S2 noise at ISO200? / ZoomBrowser altering video quality?

[2Shiny]

I took my camera disc golfing yesterday and bumped the ISO to 200 on my S2 before we started playing. It was a bit dark in the woods, but we also had light snow cover. The combination of relatively high ISO, very bright AND very dark areas, and scene action really made it difficult to take pictures. I have not been impressed at all with the quality of the photos I got.

I also took a few movies, and rotated them when I got home, but ZoomBrowser seems to have altered the quality of the video?!?! I have the originals yet, but I don't understand why it would change anything but the rotation. The rotated movies look a lot noisier.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v627/White95Max/Nic3-R.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v627/White95Max/Shana_Jenny--R.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v627/White95Max/ShanaDisc---R.jpg

I'm happy with the moment captured with that last pic (disc about to hit the chains), but the overall picture quality is terrible. I tried fixing it up a bit, but with my limited talent in post processing, this is all I got.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v627/White95Max/ShanaDisc-R.jpg

I may just go over to that park in the next few days just to take a ton of pictures and find out what actually works. The bright snow, bright sky, and dark trees/ground were very difficult to work with. I was using evaluative metering, but I'm thinking I probably shouldn't have. Any tips that might help me next time I'm faced with this situation?

[MingFromMongo]

It reminds me of a series of photos that I took that I had shot with the camera on tv and the white balance as tungsten. I took these in similar conditions with bright light and dark areas. The result was a bluish cast to everything similar to those you took.

[joayne]

This looks like a white balance problem rather than noise. ISO of 200 should not really produce any noticeable noise. Try changing your white balance settings with your processing software. Cycle through all of the choices in your software. If you use PS lookup setting the White Point and Black Point.

[2Shiny]

well I'll be damned....I checked the EXIF on a couple pics and it says White Balance - tungsten. I must have taken a quick glance at it and mistakenly saw the little light bulb icon as the daylight icon. :(
I really hate when a whole day's pics are messed up like this!

[MaxZoom]

In Photoshop VS2 try - "Image" - "Adjustments" - "Match Color" and select "Neutralize" and work from there. I'd post my attempt but you have image editing turned off in your profile.

[2Shiny]

Feel free to take a shot at correcting it. I changed my image editing preference.

[MaxZoom]

Feel free to take a shot at correcting it. I changed my image editing preference.
I did as I suggested and also fiddled with R G & B levels clipping the snow slightly. I then applied a 1.0 pixel 200% unsharp mask to the luminance channel only. Was not successful in finding a noise reduction profile that did not make the whole picture too soft.
I've no idea what it looked like in real life but this looks pretty good to me. :)

I had to down size the images to meet forum file size limitations.
130107
130082

[283CID]

WOW !!! As I read your posting I saw this:

"I also took a few movies, and rotated them when I got home, but ZoomBrowser seems to have altered the quality of the video?!?! I have the originals yet, but I don't understand why it would change anything but the rotation. The rotated movies look a lot noisier."

Could you please tell me/us how you rotated movies ? My wife took a few .avi files with the camera in the vertical position...and grumbles at having to look sideways at them! If there is a way to 'straighten' them up she would SURE appreciate knowing it...

[Jon]

If you rotated a movie, it's quite likely that there was some loss of quality due to the re-compression of hte video data in the new orientation. Currently, still JPEWG images aren't actually rotated; compliant software recognizes a "rotation" flag, which tells the application which end was up when the picture was taken. If you rotate a still, this is changed to the new appropriate one. But videos are physically rotated; virtually every bit is relocated, so the file needs to be recompressed. Also your video's only about 640x480 pixels; if you blow that up to full screen, it'll look blocky.

[283CID]

C'mon Jon... you gonna tell me HOW you do that, so I can get Mrs. Whats-Her-Name off my back ??? p l e a s e ??

[mishnogram]

C'mon Jon... you gonna tell me HOW you do that, so I can get Mrs. Whats-Her-Name off my back ??? p l e a s e ??


I have never tried doing it with Zoombrowser but can do it with Windows Movie Maker as well which comes free with Windows. Just select effects and either rotate 90degress or 270 degrees.

Hope that helps.

[2Shiny]

Could you please tell me/us how you rotated movies ? My wife took a few .avi files with the camera in the vertical position...and grumbles at having to look sideways at them! If there is a way to 'straighten' them up she would SURE appreciate knowing it...

Open ZoomBrowser.
Open a movie.
Click Edit on the left sidebar.
Click Edit Movie.
Click Rotate.
Click the desired direction of rotation.
Click OK.
Click Save.

[283CID]

PRICELESS !!! By Gar, 'Shiny.. if I still loved up in The Soo, I'd bring you by a case of GOOD beer for that one. [Just shows how we have NOT looked under all the rocks in the Z/B program]

Thank you very much...