This is amazing, F 2.4 and still a very good DOF
Bridge is captured perfect with this soft light .
Well done Sergey , really like it..

I would think DOF becomes irrelevant after some 20+ meters, especially with the smaller digital censors. I did try few shots with the optimal F3.2-4 aperture, but it then slowed the shutter down producing somewhat (still cute) unrealistic flowing water. It looked more like a frozen ice with all kinds of colorful reflections on it. I will post few of those images later. It also appeared that with the longer shutter speed not all the luminosity levels are processed equally. That is the brights became brighter, almost blinding, and the darks darker. The results are interesting, but definitely not exactly realistic. Especially with some lost information in brightest of the spots. I did not try the noise reduction though. I wonder how the flowing water would be interpreted, since the same pixels would not be found on the second scan again. Would differences be treated and removed as a noise, or would that be ignored? I frankly all forgot about it.
So what are the tricks for the night photography? Do you know of any?

- Sergey

Fons van Swaal wrote:
> This is amazing, F 2.4 and still a very good DOF
> Bridge is captured perfect with this soft light .
> Well done Sergey , really like it..
>

The word DOF was chosen wrong , I thought about sharp and clear. Don?t know why I wrote DOF....;-((

Sergey Green wrote:
> I would think DOF becomes irrelevant after some 20+ meters, especially with the smaller digital
> censors. I did try few shots with the optimal F3.2-4 aperture, but it then slowed the shutter
> down producing somewhat (still cute) unrealistic flowing water. It looked more like a frozen
> ice with all kinds of colorful reflections on it. I will post few of those images later. It
> also appeared that with the longer shutter speed not all the luminosity levels are processed
> equally. That is the brights became brighter, almost blinding, and the darks darker. The results
> are interesting, but definitely not exactly realistic. Especially with some lost information
> in brightest of the spots. I did not try the noise reduction though. I wonder how the flowing
> water would be interpreted, since the same pixels would not be found on the second scan again.
> Would differences be treated and removed as a noise, or would that be ignored? I frankly all
> forgot about it.
> So what are the tricks for the night photography? Do you know of any?

The shot is excellent and again demonstrates the superiority of RAW vs. JPEG. I find your comments interesting. Usually I tend to shoot with exposure times > 1/2s, because this way the inbuilt dark frame noise reduction kicks in, lowering substantially noise levels. But I understand that you wanted the water to look like flowing.

I didn't notice the effect you mentioned (brights becoming brighter). You have obviously to make sure that the image is not overexposed. For that you have to do some exosure bracketing, and keep only the properly exposed shots. That's what I did with these shots:
http://myolympus.org/document.php?id=890
http://myolympus.org/document.php?id=2041

Thanks Alfred for looking. The images I was refereeing to were uploaded later. They are

http://myolympus.org/document.php?id=3586
http://myolympus.org/document.php?id=3553
http://myolympus.org/document.php?id=3594

Especially the last one; the exposure appears to be just fine, but the brights are way over from where I saw them in real life. I guess you could probably ascribe it to the dynamic range, or rather a lack of it, which resulted in luminosity shift to somewhat exaggerated proportions. In a good way though. So it is as if each level of brightness was not processed equally. Well, either way you look at it.

Your images look very much controlled. It looks as if you had done some experimentation prior to taking the shots the images of which you uploaded. I did not even think about bracketing for the night-time. I tried bracketing during the sunny day, but then was not really impressed with the usefulness of it. It probably makes all the difference at night.

As for the RAW format, the differences are expected. The c-8080 censor captures light in 10-bit format and then compresses it to an 8-bit JPEG. So with a naked eye you see that the RAW format leaves you much more room for the color and depth manipulation than the resultant JPG files. I only wish that 8080 was more a modern camera and would allow writing speed that would not interfere with the shooting. This is my first digital camera and I only had it for nearly three months. Do you have other cameras? Any brands you liked in particular?

Sergey Green wrote:
> Thanks Alfred for looking. The images I was refereeing to were uploaded later. They are
>
> http://myolympus.org/document.php?id=3586
> http://myolympus.org/document.php?id=3553
> http://myolympus.org/document.php?id=3594

What you are referring to is not caused by long exposure times, rather by too much dynamic range (a bright lamp in a dark night). The sensor can't capture both the lamp and the scene without burning the highlights and cutting off the shadows.

> As for the RAW format, the differences are expected. The c-8080 censor captures light in 10-bit
> format and then compresses it to an 8-bit JPEG.

Actually the 8080 RAW have 12 bits.

> Do you have other cameras? Any brands you liked in particular?

I've always used Olympus digital cameras. Started the C1400 in 1997, then the C2000 in 1999, the 4040 in 2001, the 5050 in 2003 and the 8080 in 2004.

Alfed,

Thanks for commenting.

I was referring to the dynamic range in terms of camera?s capabilities, and not the range of the scene. My fault if I was not clear. Had camera had a wider dynamic range the night sceneries would be more realistic and less glaring. They look good, superb, excellent for the postcards and posters, but they are not exactly real; not what the eye sees. Nothing is lost here, but it is kind of sensational to see the images that appear to look ?better? than the scenery itself.

Today?s imaging RAW standard is 12-bit, regardless whether it is Olympus or any other camera. Some manufacturers are experimenting with 14-bit, but this is not the case with Olympus yet. In my previous comment I was not referring to a format, but to a SONY (on c-8080) original 10-bit CCD censor. It was extended for Sony Cyber-shot to a 14-bit DXP type, but I do not believe they gave this technology to Olympus yet.

Yes, RAW format is superb, no-one disputes that.