Low light photography: What am I doing wrong?

[Mark Seychell]

Hi all,

I just purchased a phone tripod, and I thought I'd try it out over the weekend. Results are great, BUT, I always get a low of noise on the night sky and close, as you can see in the image in the link.

Why is this happening? I am using my Lumia 930, with 64ISO and 2.75 shutter speed for this particular image, of course using the tripod. Experimenting with the settings also yields no results, whatever settings I give, the result is the same...good picture and detail, but a lot of noise on the night sky.

Anything I can do to eliminate this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks!

 

[gpobernardo]

Try using a lower ISO setting; I use ISO 100 as much as I can (with my L1020) to reduce noise. You've got a tripod anyway, so the longer exposure time wouldn't be a problem. If ISO 100 is not possible (since your shutter speed is already 2.75s @ ISO641 (I'm presuming this is in auto ISO setting), then move to ISO 200, then to ISO 400.

You may also want to adjust your white balance.

Update: I misread the ISO level as ISO 641 - it is, in fact, ISO 64. See succeeding reply below (post #6).

 

[Mark Seychell]

Hi, thanks for your reply.

I'm sorry for the mix up, my ISO was already at 64, so it cannot be any lower. this is why it is concerning me

 

[TLuck Sharma]

Hi all,

I just purchased a phone tripod, and I thought I'd try it out over the weekend. Results are great, BUT, I always get a low of noise on the night sky and close, as you can see in the image in the link.

http://i.imgur.com/jrcgr9x.jpg

Why is this happening? I am using my Lumia 930, with 64ISO and 2.75 shutter speed for this particular image, of course using the tripod. Experimenting with the settings also yields no results, whatever settings I give, the result is the same...good picture and detail, but a lot of noise on the night sky.

Anything I can do to eliminate this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks!

As I can see in the picture the light is flashing too much at the corners of the architectural structures, So I think you should Set ISO at 200 and Exposure at 1.3. You can give it a shot. And do let us know how it works!

 

[TLuck Sharma]

Hi all,

I just purchased a phone tripod, and I thought I'd try it out over the weekend. Results are great, BUT, I always get a low of noise on the night sky and close, as you can see in the image in the link.

http://i.imgur.com/jrcgr9x.jpg

Why is this happening? I am using my Lumia 930, with 64ISO and 2.75 shutter speed for this particular image, of course using the tripod. Experimenting with the settings also yields no results, whatever settings I give, the result is the same...good picture and detail, but a lot of noise on the night sky.

Anything I can do to eliminate this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks!

It can also reduce the noise in night sky! And don't lower the ISO at 64. As you are saying you have a tripod then stability won't be any issue as ISO creates noise when device is not held stable so you can increase iso at 200 without compromising with picture quality. Cheers!

 

[gpobernardo]

It can also reduce the noise in night sky! And don't lower the ISO at 64. As you are saying you have a tripod then stability won't be any issue as ISO creates noise when device is not held stable so you can increase iso at 200 without compromising with picture quality. Cheers!

ISO setting creates noise regardless if the camera is held steady or not - this is different from motion blur. Also, ISO 64 is lower than ISO 200, so less noise is expected out of ISO 64 than ISO 200.

To the OP: if ISO 64 was already used, then try using a different camera app instead. You could try ProShot where you can change the sharpness value - try decreasing the sharpness level and see if that gets rid of the minor noise from the black sky.

Here's also something you can try: set your ISO to 64 and your shutter exposure time to the maximum, then cover the lens with something opaque and take a shot. You should see a completely blank image. If you happen to see noise in that image, then it's the processing of the signal in that particular device that is at fault (not the camera settings anymore) which happens when certain sensors are turned on for a considerably long period of time - hence, try setting the exposure time to about 2 seconds instead, or less, both fixing the ISO at 64 and allowing the ISO to adjust automatically at an eV of about -1.0.

 

[Mark Seychell]

Thanks all, will certainly try these tips and will report back.

I wonder though, as anyone experienced something similar?

 

[Marty89]

You are using Lumia Camera 5, right? I always get this weird noise with this app when using lower ISO and longer shutter speed. Try Lumia Camera Classic instead.

 

[Mark Seychell]

yes I am using Lumia Camera 5. I bought my 930 very recently so do I still have access to Lumia Camera Classic? I can't find it in the store.

EDIT: In fact, I seem to have found it. It's simply called Lumia Camera with a blue icon rather than pink

 

[TLuck Sharma]

ISO setting creates noise regardless if the camera is held steady or not - this is different from motion blur. Also, ISO 64 is lower than ISO 200, so less noise is expected out of ISO 64 than ISO 200.

To the OP: if ISO 64 was already used, then try using a different camera app instead. You could try ProShot where you can change the sharpness value - try decreasing the sharpness level and see if that gets rid of the minor noise from the black sky.

Here's also something you can try: set your ISO to 64 and your shutter exposure time to the maximum, then cover the lens with something opaque and take a shot. You should see a completely blank image. If you happen to see noise in that image, then it's the processing of the signal in that particular device that is at fault (not the camera settings anymore) which happens when certain sensors are turned on for a considerably long period of time - hence, try setting the exposure time to about 2 seconds instead, or less, both fixing the ISO at 64 and allowing the ISO to adjust automatically at an eV of about -1.0.

Thanks for Info!

 

[Chomiq]

You're posting OOC jpegs or are you developing from RAW? If we're talking about OOC jpegs then it might be that noise reduction algorithm from Lumia Camera is just too heavy to retain the level of detail needed for night sky. Try shooting with jpeg+raw and develop the original RAW in external software (RawTherapee is easy to use and free).

 

[Mark Seychell]

Experimented yesterday with the Lumia Camera (blue icon, not Lumia Camera 5), and the results were great.

As some people mentioned here and on the net Lumia Camera 5 seems to get a little more noise than Lumia Camera in longer exposure times. I will experiment a little more

 

[Mark Seychell]

You're posting OOC jpegs or are you developing from RAW? If we're talking about OOC jpegs then it might be that noise reduction algorithm from Lumia Camera is just too heavy to retain the level of detail needed for night sky. Try shooting with jpeg+raw and develop the original RAW in external software (RawTherapee is easy to use and free).

I was shooting in JPEG. I am still getting accustomed to RAW, but I will also try this, thanks.

 

[gpobernardo]

Experimented yesterday with the Lumia Camera (blue icon, not Lumia Camera 5), and the results were great.

As some people mentioned here and on the net Lumia Camera 5 seems to get a little more noise than Lumia Camera in longer exposure times. I will experiment a little more

As suspected, it seems like it's the additional post processing in Lumia Camera 5 that's adding all the noise, where noise is just a result of signal amplification (which happens to be a common process of enhancing images). Supporting the finding, I've rarely experienced that issue in my L1020 - well both because the L1020 has larger "light buckets" (sensor pixels) which in turn means it needs less signal amplification, and because the L1020 doesn't have Lumia Camera 5.

 

[Marty89]

More noise in Lumia camera 5 is because of the oversharpening. For less noise they would have to use more algorithms that erase the noise but then everything would look like a painting on a canvas with less detail.

 

[ushodax]

does anyone get a pink "band" across the picture when taking photos with extreme low light and long exposure? yesterday i tried to take a picture of the sky, stars, and i got to capture some stars but across the picture a big pink band appeared .

 

[Visa Declined]

As was said in the first response you got, you really need to adjust your white balance to counter those(possibly sodium) light bulbs. The scene is much too yellow, and white balance can fix that up real quick.

 

[Nabkawe5]

I actually think this is a decent shot, the only phone that could really show the sky with minimal noise was the Nokia 808 may it rest in peace.(also the Lumia 920)

 

[blue1k]

Don't worry too much about noise. Imagenomic plugin in Photoshop can do wonders. Check out my Flickr at @blue1k

 

[Mark Seychell]

Thanks for the reply guys.

After more trial and error, I seem to find that, to my complete surprise, this seems to be more or less random, irrespective of the app I use (Lumia Camera 5 or Lumia Camera). Or perhaps dependent upon the scene itself? It can probably also be that I still need to get used to low light photography itself.

Always, I am using a tripod, adjusting the ISO to the lowest possible, and letting the camera itself work out the exposure time.

Look at these, both with Lumia Camera:

No noise

A lot of noise