Milky Way 7 panel panorama REPRO

[iceman (Mike)]

I use Topaz De-Noise - great noise reduction plugin.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

That's heaps better and the portrait orientation looks best to me, the bottom foreground grounds the viewer IMO

Mike

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by Adelastro1

Much better Greg. I can't decide whether I like the landscape or portrait better though. Both have pluses.





Thanks Colin, I'll try no NR in camera. I had High ISO NR set to high. It was also a quick processing in PS6 and could have done better. I'll take a look at Neat Image - I've used a trial of Noise Ninja once which seemed ok, but noise profiles sound interesting and worth a look.

What settings did you use Greg? Any NR in camera? I'm finding 20sec a good exposure length to reduce star movement.

14mm F2.8, 30 seconds, ISO6400 ICNR on, no high ISO NR.

What's the concern about ICNR? Its just a dark subtract.

Greg.

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by iceman

I use Topaz De-Noise - great noise reduction plugin.

I sometimes use Noise Ninja which is very good. Best is Noel Carboni deep space noise reduction or none at all.

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

That's heaps better and the portrait orientation looks best to me, the bottom foreground grounds the viewer IMO

Mike

Thanks Mike. Yes I tend to agree with you there portrait is better.

Greg.

[StephenM (Stephen)]

Great work with the repro Greg! I prefer the portrait version myself.

Cheers,
Stephen

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by StephenM

Great work with the repro Greg! I prefer the portrait version myself.

Cheers,
Stephen

Thanks Stephen.

Yes I think that is the better orientation as well.

Greg.

[colinmlegg (Colin)]

Sorry, actually meant high iso NR. Out of interest re. ICNR on the the d800e, can you take another shot while the camera's processing the dark frame?

Originally Posted by gregbradley

14mm F2.8, 30 seconds, ISO6400 ICNR on, no high ISO NR.

What's the concern about ICNR? Its just a dark subtract.

Greg.

[Adelastro1 (Wayne England)]

No. I just tried it and it only allows metering and focussing, which makes sense as the sensor needs to record the dark frame with the shutter closed, otherwise it wouldn't be a dark frame. The display flashes 'job nr' until the dark frame has been completed.

I took a 30sec frame with ICNR off at 6400 with lens cap on and also covered the lens with a cloth, and there was quite a lot of purple glow and bands. I turned on the ICNR and did the same exposure (plus the automatic dark) and there was almost no glow. So it looks like I'll need to do either manual darks each shoot, or turn on the annoying ICNR that effectively doubles exposure times or fix in post processing at hose ISO levels!

Originally Posted by colinmlegg

Sorry, actually meant high iso NR. Out of interest re. ICNR on the the d800e, can you take another shot while the camera's processing the dark frame?

[colinmlegg (Colin)]

Cheers mate. That's what I would have expected re. dark frame needing to be created when the shutter is closed -- the bizarre thing is that the Canon 5D2 allows you to take 4 shots while processing dark frames from the previous 3. Anyone know how it does this?

What about 3200? How does that look? You should be able to clean it up nicely in post. You won't want ICNR on if you try timelapse - the gap adds a noticeable jerkiness to the star movement.

Originally Posted by Adelastro1

No. I just tried it and it only allows metering and focussing, which makes sense as the sensor needs to record the dark frame with the shutter closed, otherwise it wouldn't be a dark frame. The display flashes 'job nr' until the dark frame has been completed.

I took a 30sec frame with ICNR off at 6400 with lens cap on and also covered the lens with a cloth, and there was quite a lot of purple glow and bands. I turned on the ICNR and did the same exposure (plus the automatic dark) and there was almost no glow. So it looks like I'll need to do either manual darks each shoot, or turn on the annoying ICNR that effectively doubles exposure times or fix in post processing at hose ISO levels!

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by colinmlegg

Cheers mate. That's what I would have expected re. dark frame needing to be created when the shutter is closed -- the bizarre thing is that the Canon 5D2 allows you to take 4 shots while processing dark frames from the previous 3. Anyone know how it does this?

What about 3200? How does that look? You should be able to clean it up nicely in post. You won't want ICNR on if you try timelapse - the gap adds a noticeable jerkiness to the star movement.

High ISO noise reduction will be some sort of blurring processing and likely to damage the fainter stars so yes I agree you don't want that.

My first DSLR was a Nikon D70 and it had bad amp glow so I used ICNR all the time. There was a lot of discussion back then about Nikons "RAW" file format NEF. That it applied a fine blur to reduce noise even though it was RAW and the work around was to take an image, and turn the camera off during after an ICNR as I recall. The camera did an emergency save and did not apply that blur.

That's a handy feature of the 5D2 allowing more shots whilst doing ICNR.

Library darks are handy and speed things up. But really when we are talking about 20 minutes of shooting its not a big deal. I am used to multi hour CCD imaging.

I'll have to check out high ISO amp glow. Wayne, have you done any testing of amp glow at various ISO's? I believe digital gain kicks in at about ISO6400 so perhaps the glow is more noticeable then.

I did not notice amp glow in my time lapse which had no ICNR and used 30 seconds ISO6400.

Greg.

[Adelastro1 (Wayne England)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

I'll have to check out high ISO amp glow. Wayne, have you done any testing of amp glow at various ISO's? I believe digital gain kicks in at about ISO6400 so perhaps the glow is more noticeable then.

I did not notice amp glow in my time lapse which had no ICNR and used 30 seconds ISO6400.

Greg.

Yes I have, well actually on Alex Cherney's request. He's putting together a comparison between various Nikon bodies which he will post soon no doubt (I need to resend my darks to him as a check!).
When I compare one dark to the next I can just see it at 3200, it's noticeable at 6400 and very evident at 12800. At 6400 it's not something that you would necessarily notice in an image because of everything else being recorded in the image, except maybe for a slight magenta look to it perhaps.
Alex told me at the Malins that digital gain kicks in after 1250, which would seem about right if amp glow is purely due to digital gain (is it?) and the fact that I see it visually from about 3200 (I wouldn't be able to detect it with my eye and laptop screen at 1600 presumably).

And that's interesting about the 5D Colin. I wonder how that works too!