[font color=\'#000000\']I'll be going out photographing some coastal landscapes by the full moon on Monday night, and I was wondering what settings you use for digital night photography.
I have a 10D and some wide angle lenses, and I'd prefer to use ISO 400 over 800, due to the noise, but for a 30" exposure at f/2.8 I find I need 800 to bring the histogram up past a third of the way across.
So is it possible to increase a RAW ISO 400 image by a stop to get the equivalent of an 800 image in brightness, but without the noise? And can you get two stops out of it (to shorten the exposure time and so cut down on stair trails), without much degradation?
I'll be testing this myself (I'm stuck with Canon's converter for the moment), but I wanted to see what your experience with this is so I'll have a good idea on where to start when I'm out there.
Also, since this plays into it, being night photography, do you really want to bring out a full histogram curve, meaning having brilliant whites, or should you keep the sky and landscape a little muted if there's no white rocks or such in the image?
Thanks.[/font]