Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => Landscape Showcase => Topic started by: KMRennie on April 02, 2018, 07:30:12 pm
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Sep 2014 looking NW from the Chamonix (France) campsite well after sunset ISO 200 f10 27s exposure. I don't know why this is as noisy as it is although it was very dark. Forgetting the noise and lack of sharpness the tripod may not have been as stable as it should have been there is something otherworldly about this image. Oh to have my present camera and tripod and conditions like these. Comments Ken
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Very nice
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Otherworldly indeed! Beautiful!
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Actually looks good to me.
Kent in SD
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You sure know how to get the weather to do your bidding, Ken.
Nice!
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Wonderful.
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The "aiguilles" emerge from the clouds and the play between light and shadows makes this photo even more mysterious.
Incidentally, the Aiguilles Rouges massif made the front pages this last week-end. A well known doctor and mountain guide lost his life, swept away by an avalanche (https://www.thelocal.fr/20180402/renowned-mountain-doctor-killed-in-french-avalanche).
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Fantastic light.
Thierry
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Grand and mysterious. Nice.
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very fine, I like it.
sandro
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Grand and mysterious. Nice.
+1
plus a bit of the Chinese aesthetic
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Beautiful Ken and quite a pleasant and a much needed variation on the 'long exposure' genre of photography we often see :)
Don't know if you are a PS user, but if you are, then what I sometimes do to selectively reduce the noise in such images and especially in the sky area where the noise can often be at its greatest, yet at the same time keep as much detail as I possible can within the edges of the image, is to duplicate the background layer twice (Ctrl+J twice), then on the top layer use the [filter], [noise] and [despeckle] menu option and perhaps even use it more than once depending how noisy the image actually is. Then hide that layer, then in the second layer down, go to [filter], [other] and [High Pass] and set the slider until you can clearly see all the edges within the image. Then press Ctrl+U to desaturate that high pass layer and then go into levels with Ctrl+L and using the sliders (aggressively) move them around until you end up with what looks like a completely black and white line drawing and which we are now going to invert with Ctrl+shift+I and then use as a mask. Then select and copy all of this black and white layer with Ctrl+A, then Ctrl+C and then delete the layer. Now go to the despeckled layer and create a new white mask, then hold down Alt and click on the mask and then type Ctrl+V, then Alt click the mask again and so you should now have a mask that protects the sharpness of all the edges in your image, but at the same time allows all the noise reducing effect of the despeckle filter to work on the none edged parts of the image. If you then zoom into to 100%, you will probably find that you also have to blur this mask slightly to remove any obvious delineation lines between the light and dark areas of the mask, but with a little practice and some tweaking, you can usually achieve quite a good and well targetted noise reducing effect within the image and without any great loss to the sharpness detail to all of your edges.
Of course you could try other Noise reducing filters, but I find they tend to soften all of the image a little too much for my liking - but anyway, you probably don't use PS very much or at all and so this will probably not be something that is of use to you ;)
Dave
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Thanks Dave I never thought of using high pass to find the edges and use this as a mask. I am working on the image at the present time and have managed to reduce the noise quite a bit but will keep working on it. The colour temperature seems to make a big difference to not only the look of the image but also the noise and I seem to remember something about more noise in the blue channel so will investigate that and get back. Ken
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Thanks Dave I never thought of using high pass to find the edges and use this as a mask. I am working on the image at the present time and have managed to reduce the noise quite a bit but will keep working on it. The colour temperature seems to make a big difference to not only the look of the image but also the noise and I seem to remember something about more noise in the blue channel so will investigate that and get back. Ken
Ah, so you do dabble with PS?
Yes you can actually apply noise reduction on a per channel basis quite effectively using the channels palette?
But I would certainly backup your original version of this image, or work on a duplicate file or at least a duplicate layer, before you start trying to smooth out individual channel etc, but yes you can do a whole lot of good things with the individual RGB colour channels, as well as with CMYK and Lab channels etc.
Dave
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This is another shot taken in the same location. ISO 200, f7.1, 30s exposure it was very dark. Now that I know that this can happen in the mountains I will try it some more even if it is almost impossible to see the composition until after the shot has been taken. I suppose racking the ISO tight up and live view with the lens wide open may work for composition. Something new to learn. Ken
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Original shot redone with emphasis on noise reduction. This is a slightly different crop with less sky. Ken
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I had missed this post. Beautiful image, and I like your revised version more.
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Original shot redone with emphasis on noise reduction. This is a slightly different crop with less sky. Ken
Mmm, very moody :)
Dave
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This is another shot taken in the same location. ISO 200, f7.1, 30s exposure it was very dark. Now that I know that this can happen in the mountains I will try it some more even if it is almost impossible to see the composition until after the shot has been taken. I suppose racking the ISO tight up and live view with the lens wide open may work for composition. Something new to learn. Ken
Hi Ken, I am not trying to come across as Mr Know-it-all or anything, but I used to have the same problem with my old Canon and then with the Sony, which leads me to suspect that you have your camera's screen set to not emulate exposure, or however they describe it for your camera, so just turn it to whatever the opposite setting is and the screen should then light up the view for you nice and bright and allow you to easily choose and then set your focus point accurately. The screen will probably go all noisey as it tries to increase the light shown within it for dark scenes such as these, as there isn't much light in it, but this will have absolutely no effect on your final image. Your built in light meter on the screen will still read out for the correct exposure though and then after taking the shot, you can then check your histogram for the correct exposure afterwards. ;)
Dave
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Hi Ken -- I really like #1 and #2. I think #3 is a bit too cramped...
Cheers!
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I like #2 a lot. The updated version of #1 is better for me. Following Guido's comment, I think that the cropped top of the frame shifts the center of interest toward teh lower aiguilles and I don't think that it's too cramped but that's just my opinion…
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I like #2 a lot. The updated version of #1 is better for me. Following Guido's comment, I think that the cropped top of the frame shifts the center of interest toward teh lower aiguilles and I don't think that it's too cramped but that's just my opinion…
It has been demonstrated I like more breathing room in my images... ;)
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Thanks everyone for the comments especially Dave I will try this the next time I am somewhere really dark. My Fuji XE1 is a bit odd in that when it is really dark it only gives you an exposure preview when you half press the shutter and even then it doesn't really work when it is this dark. I was standing in a lit campsite so my eyes didn't get the chance to acquire night vision. My Nikon D810 does give a much better live view image although it is still very noisy. Ken