DK! Post Some IS0 1600-6400 a900 Samples Soon!

[aster]

May I make 3 wild guesses: Starobremen, Kozel and Krushovitsa
Do I win a A900 ?

You'll have to wait my becoming an "Imperial Ambassador" to bestow that marvellous goodie on you Your Highness!!
And that may take an other couple of hundred posts of mine unfortunately...

Patience...patience...patience

[Dr. Harout]

May I make 3 wild guesses: Starobremen, Kozel and Krushovitsa
Do I win a A900 ?

You'll have to wait my becoming an "Imperial Ambassador" to bestow that marvellous goodie on you Your Highness!!
And that may take an other couple of hundred posts of mine unfortunately...

Patience...patience...patience

[David Kilpatrick]

No, something else - it may not even be Czech - Gambrinus:



It's not a very bright shot because I was forced to use Canon 300D and KM A2 for this trip, it's on the A2 - these days, I go for much brighter more colourful processing, doing that with the A2 tends to boost noise too much. But - it's sold, $70 is not a fortune and commission comes off that. Still worth doing.

I don't know Kozel and Krushovitsa. But I do photograph my beer anytime the glass looks good and has the right logo, and the conditions are OK - good head on the beer, frost on the glass, no big fingermarks or spills on the table and so on. And I've had repeated sales to a World Beers guide which is republished every year, as a result. I also photograph my food, especially local or national dishes.

Dr H, your pictures of Armenia and markets etc would earn you an A900 through Alamy and maybe a specialist geographical agency.

David

[Birma]

A beer photo thread - that is something I could really get in to

May be a few single malts later on as a night cap?

Tonight I'm going to the monthly "Dad's night out" for our "baby-group" (NCT). It's at an Austrian theme bar. Great beer, lovely schnapps, but a guaranteed bad head tomorrow (I will not be taking my dslr though!)

Slainte! (or should that be Prost!)

[[SiC]]

Slainte! (or should that be Prost!)

SKÅL!

[David Kilpatrick]

LOL...Give me a link to your stock collection...I want to take a look and see how much low light stuff you actually have on display.[/b]
I can easily show over 5,000 high ISO images that are on-line already...what is your low light count?

Not many, relatively - low light tends to be events-related, and events have a short lifespan for stock sales. I'm still selling work from 40 years ago, and while I know that 80 per cent of my current shots will be outdated in a few years, I don't do much event shooting. Something like the Cirque du Soleil was an unusual thing; I was invited to do it (a month before the event) and knew that it would be timed for the week before I had to finish my magazine report on the Alpha 700. Only 20 UK photographers were given passes to shoot it and most were nationally known pressmen (I recognised a few I've known for years by face but not by name).

Our national stadium sports in the UK are completely restricted - all photography is banned except a very small group of newspaper or agency guys. The football associations even tried to claim copyright of all their images last year, and it took a threatened walkout (no coverage at all) to get them to change it. Local sports (regional) are of no interest whatsoever. The local papers do run photos, they do assign photographers, but they are generally weekend part-timer amateurs who are either paid very little or unpaid. Very few of our local and regional papers pay anything at all for outside photos. So, here, your main reason ever to do the kind of stuff you do is as a photo hobbyist or sports hobbyist, supporting a local team. There can be some money in print sales from sports meetings such as our Highland Games (which involve many normal sports like running, as well as the Scottish stuff).

By the way, I found your comment about my showing disrespect for 'sports and fish photographers' funny. We don't have many fish photographers! And of course, when I referred to stadium lighting I was not referring to your fish!

Here's a couple of links: the first should enable the entire Alamy collection to be seen -

http://www.alamy.com/stock-photography/ ... trick.html

This should provide a 'Lightbox' which is a bit clumsy for night shots alone:

http://www.alamy.com/royalty-free-image ... D%26cdn%3D

While it's not a large number, the range of conditions and subjects covers many types of lighting - it also covers from slide film to Nikon D3 and Sony A700, no A900 yet. No Cirque du Soleil - restricted use contract means I am only ever able to use those images on this website, in Photoworld, and in the British Journal of Photography.

David

[David Kilpatrick]

A single rights managed Red Finned Borleyi shot, not even as good as this one, has paid for several of my cameras all by itself!

But - tell me - is the value in the fish or the photo? I don't know what that fish is or why it's special, but I know some of the fish you deal with are rare and valuable. If you have access to subjects which no-one else can illustrate easily, it is possible to make big money from relatively straight pix of moderate - good enough - quality.

I still don't know why someone paid $400 for an RF download of a shot I took of a public aquarium in Nice with a yellow tang in the foreground. That's such a common fish every marine aquarium has them.

David

[Javelin]

Oh man our family can't do fish. Twice now since the kids were small we've set up aquariums with fish and weve managed to murder them all. the only one that lasted was a 50cent goldfish my youngest daughter won at a carny game .. that one lasted 7 years in a fish bowl

-Fishenator

[lock]

Anyone that owns cats knows that you can not pose them to look into a light! The catchlights you see on some of those are from a double hung window some 20+ feet away...
-Sonolta

I've got cats for more than 20 years, but you simply do not seen to know the trick
Anyway, thats not the issue. I said it looks like it's etc...thereby expressing the fact that there is distinct light difference between the two crops. You want to see the two histograms of the crops ? One entirely on right side ( to be more specific: the A700 one) and the A900 crop is all the way on the left.

I do not know what DP did with his picture in software. But i've seen the cat pictures on your site with the A700 after some heavy reduction of the resolution. I also suspect you used some NR. Could you tell us how you did it so we can understand some differences ? I mean, there are iso 6400 picture of cats that look like they were stolen from the 5DMII. So tell us your secrets.

lock

[lock]

I saw them. But the dark eye from the A900 is about two stops underexposed compared two an evenly exposed picture like the ones you are pointing at now. You are bound to see more noise in that part of the a900 picture.

But what about the secrets ? I just did a resizing and this seriously reduces noise on the A700 pictures. But I still need NR to get the same effect as yours. Can you lift the lid a little bit ?

[lock]

I'm not sure what to answer. All of the cat photos on your website show the same style of reduced noise. I like to know how you got them like that.
Follow your own like you provided and you will see the samples I found on your website before. It's about those pictures.

lock

[David Kilpatrick]

#9 I often expose to the right, and with the a700 files I at times pull back as much as two stops in post...that may be why my images look more noise free than what you are used to seeing at similar ISO values.

You have your answer.

David

[lock]

Thank you Sonolta, thanks Dave for the abstract.

I'm going to try this one for sure. But essentially it's about taking in more light than default, hence reducing the basic noise levels. Two stops max can be a lot but I will try and vary this and see how well this works.

[David Kilpatrick]

It can just be about making sure the camera's tendency to underexpose doesn't get in the way of good high ISO pix. Remember, the Nikon D3 and D700 both typically give one full f-stop more exposure, in a given situation, compared to the A700 or A900. I have found this when using them. The exposure is simply more generous; does this mean their ISO 12,800 is not really 12,800? No - the images are brighter (if the camera gave one stop more, and the images were the same density as the A900/A700, then Nikon's claimed ISO ratings would not be true).

So, I have done a few tests using both generous (+2 reduced by -1 in ACR at 6400) and correct (+1, in-camera JPEG and ACR at 1600) tests with a situation comparable to Don's cats - my cats on the bed, with reflected sunshine 'bounce lighting' them:



http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/103702323

This is the first of a sequence of five files, two of them very large full size, with captions explaining the shots. Use the link and then view the sequence using the NEXT tab.

Here is one of the samples - 6400, filesize reduced to exactly match the A700 dimensions, crop to eye only:



David

[David Kilpatrick]

Don, I already did that. My Papa Joe shots were in pretty much exactly the same light as your cats. I referred you back to them again, but you had completely screwed up my thread posting images from photokina by littering it with arguments and promo pix from Canon and Nikon, and ignored these entirely. I hate to 'do a Sonolta' and post something repeatedly but here goes, repeated, between the dashed lines:

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the Nikon D3, section of a 12 megapixel image shot at f5.6 and 1/125th using the 24-70mm at 24mm. Now it's not stunningly detailed even if the noise is very even, and the noise is not zero either. Processing conditions using ACR were 0 sharpening, 50 chroma, 0 luminance. The focus point in the shot is the copper cauldron. Checking many other shots, this degree of detail softening is typical of the Nikon at 3200:



Now look at a section of one of the shots I just posted, this time processed identically to the Nikon (the full image actually uses some luminance NR and sharpening 25 because it can take it, this omits the luminance NR and sharpening):


--------------------------------------------------------------------

The light level I shot the latest cat pix in is typical of many uses for 6400, and here is a comparison with the Nikon D3:

http://upload.pbase.com/image/103706023

For reference, a small version of the pair:



The illumination levels are within 1/3rd of a stop for these two shots. I just don't get where you are coming from. What are you trying to say, or prove? Absolute light level is not as important as relative exposure level, within certain limits, for getting a decent sharp result with moderate noise. I shot this pic mainly because I realised I didn't have any keeper shots which showed our cats doing their usual all-day stint getting the bedclothes furry, and when passing the light looked good. Your cat pix had reminded how few 'good' shots we have of our cats - once grown up, they stop being chased by the camera.

Within the limits of its ISO range - since it does not go beyond 6400 - the Alpha 900 is going to prove itself in the hands of users, no matter how much you jump up and down protesting that it won't and can't. You would not be advised to get an A900 anyway, except perhaps for your shots of graffiti and similar fine art copy/trouvé work - you benefit more from crop factor format shooting because of the distances involved, and the subjects really don't need 24.5 megapixels. Nor do a lot of mine, and I've decided that the A350 with CZ 16-80mm attached will be second string for 'walkabout' situations.

But, so far - the A900 will be used for high res AND for high ISO shooting. Apart from anything else it focuses much more accurately with my faster lenses (50mm f1.4, 28mm f2, 100mm f2..

These are no doubt not the last 1600-6400 samples I will post, so I am sure further light conditions around the hand-held limit at 3200 will come up.

David