mushy greys

[graham catley]

I have attached a 100% crop of a Black Redstart taken Sunday 15th---light was poor hence shutter speed of 320th second at 5.6 on the Canon 300f4 with 1.4 converter attached on the 1DIIN at ISO500 --hand held shot---
to me while it is not pin sharp the edges of the flight feathers and bill and the post are quite sharp but the greys of the plumage look rather muddy and indistinct.

Is this all just blur due to camera shake or is there something else which affects grey colours on DSLR's in poor light? I took some Red-throated Divers last week in similar dull light witht he same combination and again the greys in the plumage took on this wishy/mushy look

any ideas please?

[normjackson]

Good question. Haven't the foggiest what the answer is though ;) Maybe a breeze affected the feathers. Maybe even a top DSLR camera has difficulty presenting detail in such low contrast conditions.
Presumably the latest fancy sharpeners in Photoshop CS can pull some detail out of those feathers. Since I don't have CS thought I'd try using demo of Optipix Detail Sharpener. Maybe something along these lines will give you what you're after. Think I know what you mean; the original almost looks like it has had noise reduction applied.

[Henry B]

Could be the tele-converter..

[Saphire]

Is there a custom setting in the camera for low light noise reduction. I have mine switched of on the 30D but I still get soft images if there isn't enough light.

[Mick Johnson]

I have attached a 100% crop of a Black Redstart taken Sunday 15th---light was poor hence shutter speed of 320th second at 5.6 on the Canon 300f4 with 1.4 converter attached on the 1DIIN at ISO500 --hand held shot---
to me while it is not pin sharp the edges of the flight feathers and bill and the post are quite sharp but the greys of the plumage look rather muddy and indistinct.

Is this all just blur due to camera shake or is there something else which affects grey colours on DSLR's in poor light? I took some Red-throated Divers last week in similar dull light witht he same combination and again the greys in the plumage took on this wishy/mushy look

any ideas please?


Hi Graham,

I think this is a good example of what digital is'nt that good at, that's showing fine detail in a low contrast area.

You can see it even better with 'point & shoot' digital camera's and is sometimes called as you said 'digital mush' Really shows in grass and foilage and as I've found, some birds plumage.

I see it more with reds, like a Robins breast where the colour seems to blend itself together and loose detail.

I have a 20d so tried a 5d thinking the extra pixels would cure it but found it just the same as my 20d.

I've also taken the same shot of a Kingfisher from a hide on the same day, same time, same lens with the 20d and Eos3 using Sensia 100 and the film shows a great deal more detail, and I mean a great deal more. Also shows a lot more tones in the feather fibres.

Only thing I find helps is boosting the contrast in the Raw converter as much as you can get away with and then maybe a bit more in Photoshop and a good sharpen.

Helps more though if you take it in good light in the first place. Or maybe a touch of flash would help as it will increase the contrast.

[hollis_f]

Is there a custom setting in the camera for low light noise reduction. I have mine switched of on the 30D but I still get soft images if there isn't enough light.

I don't have a 30D, but on the 20D there's a 'Long Exposure Noise Reduction' custom setting. This switches in for exposures longer than 1 second, so I doubt it's responsible for Grahams problem.

[deshojo]

It looks like it's mainly due to the low contrast conditions to me (though not sure how much of a crop this is).

As well as increasing contrast at the RAW development stage, one trick I found to raise mid-tone contrast (like these greys) withouth sending highlights/shadows off the ends of the histogram, is to use USM set to around 50 pixels radius, 0 threshold, and adjust the amount to around 10-20 (just experiment to your liking). It just gives the shot a bit more "punch".

If you need further sharpening at the end of processing, you can either use USM as normal (though less needed) or use the high pass technique (Layer via copy/Filter/Other/High Pass @ around 10pix/in layers pallette change normal to Hard Light, opacity 10-70%). The latter can sometimes work better on some shots than USM altogether, and is also a good general technique for sharpening without increasing noise.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Matt

[deshojo]

Having tried both techniques on your photo, the USM was clearly more effective on this shot.

1st yours, 2nd USM amount 20% radius 50 followed by amount 150% radius 1, 3rd USM/high pass.
http://www.nature-photos.biz/Black-Red.htm