I was out yesterday morning photographing movie theaters. I was looking at contrasts between old, neighborhood locations (yes, a few are left) and the new maga-plix creations. At one, no longer a theater but it's still obvious what it once was, a man asked me what I was doing and then offered, "Would you like to come inside? It's beautiful."

You bet, of course I would. I had no idea I would get inside one: no tripod, no flash and the wrong lens. I took the opportunity and did the best I could. I cranked the ISO up, way up, noise be damned, and selected the slowest shutter I thought I could hold steady.

ParadiseTheater-before.jpg (112.29 KiB) Viewed 1024 times

I processed the Raw image three times and then stacked the images, layers, in one file. Masks were used to block out parts of each layer. The merged result then required some pretty heroic noise reduction efforts.



The Paradise Theater in West Allis, Wisconsin, was built in 1927 in the ornate "palace style" of the day. It is now the home of a charismatic church of some sort. It would have been sharper with a tripod, better with my much faster 50mm lens and brighter with fill flash -- my camera bag was 2 blocks away locked in the trunk of my car

Here's one more -- only two processes in ACR for this one. For some reason, much more noise in this one. I had to run NeatImage twice on it and it's still not very good.

ParadiseTheater-2.jpg (130.15 KiB) Viewed 1017 times

I don't know anything at all about Lightroom. Maybe something like this is easy with that product?

Rusty

Very convincing, Rusty.
This proves that you can get good results in bad lighting conditions, with ACR, multiple ACR editing, masking... and a lot of work!
I was tempted by the Sigma 30mm f1.4... but to tell the truth, the opportunities to use it are scarce for me!

Wow, you did a good job with this, Rusty. Some old theaters are truly magnificent. When my son lived in Richmond, VA we went to a movie theater there that has been restored to it's former glory. It was just breathtaking. It's still used as a movie theater to show old movies. There's even a person who plays the organ during intermission.

Anita

Oh, Wow, Anita, do you bring back memories.

I forgot all about the organ. We had one of those "grand palaces" in my hometown of Birmingham. Silent films were, of course long gone (I ain't that old), but in the 1950s a man would come out and play the organ during the intermission (people were encouraged to go and spend more money at the concession stand). We even had sing-alongs -- they put the words up on the screen and the "bouncing ball" showed where you were supposed to be.

Oh Yeah, those were simpler times. Can you imagine trying, today, to get a bunch of teenagers to follow the bouncing ball and sing songs in a movie theater?

Good stuff,

Rusty