Carols by Candlelight

[MarkBarbieri]

Our neighborhood put on a candlelight Christmas program last night. People sang carols, there was a brief nativity play, and the kids played with their candles. Fire seems to be popular with boys.

I made an effort to take pictures of the event. Taking pictures of a crowd of people in the dark using candles for light isn't as easy as I hoped, even with the 5DM2.

I shot between ISO 1600 and ISO 6400. I used my Canon 24-70 f/2.8 and my Canon 70-200 f/2.8. Everything was shot on a tripod. All (or almost all) shots were taken wide open. The shutter speeds varied from 1/2 to 1/200 with most between 1/15 and 1/30. Most of the pictures were garbage. Noise, subject movement, extreme dynamic range, and challenging compositions overwhelmed my abilities.

I used my flash to help out. Obviously, a standard flash photo of someone holding a candle is going to ruin the candle effect. I used an orange gel over the flash to warm the light. I still had problems with flash power. At first, I set the camera to -2 stop flash exposure compensation. Unhappy with the look, I switched the flash to manual mode and dialed it to minimum power (1/128). That was still too bright. Finally, I switched to the longer lens and flipped down the flash diffuser. That made the flash cover and extremely wide angle (14mm equivalent), so the amount of flash on my subject (shooting between 70mm and 200mm) was pretty small. It was enough to help out but not enough to overpower. In hindsight, once I'd worked out the trick to forcing down the effective power of the flash by increasing the coverage area, I should have switched back to E-TTL -2. Instead, I just left it on manual. Shooting with the flash in the dark gave me a better appreciation of why they now let you control the flash through the camera's menu. I'm still more comfortable with the old fashion buttons on the flash, so I used them instead.

I did most of my post processing in photoshop because of the availability of better noise reduction. The photos were so bad that I really needed the extra control of PS over Lightroom. I did do basic work in Lightroom (crops, pimple healing, basic exposure). I also used it for vignetting. With so many of my subjects being surrounded by other distracting people, I used the vignetting to draw more attention to my subject.

Looking back at the pictures, I can also see that I had a problem with centered-subjects. I did a lot of shooting with the center focus point active because it was hard to get the focus lock I wanted shooting into a crowd in extreme low light. The problem was that I would often forget to recompose and so I was left with an awkwardly centered subject. Hopefully it makes some newbies feel better to know that someone that has been shooting for 20 years still makes stupid rookie mistakes on a regular basis.

The slideshow is here. The pictures are here. Below are some samples. As bad as they look, these are among the better shots. If you have any advice on how to better shoot something like this, I'd love to hear suggestions.

 

[Amy]

Below are some samples. As bad as they look, these are among the better shots. If you have any advice on how to better shoot something like this, I'd love to hear suggestions.

You think those look bad?? Are you nuts?! I for one would love to take photos as "bad" as those! The crowd photos (#3 and #4) are esp. good. I didn't understand half of what you said you did to your photos, but I think they're awesome!

Merry Christmas!

 

[boBQuincy]

Candlelight, while being thought of as soft, is actually very harsh. You did a great job of getting the images as good as you did!
I wondered if a fill flash (with maybe a yellow filter) turned down to -2 stops or more would help? Just enough to lighten some harsh shadows but little enough so it would be difficult to know a flash was used.

There's always the O. Winston Link method of setting up a zillion (or so) lights around the area! It works.
I suppose the only way to test the idea is to get everyone together again for more caroling!

 

[Jeff Fillmore]

I think you did very well with these Mark- good work under very difficult conditions. Looks like a fun time by all (Except maybe the guy giving you the eye in #8 anyway. )

 

[YesDear]

Great job as usual Mark. Thanks for always being willing to share your learning experiences.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

You think those look bad?? Are you nuts?! I for one would love to take photos as "bad" as those! The crowd photos (#3 and #4) are esp. good. I didn't understand half of what you said you did to your photos, but I think they're awesome!

Merry Christmas!

I only posted 1024x768 versions on my Smugmug site. If you saw anything higher resolution, you'd see what I mean. It's not too hard to make a technically weak picture look OK if you make it small enough. That's why pictures often look great on your LCD and look terrible when you get them home (at least mine do). Believe me, these are not pictures you'd want printed.

Candlelight, while being thought of as soft, is actually very harsh. You did a great job of getting the images as good as you did!
I wondered if a fill flash (with maybe a yellow filter) turned down to -2 stops or more would help? Just enough to lighten some harsh shadows but little enough so it would be difficult to know a flash was used.

You skimmed through my blabbering. I said that I used an orange gel (I think it makes better "candlelight") and I tried -2 FEC. The problem was that the lowest power setting on the flash was too strong for f/2.8, ISO 6400 shooting. I finally overcame that by setting the flash up as though I was taking a really wide shot and then used a long zoom. That trick finally let me get the flash low enough to not overwhelm the scene but helped fill in the shadows.

 

[Tuffcookie]

These are great pictures that capture the true reason for the season.

Thank you for sharing these with us!

TC

 

[Quicklabs]

I think these shots look amazing. How lucky you are to live in a neighborhood that really gets into the spirit of the season.

 

[Code]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I will have to remember what you did with the flash zoom to knock the power down when using as a fill in low light. I have an ND gel -1 stop but I'm not sure that would be enough.

Also candle light at ~1850K is much warmer than tungsten so you need an extra quarter CTO gel on top of the full CTO to really match it.

 

[boBQuincy]

You skimmed through my blabbering. I said that I used an orange gel (I think it makes better "candlelight") and I tried -2 FEC. The problem was that the lowest power setting on the flash was too strong for f/2.8, ISO 6400 shooting.

Guilty of skimming, as charged!
Instead of E-TTL perhaps an old fashioned flash with it's own sensor would work better. By directing some light to the sensor the flash output could be reduced. Something to play with on another day...

 

[Code]

One other question... did you use LR2's post-crop vignetting on the last one?

 

[DVC Jen]

These are beautiful Mark. I will have to check them out on your smugmug. Seems like you have a great neighborhood. We had one like that in california - but not here unfortunately.

 

[emmabelle]

very cool.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

One other question... did you use LR2's post-crop vignetting on the last one?

Yes, and rather excessively. I processed the pictures for display in a slideshow rather than for display as static pictures. Given that the slides would only be show for a few seconds each, I thought it was OK to push the vignetting much further than usual. I wanted to keep the viewer's eye locked on my subject and not have it wondering off. With a static shot, I think the effect looks a little goofy, like the subject is surrounded by a dark cloud.

BTW, I added a video version of the slideshow for those not using Windows compatible PCs or for those unwilling to download and run an EXE file. I'll be adding a video version of all of my slideshows over the next few weeks. The video for this one is here.

 

[Code]

Ahh ok... just wanted to make sure you knew that post-crop vignetting was still broken... it's still just a brightness mask rather than an exposure adjustment. I noticed because the girl on the left's head just kind of disappears halfway up her face I've tried to explain it before, but I found this instead:

http://prolost.blogspot.com/2008/08/whats-wrong-with-lightroom-2.html

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I don't think that it is fair to call a feature "broken" just because you don't like the way it works. The post-crop vignette does what it was designed to do. Could it be better? Certainly.

The lens correction vignette handles exposure better for most situations, but it lakes the ability to control "roundness" and "feather." That's more of a weakness for me in more circumstances than how the exposure is controlled. In fact, if I could have everything I wanted, I'd prefer multiple means of controlling the exposure in the vignette areas.

The one aspect of vignetting that is hard to defend is that it is done after the exposure for the image is "baked in", so if something is blow out, you can't recover it with a vignette.

 

[Code]

I don't think that it is fair to call a feature "broken" just because you don't like the way it works. The post-crop vignette does what it was designed to do. Could it be better? Certainly.

The lens correction vignette handles exposure better for most situations, but it lakes the ability to control "roundness" and "feather." That's more of a weakness for me in more circumstances than how the exposure is controlled. In fact, if I could have everything I wanted, I'd prefer multiple means of controlling the exposure in the vignette areas.

The one aspect of vignetting that is hard to defend is that it is done after the exposure for the image is "baked in", so if something is blow out, you can't recover it with a vignette.

Hmm, I'm sticking with "broken" as it doesn't act like the original vignetting tool, or Photoshop's, or a real lens vignette for that matter. What post-crop does is more of a border overlay. I'm not saying the current effect isn't useful, it's just not technically a photographic vignette.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Well, you can use the word "broken" to mean whatever you want it to mean. As Humpty-Dumpty said in Through the Looking Glass, "'When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." You are certainly free to call it "broken" if that's what you'd like.

I just want to make sure that other readers of this thread realize that you aren't using broken in the traditional sense of "not working." You appear to be using it to mean "doesn't work the way I expected or desired."

The tool does work. It definitely does create a vignette. It doesn't create a vignette in the same way that a lens does (hence it is not called a lens correction). It works by fading (to white or black) the edges of the picture. The effect is to cause the "pciture to shade off gradually" as the word vignette is defined by Merriiam-Webster.