The GetDPI Photography Forum

Great to see you here. Join our insightful photographic forum today and start tapping into a huge wealth of photographic knowledge. Completing our simple registration process will allow you to gain access to exclusive content, add your own topics and posts, share your work and connect with other members through your own private inbox! And don’t forget to say hi!

Panasonic LX2 and ISO 400

Photon-hunter

New member
From all the coments and reviews read before my purchase I was honestly expecting ISO 400 photos from my LX2 to be much worse than what they are turning out to be...Though I still haven´t spent enough time with it and have not printed anything yet, I am finding ISO400 VERY usable .I love the way this camera/lens draws...:thumbs:

Two ISO 400 examples, street music yesterday afternoon and a portrait of my mother with my kids today. Both colour JPEG´s, noise reduction turned to "standard", converted to BW and with slight PP in Photoshop...

Any coments will be highly appreciated. Cheers!
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
It is a nifty little camera and now travels with me as my backup. I am also pretty pleased with the 13x19 prints it is capable of with just a little care.
Oh, and by the way I love both of the shots that you posted, very nice.
-bob
 

TRSmith

Subscriber Member
Very nice feeling to the family portrait. The skin tones feel great, very warm and the overall sense is one of comfortable intimacy. If I were to do anything, I'd open the shadows just a tiny bit on the right side of the faces (their right side). Nice shot!
 
M

micampe

Guest
I agree, people are often looking a bit too much into the pixels.

I find even ISO800 can be used sometimes with the noise giving a nice touch to the image. I admit this one (The Notwist, friday night in Ljubljana, Slovenija) wouldn't have worked the same in color, but as black and white I think it isn't bad at all (this is also my first BW conversion from RAW). Or is it? ;)

 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
Michele,
It is actually pretty good.
The effect is not as much like negative film grain as I would like it to be since dark areas have very little grain and that is the opposite of digital noise. Sometimes I use a mask in photoshop with blur and curves to make the black-ish areas go drop apparent grain.
-bob
 
M

micampe

Guest
Thanks for the suggestion Bob. Do you mean you mask the dark areas and blur only those? I'll play with it, although I'm not very good at PP :)
 

Lili

New member
Photonhunter, that is a terrific shot
I see nothing wrong with it at all.
Pixel peeping grows old, one finds fault in everything.
Take pictures and enjoy :)

Michelle, great shot of Guitarist :)
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
Michele,
This a technique that I use with no warranties that it is the best or the easiest when you want to get rid of noise in the blacks.
First it is better to work first on an rgb image since usually a lot of the high iso noise is contained in the blue channel.
Select the channels tab and look at the channels individually, if the noise is in the blues, select a channel that is relatively noise free. then click on the selection circle at the bottom of the channels palette. What you get is a selection of the areas of the image that are below mid-point in value.
Go back to layers, duplicate your background, and then add the selection as a layer mask.
Then play with either the gaussian blur filter or the reduce noise filter on the background copy image. Usually I find a blur works pretty good.
Then flatten the image, sharpen and touch up with the spot healing brush.
That is what I did to the attached. I makes black backgrounds BLACK and avoids the appearance that you have dust on your monitor.
-bob
 

Joan

New member
Perfectly beautiful shots, that little lens on the LX2 is marvelous. Love the PP, excellent. :thumbs:
 
M

micampe

Guest
Thanks again Bob, the blacks are definitely better, now I understand what people mean when they say film-like grain. I'll play with your suggestions.
 

Photon-hunter

New member
Been away for most of the weekend, I didn´t see the replies untill right now.

I appreciate all the comments, feels great to be in this place sharing a passion with so many nice people!!

All I can say, after just a week with this little camera is that, accepting it´s obvious limits and specific problems, it is giving me far more pleassure (and photographic oportunities) than my "superior" Canon 30D and assorted glass...

I thought carrying the LX2 would be like taking a little "notebook" with me all the time, but it is resulting to be much more than "just" that.

Cheers!!
 
Top