Night Photography Help Please

I snapped a few shots of the Mormon Temple yesterday evening. The one below is my favorite of the bunch, but I dislike the green noise in the sky. Burning takes care of it, but I try to post process as little as possible and am looking for tips to improve the shot from the very begining. For the things I can't change, like the burnt out light on the lower right hand side, what do you all suggest? Thanks for the help!

I would say in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) or Lightroom, drop the exposure and use fill light. This way the sky will be mostly dark and green unnoticable.

I don't see any green btw. You must have darkened quite a bit.

mumbles wrote in post #5012262
I would say in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) or Lightroom, drop the exposure and use fill light. This way the sky will be mostly dark and green unnoticable.

I don't see any green btw. You must have darkened quite a bit.

That's actually the unedited version, but it's no where near full size. Here's the crop...

The only thing I would have said is drop your aperature some, to get you a slower shutter speed, which would create a little less noise...But night shots like that are going to have noise, at least with my experience.

Have you tried selecting colors for Shadow, Highlights and Neutral Grey in Adobe Photoshop?

The quote function seems to be having some issues, so to answer vinunleaded's question... no, I haven't. I'm not much of a photoshop wizard. How do I select colors for shadow, highlights and neutral grey?

For CS3
For finding Highlights and Shadows:
Go to New Adjustment Layer > Curves
Hold down ALT and drag the Shadow Slider (black arrow) to the right to find the darkest color, make note, then drag it back to the left.
Use the left sampler, then select the black area that you found
Hold down Alt and drag the Highlight Slider (white arrow) to the left to find the whitest color, make note, then rag it back to the right.
use the right sampler, then click on the whitest area on your picture.

The middle sampler is for neutral grey. Heres a trick on how to find neutral grey.
Create new blank layer
Go to Edit, choose Fill. in the Content section, choose 50% Gray from the drop down menu
Go to the Layer panel and change the blend mode of this layer to Difference
Go to Create New Adjustment Layer, then select Threshold
Drag the slider all the white to the left, your picture will become white, then drag the slider slowly back to the right to reveal the grey area.
Shift click on that area to mark it
Go back to the Layer panel and delete the new gray layer you just created.
Double click on the Curve layer on the Layer panel to make your selection for Neutral Gray.
Use the middle sampler tool to select the neutral gray color you just found


I got this from The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby
Remember, correct colors dont necessary make good photos

is this better

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Clone the light in CS3, correct lens distortion with PTlens and bobs yer uncle.

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The light cloning I managed pretty well... I'm not sure what PT lens correction is though. I've got CS2, is there an equivalent?

I have not tried mirror lockup, but will do so the next time around. Would any type of filter help with the noise issue? I shot this bare.

I've noticed that ISO 100 is sometimes considerably noisier than ISO 50 for long exposures.

AdamLM wrote in post #5120451
I've noticed that ISO 100 is sometimes considerably noisier than ISO 50 for long exposures.

Now if only my 30D had ISO 50...

intrinsicvalue wrote in post #5123148
Now if only my 30D had ISO 50...

Crap, that's right, the expandable ISO in the 30 is only 3200...

Oops.

As for tips with things you can do while taking the photo, as SlowBlink stated, there is distortion caused by aiming your lens upward rather than being level with the temple. If you keep the camera and lens level when shooting, you won't get the distortion of the edges appearing to point towards the center of the photo.

mavericksupersonic wrote in post #5129734
As for tips with things you can do while taking the photo, as SlowBlink stated, there is distortion caused by aiming your lens upward rather than being level with the temple. If you keep the camera and lens level when shooting, you won't get the distortion of the edges appearing to point towards the center of the photo.

Thanks for the tip, I'll keep that in mind.