Nikon in camera Long Exp NR setting

anonymouscuban

I turned this feature on when I first got my D300 and left it on for quite some time. I recently starting shooting night shots so I actually started using the feature. I guess it runs an NR program in camera after you take an exp of longer than 8 sec or so. It adds quite a few seconds between shots so I turned it off but now I am not sure if I should turn it back on.

Do any of you guys use this setting?

Kyle D

I use it on my D50 only when I'm doing long exposure shots. If I remember correctly, how it works is it takes the image, say an 20 second exposure, then once it's taken that it will keep the shutter closed but then take another blank/black 20 second exposure to determine the noise created by having the sensor on for that long. It will then average the two images together thus creating a significantly lower noise long exposure image. I've noticed a significant decrease in noise when using it on long exposure shots on my D50. Sure, it makes the shot to shot time longer, but it saves me effort in noise reduction later plus I think it even saves some detail as compared to doing noise reduction pp.

anonymouscuban

Interesting. I don't mind the extra time if it's actually doing something productive. Sounds like it is so I will turn it back on.

mushy

I have a theory on this one too, be it just a theory.
Long exposures at night quite often equals cold weather too, so battery life is diminished yes?
Could you not, turn off NR and when you get back to your comfy warm house, take a shot with the lens cap on of equal time to your outdoors exposure and setup a photoshop action to remove any spots from the 'black photo' from the original. It is just a means to save card space and battery life.
Its just an idea I've been playing with as I play around alot when I go camping with night exposures and end up using all my batteries up pretty quickly.

Any thoughts?

Kyle D

mushy wrote:

I have a theory on this one too, be it just a theory.
Long exposures at night quite often equals cold weather too, so battery life is diminished yes?
Could you not, turn off NR and when you get back to your comfy warm house, take a shot with the lens cap on of equal time to your outdoors exposure and setup a photoshop action to remove any spots from the 'black photo' from the original. It is just a means to save card space and battery life.
Its just an idea I've been playing with as I play around alot when I go camping with night exposures and end up using all my batteries up pretty quickly.

Any thoughts?

From what I've noticed, a long exposure shot with the long exposure nr turned on does not use any more card space than the original image. As for using up batteries, I can get about 1200-1600 shots out of the batteries in my D50 so I'm not too worried about that.

anonymouscuban

Kyle D wrote:

From what I've noticed, a long exposure shot with the long exposure nr turned on does not use any more card space than the original image. As for using up batteries, I can get about 1200-1600 shots out of the batteries in my D50 so I'm not too worried about that.

Ditto... when I did use it, I didn't notice any difference in file size. And battery life has not been an issue with my D300 for me either.

Honestly, I think the NR feature does work... here is a shot I took with a 25 sec exposure using the NR feature. No noise reduction in PP.

Tango

imo. always use NR in camera.
i think nr in post makes the image soft....

why in-camera does not affect softness in-camera i do not know....

(only speaking for Canon 5D)

mushy

Kyle D wrote:

From what I've noticed, a long exposure shot with the long exposure nr turned on does not use any more card space than the original image. As for using up batteries, I can get about 1200-1600 shots out of the batteries in my D50 so I'm not too worried about that.

Probably should have mentioned that I was referring more to doing long night captures of star trails, where the shutter is left open for an hour or two. Or doing multiple 2 minute exposures to stack later.

Kyle D

mushy wrote:

Probably should have mentioned that I was referring more to doing long night captures of star trails, where the shutter is left open for an hour or two. Or doing multiple 2 minute exposures to stack later.

I don't even think Nikon's can do 1 or 2 hour exposures. I believe that the bulb mode tops out at 30 minutes.

Kyle D

anonymouscuban wrote:

Ditto... when I did use it, I didn't notice any difference in file size. And battery life has not been an issue with my D300 for me either.

Honestly, I think the NR feature does work... here is a shot I took with a 25 sec exposure using the NR feature. No noise reduction in PP.

Amazing shot!

DsrtVW

Nikon D300 will stay open in bulb for longer than 30 minutes I have not tried for an hour but I have done over 30. The Long Expose NR is a good feature just takes a little getting used to. The battery on the D300 last twice as long as my D50. I guess it is the difference between CMOS and CCD sensors
This one did not have long exp NR 13 minute exposure

This one did. 11 second exp

bf2015

mushy wrote:

Probably should have mentioned that I was referring more to doing long night captures of star trails, where the shutter is left open for an hour or two. Or doing multiple 2 minute exposures to stack later.

If you are doing star trail/milky way type long exposures that you will be stacking pp, you should read Jim Solomon's Astrophotography Cookbook. It has a lot of valuable info on NR. Especially with Milky Way shots, it is an involved process of taking dark frame, bais/offsets frames, flat light and light frame etc all to reduce noise in the stacking process. This actually works in all ISO settings but is most important at 1600 and above.

I use a Nikon D40, but if I remember correctly, all Nikon cameras at ISO's below 3200 will automatically do an "in camera" NR after the shutter closes (that's why longer exposures will take longer to be written to the card). With star trail/milky way shots that will be stacked, this isn't good because it will actually decrease the sharpness and detail in the NEF file. The "fix" around this is right after the shutter closes after the shot, turn the camera off. All Nikon cameras have a built-in "safety" feature that will write the shot to the card in case the battery dies after the shutter closes. By turning the camera off right after the shutter closes, the auto NR is not written to the shot and all of the noise/sharpness/deatil is kept as shot. This is important for later stacking.

The suggestion made that you could take a black frame after in a warmer setting won't work because the noise of a shot is dependent on the outside temperature at the time the shot is taken. This is because the CMOS sensor in camera will produce different noise at different outside temperatures. This is where taking dark flat shots at the same temperature, exp time, and ISO is important.

I hope this has made since and is what you were talking about. The cookbook probably explains it way better than I can. Here is my first attempt at stacking. The main image is Mt Rainier just before sunset. The sky is a series of 13 30 second, 1600 ISO shots stacked with the free program DeepSkyStacker. To reduce the noise of long exp high ISO shots, the 13 images were stacked along with 19 dark shots, 19 bias/offset shots, 19 dark flat shots, and 19 light flat shots (the cookbook explains all of this and DeepSkyStacker stacks all automatically). Taking all of the shots is a little involved, but pp is fairly automated and easy.

sweet caroline

mushy wrote:

I have a theory on this one too, be it just a theory.
Long exposures at night quite often equals cold weather too, so battery life is diminished yes?
Could you not, turn off NR and when you get back to your comfy warm house, take a shot with the lens cap on of equal time to your outdoors exposure and setup a photoshop action to remove any spots from the 'black photo' from the original. It is just a means to save card space and battery life.
Its just an idea I've been playing with as I play around alot when I go camping with night exposures and end up using all my batteries up pretty quickly.

Any thoughts?

I live in Texas where it's hot at night most of the year, and I experience this behavior with my D300. So there goes your theory!

dcabarle

anonymouscuban wrote:

Ditto... when I did use it, I didn't notice any difference in file size. And battery life has not been an issue with my D300 for me either.

Honestly, I think the NR feature does work... here is a shot I took with a 25 sec exposure using the NR feature. No noise reduction in PP.

Very nice, which lense did you use for this?

anonymouscuban

dcabarle wrote:

Very nice, which lense did you use for this?

I used a Nikon 70-300 VR that I borrowed from a friend. I believe I shot that at about 90mm at f16.

AFBlue

anonymouscuban wrote:

Ditto... when I did use it, I didn't notice any difference in file size. And battery life has not been an issue with my D300 for me either.

Honestly, I think the NR feature does work... here is a shot I took with a 25 sec exposure using the NR feature. No noise reduction in PP.

As they say, one picture ....
Pretty convincing argument for using the in-camera NR for long exposures. (And thanks for sharing this beautiful shot.)

Jerry