Histogram help please: I recently tried to capture a sunset but on looking back home at my pc the dark foreground elements had a lot of noise. I looked at the histogram and noticed the...

Izza1967 Loc: Bristol, England

I recently tried to capture a sunset but on looking back home at my pc the dark foreground elements had a lot of noise. I looked at the histogram and noticed the left hand side went off the scale. Does this tell me my camera can't handle the amount of dynamic range I was asking it to record?

Is this where graduated ND filters come into it?

Here is the histogram

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

Looks like you probably had a lot of black silhouette in the foreground of that shot. Why not post the image also so everyone can see.

Izza1967 Loc: Bristol, England

MT Shooter wrote:

Looks like you probably had a lot of black silhouette in the foreground of that shot. Why not post the image also so everyone can see.

Thanks for looking MT.

Everything was a rush so no tripod or even looking properly at settings until it was too late

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

Looks like the histogram was right on.

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

If I may suggest a couple of crops, here are some changes you may like.

Cropped for effect

Cropped with color correction

Izza1967 Loc: Bristol, England

It was just the noise issue I was interested but I like the crops :)

So to remove the noise could I just use fill flash to light the foreground or use a graduated ND filter to balance the exposure.

Any suggestions greatly recieved. PS I only have the built in flash and don't own any ND filters at present but an answer here may give me a trip to the shops ;)

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

The data I show is 1/50 sec at F5 and ISO 100. No idea why that kind of noise is present with a Canon 7D body with the EFS 18-55mm kit lens on it. The only thing I see is that the WB was set to Auto and that you previously processed the image with CS6. No ND filter would help here, and the built-in flash might have lit some of the bushes, but I doubt that it would have improved the overall. I would have just zoomed the lens in to eliminate much of the foreground.

lightchime Loc: Somewhere Over The Rainbow

MT Shooter wrote:

The data I show is 1/50 sec at F5 and ISO 100. No idea why that kind of noise is present with a Canon 7D body with the EFS 18-55mm kit lens on it. The only thing I see is that the WB was set to Auto and that you previously processed the image with CS6. No ND filter would help here, and the built-in flash might have lit some of the bushes, but I doubt that it would have improved the overall. I would have just zoomed the lens in to eliminate much of the foreground.

I think that the crop is great. There is a filter that can help if it provides the result you desire. It is a reverse (graduated) neutral density filter.
It can provide balanced light intensity from one part of a scene to another - control bright horizons. It helps provide light control in contrasty landscapes. They are not cheap - made by Hi-Tech and Singh Ray.

Izza1967 Loc: Bristol, England

The only thing I did with CS6 was to import it and save it out as a jpg.

When loaded into camera raw I had red and blue warnings so all I did was lower the whites and raise the blacks until the warnings were clear.

It's because I had warnings for both highlights and blacks that I thought I was trying to capture to wide a dynamic range of colours.

I think I need to do some more reading on capturing sunsets and using filters.

lighthouse Loc: No Fixed Abode

Izza1967 wrote:

I recently tried to capture a sunset but on looking back home at my pc the dark foreground elements had a lot of noise. I looked at the histogram and noticed the left hand side went off the scale. Does this tell me my camera can't handle the amount of dynamic range I was asking it to record?

Is this where graduated ND filters come into it?

Here is the histogram

Yes, normally this is exactly where grad NDs come into it.

But ..... you would only do that if you had an interesting foreground with positive compositional elements to add to the photo.
The foreground in this shot would be fairly ordinary and is better left as a silhouette.

I cannot recommend the 3 stop Singh-Ray reverse ND grad. It has a magenta colour cast.
I have not seen the Hitech version.
Also my Singh-Ray reverse ND grad is not grad enough. It doesn't fade enough toward to top.
I might as well use a normal 2 stop ND hard grad.

Cokins have a magenta colour cast. They are cheap ... and it shows.
I have seen others with a green cast.

Lee are colour neutral. I have a 1,2 & 3 stop soft grad.
And am about to supplement the kit with a 2 f/stop hard grad.

Izza1967 Loc: Bristol, England

Thanks for the useful information Lighthouse

SteveR Loc: Michigan

Histogram? I know everybody says that they are important. However, from what I've seen, it will tell you how much light and dark you have in your photo. I can tell that by looking at my photo. MT was right, you had a good amount of dark in your photo. Does it mean your photo is bad? No. Your eye will tell you that. So, can anybody tell me why a histogram is so important?

LoneRangeFinder Loc: Left field

SteveR wrote:

Histogram? I know everybody says that they are important. However, from what I've seen, it will tell you how much light and dark you have in your photo. I can tell that by looking at my photo. MT was right, you had a good amount of dark in your photo. Does it mean your photo is bad? No. Your eye will tell you that. So, can anybody tell me why a histogram is so important?

Monitors can be adjusted for brightness/darkness (I have mine set at -1), but the histogram will tell the true tale of whether or not your highlights are clipped. If you can tell that in a 3" monitor, your eyes are better than mine.

;-)

SteveR Loc: Michigan

LoneRangeFinder wrote:

quote=SteveR Histogram? I know everybody says th... (show quote)

You can really tell from a histogram that your highlights will be blown out?

birdpix Loc: South East Pennsylvania

You can really tell from a histogram that your highlights will be blown out?[/quote]

Yes, of course. If the Histogram is bang up against the right hand side of the graph, your highlights are blown out. How important this is is related to how much of the histo is up against the right side. In other words a few specular highlights that are blown out are not a problem but more than that may be.