January 30 2010 - Photo Jottings

January 30 2010

1/30/10

Look at the ISO 1600 image taken with my new camera phone at Burger King, where I’m a busboy.  Actually, I should own this place with the amount of money I’ve spent here. I chose this shot to show you not because I thought National Geographic magazine would see it and give me a call, but because I knew it would show massive noise in the shadow areas, and smeared out textures galore, making it a good image to experiment with.

In the original shot, there is massive blue confetti in the shadows, with an overall bluish cast.  In
the lightroom tweaked image below, I’ve removed some of that mess, along with a few other tricks.  Go to the review of the C905a, at the bottom of the page for the original shot, and see what I did to make it look better.

This shot would be impossible without having exposure compensation on the camera.  In this scene the camera was underexposing by two stops because it’s limited to a shutter speed of 1/10s, and only wanted to go up to ISO 400, so when you raise the eV +2.00, you’re actually raising the camera sensitivity, or ISO.  Attempting to bring up the shadow areas of the underexposed shot in post processing would make a mess of it with all the extra noise that procedure would produce.  If I had used the flash, it would’ve illuminated the table and chair in the foreground, and everything else would be too dark.  With some fancy post processing, I think you could make a decent 4×6″ print at ISO 1600, which makes the C905a more useful as an everyday pocket camera.

I added a few more “random observations” to the review, so check ’em out again if you’re thinking about buying this camera phone.

EXIF data for the shot below; F/2.8, 1/10s ISO 1600, eV +2.00, AWB and no flash.

Jan2010/cphps.jpg
C905a camera phone at ISO 1600! Click for review page
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