On Friday 10 of June Saddleworth celebrated with the annual Whit Friday walks of witness, followed by day long band contests in each of the villages, ending in the early hours of Saturday morning, usually around 1 to 2 am. They have dozens of bands from all over the UK and from often as far afield as Australia. Bands do not pre book but just turn up at each village contest in their coaches and register on the day. it sounds chaotic but it works.

I wandered home at around 9pm in the evening, and saw a few others strolling home along the river bank,
complete with their mugs of beer.

The sun had set but the scene was lit by a still bright sky. The X 30 @iso400 (which only has a 2/3 in sensor) exposed it as if it was a normal day light shot, that is to say brightened it considerably. I added a further stop of compensation to make sure that the shadows were free of noise.

The result was a raw file that looked hopelessly overexposed when processed by the camera. while the histogram showed that all was well. with no clipping of highlights or shadows.
This resulted in a file that was easy to process in a way that reflected the scene as I had seen it.
Even after a moderate amount of cropping there is no visible noise.
It is perhaps darker than many would choose to process it, but that is intentional , and more in tune with the occasion.



The un processed file

 

There`s a big difference between the raw file and your edit Terry.
I appreciate you wanted to render the scene as you remembered it,as I would
but I think I would have opened up the shadows just a touch.

 

They I did open more, but I darkened them down again. It's just me.

 

Unrealistically bright shadows are overrated - just because the technology allows us to do it, doesn't mean we have to. The intentional use of dark shadows is an example of the artists' technique of 'chiaroscuro' (see the wikipedia page). I once spent a while in the Caravaggio room at the Uffizi gallery in Florence, and have hence seen it how it was used by a master.