low-light landscape - iso vs. shutter speed?

troutstreaming

Hi all,

While shooting some landscapes at dusk over the weekend with a 20d, it dawned on me that I had no clue if it was 'better' (less noise, better saturation, better sharpness - in some order) to minimize my shutter speed with a high ISO setting or minimize ISO and go with the longer exposure.

I was shooting RAW at ISO 200 on a tripod with a 16-35L F8 @ 8 second exposure and then hit the image with Photoshop (set black and white points and temperature in RAW, then NoiseNinja, LAB curves, and sharpening.)

What are some of the thoughts/practices for those of you that shoot a lot of low light static images for ISO vs. shutter speed? And for dealing with noise in post - trading off noisy and sharp versus lower noise and softer images?


Final image - I liked the variety of colors and so cropped more to emphasize all of the different color patches as I did not think any of the other elements were strong enough to be a central focal point in and of themselves - feedback on composition and saturation is welcome as well.


Uncropped image - w/ hand picked black and white points and automated processing with Noiseninja and some minor automated curves and sharpening.


In camera jpg

Thank you in advance!

Andy

gtc

compromises or use a tripod
Nice photo-re your question-shooting handheld is always a compromise between iso,camera shake and shutter speed-the best way to get low iso is to use a tripod ,don't worry about shutter speed and stop down for maximum DOF.

Maybe even think about multiple exposures with different focus and stack then later in photoshop for an infinite DOF effect-only achievable with a tripod fopr obvious reasons.

If you aren't using a tripod you will often need to bump up the ISO to enable a higher shutter speed to remove camera shake .This can mean having to use a wider aperture as well which will reduce the DOF.

ISO 400,on EOS at least, is perfectly acceptable however it can't compete with ISO 100 at a longer exposure time,especially if you are using noise ninja after really long exposures.

wxwax

Unless it's really dark (requiring a super-long exposure), a long exposure is better than high ISO.

Shooting at dawn or dusk pretty much forces you to bring along a tripod, which is a good thing.

troutstreaming

tripod and remote release both employed (no shutter lock-up)

gtc wrote:

Nice photo-re your question-shooting handheld is always a compromise between iso,camera shake and shutter speed-the best way to get low iso is to use a tripod ,don't worry about shutter speed and stop down for maximum DOF.

Maybe even think about multiple exposures with different focus and stack then later in photoshop for an infinite DOF effect-only achievable with a tripod fopr obvious reasons.

If you aren't using a tripod you will often need to bump up the ISO to enable a higher shutter speed to remove camera shake .This can mean having to use a wider aperture as well which will reduce the DOF.

ISO 400,on EOS at least, is perfectly acceptable however it can't compete with ISO 100 at a longer exposure time,especially if you are using noise ninja after really long exposures.

I am using a tripod and am assuming for this question that its stability over time is not an issue and that the dof setting is also held constant. So purely the theoretical of which is better with a 20D over a multi-second exposure and where would the breaking point be for this. Would ISO 400 at 2 seconds have been better from a noise/sharpness perspective than the ISO 200 at 8s employed - or ISO 800 at 1s, or ISO 100 at 13s (or whatever the correct exposure stops there are)? I am assuming that I do not want to go to 1600 unless absolutely forced to.

Thanks for the input!

Andy

gtc

it depends on ...
your taste and what you are looking to achieve-from the look of the original I would first try iso 200 in aperture priority and stop down to say f4,.then
f8.0 and maybe narrower and see what the meter sets the shutter speed to-try that and see how it looks.ISO 200 is very smooth.iso 100 with that light may be a bit long but would be worth trying as well.this is effectively aperture bracketing.You could also use exposure bracketing with say a stop either side.

You could also set your camera to long exposure noise reduction and check results or turn it off and apply noise ninja in post if noise is a problem.

It shouldnt be but who can tell until you take the shot?

If not enough in focus try stopping down even further.Dont go too far though as refraction reduces sharpness at really narrow apertures.

Also consider using a remote or the self timer to reduce camera shake when you are tripping the shutter.

Photography is a balancing act between exposure time,"film" speed and aperture-and requires experimentation to find out what works best with your camera and the shooting subject and conditions-the tripod effectively shutter speed issue,other than perhaps noise,leaving you some room to experiment with ISO and aperture.

erich6

Since you are using a tripod with remote shutter release I'd say that as long as there isn't something moving in the scene that you are trying to "catch" you should use the lowest ISO setting regardless of the exposure time. In a scene like this a problem could arise if it's windy and you don't want to blur out the motion of the tall grass.

Another potential issue if you are in the range between 1/15 sec and 2 sec is that of mirror shake. Fortunately, the 20D has a custom setting for mirror lockup which will mitigate this.

Erich

Jeffro

troutstreaming wrote:

In camera jpg

If this is your in camera jpeg, what parameter did you use...because it is very bland, and surprising. Reminds me more of a RAW file.

troutstreaming

Jeffro wrote:

If this is your in camera jpeg, what parameter did you use...because it is very bland, and surprising. Reminds me more of a RAW file.

Parameter Set 1