Noise-Reduction Strategies for Night Photography (CC)
A Talk by Michael Frye (Professional Photographer, Michael Frye Photography)
About this Talk
“Into every night-photographer’s life a little noise must fall.”
Noise is a fact of life for night photographers. But there are things we can do reduce noise—both before and after pressing the shutter.
Michael Frye will start this session by delving into the different types of noise, and then the factors that affect noise, including the amount of light reaching the sensor, sensor size, pixel size, electronic noise, exposure time and heat.
From there we can develop strategies to mitigate noise in the field, and choose the right strategies for our equipment, our individual shooting styles and the different situations we encounter. These strategies include choosing the optimal camera settings, bracketing, blending, star-stacking, star-tracking, stitching, capturing dark frames and more.
Michael will also discuss tools and techniques for reducing noise later in software, either with single exposures, or by blending multiple frames with Photoshop, Starry Landscape Stacker and Sequator.
Some noise may be unavoidable in night photography, but you can do a lot to reduce noise and to make big, beautiful prints of your nighttime images.