monitor issues, first time with flash and post processing (C&C too)

tomso · Nov 4, 2012

Alright, so this weekend I took some shots of my friends band, I asked some advice for shooting in a nightclub and you were all very helpful! Unfortunately, the show was cancelled and turned into a house show next door. I used my speedlite on camera and an improvised flash card to bounce the flash. I'm not thrilled with the results but it was the only way to get a shot. Additionally, this is some of my first work I shot in RAW (and jpeg just in case) so I could start getting some experience with post processing.

After a little bit of work, I got a usable image (if still a tad overexposed) on my monitor. I'm using a laptop - ThinkPad W530 - with the upgraded 1080p screen. I know laptops are generally crap for photoshop work, but I figured the upgraded screen would be calibrated close enough to get usable images. However, when I looked at the picture on my ipad, it was yellow-tinted and underexposed. On my room mates laptop, it's overexposed with no yellow tint.

For those of you with correctly calibrated monitors, could you please let me know how this image looks on your screen?
And of course, C&C is always welcome. Like I said, I'm not thrilled with the image (guitar is cropped, shirt bleeds into dark door frame, busy backgroud, etc) but I'm sure there's things I did and didn't even notice!

MLeeK · Nov 4, 2012

It's REALLY dark. I'll bring it up... BRB

MLeeK · Nov 4, 2012

I brought it up 1 full stop and added a little fill light. It could probably come up another 1/4 stop, but I left it a little on the darker side of exposure because of it being a band kind of shot.

SCraig · Nov 4, 2012

Look at the histogram. Regardless of whether your monitor is calibrated, a laptop, an iPad, or whatever, the histogram of the image will ALWAYS show you how the exposure looks. It may not tell anything about the color tint, but it will certainly tell you about the exposure. This one is about 2 full stops underexposed, and it does have a slight yellow tint noticeable primarily on the walls and his guitar.

That's twice MLeeK!

I'll go along with with 1-1/4 stops instead of 2. I was using the histogram in Capture NX2 instead of Photoshop.

MLeeK · Nov 4, 2012

SCraig said:
Look at the histogram. Regardless of whether your monitor is calibrated, a laptop, an iPad, or whatever, the histogram of the image will ALWAYS show you how the exposure looks. It may not tell anything about the color tint, but it will certainly tell you about the exposure. This one is about 2 full stops underexposed, and it does have a slight yellow tint noticeable primarily on the walls and his guitar.

That's twice MLeeK!

I'll go along with with 1-1/4 stops instead of 2. I was using the histogram in Capture NX2 instead of Photoshop.

Nah, you were right. 2 works!

Here's 2 full stops plus some fill, wb adjustment. Definitely looks much better!

tomso · Nov 4, 2012

Awesome! Thanks, I totally spaced on paying attention to the histogram. Rookie mistake I guess. :blushing:

Is there any way for me to correct for the yellow tint in my monitor or should I bite the bullet and buy calibration hardware?

SCraig · Nov 4, 2012

MLeeK said:
Nah, you were right. 2 works!

Here's 2 full stops plus some fill, wb adjustment. Definitely looks much better!

That's actually good to know. For some reason known only to Nikon, Capture NX2 won't allow adjusting EV unless it's a NEF file. So, I had to adjust the brightness and estimate how much I moved it on the histogram. At least I know that estimate was close

SCraig · Nov 4, 2012

tomso said:
Awesome! Thanks, I totally spaced on paying attention to the histogram. Rookie mistake I guess. :blushing:

Is there any way for me to correct for the yellow tint in my monitor or should I bite the bullet and buy calibration hardware?

You can play with some of the adjustments using This Site but as soon as you move your laptop the adjustments are useless. One of the big keys in monitor adjustment is the ambient light falling on the screen, and if you view it in other light or at a different angle or anything, then the adjustments you made are worthless. Your best bet is to get an external monitor and then calibrate that one since it will stay in pretty much the same place all the time.

MLeeK · Nov 4, 2012

tomso said:
Awesome! Thanks, I totally spaced on paying attention to the histogram. Rookie mistake I guess. :blushing:

Is there any way for me to correct for the yellow tint in my monitor or should I bite the bullet and buy calibration hardware?

If you are going to be taking photos and want them to be correct for print? Bite the bullet. You can't work on an uncalibrated monitor

tomso · Nov 4, 2012

SCraig said:
You can play with some of the adjustments using This Site but as soon as you move your laptop the adjustments are useless. One of the big keys in monitor adjustment is the ambient light falling on the screen, and if you view it in other light or at a different angle or anything, then the adjustments you made are worthless. Your best bet is to get an external monitor and then calibrate that one since it will stay in pretty much the same place all the time.

I used a similar site to adjust by eye and then fine tuned with my graphics card's calibration software with all lights off, but I'm sure I picked my laptop up and put in my lap and/or back on the table, so that probably screwed me up. MLeeK, you mentioned adding fill light with photoshop. Should I have been using my speedlite's fill light? I had it turned off while I was shooting.

WesternGuy · Nov 5, 2012

I would go with what MLeeK has to say - if you don't have a calibrated monitor, you will drive yourself crazy trying to tweek your images. As was also mentioned, think seriously about getting a stand-alone monitor, preferably an IPS monitor, and keep it calibrated with something like Spyder4 or ColorMunki.

WesternGuy

MLeeK · Nov 5, 2012

tomso said:
SCraig said:

You can play with some of the adjustments using This Site but as soon as you move your laptop the adjustments are useless. One of the big keys in monitor adjustment is the ambient light falling on the screen, and if you view it in other light or at a different angle or anything, then the adjustments you made are worthless. Your best bet is to get an external monitor and then calibrate that one since it will stay in pretty much the same place all the time.

Click to expand...

I used a similar site to adjust by eye and then fine tuned with my graphics card's calibration software with all lights off, but I'm sure I picked my laptop up and put in my lap and/or back on the table, so that probably screwed me up. MLeeK, you mentioned adding fill light with photoshop. Should I have been using my speedlite's fill light? I had it turned off while I was shooting.

"fill" in Adobe camera raw CS5 brings up the darker/mid's a bit. Honestly, the flash should have been used for exposure in general. If you had bumped ISO/Shutter/Aperture for proper exposure you COULD have still needed just a bit of fill, but I kind of doubt it.