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Christmas Gospel Choir 2007 - part 2 (Performance)
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 9:25 pm    Post subject: Christmas Gospel Choir 2007 - part 2 (Performance) Reply with quote
http://www.oriofoto.net/temp/choir2007_b/index.html

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 10:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
nice to see your 135 back to work. this is a damn good lens, giving this result in such condition is incredible; the makro-planar look poor in comparison. your 85 is impressive, I have to try mine at night, I hope it will have this resistance to flare Shocked


PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 10:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
poilu wrote:
nice to see your 135 back to work. this is a damn good lens, giving this result in such condition is incredible


Well, part of the photos (the majority I guess) are before the accident, part after.

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 10:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Impressive photos, Orio! Very good quality, in spite of the low light conditions. Don't think more about this accident...


PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 10:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Nice pictures Orio, but I think I prefer last year's with the J37


PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 10:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
peterqd wrote:
Nice pictures Orio, but I think I prefer last year's with the J37


...and the Sonnar 85.
Yeah, there was a number of more difficult factors this year. Mostly the fact that last year the singers were places on the stairs, and so you could see all of them. Then the fact that last year the concert was held before, with the daylight. This year the coloured lights have killed the detail, especially the red light which makes the camera work at 8 bit resolution.
Then again the more elevated place, the number of microphones and stands in the way, the cluttered "stage"... everything was less aesthetically pleasing for the photographer.
So instead of trying to make the "killer photo", I tried in stead to go for a more story-like approach, that could make up for the less impacting visuals.

It's the life of the street events photographer, things are not always the way you hope them to be, and you have to be able to adapt and adjust...
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 11:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Yes, the coloured lighting makes it really difficult and you did a great job against it. You can see in a few of the pictures how it affects the focus, this is true of the optics in our own eyes as well as the camera. I'm not clear why 8-bit should make that difference though, aren't jpegs always 8-bit?

I think the main difference to last year, besides the lighting, is that you are in a lower position, looking up at the choir. Last year you were slightly higher than the choir, and maybe a little closer, and you could pick out individual singers.

The girl playing the trumpet looks cold! Smile She has my sympathy - my band played 4 or 5 outdoor carol concerts this year and you can't help feeling the cold after a while (hands and feet particularly) because you can't move very much.

Anyway, a very nice series all the same. The foggy pictures of Piacenza look just like Trafalgar Square - a foggy day in London Town!


PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 11:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
peterqd wrote:
Yes, the coloured lighting makes it really difficult and you did a great job against it. You can see in a few of the pictures how it affects the focus, this is true of the optics in our own eyes as well as the camera.


Absolutely. Coloured lights, together with the diffusion caused by the fog, lowered the contrast and made it difficult for chipped adapter to work properly. I had to use my eyes for focus but after the accident, the dioptric control in the 5D was misplaced and I missed a lot of pictures for that.

peterqd wrote:
I'm not clear why 8-bit should make that difference though, aren't jpegs always 8-bit?


Because for the way most sensors record the colours, the red channel only gets 8 bit of colour information. I can't go farther than this in technical explanation (maybe someone else can), but I can see with my eyes that the story is true. All pictures with red light flooding in seem to be taken with a cheap point and shoot. I had to trash a lot of them.
As for JPG, yes they're 8 bit, but "after the fact". When you record at the highest available resolution, the camera brings in the most data (and thus you have more colour shades, more resolution, more microcontrast, in other words more sharpness). When you make a final conversion from RAW or TIF to JPG, the colour space is reduced to 8 bit, but these 8 bit are a (more or less) faithful reproduction of a 16 bit (or 32 or 48 bit) colour space.
I make an example: if a person in a blooming garden of roses, paeoniae and azaleae, is only allowed to pick roses, he picks 300 roses and makes a big bouquet. If later he is asked to remove 150 flowers from the bouquet, picking from all parts of the bouquet, he will remove 150 roses, and his bouquet will remain of 150 roses.
If instead he can pick from all the 3 different species, he will pick 100 roses, 100 paeonias, and 100 azaleae, and will make a big mixed bouquet. When after he is asked to remove 150 flowers, from all parts of the bouquet, he will remove 50 roses, 50 paeonias and 50 azaleae. His bouquet will remain of 150 flowers, too, but it will be composed of 50 roses, 50 paeonias and 50 azaleae.

Quote:
I think the main difference to last year, besides the lighting, is that you are in a lower position, looking up at the choir. Last year you were slightly higher than the choir, and maybe a little closer, and you could pick out individual singers.


Yes, I was not higher really, but almost on the same level. I was on the piazza floor, and the singers were on the stairs to the dome, so the difference was minimum. But of great importance visually was the fact that each row of singers behind was higher than the one in front, so you could see every singer in the face.

Quote:
The girl playing the trumpet looks cold! Smile She has my sympathy - my band played 4 or 5 outdoor carol concerts this year and you can't help feeling the cold after a while (hands and feet particularly) because you can't move very much.


I can imagine! Articulation especially must be problematic, and also being trumpet a lip tuned instruments, cold lips must not help either, I guess.
She is a professor in the Conservatorium, like the choir Director. All the people there is either students or professors of the Conservatorium of Piacenza, except for some older people in the choir.

Quote:
The foggy pictures of Piacenza look just like Trafalgar Square - a foggy day in London Town!


Yes, Piacenza is our "fog capital". It's the Italian city with the highest number of foggy days per year. It's placed near the river Po, which is one of the bigger in Europe, so this is quite understandeable.

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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 5:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio

Superb. I would not even have tried to take pictures under those conditions. My hat off to you for doing such a wonderful job



patrickh


PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 8:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thanks Patrick. You're always too nice.


PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 8:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
I'd like to ask you about the slideshow, how does it feel for you, is it ok or is it too fast?
Perhaps is it ok if you already know the pictures, but a bit too fast if it's the first time that you see them?
I'm not sure.


PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 9:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Excellent, Orio - your people images always look "real" in that one can almost interact with the subjects. Cool


PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 11:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
bob955i wrote:
Excellent, Orio - your people images always look "real" in that one can almost interact with the subjects. Cool


Thanks Bob, this is a big compliment for a street event photographer. Thank you.

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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 1:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Superb pictures, Orio... As usual, am I tempted to add.

Orio wrote:
peterqd wrote:
I'm not clear why 8-bit should make that difference though, aren't jpegs always 8-bit?

Because for the way most sensors record the colours, the red channel only gets 8 bit of colour information.


Yes, a JPEG digital image has 8 bits per channel, which means 8 bits for red, 8 bits for green and 8 bits for blue. But those bits are not born equal. Due to the arrangement of the color filter array of the Bayer mosaic, there is only one red and one blue pixel for every two green pixels:


Document Wikipedia

That means that the resolution of the green channel is double the resolution of either the red or the blue channel. So if your subject is mainly red or lighted by a red light, the demoisaicing algorithm will rebuild the whole image based only on 1/4 of the pixels. In other words, your up to date 12 Mpix DSLR turns instantly into a 3 Mpix cameraphone Shocked

Cheers!

Abbazz


PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 2:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Abbazz wrote:
So if your subject is mainly red or lighted by a red light, the demoisaicing algorithm will rebuild the whole image based only on 1/4 of the pixels. In other words, your up to date 12 Mpix DSLR turns instantly into a 3 Mpix cameraphone Shocked
Abbazz


I mean, it's enough to look at my images where there is a strong red light on the face of the persons, and compare to where there is not, to immediately see what Abbaz describes. Look at this one:



It is evident with striking evidence. Look at the girl on the left, look at her coat it is focused, now look at the face it seems like she is completely out of focus, but she's not, she's only flooded with red light and my 5D became a cameraphone Sad Sad
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Last edited by Orio on Thu Dec 27, 2007 11:29 am; edited 1 time in total


PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 4:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio wrote:
It is evident with striking evidence. Look at the girl on the left, look at her coat it is focused, now look at the face it seems like she is completely out of focus, but she's not, she's only flooded with red light and my 5D became a cameraphone Sad Sad
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Yes, it is particularly evident in the picture linked. I had also this picture in mind:



You can also see the limited resolution on the part of the picture under the blue lighting, although to a less extend because this blue projector is less monochromatic than the red one. As the blue channel is more noisy than the two others on digital cameras, there is also some digital noise creeping in the dark coat of the lady on the right.

This phenomenon explains the poor performance of digital cameras when used in tungsten light without any correction filter. Tungsten light is very warm, so the green and blue filtered pixels don't "see" much of the subject lit by the reddish light. As a result, the final image is a disappointing interpolation based mainly on data from the red filtered pixels.

Conclusion: when possible, it is usually better to use a color compensating filter at shooting time to get a sharper image with less noise. But of course, it is not always suitable to compensate for every color shift. Shooting a flamboyant sunset with a blue compensating filter would not make much sense Rolling Eyes

Cheers!

Abbazz


PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 5:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
This is a very difficult lighting situation. I understand the points you both make regarding the shortcomings of the bayer system. This type of lighting for me anyway is difficult to make detail out even with my naked eye sometimes. I think the camera actually could not do better. Film would be as funky fore you can not compensate thru filters for such a mix of color lighting. Do either of you or anyone else have an opinion on how the Foveon x3 sensor would react in this or a similar situation. I am very fascinated with the Foveon. If it could mount my contax lenses I would have bought the Sigma sd14 just to take a chance on it and see. Some of the photos coming from this camera that can be found online are very interesting in how lush they look.
Andy


PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 11:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
It would be an interesting experiment in a similar situation to shoot with both a digital reflex and a film reflex. I am convinced that the film should outperform the digital significantly.

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