Night from above the lights.

[bigdawg]

The first one was shot with a Takumar -A Zoom lens at 28mm f/3.5 1/60 sec ISO1600. Here is the un retouched photo. I in the first one I posted used Auto levels and auto contrast and that is just about all. The banding is from using the High ISO.

First a un retouched version. Forget the 200mm of the EXIF as I had forgotten to change it from a previous lens. Would have been worse maybe if I had moved it. No tripod was allowed and the Aperture was not a fast one.

Dawg

[bigdawg]

In this one I used Neat Image to get rid of the banding and noise.

Dawg

[bigdawg]

In this one I used Neat Image and adjusted the levels and contrast manually.

Dawg

[vIZnquest]

FWIW,

These under the conditions captured are better than nothing at all. The use of neat image really smeared most of the shots. Loss of detail to reduce the noise is almost a "catch 22" so to speak.

Shot number 5 is the best of the bunch.

[bigdawg]

In this one I used DCE Tools Auto Enhance Plugin for Abobe Photoshop. Then selecting only the dark areas I used Neat image to remove most of the banding and noise.

Dawg

[bigdawg]

No. 5 had the most light available thus a better photo.

[bigdawg]

Same photo as above but added +10 contrast and +7 saturation.

Dawg

[mtngal]

Thanks for the explanation about what you did to the picture - it rather tracks what my experience has been. The banding isn't particularly noticeable if you don't try to push underexposed 1600 ISO pictures - the minute you do, it comes up. I also don't see it as well with my work monitor, the better one, but it's darker than it should be and I can't adjust it any more.

[bigdawg]

mtngal wrote:

Thanks for the explanation about what you did to the picture - it rather tracks what my experience has been. The banding isn't particularly noticeable if you don't try to push underexposed 1600 ISO pictures - the minute you do, it comes up. I also don't see it as well with my work monitor, the better one, but it's darker than it should be and I can't adjust it any more.

I very seldom venture into the 1600 territory and have this come up all the time...Also I get in a hurry to post a photo sometimes and use the auto level and auto contrast in PS 7.0. This is faster but almost never delivers the approximation to what I see with the naked eye. The last one other than the bit of camera shake blur is very close to what was actually there. I need a faster wide angle lens to keep from having to do these manipulations to recover a photo to what I see. Also a noise reducing program like Neat Image helps but it also can cause more blurring or an increase in the blurring already there.

Question from the other wide angle lens owners out there...Which one to buy and why!!!

Dawg

[mtngal]

The only fast wide angle I have is the M 24mm 2.8. It's a lens I disliked on a film camera because it had too much distortion for my taste, and isn't quite wide enough to be a true fisheye. It's much better with a dSLR - there's still some barreling, but not that bad and CS2's lens correction tool takes care of it easily. Optically it's quite sharp and has good contrast, and (when you can find it) usually priced reasonably. There are probably other, better options out there but I don't have experience with them.