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Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

Photo Of The Day

This is my photo of the day, took this in the Mojave Desert. For some reason my pictures get grainy after I upload them, I don't know how to stop it. They are fine before I upload them.

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Edward Fielding

9 Years Ago

How big is the original?

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

About the size of a 14 inch computer screen, and I see no grain/noise.

 

Murray Bloom

9 Years Ago

Brandon, the sky is quite grainy, but I'd be more concerned by the U-shaped motion blur and general lack of sharpness.

 

Heather Applegate

9 Years Ago

Brandon - when asked about original size, we talk in pixel dimensions.
What are the pixel dimensions straight out of camera? If you can't figure it out, just google the camera type you have or look at the manual and you can figure it out.

Good sturdy tripod is your friend. You can fix noise to a degree, but motion blur like this is a lost cause.

 

Ton Dias

9 Years Ago

Very nice picture!

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

5,184 x 3,456 are the pixels, i don't see the motion blur but the noise is bothering me.

 

Michelle Calkins

9 Years Ago

I think you can see that the stars are u-shaped due to movement during the time exposure.

 

SharaLee Art

9 Years Ago

Night exposures are always going to have noise. What editing software do you use? You should be able to omit most of the graininess. Using a tripod is good, but also invest in a remote shutter release.

 

Loree Johnson

9 Years Ago

In addition to a good sturdy tripod, using a remote shutter release, or the delay timer of the camera can help with the movement. With long exposures, even the slightest movement will cause blur. Also, night shots will usually have some noise, whether due to the high ISO or the above mentioned long exposure. Noise reduction in camera or with software can help, but it's a fine line to walk between reducing noise and obliterating detail. If you have a somewhat blurry image to begin with, noise reduction will only make it look worse.

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

shoot in raw, not jpg, shoot at a low iso, that one is pretty high. some of that noise is compression issues. save it at the best (highest) settings you can. you want it as lossless as possible. what i'm seeing on my screen are very fine blocks. telling me you compressed it too much.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

I did shoot raw

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

i'm thinking it's how you saved it, was it the highest setting? or was it a save for web or something really low? because i'm seeing blocks on that image. the noise has a pattern to it. it may also depend what you used to edit the raw with, photoshop does a good job cleaning out noise.

however its best though to shoot at a lower iso next time, or have a camera that can handle higher noise.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

Just trust me the photos are perfectly fine before I upload them.

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

i can't really trust. the site won't hurt the image all that much. i see fine blocks on my screen. the noise forms a pattern like that. i can't tell if your screen is just too low in resolution, or your using a phone or a laptop not designed for graphics. or the settings for color are different in photoshop or whatever your using vs the colorspace in your browser. like it's brighter here so you see it better. i can't tell you.

i can only judge what i see, i see iso noise and compression issues. i suggest to edit it again, save it at the highest best setting you can and upload it again and see what happens.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Thomas Zimmerman

9 Years Ago

If you are viewing it at 14", you are not NEAR viewing it at 100%. When you click on the preview here on FAA, its showing you the true 100% preview.

Bottom line, the noise is there in the original file as well, zoom in to 100% you will see it.

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

Ok I edited it again and made it sharper and saved it at highest quality and it 100% decreases in quality. There is some grain in the original but not as much after I upload it, and I full screened it to make sure.

 

Murray Bloom

9 Years Ago

It's now super grainy and the motion blur is still there. I think it's going the wrong way. If you have PS, try despeckling the original image.

 

Thomas Zimmerman

9 Years Ago

When you sharpen an image, you sharpen the noise....that is what caused the issues.

 

Mark Blauhoefer

9 Years Ago

To take an image like that effectively you need to check a few things.

It's night, low light, meaning there's less light entering the lens than day time, so longer exposures mean the camera has to be dead still. You needn't lug a tripod around, just a small bean bag for support.

Turn off the image stabilization, focus, then ensure mirror lock up.

If you don't have a remote control then set the self-timer to a few seconds.

Also you're best to bracket because at low light levels most cameras guess the exposure incorrectly.

The lowest native ISO, not a forced 50.

You still want some depth of field so choose an aperture of f 8 or f 11.

You save in RAW, or RAW + JPG, to be able to check the images.


And then you should have produced an image that has the lowest noise, no motion blur, be perfectly exposed, and be in perfect focus.

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

don't sharpen it. and if you do - never use the SHARPEN tool. that will be a sure way for this to never print. you have too much noise. you have to shoot on a low iso, the lower the better. i'm still not thinking you zoomed to a 100% in your computer. keep in mind this site already adds a sharpening to the uploads and makes it a touch brighter. look up highpass sharpening, or a deconvolution sharpening program (i think focus magic is one of those). or learn to use unsharp mask. however you need to control the noise first, and a noise remover won't help, since you have stars in there. you'll have to reshoot this at the lowest iso.

its a little pricey and i have yet to try it but you can get trigger trap. it's a single wire that you buy and free software, that allows you to do long exposures on the phone. its like a fancy bulb mode. you'll need a phone holder though, the wire is rather short and you don't want the screen near the lens.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Edward Fielding

9 Years Ago

Have you been able to take a quality photograph in optimal light? You might want to start there. Learn to walk before you run as they say.

 

Joseph C Hinson

9 Years Ago

His avatar is a great photo. He should try to recapture what he did there.

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

even in that shot, it's very small. my guess is, it has the same amount of noise, but it's half the size or less.

following ed's suggestion - shoot during the day until you master that. then move on to night shots. night images are harder to get, take more know how. i'd say in a few years try night shots until you get a good handling on photography in general.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

ok

 

Liz Masoner

9 Years Ago

Few questions:

1. Are you resizing the photo before saving?

2. What program are you using for editing?

3. What steps are you taking to save before uploading?

 

Abbie Shores

9 Years Ago

You know, people pay a fortune for lessons like this. Thank you everyone for the invaluable advice that not only Brandon is getting! How refreshing this site can be :)

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

yep, just another day at fine art... only there is no recess. or there is too much recess.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

Liz,

1. No i'm not re-sizing

2. I am using ViewNX 2

3. I just save it and upload it

 

Liz Masoner

9 Years Ago

Ok, that narrows it down a bit.

When you save it, HOW are you saving it? When you convert the file to finish the save process are what settings are you using? Are you using highest quality setting or compressing it a bit or changing any of the other settings?

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

I don't know I just click save.

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

usually a box pops up and it will ask what compression level you want. in photoshop it's a level 1-12. and others will say lossless or something like that. yours might be saving it for web use. how large is this photo in megs? i would get gimp, or try to find a photoshop free version, i'm betting came with the camera. proprietary software that comes with the camera usually isn't that good. it's more of a viewer of files than a saver of files.

https://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Products/Product/Imaging-Software/ViewNX-2.html#tab-ProductDetail-ProductTabs-RatingsReviews that software has a rather poor rating.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

http://nps.nikonimaging.com/technical_solutions/viewnx2_reference_manual/pdf/ViewNX2_RM_En_A4_01.pdf

page 33, raw converter, second slider down is your compression. slide that to the highest level.

however this won't fix the noise. you have to do that by reshooting at a lower iso. if you try cleaning this, all the stars will go as well.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Edward Fielding

9 Years Ago

What are you a vampire? Get out in the sun and start shooting.

 

Liz Masoner

9 Years Ago

Mike pointed you to a good resource for NX2. However, while that won't fix noise it WILL fix compression that makes noise worse and sometimes masquerades as noise. I see on your profile it is a new camera to you as well. If you'd like friendly tips and faster help (I don't check FAA messages every day usually) check out https://www.facebook.com/groups/thephotonuts/ on Facebook. That is what I use as a discussion forum for my photography teaching. Best of luck and NEVER stop shooting. :)

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

Thanks for your help! and I see you can also save as TIFF, what is that?

 

Liz Masoner

9 Years Ago

TIFF is another image format protocol. It stands for Tagged Image File Format and is actually more powerful than Jpeg or PNG in a lot of ways. Just fewer sites support TIFF and instead rely on Jpeg or PNG. Every format has benefits and downsides.

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

Ok thanks

 

Mark Blauhoefer

9 Years Ago

TIFF gives you no image degradation, where jpg and png are both lossy even at no compression, if initially undetectably.

This is to say if you save a jpg and work on the noise a bit, then save it again it will have degraded a little. Save it four times, eight times, twenty times and each time it will be a bit shabbier than the last, until it's so shabby that all detail is lost.

TIFF you can save a million times and it will still be as pristine as it was the day it was taken.

Oversaving jpgs is sort of like having two old cassette recorders and copying one recording to another, back and forth, and keeping on copying copying copying until the hiss is so obstructive all you can hear is noise.

But because you're dealing with digital the detail loss is considerably slighter than an analog system (but still there).

Saving a TIFF is like making a new recording from the digital master recording each time, and only when you've finished all the editing do you save as a jpg

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

however a tiff format will not fix iso noise and it's quite huge. it has no compression, neither does png. tiff supports layers though.

still the only way to fix it, is to reshoot it.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Mark Blauhoefer

9 Years Ago

Research has shown that yes PNG does indeed support lossless compression (I've never used it)

Actually there are other ways, but they're time consuming. I've done similar sort of night photos over a lake, which was okay for a handheld shot but wobbly as a jelly and noisier than a gaggle of geese magnified.

I replaced the sky with a gradient and added artificial stars, and some reflected squiggles in the water. A fair few breeze-blurry leaves, but selected the range to exclude the blurry edges. Copied that and pasted into a new image and resized it just enough to cover the blur in the original. Blurred the edges a tad because of jaggies. Reselected it and pasted it back in.

It worked out okay, a bit extreme maybe, a lot of trial and error, but my holiday was over for that year and I had no other recourse

 

Edward Fielding

9 Years Ago

How about we just stick to the basics? Take a photo in broad day light and see if you have any issues.

 

Jennifer White

9 Years Ago

When you sharpened it, you add so much more noise to it. You Rarely ever want to use sharpen like Mike Said. If anything you want to reduce the noise. I don't know anything about the program you're using. Noise Reduction in Lightroom (just not to high or it'll soften the photo) along with other combinations works well. You can try a 30 day free trail on both Lightroom and Photoshop. If you like it, you can pay $10 per month to use them (at least that's what it was a few months ago - may have changed). What ISO did you use? When I do night shots, I don't go higher than 400. Every camera is different. Some camera's have a lot of noise even at 200 ISO. And make sure you check your save settings. Save it as the same setting as the camera at 100% quality.

Edward is right, you really need to practice with daylight photos. Night shots are hard to master and require a lot of practice. I love taking night shots, and have several good moon photographs, but I don't think they are high enough quality to post on FAA compared to some of the others on here.

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

I find daytime shots harder to get than night shots in my opinion.

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

how is that possible? the iso is low, the speed is high, the image should be clearer. or are you talking finding a picture to take?

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Edward Fielding

9 Years Ago

I knew it! Vampire! '-)

Star shots are certainly tougher to get during the day.

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

Let me re-word, it my ideas for photos are always night shots, I can never think of any during the day.

 

Edward Fielding

9 Years Ago

Can't you manage a test shot during the day to see if your camera and work flow is sufficient? Take a picture of your car, house, a stop sign, your dog,
flowers -- something to see if you still get grainy pics.

 

Kevin OConnell

9 Years Ago

No matter what you may think, its a learning process like anything else. If you want to get good at something, you have to put the time in to learn all aspects of it. Not to be mean, but you need to start with the basics. Trial and error works once you have knowledge of a profession, not going to help if you dont understand why.

 

John Turner

9 Years Ago

Brandon, you could try working inside in a dark room to hone you low light shots. I have done this for a long time for practicing low light and long exposure shots. It has also been a way to learn how to light paint on a small scale. This one is taken in a dark studio (garage) with long exposure, low iso, and using light to paint the illuminated areas.
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/game-time-john-turner.html

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

I have tested day time shots, they still lose quality when I upload them, look at my red ginger flower.

 

Jennifer White

9 Years Ago

I didn't see much noise in the Ginger Flower. It has to be your editing program or the way you are saving them. Have you researched information about your program on youtube? Again, I suggest trying the 30 day free trial of Lightroom and Photoshop just so you can at least see the difference. The only other thing, would be your camera. Check all your camera settings. I don't know anything about what you have, but on most there's a noise reduction. Make sure it's photographing at the highest setting possible. You said you were shooting Raw, that makes me believe even more its the editing program. Try shooting the same image in both Raw and then one in JPEG and see if there's a difference in editing quality.

If you have a hard time in daylight, you need to practice composition. There are always things out there to photograph. Find a nice or older car and take closeup photos of parts. There's always birds around. Go to a pond and practice on some ducks/geese, etc. Open your eyes and you'll learn to get the photographers eye. Look at something, then look at it at different angles. Get down on the ground and shoot ground level. Get up high.... etc. Just keep practicing.

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

Thanks for the ideas, and I did look up youtube videos about my software.

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

was that flower taken with a different camera? test day time shots with the current camera. still, learn how to frame during the day, the amount of extra work needed for night time shots is usually beyond a beginner.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Murray Bloom

9 Years Ago

This conversation seems a bit surreal to me.

Just sayin'

 

From memory it was stated this flower shot was taken using a GoPro

 

David Letts

9 Years Ago

I believe in being nice and helpful up to a certain point. But come on. He seems to be leading everyone on ---- Just saying-----

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

that's what i remember as well, the flower was shot with that thing and not the current one. so we can't use it as a comparison. not to mention any noise would be hidden in the plant and most of it is colorless.

you shouldn't need youtube for that program, seems simple enough to use.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

Ya I used the GoPro Hero 3 to take that picture, in Hawaii. I only watched 1 video on that software.

 

Brandon, just go take a day time shot of anything with the settings everyone has advised. Download a free 30 day trial of Lightroom and process where necessary.

Lots of free advice is being given to you and I am seeing none of it being acted on.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Follow the advice or you may receive less in future.

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago



here this video will help you alot, his accent is a little thick, but he covers the exact issue your having in the exact area you took it in, but you still need lightroom and topaz denoise to help. i didn't view the entire video, it's 20min mostly because i have few stars to view, so i don't care that much.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

Thanks for the video. It helps a lot, I will download the trial when I have a milky way shot to edit.

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

Anyone know a good lens for daytime shots?

 

Edward Fielding

9 Years Ago

Oh boy. Every lens is designed to work in daylight (as well as night time).

Here is another secret. Cameras also work in the vertical position as well as horizontal.

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

any lens is fine for day time.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

but really.... seriously?


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Brandon Nikolajevic

9 Years Ago

Ok thanks. I know every lens works in the day time its just for up close images of birds I can get far away.

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

then that's what you should have said. because those are special lenses, and to be honest i don't recommend anything until you understand how to use the camera, software and to be able to shoot during the day. you can get a close up with almost any lens a special lens will run you thousands of dollars - tele or macro. a good telephoto prime can easily cost you $3000 or more. unless you specialize, master what you have right now and then get into the other stuff. because along with the lens, you'll need a tripod, a tripod head to go with the lens (and how far away determines other factors like what kind of head you get), and a flash with extender. we are talking big money. depending what you want. for a few birds, just get closer.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

This discussion is closed.