Low Light and Digitial Photography

[LilGryphMaster]

There's a new style for me here somewhere, but I dunno if I've quite grasped it. I'm just experimenting with low light and night shooting, as the title below suggests.

Night Shooting with Three Beautiful Women

I'm not too happy with these. They look cool when they're small, but if you zoom in far enough the quality really degrades. Maybe because I've been working on this at midnight, the quality can be lacking... I dunno. I still like them, the quality (blurriness and jaggedyness) just bugs me.

I'm really digging this high-contrast look, though. It works well for night shots.

Anyway, I guess what I am asking is if there is a way to eliminate blurriness without using unsharp masks or the smart sharpen filter? They usually do the trick, but alot of times the look is really destracting and the noise is emphasised and really just sucks.

Also, the actuance of digital pictures really gets to me. It's the only barrier between passing off my digital pics as film pics.

Dunno, any comments and suggestions for an amateur such as myself are welcome.

[Sark]

Even with traditional film, low light means faster film and grainier images. Slower film means slower shutter speeds and blur (without a tripod). The same principles apply to digital. You just get noise instead of grain. Personally, I would go for a sharp, albeit grainier/noisier image over a blurred image.

Tripods are not a great solution for this type of image, but you might consider a monopod. It does offer a little more freedom, although still not ideal for this kind of work. The other alternative is flash, but I guess that's not the effect you're after.

Sharpening can only do so much, it won't cure poor images. I guess my advice would be to go with faster iso's and maybe consider cleaning the noise, rather than trying to sharpen blur.

Sark

[Welles]

If you have CS2 have you tried the Reduce Noise filter? \:/

[LilGryphMaster]

Urp... I think I'll give her a try..

[LilGryphMaster]

Here are the new edits. The quality still bugs me, but now I realize it's probably because I was using automatic settings. Next time I will try to use manual shutter and/or arpeture.

http://www.lilgryphmaster.com/shoot27/new