Is there a way I can salvage these images? The long exposure noise is killing me!

I don't get it. Last week I took a few long exposures at nearly the same settings with the same zoom lens in worse lighting and I got great results, same thing happened the week before that. Today, I get a friend with me and we go take shots of his car and as part of a giant composition I wanted to do complete with light painting, long exposures and stuff and this happens.

I take a shot at f/8 or f/6.3 and the long exposure noise goes off the charts! Compare these two images, both of which have not been edited:

I took this one at f/10, ISO-400 with a 15 second exposure

VS.

Took this one last week at f/3.5, iso-200 on a 6 second exposure
Or this one at f/3.5, ISO-200 on a 15 sec exposure

The only difference here are the locations, but one is being lit slightly more by a gigantic billboard in the bottom two photos and the one under the freeways has more freeway lights, thats all. The amount of light in both places I'd say was about even.

Is there a way I can fix these images and make them usable? I'm pretty bummed out about, honestly.

How's this

http://i123.photobucke​t.com …catalyst412/Ima​gecopy.jpg

There is a switchable function in the camera, in which it actually takes two exposures in one for long exposures...it does a 'difference' comparison of the two and it interprets bits which are different between the two halves to be noise, which is then subtracted out from the final composite to reduce total noise. The disadvantage is that any long exposure takes twice as long as you think...if you took a 30 sec. exposure, it would take a total of 60 sec. to compile the two halves, and then it would subtract the noise. But this processing is in camera, not ordinarily available in post processing programs.

These are jpgs straight out of the camera? Looks like the first doesn't have any (chroma) NR and the others have plenty…

Chroma NR can be done pretty well in software. Even easier if you shot Raw.

What settings were used?

René Damkot wrote in post #14021214
These are jpgs straight out of the camera?
What settings were used?

Nope, these were shot in RAW but for practical reasons I uploaded a jpeg. For settings, what do you mean? Like in camera settings?

I have noise reduction off because it doesn't help and I have better control when removing it in Lr3, and that's about it. My camera doesn't have a long exposure NR mode I think.

upload the raw somewher

1D classic does have long exposure NR (dark frame subtraction). This is also applied to a Raw if switched on (First menu: Settings are "off", "On1" and "On2")
If you select "on", the camera takes a second exposure without opening the shutter. You can notice this, because it takes twice as long before the image is displayed / written to the CF card.

http://www.fredmiranda​.com/forum/topic/31061​2
http://www.dphoto.us/f​orum/showthread.php?t=​1212

If you used LR to process the TIF files, camera parameters are irrelevant, since LR uses it's own defaults. You might have set different defaults for ISO 200 and ISO 400?

No, I don't remember setting different settings for either iso's. I actually never noticed the NR helping, whenever I would shoot in low light there seemed to be MORE colored noise dots than before. I'll try it right now and check back.

But yes, I used LR to process the tif files and still noticed the rgb noise.

EDIT: I'm a doofus. Thank René !

you can try taking a exposure with the same camera settings ( try to get the same temperature ) but with the lens cap on. in photoshop you can load the dark slide on top of your original shot. set the blend mode to ''difference'' . i havnt tried this personally only read in a magazine. it kind of the same thing you do in astrophotography to reduce noise . a ''dark'' exposure would be ideal to take right after your original photo since the camera temp would be the same.

jerr6 wrote in post #14046734
you can try taking a exposure with the same camera settings ( try to get the same temperature ) but with the lens cap on. in photoshop you can load the dark slide on top of your original shot. set the blend mode to ''difference'' . i havnt tried this personally only read in a magazine. it kind of the same thing you do in astrophotography to reduce noise . a ''dark'' exposure would be ideal to take right after your original photo since the camera temp would be the same.

This is helpful, eventually I want to try taking some star trails, thanks!

This is how helpful this setting is at 20s. Same settings, slightly different angle. (my sensor is dirty ) Jpegs straight outta the camera, I shot in RAW+jpg
With NR On2With NR Off

My biggest issue with this camera is resolved. Thank you all!

jerr6 wrote in post #14046734
you can try taking a exposure with the same camera settings ( try to get the same temperature ) but with the lens cap on. in photoshop you can load the dark slide on top of your original shot. set the blend mode to ''difference'' . i havnt tried this personally only read in a magazine. it kind of the same thing you do in astrophotography to reduce noise . a ''dark'' exposure would be ideal to take right after your original photo since the camera temp would be the same.

This is what Long Exposure Noise Reduction does, but it does it automatically. So no hassle except your exposure time is doubled (the Dark Frame shot is taken with the same settings but the shutter is not opened).

The first one is at ISO 400, the other two are at ISO 200. That would be the primary source of the additional noise there.

With some heavy fiddling with NR you can bring it all down fairly well, but you can't totally eliminate it without killing all of the finer detail in the shot. The chain link fence, in the bottom right still has discernable detail in a full res edit of this.

jerr6 wrote in post #14046734
you can try taking a exposure with the same camera settings ( try to get the same temperature ) but with the lens cap on. in photoshop you can load the dark slide on top of your original shot. set the blend mode to ''difference'' . i havnt tried this personally only read in a magazine. it kind of the same thing you do in astrophotography to reduce noise . a ''dark'' exposure would be ideal to take right after your original photo since the camera temp would be the same.

Is there a difference between subtract and difference? The online guides I've read about manual dark frame subtraction used the subtract blend mode (makes sense...it's part of the name), so I never questioned it.

I read about Image Averaging at Cambridge in Colour. Does anyone use this technique?

i haven't done it in normal pictures, but I use it for astrophotography though (assuming I can get enough shots w/out the clouds getting in my way)