# Help: Foggy/ Whitish veiled photos



## owura (Jul 24, 2012)

I am fairly new to photography. I have a Sigma zoom lens 70- 300mm, anytime I use it, I get a foggy appearance to my photos. I have tried playing around with the settings on my camera but it does not seem to help. Below are some sample pics taken on different days, with different settings. BTW, i cropped parts of the original photos so it might appear a little grainy. Is it the lens or I am doing something wrong?  Any help will be appreciated.


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## 480sparky (Jul 24, 2012)

The graininess is due to high ISO and the digital noise that comes with it.  Take control of the camera by manually lowering the ISO to a lower setting.  Preferably 100 or 200.  This may not be possible in all lighting situations, but dropping the ISO as much as possible will help tremendously.

Noise reduction in post is another solution, although not bullet-proof.


The fogginess is also due in part to the high ISO.  As the ISO is raised, you start to decrease contrast and dynamic range in an image.  This can be corrected in post as well.


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## enzodm (Jul 24, 2012)

The last picture is also taken at 1/8s shutter speed, ISO3200. So, motion blur + noise. The first one is an out of focus area, where blur is obvious. The second one is at ISO1600 (did you increase brightness in postprocessing?), Sparky told you something useful about, but I would also check your picture settings, since you are shooting JPEG instead of RAW. Maybe you just have bad settings (not sure which one you have to check - never used JPEG). However, to really see if there is something wrong with the lens - unlikely, try to shoot a well exposed picture, that is, something you can take at ISO100, shutter speed at least 1/focal length.


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## deeky (Jul 24, 2012)

Also keep in mind that longer focal lengths usually require considerably more light.  Any time you can, go to a shorter focal length and you will be able to Slow the ISO and pick up the shutter speed.


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## amolitor (Jul 24, 2012)

With all due respect to all you EXIF peepers, are you guys blind?

These photos are violently overexposed, and there my be some veiling. The lens could simply have some crap in it that's lowering the contrast and creating the sort of "grey" "flat" look, but basically all these images are a couple stops overexposed.

Looking at the middle one suggests that the aperture was wide open, but the EXIF suggests f/6.3. I think it's possible that the lens is failing to stop down when the exposure is made.

Try this experiment:

In aperture priority mode, take a series of pictures at a series of successively more stopped down settings, normal exposure. Say f/3.5 or whatever the most open is, then f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16.

- If the photographs all look "about the same" in terms of exposure, but have more and more depth of field, then the aperture is probably working right.

- If the photographs look brighter and brighter, and the depth of field remains essentially the same, the aperture is not stopping down when it should, the meter is getting fooled, and your lens is busted.

You should be able to look at the images on the camera itself to determine this. The change in brightness, in case #2, should be very obvious.


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## 480sparky (Jul 24, 2012)

amolitor said:


> With all due respect to all you EXIF peepers, are you guys blind?....




Try looking at the histo.


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## deeky (Jul 24, 2012)

amolitor - how are you seeing the exif?  I know others have mentioned it, but that's one I haven't gotten to yet when it comes to others photos online.


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## amolitor (Jul 24, 2012)

deeky:

Um, various photo editors can show you the EXIF.

I think the horrible Nikon ViewNX2 software I use will show it to me, for instance, and the Preview application on the Mac as well. Presumably photoshop has some way to look at it as well? I don't use PS, though.

Other people will likely have much better suggestions for how to look at the EXIF!

480sparky:

I did, just to confirm the obvious and make sure I wasn't missing something. The histogram shows a couple stops overexposed.


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## 480sparky (Jul 24, 2012)

amolitor said:


> ..........
> 480sparky:
> 
> I did, just to confirm the obvious and make sure I wasn't missing something. The histogram shows a couple stops overexposed.



OK, Learn me sumpin'.  Point out to me the overexposed areas:


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## amolitor (Jul 24, 2012)

See all that flat space off on the left? That's where "black" is supposed to go, but it's not there. It's up about 20% of the way into the histogram. The middle one even has a handy spike of Crap piled up against the top of the graph, showing that the whole thing has been shoved to the right, with pixels falling off the end. The other two aren't as clear, I will admit, but if you look at the third photo you can see a small section of blown out white stuff (the paper wrapped, it is?) but the histogram as well as some sampling of the image shows no decent blacks at all to go with the blown out whites. (out of context, THAT would sound incredibly sketchy, eh?)

The first one, well, it might as well be a grey card, really. It "feels" the same as the others, but there aren't any smoking guns.

The histogram isn't the whole story -- if you have a small amount of white whites, or whatever, it won't really show up on the histogram very much, but the fact that they're present at all tells you that the lens and camera can produce that value. If the histogram suggests there's nothing in a range of values, you still should poke around and see if you can turn up a few pixels of that value to confirm. I can find whites, I can't find blacks.

Make sense?

I'd say that the lens was producing low contrast, except for that middle one, where the contrast range looks potentially ok-ish. The contrast range might be compressed, but not wildly so.


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## enzodm (Jul 24, 2012)

deeky said:


> amolitor - how are you seeing the exif?  I know others have mentioned it, but that's one I haven't gotten to yet when it comes to others photos online.



there is a Firefox plugin too.


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## 480sparky (Jul 24, 2012)

See all that space on the _right_?  That's where a "violently overexposed" image  would be if it were that.

What I'm seeing in image with very little dynamic range.


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## amolitor (Jul 24, 2012)

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that you were being sarcastic.


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## 480sparky (Jul 24, 2012)

Not being sarcastic.  Just trying to see what you believe is a 'violently overexposed' image.


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## amolitor (Jul 24, 2012)

If your histogram viewer has a logarithmic setting, try it out.


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## 480sparky (Jul 24, 2012)

Which does.... what, exactly?


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## sleist (Jul 24, 2012)

These are not over exposed. - well, at least the portion of the jpeg I see is not.  Of the 3 shots, #2 is the only one with blown highlights, but poor exposure compensation in post could cause the blown highlights as well as loss of contrast.  All we have are crops and histograms based off those crops.

I suspect these are actually under exposed and noisy as a result.  If we saw the entire, non processed image and the resulting histogram of the entire image, I bet it would be under exposed according to the resulting histogram.


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## amolitor (Jul 25, 2012)

480sparky said:


> Which does.... what, exactly?



It shows that there is no data at all on the left, and some data all the way up to the right. That is, that the photograph is over exposed. Or at any rate lacks blacks completely, but does not lack for whites, if you prefer.

Which you can also see by looking at the photos instead of the EXIF and the histograms and the everything-except-the-photo.

EDIT: anyways, it doesn't matter. You successfully determined that your lens was broken when you determined that you get bad photos with it on, and good photos with it off. Whether it has incredible amounts of veiling glare, or whether it's overexposing, or if the lens CPU is somehow turning on "make my photos look awful" mode in the camera, who cares?

The lens is toast. Sorry.


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## 480sparky (Jul 25, 2012)

amolitor said:


> 480sparky said:
> 
> 
> > Which does.... what, exactly?
> ...



Wow.  You need special software in order to see what's plainly visible in a 'normal' histogram?

So, if I take a photo of a sheet of white paper, in broad daylight, ISO 100, f/16, 1/100sec, your fancy-smanchy logarithmic histogram system is gonna tell me it's 'violently overexposed' when all the data is between 220 and 250?

Is a 'high-key' photo also 'violently overexposed' as well?


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## amolitor (Jul 25, 2012)

I'm done here, sparky. You're not reading what I'm writing, you're responding to what you think I'm saying. That's ok, but I'm not gonna play any more.

OP: Your lens is busted.


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## 480sparky (Jul 25, 2012)

amolitor said:


> I'm done here, sparky. You're not reading what I'm writing, you're responding to what you think I'm saying. That's ok, but I'm not gonna play any more.
> 
> OP: Your lens is busted.




I'm reading every word you're writing.  'Cept what you're writing doesn't make sense.  And you don't seem to WANT it to, nor even answer a simple question.

Just because there's nothing in the histo below, say, 70, does not automatically mean the image is 'violently overexposed'.

If you don't want to engage in a meaningful dialogue, hey, that's up to you.


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## enzodm (Jul 25, 2012)

And by the way, there is also the ETTR method.


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## 480sparky (Jul 25, 2012)

enzodm said:


> And by the way, there is also the ETTR method.



When you're shooting in Auto, with no exposure bias, I doubt that's a technique the OP has picked up on yet.


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## enzodm (Jul 25, 2012)

480sparky said:


> enzodm said:
> 
> 
> > And by the way, there is also the ETTR method.
> ...



I agree. It was a comment for amolitor, that does not like histograms aligned to the right. 
My  guess for #2 is that it was actually underexposed, with post brightness increase.


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## owura (Jul 26, 2012)

Thanks guys for your suggestions. I must reiterate that I am a beginner, hence, I do not know most of the technicalities involved in photography. I am going to try your suggestions and let you know if they make any difference. Thanks much.


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