Whip away

antonyrelou

This was a sunset / alpen glow captured over Winter Park, Colorado (that's the continental divide right there...) I was tickled by the colors and the really cool cloud formation.

I used the Nikon D80 and F/3.5 and 1/60sec and ISO 220 - what should I have done to get a less "grainy" result? (I'm still learning here...) Is there a way to "fix" this in a software program?

DavidTO

I've moved this from Whipping Post to Finishing School.

adbsgicom

Very cool picture, I think those clouds are called Lenticular clouds. In Lightroom, you can do some noise reduction, or you can get a plugin for Photoshop from Imagenomics that does noise reduction very nicely. I used the latter recently on some firework pictures that were taken from a distance with a long esposure and had a bunch of noise in the sky. In theory, reducing the ISO to 100 would have helped some (assuming the clouds weren't moving too quickly).

antonyrelou

Thanks for the tip - I'll be trying that lower ISO next time.

adbsgicom

I'd just shoot some sunset skies with both ISOs and see what you get. Make them throw-away pictures to see if you are going to get what you want. Also, there may be some noise reduction options on your camera.

wilsonjg

adbsgicom wrote:

Very cool picture, I think those clouds are called Lenticular clouds. In Lightroom, you can do some noise reduction....

I'm new to Lightroom (literally - my 2.4 edition arrived yesterday)

What is your Noice reduction process in Lightroom??

thanks

adbsgicom

wilsonjg wrote:

I'm new to Lightroom (literally - my 2.4 edition arrived yesterday)

What is your Noice reduction process in Lightroom??

thanks

You can use the sliders under detail on the develop module. I've since moved to using more of Imagenomic's Noise reduction CS4 plugin for straight noise, and their Portraiture plugin for skin-tone-only work.

AshtonChris

First post on DGrin
I shoot a lot of landscapes similar to this on a Nikon D80.
I would recommend shooting at F. 8 or 9 and drop the ISO speed to 100.
It does not take much on the D80 to start getting grainy skies with higher ISO.

Thanks,
Great Image BTW