Category Archives: equipment

Lightroom Noise Reduction Update Testing

One of the software tools that I find a lot of people talking about these days is DeNoise from Topaz. I have never been terribly bothered by noise in my images. Modern cameras do a pretty remarkable job of handling noise and, for most usage purposes, the noise is not really an issue if it is there. I have posted my efforts with PureRAW in its various forms where I have tried it out to see how the noise reduction comes out and, while I have seen strengths and weaknesses in it, I have never seen it as something I needed to spend on.

Lightroom Classic had one of its periodic updates recently. The big new feature was their own denoise functionality. Much like my experimentation with PureRAW, it analyzes the shot and creates a new DNG file with the noise suppressed. I was curious to see how it would perform and, seeing as it is included in the price of my subscription, I have it anyway. I decided to take some shots I had recently used for the PureRAW3 trial I had done and compare with the Lightroom version.

It defaulted to a 50 level of noise reduction. I don’t know whether this is a percentage and what of but it is a scale so I played with it. I did some at 50 and some at 75 to see whether more aggressive noise reduction had detrimental effects on other parts of the image. Comparing these things and then sharing the results is a touch tricky so I have created a single image from four layers. They are the original Lightroom develop settings, the PureRAW3 version, the 75 denoise settings and the 50 denoise settings. I mask them to make the image into four sections. Then, to make it useful on here, I have zoomed in to show the borders between them to provide some sort of comparison.

The PureRAW3 result is very aggressive on noise reduction. However, I find it can make some odd artifacts in the images where details were not that clear to begin with. The 75 setting in Lightroom provided a very similar level of noise reduction to PureRAW3. It is slightly noisier but barely enough to matter. A setting of 50 does show more noise. It is still a significant improvement over the basic Camera Raw settings and very usable.

What do I conclude from all of this? First, as I have said before when testing the PureRAW trials, it provides some interesting results but it is not relevant to enough of my work to matter to me sufficient for me to spend a bunch of money on buying it. Having denoise in Lightroom now provides me with a very similar option but within the existing price I am paying for Lightroom. Therefore, I will make use of it when the situation dictates. It would be a regular part of my workflow because really high ISO shots are only an occasional thing for me but having it there when I want it will be handy.

Experimenting with PureRAW3

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This blog includes a very infrequent series of posts reviewing the processing powers of PureRAW. The third version of this raw image processor has just been released and I downloaded the trial to see how it performs. I was impressed by what the previous version did to clean up some high ISO shots but the need was limited and the price was high enough that I didn’t see the point in signing up for it. I was curious as to whether the third version would change my mind.

When I download one of these trials, I always try to avoid installing it until I have time to play with it. The trial last 30 days so I want to make sure I make good use of the time. Once I got around to installing it, I put it to work. I was disappointed to find the trial was limited to 20 images at a time which is a little restrictive but, for the purposes of evaluating it, I could work around this. I had two things I wanted to do. First, I wanted to convert some shots that I had previously tried for PureRAW2 to see how different they were. Second, I had some recent night shots which I also wanted to try.

So, how did it perform? Results were mixed. I found the conversion process was quick sometimes and would slow down or stop on others. This was annoying but I suspect is something that they will fix before too long so I wasn’t that worried. What I was surprised about was that, when starting the process in Lightroom, the new DNGs will be reimported into Lightroom. However, this was unbelievably slow. I would set it off, the conversion would finish and then, a long time later, they would suddenly get added. Again, something that is probably going to get fixed but bloody annoying in the mean time.

As for the output, I was quite amazed by the results. I will show here some of the Lightroom edits along with PureRAW2 and PureRAW3 versions of the files. As you can see, the latest version really does clean up images a lot. However, I don’t think it is all good. Some of the shots feel like they have been over sharpened and look too crunchy. Also, the algorithm seems to get imaginative when it comes to lettering on airframes. Some of the results have created shapes that just are not there in the original shot. For some shots, this might not be an issue but, when something is supposed to be recognizable, the odd artifacts show up conspicuously. If the shot had been soft and noisy, you wouldn’t have worried but, because it is supposed to be clear and sharp, the weird results stand out.

Is it worth it? Not for me. I used it on some more normal exposures and couldn’t really see much benefit. Certainly not enough to make the effort worth it. For high noise, it does provide some nice results and some odd side effects but, I don’t shoot enough of them to make that really worthwhile. For now, it shall sit in the interesting but not interesting enough category. Maybe we shall have the fourth installment of this series when PureRAW4 comes out!

Lightroom’s New Content Aware Remove Tool

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The latest version of Lightroom Classic was recently rolled out. It comes with a bunch of new additions and refinements. The one that caught my eye was the addition of content aware remove. There was already the cloning tool and the healing tools built in and these could do a lot of what you might want. However, these have now been supplemented by content aware removal. The tool is really straightforward to use but you can customize it if you like, both by choosing what area to use as a reference and also the ability to get it to try again if you don’t like the result by hitting Refresh.

The thing I wanted to try out was using it to remove power lines. These can sometimes be a bit of a pain when taking shots but, rather than use an aviation shot with some power lines crossing it, I happened to be looking at a photo I took in California of some railroad which had a bunch of lines strung across it. I wasn’t bothered about making a great shot. I was just interested in what the tool would do with the power lines. It was surprising effective. Too close an inspection would show the flaws but, if you look at the overall image, it came out quite well with very little effort. I have the before and after shots here for comparison.

Checking Your USB Cable Specs

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When I got the new cameras, I needed to get a new card reader as a result of the change of format. I researched this a little and bought what seemed to be a good reader. However, when I was downloading the shots, I have to say I was a bit disappointed. I know the cards were larger and the files were bigger but it seemed that it wasn’t any faster than I was used to. At some point, I thought to look at the USB C cable I was using. I had bought the cable for connecting my iPad and found that charging cable and fast data cables were not the same thing. I tried the cable that came with the camera and the downloads zipped along. I then bought a proper data cable and now the card reader is working like a charm. I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t thought about this having already got a USB C cable but it made a big difference so don’t make the same mistake as me.

DxO PureRAW2 Review

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This post might look like it is an aviation post but, while the examples I am using are planes, this is about software. A while back I downloaded the trial of DxO’s PureRAW product. I liked it but didn’t see enough use for me to justify buying the full version. I was also a little put off by the lack of integration with Lightroom. You had to start in the app and then the output DNG file would be exported to Lightroom.

PureRAW2 has been released so I downloaded the trial version of that to see how well it works. I was interested not only in the processing capabilities but also the new Lightroom integration. Now it is possible to use the application as a plugin so I can go to a file in Lightroom and take it out to PureRAW before the DNG returns.

First, what is my experience of the integration? It is okay but not great. Taking the file out works well and you can get the processing sorted out. The return to Lightroom is not ideal. First, it gives you the option to either put the new files in a DxO folder or to go to a specific folder you choose. I would rather it went to the same folder as the original. That is not available. The second issue is that the re-import process takes a very long time. It was a couple of minutes after closing the file that it showed up in Lightroom. No idea why it takes so long.

Now for the processing. It is very impressive. I was working with some shots from very dark conditions with B-1s taking off. The exposure was heavily driven by the afterburner plumes so the rest of the airframe was very dark. When I tried to bump up the exposure in Lightroom to get something that showed the bare outline of the fuselage, the noise was really bad. The PureRAW DNG was so much cleaner and allowed me to move the exposure around quite a bit. For an ISO 51,2000 shot, this was very impressive. I think the processing is not massively changed from before but it clearly works well.

However, as before, the number of times I would want to use this are not many. The full version is now $129 which is a step up from where the original was priced when I reviewed it. I am still not sure I need it enough to justify the investment. No question, though, that it is a significantly improved tool from the original version.

Focus Stacking With The Camera’s Help

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One of the functions that my new camera has built in is a focus stacking function. I know this is not unique to this camera but it is a first for me so I was keen to play with it. The mode, when enabled, allows you to set how many shots you want taken and set a scale for how close the focus points will be to each other. You then pick you initial focus point and set it off and it takes the sequence of shots incrementing the focus slightly between each one.

The resulting stack of images can then be processed in Photoshop to get the focus stacked output. This is so much nicer than making minor focus adjustments by hand between shots. The sequence gets created really quickly. I also was able to do reshoots easily. On one of the sequences, I had left it on auto ISO so it shot at a really high ISO level. I could reshoot with the ISO set low (tripod mounting means this was not a problem) in no time at all. (As an aside, the focus stacking algorithm actually seems to do a good job of reducing noise as well.)

I experimented with how fine a scale to use. Initially, I was taking way too many shots with very little movement through the image so I coarsened up the scale a bit. The nice thing was, if it didn’t go all through the range, I could just hit the shutter again and it would keep going. Photoshop chunked through the processing pretty well. I was shooting a few things but also experimented with some coins on my desk. Not the most original subject but one that shows the result well unlike the other things I was shooting. The software seemed to struggle a little on some of the coin edges so maybe a finer shoot next time or maybe I should just hand blend those bits.

Shooting After Sunset

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For a while, I had been thinking about trying to do some night photography of airliners. I had seen some good shots people had got but SeaTac does not have a lot of ambient light to illuminate aircraft flying overhead. It would be better if there was a large public space under the approach that would provide so brightness to work with. I was down at SeaTac to pick up a colleague and knew I would be there as the sun went down so I decided to have a go at some shots.

I used the 70-200 f/2.8 to get as much light as possible. The sun was going down so I was going through quite the transition of lighting conditions. Some were just twilight while other were when things were getting quite dark. The autofocus was also struggling since the center point was being used and the underside of the jet lacked much contrast in the dark. I still got a few usable images. The lack of light means they aren’t too great but it was fun to try something different. Now to find a better location!

Night Touchdown

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I posted about some night photography I tried on jets approaching SeaTac. After finishing that up I was heading to the terminal to pick up my colleague and I decided to go for a shot of touchdown in the dark. This was not going to be an easy one to get since it is really pretty dark at the north end of the airport so little ambient light. I was relying on the lights of the jet and pushing the ISO to a really high level. It is true that the noise gets really tough in those conditions but when looking at the image at a normal size, it really is not a big deal. Besides, it is a shot we would never have done in pre-digital days.

How Dark Can This Thing Shoot

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Every once in a while, I really test the high ISO capability of the cameras I have. The R3 got an early test when I was at Red Flag, I went out on two evenings to shoot some night departures and experimented with the ability of the camera to perform in those conditions. The high ISO capability of cameras has not moved on too much to be honest. The max ISO I used on my 1DXII was 51,200 and the R3 is still the same. It does appear to be a bit cleaner but they have possibly hit a bit of a limit. What I had not tried out before was an electronic viewfinder in such conditions.

The first night, I went out into the dunes to be ready for the B-1 departures. As it turned out, they didn’t launch that night. I did get some fighters coming out my way for a while before I concluded that this was a bust and I was heading back to the hotel. I tried shooting a few of the jets but I discovered the limitations of the camera pretty rapidly. When there is no light, the electronic viewfinder really struggles. The frame rate of the viewfinder drops like a stone and tracking a subject becomes pretty problematic. The frames per second drop too so the chances of a result are slim. With an optical viewfinder, this is not an issue but the chances of a good shot are also slim.

I returned to the hotel feeling pretty dispirited by this result. I wondered whether this was a real problem for adopting the R3. The following night, I went out again with the B-1s again being my main target. This time I had some tankers heading out before the B-1s launched. It was a very different evening. Sure, the lack of light still makes the chances of getting a good shot pretty low but the camera seemed to have no problem tracking the subjects and keeping the viewfinder frame rate up to a perfectly acceptable level. If I had only gone from the previous night, I would have concluded that it was unusable.

The embedded images in the RAW files looked pretty good but the Lightroom edits required a lot more work. DPP might be the answer or DxO PrimeRAW could do a good job. However, that is not the issue. Will the camera allow me to shoot at night with very dark subjects. Apparently, the answer is yes. It can handle it. However, it can’t track an almost black subject with a couple of navigation lights like an optical viewfinder can. That is a limitation that I may have to live with.

Giving the R3 A Workout At Nellis

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I had given the R3 a couple of trips out before I headed to Nellis. I had shot it at BFI and at Juanita Bay. However, my trip to Nellis was the first time it was going to really be given a serious blast with constant shooting and varying conditions. How would it perform and could it be the camera for me for the next few years?

First, I should point out that I have not yet had a proper investigation of the various functions of the camera and how to configure it. Consequently, I was not using it in the best way I could but was instead experimenting with it as I went. So, given that limitation (of me, not necessarily the camera), how did it go? Overall, things were very impressive. Let’s start with the simple things.

Battery life was really good. I shot a little late on the first night, all of the second day and the beginning of the third on one battery. I had spares with me but the battery life, while maybe not as long as for the 1DXII, was still very good. It is also a nice thing that I can recharge with a USB-C charger if I need to which means not taking the large battery charger with me.

Autofocus was very impressive. When things are a long way off, it is still guessing at what to look at and that is something I need to investigate. However, it seemed to recognize planes very early on and then track them very effectively. The ability to let it track a target allowed me to worry about composition far more than I used to with center point focus. I could move planes to the edge of the frame to get a wingman in and still have focus working well.

Exposure was okay. I have the viewfinder set up to give me the exposure simulation which is handy for understanding what the camera is seeing. This helped me out once when I have managed to change the ISO to 800 by accident. Not sure how I did that but I was able to notice it quickly. However, I am not so sure about how quickly it adjusts as conditions change. Moving from a cloudy background to blue sky provides a rapid change that the camera needs to accommodate and it sometimes seemed a little slow to work it out. When shooting raw, your have some latitude to adjust afterwards, of course.

Handling was good. It felt good in the hands and I am wondering whether I will miss the hand grip I have used in the past. The controls are good. The smart controller is neat but it does get adjusted a lot without realizing. I also am so used to using center focus that I sometimes assume that I have to keep the subject in the same space to keep it in focus, not realizing that I can re-center things with the camera following things. I did struggle to work out how to chance the card that I was using. I found a way but it was not as simple as for the 1DXII.

Image stabilization is something that is causing me a lot of trouble. It isn’t the performance of the stabilization. That is really impressive. What I am struggling with is that the stabilization switches on and then stays on. I can put the camera down for a while and I can still hear the IS motors in the lens whirring away. Eventually they switch off but this seems like it is really chewing battery life. I have tweaked a few things to reduce it but, on the 1DXII, the IS would switch off after about 20 seconds. Why it this happening? Again, this may be my failing but I would like to understand why it happens and try to switch it off.

Frame rate is very impressive. I rarely switched it up to the 30fps setting. 15fps was blasting through the cards at a prodigious rate as it was so no need to make things any worse. I have the audio shutter turned on so I have something to remind me when I am taking too many shots and to hopefully keep things under control. However, while the frame rate may notionally be similar to the 1DXII, it consistently hits it which does result in a lot more photos than I was used to. More culling to come I guess.

Having the ability to connect to my iPad and phone is a real benefit. I used to just have this with the M6 and I really liked that. Being able to connect to the R3 gives me a lot of flexibility. I was able to send a few shots to a friend while out in the field. I will use this sporadically but it is definitely a good capability to have.

Overall, it was a great experience. I had two bodies with me but I focused on shooting with the one R3 and the other body, a 1DXII, stayed in the bag almost all of the time. I had it ready in case but didn’t end up using it. At no point during the time there did I think about reverting. I do still have a few tweaks to work out with how to set the camera up but it was a very positive experience. I think that this camera might be the one for me.