Editing and AI

Nikon D810, 80-400mm, 1/200, f4.5, ISO 12,800

The debate about artificial intelligence in photo editing is far from over. At what point does a photo stop being a photo and become an AI creation? Though I don’t hope to definitively answer the question here, I can at least provide a sample from the borderland.

I took the photo above during yesterday’s Central Avenue Dia de los Muertos parade. If you click on it to get a better view of the details, you’ll see just how grainy it is. That’s an inevitable consequence of cranking the ISO way up, which in turn is an inevitable consequence of working in low light (a nearby streetlight was the best I could find) without flash (too far away from the subjects for the flash to be of much use).

So when I got it home and loaded it into Lightroom, I ran a noise reduction filter on the image. Interestingly enough, the app made a copy of the original and then officially designated the filtered version as “Enhanced-NR” indicating that it had been altered using AI.

As ever, my goal is for the image to reproduce the experience, to show what I saw. The grainy photo definitely wasn’t what I was after. The noise-reduced version is a lot closer to reality.

But here’s the issue: it has also taken on an AI-view-of-the-world visual quality. If you typed “woman celebrating Dia de los Muertos” into a generative AI system, you’d likely get something more surreal than this. Still, that same sense of light and color that algorithms bring to their own products ... well, that’s what this looks like, too. 

And the last thing I’d ever want as a photographer would be an image that looked like a machine made it up.

Devil rat

Nikon D7000, 50mm, 1/60, f/1.8, ISO 1250

Okay, actually this is neither a devil nor a rat. It’s some sort of ferret or weasel that was converted into a tobacco pouch. And then later it became a museum exhibit.

The first time I tried photographing it, the picture looked terrible. I had to crank the ISO up so high that it turned into a festival of grainy crap. And it was still too dark.

Nikon D3000, 42mm (18-55), 1/60, f/5.6, ISO 3200

So when I tried it again recently, I used a “faster” lens (a 50mm prime that allowed for a wider f-stop). The trade-off was field depth, the narrowness of which you can clearly see in the photo. But without recourse to a tripod (not permitted in the Nelson art museum), this is the best I could hope for.

Omaha Zoo – Miscellany

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/640, f/13, ISO 1600

This last Omaha-centered blog entry picks up a handful of miscellaneous photos I took during our visit. Though I had my wide angle lens with me, I ended up not using it for all that much. Every once in awhile I got a good result from it, however. I was pleased by the strangely-bending lines of the dome atop the desert building.

Nikon D7000, 125mm (28-200), 1/13, f/5.6, ISO 6400, adjusted

I honestly thought I’d walk away with pretty much nothing from the nocturnal exhibit, but a shot or two sorta worked. For this picture of an alligator I cranked the ISO way up and braced the camera on a railing to avoid as much shake as possible. Still, you can see some camera shake in the shot. Look at the small points of light such as the reflection in the gator’s eye, which should be single points but turn into tell-tale crescents because of camera motion.

I should also note that the gator shot was seriously level-adjusted in Photoshop. Straight out of the camera, the frame was mostly black.

Nikon D7000, 28mm (28-200), 1/800, f/9, ISO 400

I hoped for some good wide angle shots while we were up on the sky tram (the cables for which you can see in shadow running through the middle of the picture). However, the 10.5mm lens kept getting my feet or another part of the tram in the shot, so I had to settle for sorta-wide-angle 28mm pictures from my other lens.

At least this photo demonstrates the value of getting up above your subject for a “lay of the land” picture.

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/30, f/5.6, ISO 500, cropped

I had to optically zoom in as far as I could and then “digitally zoom” by cropping in order to capture these dour residents.

Nikon D7000, 112mm (28-200), 1/125, f/5.3, ISO 800, adjusted

A wider group shot was less technically demanding.

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/50, f/5.6, ISO 500, adjusted

Some of the most dramatic residents of the rainforest building were giant (like serious shark sized) carp with beautiful gold edges on their scales. The viewing angle and water surface reflections made any kind of documentary shot impossible, and I almost gave up on photographing them at all. But once I gave up the notion of trying to get a clear shot and just went with the beautiful, abstract forms of line, shape and color, I ended up with some pleasing pictures.

Omaha Zoo – Penguins

Nikon D7000, 32mm (28-200), 1/60, f/3.8, ISO 2500

If I had to pick one favorite part of the zoo experience, the penguins would be strong contenders. I could sit for hours and watch them swim gracefully back and forth.

As a photographer, however, they give me nightmares. The lighting is extremely tricky in Omaha’s penguin area. I was after a wider angle shot of the birds swimming, but even with the ISO cranked way up I was still at a 1/60 shutter speed. Any slower and camera shake would have been a problem, as would motion blur on the swimming subjects.

Also note the extreme hot spot in the background. Proper exposure of the main subjects underwater drastically over-exposed the brightly lit surface area at the top of the shot. And if I crop down (thus “enlarging”) the birds at the bottom, the ISO grain will become an issue.

Nikon D7000, 122mm (28-200), 1/250, f/5.3, ISO 2500

We were lucky to be there when the keepers came in to dish out the fish. This shot is actually part of a series in which the keeper gives the bigger penguin a gentle shove and scoots him back into the water so his smaller companions can get some fish. I love this frame the best because of the invisible leading line between woman and bird, giving the scene a strong sense of interaction.

World War One Memorial

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/1000, f/13, ISO 1600, edited

Someday I’m going to walk into a museum in which all the exhibits are brightly lit and I can shoot flash-free to my heart’s content without cranking the ISO way up and the shutter speed way down.

Last Wednesday was not that day.

The World War One Museum is an outstanding collection skillfully presented, well worth the trip. And in its defense, the museum does allow flash photography. Of course that doesn’t help much with stuff in glass-fronted display cases. And as one might expect, a flash doesn’t help much in a large room.

Thus the photo I took in the entry hall had lighting issues. Here’s what it looked like straight out of the camera:

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/1000, f/13, ISO 1600

Nor is it simply a matter of adjusting the light levels. Just lightening the image wipes out the properly-exposed Liberty Memorial visible through the skylights. It also amplifies the noise caused by the high ISO. The result looks like this:

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/1000, f/13, ISO 1600, edited

We can get around the over-exposed skylights by masking them off before adjusting the light levels. And we can eliminate some of the speckled look by applying Photoshop’s noise reduction filter.

This “problem child” photo is also a good lesson in not trusting my camera’s automatic settings. There’s no earthly reason for the shutter speed to be 1000 in a room with no moving objects. The aperture is also narrower than it needs to be. Adjusting those settings manually might have made the shot brighter and allowed me to cut down on the noise by using a lower ISO.

Bee

Nikon D7000, 300mm (75-300), 1/80, f/11, ISO 200, cropped

Every spring the bumblebees return to the tree in our front yard. And every year I shoot some pictures of them (assuming I catch them during the brief day or two when they’re here).

This year I used a 75-300mm zoom with macro focus to get in way closer than I’d actually care to with a shorter lens. While the bees are working, the whole tree hums with their busy buzzing. I don’t care to find out what would happen if I upset them by trespassing on their space.

At this focal length, shooting conditions are fairly unforgiving. The field depth is paper thin, so only the bee is in clear focus. Thanks to the bright sunlight, I was able to close the aperture down a bit and thus widen the field a little. However, I needed to keep the ISO low so I could “blow up” the images without making them look grainy.

With so many factors in play, many of the photos in the set ended up with technical problems of one kind or another. Still, all I need for a blog entry is one good one.

Ethnic Fest 2013

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/60, f/5.6, ISO 640, adjusted

Last Saturday I took some shots at the college’s annual Ethnic Festival. I try to time the Saturday photography seminar I teach once a semester to coincide with an event like this with some good photo opportunities. This year we missed the dance groups, so photogenic moments were fewer and farther between.

The one thing I forgot from last year was that the light in the field house is deceptively bad. It looks okay to the eye, but it’s dim enough to make a camera struggle. The shot at the top of this post was far too dark straight out of the camera:

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/60, f/5.6, ISO 640

And that was at a relatively slow, 60 shutter. Fortunately, fixing that particular picture was an easy level adjustment in Photoshop.

When I slowed it down further, however, the lighting got better but other problems cropped up. A 30 shutter is about as slow as I can go and not pick up camera vibration. And even then, I have to concentrate on holding the camera still. If I pay attention to my grip, I end up only with motion from the subject (though at this slow speed even that will show up in the picture):

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/30, f/5.6, ISO 1000

But if I’m not careful, the camera moves and the whole picture gets messed up:

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/30, f/5.6, ISO 1000

In retrospect, I should have cranked the ISO up a bit more and found ways to adjust for the resulting graininess.

Capitol dome

Nikon D7000, 28mm (28-200), 1/250, f/8, ISO 110

Last week we were inside the capitol in Topeka, so this week let’s step outside and play around with zooming for a minute.

These are among the first shots I took with a new toy: a Tamron 28-200mm zoom lens. For some time now I’d been working with a Nikkor 18-55mm zoom as my standard lens, the one I left attached to the Nikon D7000 (the more powerful of the two digital cameras I use regularly) for everyday use. However, I found myself somewhat dissatisfied with the limits of being able to zoom in only to 55mm. So at the recommendation of the good folks at Overland Photo Supply, I opted to take a chance on a brand I’d never tried before.

Thus far I’ve been quite pleased with the results. I took the shot at the top of this post at the lens’s widest focal length: 28mm. This allows me to capture the overall “lay of the land” but doesn’t give me a ton of detail on any one particular spot.

So my next shot is zoomed in to the other end of the lens’s limits: 200mm.

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/1250, f/5.6, ISO 400

Mind, I didn’t move my feet at all. The camera is no closer to the subject. All this took was a twist of the lens.

That’s the limit of optical zoom, the zooming that can be done with the lens itself. However, the file size allows for a considerable amount of digital zoom. Here’s how it works:

At its highest image quality levels, the D7000’s photos are 4928 pixels by 3264 pixels. That’s way bigger than anything we need for computer screen display, so as a rule of thumb I reduce image size to 1000 pixels along the longest edge before uploading to the blog. That cuts D7000 photos down to 1000 x 662 (or 662 x 1000 if it happens to be a vertical composition).

But what if I crop the image rather than reducing it? In Photoshop I can use the crop tool to cut out a tiny 1000 x 662 chunk out of the huge 4928 x 3264 picture. Thus I can make it look like I zoomed in with the lens even though what I’m actually doing is cropping down to a small chunk of a larger picture:

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/1250, f/5.6, ISO 400, cropped

Extra for intermediate and advanced photographers: though I’m pleased with the result (this is way more detail than I could ever have dreamed of if I’d been stuck at 28mm), I am a little annoyed at the camera’s exposure decisions. I put the D7000 on automatic exposure mode so I could concentrate exclusively on what I was doing with the lens. Usually auto mode works reasonably well, but here it made some odd decisions.

The 1/1250 shutter speed is way too fast for a subject that isn’t moving (indeed, that’s too fast even for most objects that are moving). I don’t want to dip below 1/200 in order to avoid camera shake problems at this focal length. Still ...

The shutter speed itself isn’t a problem, but to compensate for the speed the camera does some things I don’t want. It compensates for the tiny amount of light that gets through in 1/1250th of a second by opening the aperture all the way up to 5.6, narrowing the depth of field and making it harder to focus. It also cranked the ISO up to 400, which starts to add some graininess into the image.

In fairness to the camera, you do need to worry about the shutter speed with telephoto shots, because even tiny vibrations can cause camera motion blur. But on a bright, sunny day like this, if I’d had the camera in manual exposure mode I would have set the ISO at 100 and sacrificed at least some shutter speed in order to keep the f-stop narrower.

Snow

Nikon D7000, 18mm (18-55mm), 1/50, F/7.1, ISO 100

To start the new year, here’s a seasonably-appropriate shot. I took it with the camera mounted on a tripod, which gave me free reign to turn the ISO down to 100 (giving me a crisp, non-grainy image) and set my shutter speed to whatever I wanted.

This shot was taken at 1/50 of a second, which I could probably have taken without a tripod. Note that the snow appears in dark areas of the photo as subtle white streaks (and of course it doesn’t show up against white backgrounds at all). You may need to click on the photo to enlarge it so you can see the detail.

Or better yet, check out the larger version and five more shots I just added to the first slide show in the Photographer’s Sketchbook web site. Fair warning, though: this project is still in its early stages of development. The slide show works just fine (be patient while it loads), but if you come back to it on down the road it may look different and have a few more bells and whistles.

Happy holidays

Nikon D7000, 10.5mm, 3 sec., f/8, ISO 100

Starting next Monday The Photographer’s Sketchbook will feature our eight favorite previously-unblogged photos of 2012. I actually finished the entries a couple of days ago, scheduled them to run and then put the blog to bed for the rest of the year.

Then the snow hit. Though it was really exceptionally cold outside, I did venture out to the deck to set the tree aright and shoot a few pictures. This one was the best. A low ISO and a three second exposure (thank you, tripod!) allowed me to bring out the dramatic oranges in the sky, a good contrast to the bright blue lights.

And because I can’t seem to shut the teaching thing off (even when I’m on break), here are a couple of other approaches to the same subject.

Nikon D7000, 18mm (18-55), 2 sec., f/8, ISO 100

The exposure here gives me a similar sense of light and color. Indeed, I love the strong blues (which is why I got blue lights for the tree to begin with). On the other hand, the shot composition isn’t quite as good. I also miss the dramatic sky.

Nikon D7000, 10.5mm, 1/4, f/8, ISO 100, Vivitar flash at 1/16 strength

The only differences between this flash-heavy shot and the available light picture at the top are the shutter speed and obviously the flash. At only 1/16 of full strength, the flash creates a nice effect; any stronger and the tree probably would have turned into a blob of bright white haze. I also like the snowflakes frozen in midair. Still, if this was The Shot from this set, I’d be strongly tempted to edit out the bird feeder.

Practicing with statues

Nikon D3000, 30mm (18-55), 1/60, f/5.6, ISO 3200, filtered

I encourage my students to take plenty of pictures of statues. I consider these photos “sketches,” practicing for real photography. The problem with shooting statues is that the sculptor already did most of the work for you. Statues hold perfectly still, giving you all the time you need to line your shot up perfectly. In short, they aren’t much of a challenge.

However, they patiently wait while you practice focusing, composing shots, fiddling with zoom and so on. So use them when you get the chance, and remember the lessons you learn while shooting “real” pictures.

The example above suffers from several technical defects. The worst is the ISO problem. The light at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art is designed to avoid damage to the art from over-exposure to harsh light. For viewing, the light is fine. For photography, it’s far too dark. And of course flashes aren’t permitted (again, that harsh light problem). Cranking up the camera’s light sensitivity allows me to get the shot, but the resulting grainy texture does the smooth marble a disservice. Even filtered in Photoshop to remove some of the grain, it’s still obviously there.

Quick note: if you’re going to use statues to practice shot composition and the like, you can find a lot of them in outdoor locations where you don’t have to worry so much about the light.

Defects aside, this shot allowed me to practice composing a shot with three or more people in it, shooting at an angle that allows me to get everyone in. I put this technique to work in an actual photo a few months later at Topeka’s Day of the Dead celebration.

Nikon D7000, 55 mm (18-55), 1/250, f/8, ISO 100

Note that the composition doesn’t exactly mirror what I did with the statues. I might have cropped this down to increase emphasis on the foreground figure (as I did with the statue shot), but then I would have lost the slightly blurry background thus costing myself the nice, three-dimensional look.

Friday night football

Nikon D3000, Sigma 150-500mm (150mm), f/5, 1/100, ISO 3200, cropped and filtered

This is the first time I’ve ever shot a football game. It’s also the first time I’ve used my Sigma 150-500mm lens for action shots. So it was a good learning experience for me.

The photos in this blog entry are a sequence of shots of the same play. The first one (above) has been filtered to compensate for the 3200 ISO setting. I needed the camera to be highly sensitive to light so I could afford to speed the shutter up, but the higher ISO produces a grainy look. None of the rest of the shots in this set have been filtered, so you can see the grain in them.

Nikon D3000, Sigma 150-500mm (150mm), f/5, 1/100, ISO 3200, cropped

This shot demonstrates a couple of ways to capture motion in a still shot. The players’ postures clearly indicate that they’re moving. The dust they’re kicking up also helps the effect.

Nikon D3000, Sigma 150-500mm (150mm), f/5, 1/100, ISO 3200, cropped

One of the disadvantages to football is that the helmets tend to obscure facial expression. But every once in awhile a little emotion peeks through. I’m particularly fond of the “I’ve got you now” look in the eyes of the guy on the right.

Nikon D3000, Sigma 150-500mm (150mm), f/5, 1/100, ISO 3200, cropped

Of the shots of this set, this last one is my favorite. Despite the grain and the slight excess of blur, the action is hard to beat.

Cave bear part two

Nikon D7000, 30mm (18-55mm), f7.1, 1/40, ISO 6400

We aren’t quite done with the bear skeleton yet. The last post was getting a little long, but the subject has a little more to teach us.

I took the photo above with the same camera but from a different angle and a slightly different focal length. This shot doesn’t provide as good a sense of the bear’s surroundings. But the Aaaaaagh! factor is much higher. Those teeth! Those claws! If this thing hadn’t been dead for millennia, I’d be in serious trouble right about now.

You can use this shot to apply what you learned last week. How could you edit this picture to make the bear stand out more? If you have a copy of Photoshop (or other image editing software), feel free to download the image and play around with it.

Now here’s the same subject shot with a different camera and lens:

Nikon D7000, 10.5mm, f3.2, 1/30, ISO 1600

The fisheye allows me to get the whole skeleton in while at the same time preserving the sense of menace. This would have been a tougher edit, however.

Before we leave the Field Museum, let’s look at one more subject: ISO. Museums tend to be good places to practice your exposure control. Subjects tend not to move around a lot, so you don’t have to fret about losing your shot. Still objects also eliminate a lot of shutter speed worries (if it isn’t moving, you don’t have to care much about subject motion blur). You will probably also encounter many different lighting conditions, which should keep you mindful of your shutter and aperture settings.

The big challenge is typically that museums tend to use lighting that’s pleasing to the eye but too dim for photography. The easiest way to compensate for the lower light (other than using a tripod, which most museums don’t allow) is to bump up your ISO, making your camera’s imaging chip more sensitive to available light. However, there’s a trade-off involved.

Nikon D7000, 22mm (18-55mm), f7.1, 1/40, ISO 6400, cropped

See how grainy the picture looks? That’s the result of turning up the ISO to 6400. The problem doesn’t show up in the larger picture. But when we “blow up” to the actual pixels, you can see where the camera’s chip is starting to make mistakes. That’s the ISO trade-off. Higher settings allow you to capture images in much lower light, but the quality of the picture can suffer as a result.

Trees and mist

Canon EOS 10D, 17mm, f/4, shutter 1/4, ISO 100

I’m starting this blog with one of my personal favorite photos. I shot this on the last day of a week-long trip to the Black Hills. When I woke up that morning, a mist settled in around our cabin. The whole world seemed so peaceful, it didn’t exactly make it any easier to leave.

The picture gives me a couple of good opportunities to introduce important photography concepts. The first is the aesthetic principle called Contemplative Photography. The idea behind this philosophical approach to the craft is to shoot pictures that capture our perceptions (actually there’s more to it than that, but a simple description will do to start). So the image I wanted was misty, shadowy, not rich on vivid detail, the trees in the mist the way I perceived the scene.

With the camera on “full auto,” this is what I got:

Canon EOS 10D, 17mm, f/4, shutter 1/2, ISO 400

The camera’s programming thinks it’s doing me a favor with this bright, detailed picture. And in many shooting situations it would be absolutely correct. In this case, however, the “full auto” image was too over-exposed to match what I saw and felt.

So I took it off the automatic setting, made some adjustments and got the picture I wanted (the one at the top of this entry). Specifically, I decreased the ISO (the camera’s sensitivity to light) and increased the shutter speed (letting less light get through). The result is a darker, less detailed photo, which in this case was exactly what I was trying for.