Noise

The purpose of this exercise was to see how much noise (grain) I was happy with; I found a situation inside the villa in Florida which I partially created. The sun shone through one of the windows latre in the afternoon but was filtered a little by the blinds. I found a piece of art (a small statue head of Buddha) which I liked and set this up on a bedside cabinet against a white background; there was plenty of detail in the artwork to be able to identify texture and shadow.

I set the camera on a tripod and took a number of identical images changing the ISO setting from one to the next and wthout any depth of field.

The amount of noise is only really evident when the images are magnified; in this case, the image taken at ISO 6400 is significantly noisier that the image taken at the lowest ISO setting which was ISO 100. I was not surprised by this (through other reading and learning from taking images where there is less light. I realise that in order to get a decent exposure, I will have to compensate some of the detail for noise.).

With hindsight, a different situation could have demonstrated more of a range and visibility of noise but I understood the requirement and the appropriate learning.

ISO 6400

Exercise completed on 16th April 2012 but writtent up on 5th June 2012

Highlight Clipping

For this exercise, I took a number of images outside the villa that we were staying in on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The scene was of the road where the villa was taken in early evening when the sun was still very high and the image consisted of trees and sky. The images were taken in JPEG format.

The following sets out the results:

• f/18: very slight highlighting of sky
• f/20: no clipping - sky and clouds clear on image but foreground very dark
• f/16: increased clipping of white clouds; foreground has more detail
• f/14: substantially more clipping but foregroung clearer
• f/13: as for f/14
• f/11: as for f/14

None of the images were what I would have been very happy with. As  a compromise, I would have accepted the image taken at f/14 but this was personal preference as the sky was not as wasjed out as it was with the image taken at f/11.

If I had taken the images in Raw, I would have used Photoshop to try and lighten the foreground without damaging the detail in the sky.

This exercise was conducted on the 15th April 2012 but only written up on the 5th June 2012