Playing with Noise Reduction

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One of the biggest developments that there has been in digital imaging in recent years has been the improvement of performance in low light. A few years ago, it was hard to get a decent image at above ISO400 and much post processing work was required to try and make the images workable. Plug-ins for noise reduction were very popular. However, the camera manufacturers have been very aggressive in developing chips and processors that allow shooting at ISO levels that would have been unthinkable a while back. You hear of cameras being perfectly acceptable at ISO6400 and above.

My cameras are not the newest on the market but there are certainly not slouches in low light. However, I have never been terribly happy with the performance at high ISO settings with the image breaking up a bit when viewed up close. This is where I have to admit that I can be a complete idiot sometimes.

I shoot RAW all of the time and then process the images in Lightroom. I have created some presets of development settings that I apply each time I import an image and which then acts as the starting point for any additional editing. This is where my problem lies and why it has taken me so long to realize it I can’t imagine. Anyway, enough of the self-flagellation and on with the topic.

The problem lies in the Detail section of the Develop module. This is where sharpening and noise reduction are applied. I have some basic settings I start with here and, when I was importing shots taken at high ISO settings, I was not changing them. I would play with the noise reduction but things still didn’t look right. The problem was, of course, the sharpening. The basic setting I had entered was sharpening far too much for the ISO setting and was causing some odd breakup of the image. I finally realized this one morning while lying in bed – I have no idea why I was thinking of this but it suddenly came to me.

I got up and opened some high ISO images and went to the detail area. I zeroed out the sharpening and the noise reduction. Everything looked awful. Then I brought back the noise reduction and things suddenly started looking a lot better. When I was happy with the noise, it was time to bring back some sharpening. Things were a little soft after the noise was taken out so the sharpening brought back a bit of punch to the image. A tweak on the amount and opening up the radius a bit made things look good. Then a more aggressive level of masking of the sharpening and suddenly the image was looking way better than before.

When I was happy with things, I saved a new preset that was just sharpening and noise reduction and labeled it as High ISO Detail. Now I can apply it to any images that need it and be in a far better starting position for further processing. Each image will require its own approach if I am going to make more effort on post processing but I will now be starting from a far cleaner place. The samples above are comparison of approximately 100% crops with my original settings and the revised approach. Hopefully you can see the difference. It might be annoying to realize you have been missing something for so long but at least I finally worked it out!

Restoring Lower Wacker

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One of the parts of the city that most tourists never get to see is Lower Wacker Drive. Wacker Drive is the road that runs around the Loop along the line of the river. It is on two levels with Upper Wacker being normal street level and Lower Wacker sits directly beneath it. Half of Lower Wacker was rebuilt before we moved to the city but the other half was in an unrestored state for many years. If you watched the first of the Christian Bale Batman movies, you will have seen Lower Wacker in all of its darkness. (Go further back and the Blues Brothers movie also provided a tour of this area in the final car chase.)

I like Lower Wacker as it provides a bypass to get to the Eisenhower Expressway while avoiding the worst of the traffic – at least it did. Then they closed it for a progressive rebuilding program. This has been going on for a couple of years and is now about to be concluded. I have not been paying a lot of attention to the rebuild but I have taken a look whenever I have been passing by. The work has been a rolling program gradually moving down the length of the road. A section has been closed off while everything was diverted around it. Then the whole process would shift a few blocks further south. When I was up on the top of the Sears, I had a great view of the bottom of the drive from above. It was clear that everything was nearly done. Now I get to wait until I first can drive the new road. I have heard they have calmed the traffic flow down there which is probably a good idea but a little disappointing!

Pano 360

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There is an app I have had on my phone for a while called 360 which is for taking panoramic photographs. I have had it for quite a while and have mentioned it before here but they have progressively introduced new features over that time. While the new operating system has a pano function built into the camera (if your phone isn’t too old), it is rather basic and nowhere near as good as this one.

Taking images requires a little planning since you are able to take a full spherical image. Doing this without having the whole thing look strange in close requires you to keep the camera point itself unchanged as you turn around. This is harder than you think. The software can compensate a bit but you need to try and get it right in camera as much as possible.

It shows you a grid of the total shot and so you can see which bits you have shot and what is needed to fill it all in. It gives you a live preview as you shoot including looking straight up and down when required. Once the image is complete (or as much of it as you want), it processes it and then you can upload it to a website to view later. The links here are from that site. It is a great app and fun in some situations and valuable in others when showing off a wide view is hard to do any other way.

When checking this examples out, don’t miss out on a cool feature. At the top of the viewer are three buttons. It starts on the middle setting which allows you to pan around. If you click on the left button, it creates a view from the ground up. The right button creates a view looking straight down. (This only works properly if I have shot a full 360 image.) This looks like the work that Gerry Holtz has done and I blogged about here although his is far superior.

Muscle Cars

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My friend Joel recently suggested a trip out to a car show near O’Hare at the Rosemont convention center. It was a display of muscle cars. While this is a generation of vehicles that I know nothing about since American cars of the 60s and 70s were not something that meant anything to me in the UK, the chance to see some great restoration work and to see something different to my normal interests meant I was keen to go along.

The show was very well attended and there were plenty of cars on display. The quality of restoration work was generally very good. Some great looking cars and some proud owners willing to talk about what they had done to get their cars to the condition that they were in. I was seeing a whole bunch of cars that I had never seen before so that was interesting. For those who grew up with these cars, it would have been a far more interesting time since seeing these old cars would trigger lots of memories. However, I still had a good time and will certainly go again if the chance arises. If you want to see more, I do have a gallery of images here.

Windsurfing and Kiteboarding

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Being on the north side of the island of Maui, we were also able to see a bit of the watersport activity that people can get up to. The north shore is famous for surfing of course with Jaws being the most well known of the surfing locations. That is a little inaccessible and the surf is not huge at the time of year we were there. However, there are plenty of other ways to have fun.

With the steady, strong breeze, this is a great spot for windsurfing or kiteboarding. As we wandered along the shore near our lunch location, we could see plenty of people out having some fun. They were making great progress as a result of the strong winds and were great to watch. It is always fun to see someone who is good at something doing it well. I grabbed a few shots before we went on our (far more leisurely) way.

Goodbye Zeppelin

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A little bit of sad news recently came through to me from the West Coast. Airship Ventures have ceased operations. They are a company that bought a new generation Zeppelin airship from the manufacturers in Germany and based it in the Bay Area around San Francisco. They provided tours around the Bay as well as operating further afield in the state. I got to catch up with them when they undertook a national tour that included a stop not far from Chicago.

I was writing an article for the website at Global Aviation Resource which you can see here. I also blogged about it here. There is an effort underway to rescue the business. We shall see whether they are successful or whether someone buys the assets at a discount and sets up something new. I hope it works out and wish them well.

Festival of Light Fireworks

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Every year in the run up to Christmas, the traders on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago have a parade to get the shoppers interested. The parade has a strong Disney theme to it and attracts large numbers of families with small kids. You might be surprised to know this is not a big deal to me. However, they do finish it off with a fireworks display on the Chicago River and that is something I am happy to see.

Finding a spot to watch them from is something that is not so easy since a huge number of people are already there to see the parade. I had intended to stand on the Wabash Avenue bridge which provides a good view along the river to the display. However, that was not possible since the bridge was full of people looking at the parade, even though it was a long way away. However, dropping down to the river level provided a spot that did not give a good view of the parade but was absolutely fine for the fireworks.

I got set up with two cameras, one for stills and another for video. Rather than take a full tripod setup, I took a couple of Gorillapods to mount on to the railings along the river. This proved to be a good setup. It was flexible, easy to carry and didn’t get in anyone else’s way. One downside is that a tripod does tend to act as a bit of a deterrent to passers by. This setup seemed to encourage people to bring their kids close to my stuff so I had to make sure the kids kept their hands to themselves since their parents didn’t seem bothered about what they were up to.

Solomon Island

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We had the great pleasure of traveling to Maryland to stay with our friends Mark and Rosie a while back. They are friends of ours from the UK who are currently in the US for work. We spent the weekend with them and got to enjoy a part of Maryland that neither of us had spent much time in before. They live down near where the Patuxent River meets the Chesapeake Bay and there is plenty of water around you wherever you go.

As someone who grew up by the sea, I have always enjoyed being by the water. A good local spot to visit is Solomon Island and we decided to head there for a walk around and a spot of lunch. Since they have a boat, Mark and I decided to go by water while Nancy and Rosie took the car. I wanted to have a blast about in the boat and Mark wanted to go a bit faster than he would if Rosie was aboard so this worked for all of us.

United 787

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A while back I was in Seattle and headed up to Everett to see the large numbers of 787 airframes parked up awaiting rework and delivery to their customers. When you see that many of them lying around, sometimes it is hard to remember that some of them are now getting delivered and entering service. One of Chicago’s local airlines (if you have a local airline these days) is United and they are the first US operator to take delivery of the aircraft.

Houston is the base of operations for the early aircraft but as they are trying to build experience for the crews, they are carrying out internal flights before taking the planes overseas. The first revenue flight was a leg from Houston to Chicago O’Hare. I was interested in covering this for the magazine since they were planning a reception for the aircraft when it got to O’Hare. The Chicago airport media relations people were not handling the event but they gave me the contact details for United. Sadly United were not inclined to respond to inquiries.

However, I decided that it was worth heading up to O’Hare anyway since the forecast was looking quite pleasant. Admittedly, these things will soon be a very common sight but getting the first arrival seemed like something worth spending a morning on. (In truth, the 787 had already been to O’Hare a few times on proving flights but let’s not get too picky!)

I was not the only one there. A lot of people had shown up and the place under the approach to 28 was pretty busy. That is until they changed runways shortly before the 787 was due in. A convoy of cars suddenly headed out to get around to the 10 arrivals. I was part of the convoy and found a spot that seemed reasonable. I had barely got out when the 787 came into view. Fortunately, the sun was being cooperative and the 10 approach actually was better for putting the light on the nose of the aircraft rather than the rear. I wonder how long it will be before I get bored with United 787s showing up.

Half Dome Sunset

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One of my goals while in Yosemite was to go to Glacier Point later in the day and watch the sunset casting its warm light over Half Dome. Half Dome is always an impressive sight to behold. Taking pictures of it never allows you to experience the scale and impressiveness of it but you do the best you can. I got up there about an hour before the sun was due to set in order to get a few other shots. I had intended to hike up to Sentinel Dome but I was running out of time so that part of the trip got scrubbed and saved for another day.

Shooting sunset type shots is a funny thing. The view looks great and you take a few shots. Then, as the sun dips lower, the light gets better and you shoot some more. This continues until suddenly it stops getting better and it is all over. You have to shoot a bunch of stuff since you never know whether it is at its peak or not. Consequently, you end up with a lot of shots that you will never use again.

The other odd aspect about this shoot was the discrepancy between the view and the atmosphere. Sunset at Glacier Point is a popular thing as you might expect. Plenty of people are there. Lots of them are families and families often include small kids. Small kids are not so enthusiastic about sitting around for an hour waiting for the sun to set. Consequently, the scenery looks great but all you can here is crying kids and desperate parents trying to buy off a tired and grouchy kid. Not quite what you had in mind. I just hope the parents still enjoyed the beautiful view since the rest of it looked painful for them.