Exposure Simulator

(andersenimages.com)

63 points | by sneela 4 hours ago ago

22 comments

  • PetitPrince 14 minutes ago

    For me it's missing something to illustrate the relationship between shutter speed and motion blur. If the subject was a running fan instead of of lightbulb that would have been ideal.

  • erghjunk 3 minutes ago

    that's an insane amount of noise at 200 ISO.

  • ChrisMarshallNY 3 hours ago

    That does a fairly good job.

    I'm sure that image nerds would poke holes in it, but it seems to work pretty much exactly the way it does IRL.

    The noise at high ISO is where it can get specific. Some manufacturers make cameras that actually do really well, at high ISO, and high shutter speed. This seems to reproduce a consumer DSLR.

    • JKCalhoun an hour ago

      I think it is excellent as well—that it also demonstrates aperture and shutter priority is a bonus.

      I do feel (image nerding now) that its shutter/ISO visual for showing the image over/under-exposed is not quite correct. It appears they show incorrect exposure by taking the "correct" image and blend (multiply) with either white or blend with black (on the other end of the exposure spectrum) to produce the resulting image.

      I suppose I am expecting something more like "levels" that pushes all the pixels to white (or black) until they are forced to clip. (But maybe I am too trained in photo-editing tools and expect the film to behave in the same way.)

    • arghwhat 3 hours ago

      With the disclaimer that I am comparing to the memory of some entry-level cameras, I would still say that it's way too noisy.

      Even on old, entry-level APS-C cameras, ISO1600 is normally very usable. What is rendered here at ISO1600 feels more like the "get the picture at any cost" levels of ISO, which on those limited cameras would be something like ISO6400+.

      Heck, the original pictures (there is one for each aperture setting) are taken at ISO640 (Canon EOS 5D MarkII at 67mm)!

      (Granted, many are too allergic to noise and end up missing a picture instead of just taking the noisy one which is a shame, but that's another story entirely.)

      • einr 2 hours ago

        Noise depends a lot on the actual amount of light hitting the sensor per unit of time, which is not really a part of the simulation here. ISO 1600 has been quite usable in daylight for a very long time; at night it's a somewhat different story.

        The amount and appearance of noise also heavily depends on whether you're looking at a RAW image before noise processing or a cooked JPEG. Noise reduction is really good these days but you might be surprised by what files from even a modern camera look like before any processing.

        That said, I do think the simulation here exaggerates the effect of noise for clarity. (It also appears to be about six years old.)

    • sneela 2 hours ago

      I recently bought a film camera (Minolta X-700) and I wasted a whole roll because I inverted the aperture (i.e, 2 = sharp, 32 = blur)...

      I'm interested to see how the roll turns out - gave it for development the other day, had a good laugh with the employees though.

      I now have a mnemonic for it: Blor - a (somewhat) portmanteau of Blur and low. So low aperture = blur.

      Edit for clarification: I mean low number (2 vs 32) = blur

      • tiagod 2 hours ago

        High aperture = Blur

        Unfortunately the lower number actually means bigger aperture.

        • sneela 2 hours ago

          And that's what exactly confused me :)

          With my mnemonic, I say low *number = blur

          I should have been more specific

          • Filligree an hour ago

            The aperture size is usually described as e.g. f/32, where f is a camera-specific constant.

            Denominator, not numerator. That's why larger number = smaller aperture.

      • 4gotunameagain 2 hours ago

        The larger the entrance pupil is, the narrower the depth of field is.

        The smaller, i.e. the closest to an ideal pinhole camera, the wider the depth of field is. A an ideal pinhole camera has infinite depth of field.

        Unfortunately the aperture f numbers are the wrong way round; larger numbers correspond to smaller diameters.

    • 1e1a 3 hours ago

      Video showcasing ISO noise behavior of a few different cameras: https://youtu.be/iiMfAmWbWSg?t=94s

      • ChrisMarshallNY 3 hours ago

        That's a pretty good demo!

        Very limited camera choices, though.

        • 1e1a 2 hours ago

          Yeah, it would be interesting and useful to see this across many more cameras.

  • trimaster an hour ago

    Not sure why value on the exposure compensation scale changes in manual mode when ISO is fixed. Shouldn't it be static in that case, unless ISO was in auto?

    • czpl an hour ago

      That's a light meter, not exposure compensation.

  • pimlottc an hour ago

    It seems to be impossible to grab the sliders on mobile Safari

    • dahart 33 minutes ago

      Try tapping on the target value

  • ggambetta 2 hours ago

    Nice, but I'm going to need some ND filters :)

  • cratermoon 34 minutes ago

    This is missing a setting for the kind of light falling on the subject. Is it full open sunlight? Open shade? Overcast? Sidelight? Backlight?

    It all matters.

  • 1e1a 3 hours ago

    Changing the ISO appears to scale the noise differently from the rest of the image.

    • dahart 30 minutes ago

      Yep, just like a real camera.