Night Photography with the Canon 1Ds MKII

[gmitchel]

The night photography abilities of the Canon 1Ds MKII are wonderful!

I just returned from the UK with a bunch of night shots of London. Here's a URL to first:

http://************/423bj

A smaller version is on my home page temporarily.

I shot the image at 100 ISO. Virtually no noise. The shot was 3.2 sec at f/10 with noise reduction turned on. I used the Canon 17-40mm "L" lens at 17mm.

There was not a lot of retouching. Two flags fluttered in the breeze. I removed them and their ropes with the Healing Brush tool. A Levels adjustment set the black output to 10 and the white output to 245. Saturation was boosted separately for the cyans, greens, and reds.

The Canon 17-40mm "L" lens does have a bit of barrel distortion at 17mm. The full frame CMOS does not use the sweet spot like my Canon 20D. The image also keystoned because of the angle. I used the Free Transform tool to adjust the perspective.

I used just one round of sharpening. As I mentioned, there was not much luminosity noise. No chroma noise at all. You had to increase the image to 100% zoom to even see the luminosity noise. I created an edge mask for sharpening. Before sharpening, I inverted the mask to make it into a surface mask and used it with Neat Image Pro+ to remove the faint luminosity noise from the sky. Then I used the edge mask with USM for sharpening.

More night shots and panoramas from London will follow. Gosh, the 1Ds MKII is such a wonderful camera for night photography! :)

Cheers,

Mitch

--
http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com
http://www.thelightsright.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheLightsRight/

[tim]

Nice photo :)

[Dooglla]

Nice.

[Jonny]

I wish i fully understood all your detailed description but as an amateur PS user i will just say:

NICE SHOT!

[gmitchel]

Thanks, all. I'm pleased you like the shot! :)

Jonny, we were all new to PS at one time. You'll get the hang of the jargon.

Basically, I said that the 1Ds MkII is great for night cityscapes. There is virtually no noise at 100 ISO, even for exposures up to 30 seconds. What little noise there is, is easy to remove.

The other thing I mentioned was barrel distortion and how I corrected it in PS. Most WA zooms have barrel distortion, especially at their widest field of view.

Cheers,

Mitch

[sparker1]

Mitch, I've enjoyed your photos on your web site, and this one is very nice. I'd really like to see the Tower Bridge without the sculpture, but that's your call. Thanks for all your tips to help the rest of us.

[gmitchel]

I've got more shots of the bridge without. I'll be sharing them.

Cheers,

Mitch

[steibeldj]

Your post is why I love this forum! Great composition! I like that you left it dark enough to add mystery to the sculpture.

[Wazza]

Nice work, definately noise free and crisp. I love how the 17 is so wide on a full frame body. It's a pity with my 20D sometimes using that lens, that I can't quite get that same perspective.

So I'm guessing you're selling these as numbered fine prints?