The PIT's got himself a new toy

[az]

Most filters work well on digicams

AZ

[The PIT]

Shooting landscapes is a place where a flash isn't much use. Suppose I could nick some floodlights.
Still you can do quite a bit in software.

[az]

With a tripod and manual exposure settings you can do beautiful stuff. Dunno how bad noise is on your camera - on mine it's pretty bad - so I don't know how long your exposures can be. Another option would be to turn up the ISO.. though that introduces much noise as well.

A great app for removing noise is NeatImage, which can remove much noise without blurring the photo or losing too many details.

AZ

[VJ]

A way to bring down the noise at longer exposures is the method of dark-frame subtraction

http://www.dpreview.com/learn/Glossary/Digital_Imaging/Noise_Reduction_01.htm

(some camera's, e.g. Nikon D100, do this in hardware, at the expense of longer write-times) The effect is truly amazing.

It is vital that you take the dark-frame at the same time, as many of those noise-pixels vary in position (has to do with temperatures, ...).


Jörg

[az]

Yes, DFS is done by many cameras for longer exposures, but this only fixes hot pixels - there is still random noise in the image (unless you use a D60), and NeatImage is quite good at removing it

AZ

[VJ]

Originally posted by az
Yes, DFS is done by many cameras for longer exposures, but this only fixes hot pixels - there is still random noise in the image (unless you use a D60), and NeatImage is quite good at removing it

Nope, no D60... D100 (hey, and that is a full 40 D's better!).
Yes, you are right about the noise; allthough I feel that random noise isn't very bad on my camera (have tried 30s exposures and high ISO (6400) values). Of course, the noise is there, but it is just less obvious than the hot pixels (bright blue/red spots) all over the image.

The "danger" with NeatImage is that you can clean up the image so well, it starts to look artificially. But it is a great tool, won't argue with that.


Jörg

[The PIT]

Now we're getting to technical.
As for defects in the picture I've got a good rule of thumb for that. Does Joe bloggs notice when they look. If not theres nothing to worry about.
Again you can mess around in the software to correct this if the nead arises.

[az]

Just wanted to tell you that there is no better software for noise reduction than NeatImage

AZ

[The PIT]

Okay how about this then.

The pictures I've taken haven't as much noise as the examples on there website. see the link provided by Az

[Nowhere]

hmmm...will some english native speaker help me figure out what PIT has just said?

[Fat Tone]

Originally posted by Nowhere
hmmm...will some english native speaker help me figure out what PIT has just said?

I think he meant to say:

"Okay, how about this then?:

The pictures that I have taken do not have as much noise as the examples on the website in the link provided by Az."

[Nowhere]

nah...edited part about me

[The PIT]

Just been out this morning and used it in manual mode. It does seem to get the balance better than shooting in auto "lazy" mode. I didn't have to adjust the images so much afterwards. Rain stopped play before I could experiment a bit more.