Advice needed!

[lynnedavison]

I'm quite rusty and have taken this and don't know what went wrong.

Would anyone know what I did wrong, if it's a fault with my camera and if I can fix it?

It was shot raw on my Pentax K-10d. I have had the camera since 2008. Quite a few of the photos from the day have the same problem but this is one of the worst. I'm working on CS4.

Any advice would be great! I've tried googling but I haven't found anything that looks like my problem

 

[Buckster]

ISO 1600 noise. Get back down into reality - 100-400.

 

[Derrel]

The pattern of banding makes it look like severe underexposure.

It was shot at 1/3999 second at f/16 at ISO 1600 in Spot Metering mode...

Underexposure shows up the most in darker, shadowed areas, and as you can see, that is the case here; the bright, BETTER-lighted and this more-expsed areas look okay.

 

[pixmedic]

noise and banding from high ISO recovery.
i see it was shot at 1/4000 shutter speed.
you could have shot more around 1/160 and dropped the ISO to 200 and gotten a better image.

 

[lynnedavison]

Thanks for getting back to me. Is there any way to recover?

 

[Derrel]

Maybe search for "shadow noise recovery". You have both luminance noise, the regular, linear banding, and also chroma noise, the colored "speckles"...

You can use NR, or Noise Reduction to help alleviate it, somewhat. If the shadowed areas are allowed to go darker, or be made darker, the noise will be less-visible, but this example looks underexposed enough that I do not think it will ever look perfect, but you can get it looking "okay".

 

[pixmedic]

Thanks for getting back to me. Is there any way to recover?

reshoot at the proper settings.
keep the shutter speed under 1/250
keep the aperture under f/5.6
set ISO 400 or less.
look at the exposure meter in the camera.
adjust shutter speed down if you need more light until you hit maybe 1/125, though you shouldn't need to in daylight.

 

[lynnedavison]

Thanks Derrel. I'll give it a go. Unfortunately a re-shoot is not an option pixmedic but I appreciate the advice and will have my head screwed on next time.

 

[Buckster]

I'll take a stab at it:

1. Reduced noise in LR with settings cranked hard.
2. Layered with original in Photoshop.
3. Selectively applied noise reduction to most problematic areas (shadows) with a mask.
4. Removed a bit of green tint from the hair.
5. Reduced to internet page viewing size.
6. Sharpened selected areas of the subject.

 

[lynnedavison]

Buckster that's incredible! Thank you for explaining what you did, I'll see if I can mimic you with some of the others!