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> DXO does indeed make it easier to save a image like this one, but in some cases, their formula also ruins a perfectly good image. There is something to be said for having the ability to control the parameters, but it takes time and skill..



+1, I just ran some images through dxo's superior "prime" noise reduction and (again) noticed three things:

1. dxo's lens correction is better than acr (ps & lr), no surprise.
2. the prime nr only makes a difference @100% crop and takes ages to process
3. on topic: the dxo results look somehow more artificial and overprocessed than acr, even with absolutely no other processing applied than lens correction. It seems to be their raw conversion engine is to blame, but of course this is a subjective impression w/o much in-depth testing.

So as a result I'm happily sticking to lightroom, even if recovering shots like the above is a pita as you need all kinds of tone-curve wizardry to pull down the highlights.


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## dolina (Jun 11, 2014)

Image was taken at night.  I'm seeing Kim again next Tuesday and she's game to pose again hopefully before sunset.

Another very low light.




Rhia by alabang, on Flickr


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## mackguyver (Jun 11, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> Mt Spokane Photography said:
> 
> 
> > DXO does indeed make it easier to save a image like this one, but in some cases, their formula also ruins a perfectly good image. There is something to be said for having the ability to control the parameters, but it takes time and skill..
> ...


Marsu, I agree that LR/ACR are much easier to use and give better results right away, but if you really dig into the settings and understand how to manipulate them, DxO will give better results. I have challenged myself to process photos in both many times and DxO always wins. It just takes more work and I've had to read the manual o) and some of their tutorials to get the most out of it. The default settings are usually pretty flat and colorless in comparison to ACR, but tweak away and you'll get great photos. Some of the features that I love are the lens sharpness, which is a really sophisticated unsharp mask based on the lens profile. It sharpens less at the center and more at the edges, and at all but the highest settings, it's practically artifact free. I've never loved sharpening in ACR. Also, DxO has a tool that reduces color saturation for clipped or nearly clipped color channels to pull out more detail. It works great with photos of flowers or other highly saturated colors and can be adjusted so it doesn't wash out the colors, either.

PRIME is really useful, but is pretty much pointless below ISO 3200 as their standard NR works just fine. On low ISO photos, it takes forever to process because there is so much data in the file, but on photos at ISO 6400 or higher, it really is amazing and isn't as slow. It brings back lost color and detail unlike anything I've ever seen and makes ISO 12800 and 25600 photos usable for all but the largest prints, assuming good equipment, technique, and ETTR are used.

As for the first shot Dolina posted, if I was in DxO, I would set the exposure to Highlight Recovery-High, and then use the tone sliders to recover detail in the the shadows (as the photo would now appear very dark and underexposed), pull up the midtones a bit, and potentially drop the highlights further. I might use that color saturation tool to recover detail in her top as well and I think the results would really surprise most people.


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## dolina (Jun 11, 2014)

Should look into using DxO as I am also using Aperture 3.5.x


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## Marsu42 (Jun 11, 2014)

mackguyver said:


> Also, DxO has a tool that reduces color saturation for clipped or nearly clipped color channels to pull out more detail.



That's interesting - where do I find this option in dxo (w/o reading the manual ) ... I'd like to test that since I really hate the color saturation/clipping problem - for example strong blue borders around tree branches in front of a partly overexposed blue sky. ACR would really deserve more intelligence than the current rather "dumb" highlight slider.


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## mackguyver (Jun 11, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> mackguyver said:
> 
> 
> > Also, DxO has a tool that reduces color saturation for clipped or nearly clipped color channels to pull out more detail.
> ...


It's called "Protect saturated colors" under the Light & Color palette. You can see how it works on this tutorial page: 
http://www.dxo.com/intl/photography/tutorials/mastering-color-saturation-dxo-optics-pro-8#anc4


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## dolina (Jun 12, 2014)

Somewhat better light.




Jen by alabang, on Flickr




Jen by alabang, on Flickr


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## dolina (Jun 12, 2014)

Another image in poor lighting.

For yesterday's Philippine Independence Day celebration she wore our nation's colors.




Shellane by alabang, on Flickr


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## dolina (Jun 13, 2014)

Light does make a difference. 




Valerie by alabang, on Flickr


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## dolina (Jun 14, 2014)

Now for something a tad faster.




Vi by alabang, on Flickr


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## dolina (Jun 15, 2014)

Arlene by alabang, on Flickr


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## Click (Jun 15, 2014)

Lovely portrait. I love the background blur


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## dolina (Jun 16, 2014)

Thanks Click.




Ronald by alabang, on Flickr


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## dolina (Jun 18, 2014)

Morning!



Kim by alabang, on Flickr


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## dolina (Jun 22, 2014)

Camie by alabang, on Flickr


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## dolina (Jun 22, 2014)

Namae by alabang, on Flickr


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## wickidwombat (Jun 23, 2014)

Fantastic shots man


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## dolina (Jun 23, 2014)

Thanks wombat.




Marti by alabang, on Flickr


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## SoullessPolack (Jun 23, 2014)

dolina said:


> Namae by alabang, on Flickr



You call this poor lighting? I think it's nice and soft.

If I may give a piece of advice: clone the area next to her lip. At a quick glance it almost looks like she has a mustache, and then my mind starts thinking "TRANNY!". If you fixed that, this would be my favorite picture of the series.


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## dolina (Jun 23, 2014)

Thanks Polack.




Aly by alabang, on Flickr


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## tolusina (Jun 24, 2014)

I count 14 portraits in this series so far.
12 of them have something in common that I think makes them 'work' much better than the other two, anyone else see what I'm on about here?


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## RLPhoto (Jun 24, 2014)

dolina said:


> Light does make a difference.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


It sure does. This one is my choice from the rest so far.


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## dolina (Jun 24, 2014)

Mighty kind of you tolusina and RL.


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## Besisika (Jun 27, 2014)

SoullessPolack said:


> dolina said:
> 
> 
> > Namae by alabang, on Flickr
> ...


Agree! This is not poor (my taste). With a bit of white balancing they should be quite alright. 
And if you want to keep the background (for the sake of the mood) you could use the new selection tool called "focus area" in Photoshop cc to select your subject, color grade the skin tone to taste and apply the mask. The tool should be very effective since you have nice blurred background.


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## canon_guy (Sep 25, 2014)

dolina said:


> Now for a little break.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


great look! warm colours, like it!


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