Digital misses the mark.

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Submitted By: Highgeared

Joined: Nov 10 2006

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Digital misses the mark.

Posted: April 12, 2007 - 3:52pm

Well, after several days of living ina tent and several hundred images, I fould out what my Canon 5D cant do. It cant take long exposures. First example:

The above image was shot in RAW at f4.0 @125 speed. The exposure is nearly 15 minutes long, and the amount of noise present in the photos is disapointing. I have my custom function set to reduce noise, but I dont think any kind of decent print can be made.

These last two were shot in JPEG and roughly around 8 minutes each in exposure times. While the noise is less, it's still very prominent in the photos. I used both artificial and natural light in the last two. I found that when I used more artificial light the photos turned out better with less noise.

The following nights I switched to my film camera and took a few 4 hour exposure shots during the night (waiting to get those back). Did I hit the limits of digital photography with these long exposures? Any one else have experiences to share or pointers?

Submitted By: Larry Berman

Location: Pittsburgh

Joined: Mar 7 2005

Posts:

Re: Digital misses the mark.

Posted: April 12, 2007 - 4:33pm

Don't you love experimenting and finding the limitations of your equipment. Then try and find a way to take it further. You may now want to experiment with one of the noise reduction filters, like Noise Ninja. I don't have any experience with it but have read good things about it. And there are other similar type programs you can probably test the trial versions of.

Additionally I would suspect that the differences in color between film and digital is that you're seeing color shifts from reciprocity failure.

Submitted By: dslater

Location: NH USA

Joined: Oct 9 2007

Posts:

Re: Digital misses the mark.

Posted: October 11, 2007 - 9:07am

Just a couple of thoughts. Did your 15 minute actually take 30 minutes? i.e. a 15 min exposure followed by a 15 min dark frame exposure? If not, you may want to check your noise reduction settings. If you still can't get it to take the dark frame exposure, you could take one yourself with the lens cap on, then you can subtract the dark frame from the image.
Also, I did some reading on the web. It looks to me like many people would make this long exposure by making multiple shorter exposures and then stacking the result. For example, this picture:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joereifer/35985314/in/set-72057594063233823/
was made with a 5D - it consists of 15 4 minute exposures stacked together in photoshop.

Submitted By: jtj

Joined: Oct 5 2007

Posts:

Re: Digital misses the mark.

Posted: October 16, 2007 - 2:58pm

i have been a long time film user and am shopping to go digital. Afriend has an A100 that ive tried out a few times before making my purchase decision (all my lens are minolta, so its not likely I would buy another anyway, but just wanted to see for myself first) and I noticed the same thing as you. I could have loaded my film camera up and made much longer exposures with less grain/reciprocity issues than with the digital. overall I was still happy with it, as the shots I took shorter than 1 minute (most were 15-30 sec) were equally as good as the film shots i took along side of it. the longest exposure I did was only 10 minutes with the a100, and I was also dissatisfied with the noise, and it seemed that having it set to cancel the noise (not sure what sony calls it)automatically or not made no difference on exposures over 1-2 minutes That being said, I RARELY do long exposure times (over 1 minute) and given the scenario/place you were (which looks gorgeous btw) I would do the same as you and tote my film gear with me anyway to spend countless hours snapping away in both mediums to make sure I got the shot.