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01/22/2011 07:01:18 PM · #1 |
Hi Everyone,
I am new to the forum and to photography. This is my first post. And I was hoping you all could provide me some advice.
I have a Canon 500d body and im trying to shoot night / evening shots with my kit lens (EF-S 18-55mm)
I feel that there seems to be a lot of noise in my picture, this is especially evident when viewing the pictures in lightroom.
I would love to be able to print the photos at a2 or even larger.
I have a jpg, which I have edited to remove as much noise as possible using colour and luminance noise reduction. I have not tried to reduce noise in each channel seperately as of yet.
I shot the image with the following settings
iso 100, 18mm, f/20, 30 sec exposure.
img.photobucket.com/albums/v122/bi$hop/74858120.jpg
I would love to hear any tips or suggestions on how I can reduce the noise in my photos.
cheers
Jules
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01/22/2011 07:27:55 PM · #2 |
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01/22/2011 07:28:30 PM · #3 |
| You should try a larger aperture to lower your exposure time. f8 will probably be fine to keep everything in focus at that distance. Be sure to use mirror lockup as well. |
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01/22/2011 09:16:46 PM · #4 |
For a crop sensor with that shutter speed, noise isn't all that bad in your photo. I do see some left in the sky, but it's not horrible. But what is not so great is the blurry effect the Lightroom noise reduction gave to the buildings. They now look out of focus.
Instead of the lightroom built in reduce noise feature, you might want to try a third party noise reduction software. I recently purchased Topaz DeNoise, and I don't know how lived without it for so long! Not only does it do a fantastic job reducing noise, but it also keeps a very high amount of detail in the shot. //www.topazlabs.com/denoise/ (there is a full featured 15 day tial)
Oh, and since you asked for any tips:
1) Your horizon is WAY off from level. This is easy to do in the field, but luckily our software today makes it simple to straighten the photo
2) You horizon is also smack in the middle of the photo. This reduces the interest of the photo, as there is no dominant feature. Because you have nice water reflection, Try cropping out almost all of the sky. I bet this will instantly add a lot of life to your photo. |
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01/22/2011 10:54:22 PM · #5 |
| Picture does look out of focus...either due to Lightroom denoise........OR you were'nt using stable tripod? |
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01/23/2011 12:26:45 AM · #6 |
Camera shake, or a little out of focus is the first thing that grabs my attention. I agree with using wider aperture, even f5.6 would be good for the scene. If you use apertures beyond f11 or f16, diffusion begins to creep into the images because of the size of the aperture being so small.
Try shooting using the self timer or remote to reduce camera shake. It helps, even with a good heavy tripod. Next time you shoot at night, try turning the camera off, look through the viewfinder at the scene, and "trigger" the shutter as you would normally do it, and you will probably see the camera shake as you are looking at the scene in the viewfinder. It helps to also learn to gently squeeze off the shot, instead of jabbing the shutter button.
For focus, be aware that especially at night, it's difficult to focus, and that most lenses will focus beyond "infinity" in order to be able to focus to infinity in all temperature conditions. Also check to make sure that the viewfinder diopter control is set right for your eye.
Last, when you are shooting at night, have a look at the first few images in the LCD, and zoom in to check and see if the fine bright details are sharp and in focus.
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01/23/2011 02:39:21 AM · #7 |
Thankyou for your input everyone.
I did have "mirror lockup" so I thought. I had the live view active, and I thought that was supposed to lock the mirror in place, I then had a 2 second timer. (I dont have a remote release cable yet.) To focus, I pressed the zoom out button on the top right of the camera until a green square appeared. (Autofocus), should I be using manual?
Thankyou for the information on the composition and the lightroom tips. I agree chopping out the sky makes a world of difference.
Unfortunately my lens doesnt have the little infinity symbol, so im not to sure where the infinity focus setting is.
The diopter appears to be right, in the fact that the symbols in the view finder appear sharp.
cheers
Jules |
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01/23/2011 09:32:14 AM · #8 |
| Not sure if the 500D has these options but turning on Long Exposure and High ISO noise reduction in camera will reduce the amount of noise reduction required in post processing. |
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01/23/2011 11:22:38 AM · #9 |
Originally posted by cpanaioti:
Not sure if the 500D has these options but turning on Long Exposure and High ISO noise reduction in camera will reduce the amount of noise reduction required in post processing. |
That's a good piece of advice, because this type of noise reduction does not degrade image quality at all. It can't deal with all the noise, only a part of it, though. The image as presented is not unacceptably noisy, but I agree that either camera motion or slight focus error is probably to blame. Noise reduction may have contributed to the look.
When focusing such a scene, use your best aperture for sharpness (f8 is always a good bet), switch to manual focus and take test shots, tweaking it until you are satisfied. Then leave it set there. If you are using a zoom lens, *do not* zoom after focusing. This can and will throw the focus off with almost any consumer-level zoom lens. |
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01/23/2011 08:53:48 PM · #10 |
Thanks for the tips everyone.
the mirror lockup has worked well (i think). I had turned off the noise reduction in the camera thinking that it may have contributed to adding more noise... i will try a few with it turned on.
I took the following shots last night. The first is a photomerge of 3 photos.
The shots were taken with the following settings
iso 100, 18mm, f9.0, 2 sec exp each
img.photobucket.com/albums/v122/bi$hop/DPChallenge/9e556edd.jpg
This one was taken with the following settings
iso 100, 18mm, f9.0, 10 sec exp
img.photobucket.com/albums/v122/bi$hop/DPChallenge/fbd7fdd2.jpg
and for some reason the images seem to look a lot sharper (more in focus), in lightroom, compared to when I export them to jpeg and publish to photobucket.
What are your settings when exporting from lightroom? Or do you just export from photoshop only?
*edit*
Large photos here...
img.photobucket.com/albums/v122/bi$hop/DPChallenge/94cf616f.jpg
img.photobucket.com/albums/v122/bi$hop/DPChallenge/30c21f07.jpg
cheers
Jules
Message edited by author 2011-01-23 22:15:44. |
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01/23/2011 08:57:29 PM · #11 |
I don't know the answer to some of your other questions -- but I second, third, and fourth the suggestion for topaz denoise. I find it truly incredible. You can try it for free for 30 days and see what you think.
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01/24/2011 10:27:53 AM · #12 |
When exporting from LR you are probably downsizing your image. Sharpening after downsizing is usually necessary so turn on sharpening in the export dialogue and set it to screen. Start with the standard setting to see how it looks. You may have to set it to low or high depending on what the first result looks like.
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