What am I seeing here

[ryanyboy]

Evening all,

I ws just editing a RAW file from a picture I took today and noticed what you see in the attached photo:-

This is a 100% crop of the dark area of Sarah's coat. No proecessing has been done - just a 100% crop and conversion to JPEG. Can you tell me what we're seeing here - I've never noticed it before.

Ta Ryan

P.S metadata:-

Aperture = F1.8
Focal length =50mm
ISO = 200
Lens = AF-S 50mm F/1.4

[waffley]

OK I am a total novice but on the left hand side there seems to be a lot of green and red speckling (some kind of noise?) or is that just my monitor?

[Paulie-W]

What are we looking for Ryan?

[ryanyboy]

Originally Posted by Paulie-W

What are we looking for Ryan?

Left of centre and up/left of Sarah's bracelet. It looks like noise as Waffley said. But at such a low ISO with no shadows lifting in PS I'm stumped as to why it would appear. Is this some kind of digital artefact or something? Or is some kind of shadows noise?

I only noticed this once before and that was recently where there was lots of this in the dark areas of Sarah's hair.

[Martin.D]

Would seem most of the left side is of poor quality, almost as if it was shot on high ISO "Noise" even though it was shot at ISO 200.

[ryanyboy]

Originally Posted by Martin.D

Would seem most of the left side is of poor quality, almost as if it was shot on high ISO "Noise" even though it was shot at ISO 200.

Yep - I agree. Just don't understand why

[ryanyboy]

Another thing that occured to me so I just checked - "Active D Lighting" was NOT on.

[Garf]

Don't know if this is possible, but could it be some kind of corruption on the memory card itself ? Worth formatting the card ?

Can you reproduce if you take the same shot again ?

[ryanyboy]

Panic over!! (I think).

Firstly - I lied (not deliberately mind). In my opening post I said I had done no PP to the image. I have now realised that I HAD done a wee bit of PP to it. In ACR it is possible to download some Nikon "Pictures styles" that can be applied post capture. I first read about these beta add-ons to ACR on this very forum - I think it was Jomike who referred to them (apologies to Jomike if it wasn't you).

ANYWAY I had applied one of these "picture styles" to the image before opening it in PS Elements. I just re-opened the RAW file and realised that I had indeed selected the "Camera Portrait Beta 2" option. This had had the effect of altering the shadows and highlights slightly but obviously leaving this horrid "digital" mess on my picture.

SO from now on I think I'll steer clear of these Beta "picture styles" (or at least view the alterations very carefully before settling on them).

Thanks all for trying to come to my rescue (I had reached the terrible conclusion that I would have to take the camera back ).

FWIW I would be interested to hear if anyone else has used these Beta "picture styles" and if so your verdicts?

Cheers for now

Ryan

P.S After all I've just said if anyone thinks I've reached the WRONG conclusion please shout and I'll go back to worrying again

P.P.S Here's another 100% - this time REALLY as it came out of the picture taking machine:-

[Paulie-W]

Talk about two different pictures. Bloody hell, i'd dump the styles at least for now.

[ryanyboy]

Originally Posted by Paulie-W

Talk about two different pictures. Bloody hell, i'd dump the styles at least for now.

Yeah, I think so too.

I'd used these styles on and off for a couple of months but had only noticed this affect once before.

Glad I spotted it though before I started working on a paid job!!

[Paulie-W]

Originally Posted by ryanyboy

Yeah, I think so too.

I'd used these styles on and off for a couple of months but had only noticed this affect once before.

Glad I spotted it though before I started working on a paid job!!

Oh jeeeze can you imagine coming back from a wedding and seeing that *insert toilet smiley here*

[ryanyboy]

Originally Posted by Paulie-W

Oh jeeeze can you imagine coming back from a wedding and seeing that *insert toilet smiley here*

Oh, sorry Paul, I think I've confused you. These "picture styles" are applied post-capture in the Camera Raw program within Photoshop. They were downloaded from the Adobe website and (to be fair) are classed as Beta versions.

The more involved I get with the post-capture side of digital photography (seeking perfection as usual) the more convinced I am that RAW files are better off being converted with the camera manufacturers own software (i.e Capture NX 2 or Canon DPP).

I have a copy of NX 2 on a shelf above me - I think it might be time to give it a whirl.

[jomike]

When you say that you did no PP, what you actually meant was that you did no conscious PP. ACR, like any RAW converter, has to do PP to a RAW file in order to process the image. The picture controls were developed in response to criticism that Adobe could not read the in camera settings applied to the RAW file, and the results were not as good as (in the case of Nikon) Capture NX or even View NX. Even when not using the picture controls, you are still using presets determined by ACR. If you open the RAW in Capture or View NX and turn all the settings to 0, and the picture control and white balance to "Recorded Value", you will see the image as set in the camera settings. It is still processed, but with no other presets determined by the converter creeping in. Of course, this should be the same as shooting in Jpeg.

FWIW, I find that Capture NX(2) is the best if you want best IQ with not much tweaking. Even View NX is quite good for straightforward conversions. For work flow, Lightroom is hard to beat and with some tweaking you can get it pretty close to Nikon's software, it just takes some more work initially, but once you have it tweaked to your satisfaction you can save that as a custom preset and apply it to your RAWs as a starting point.

The Adobe picture controls were an attempt to give users a set of presets to use as a starting point for various shooting styles and conditions.

[Paulie-W]

Yeah, but still a pain in the a$$ even if not quite so scary. NX is good but i find it too slow on my pc, and i dont have money to go get another one just to PP. Shame because i quite like it, but thats another thread.