This image, taken inside St.Martin-in-the-Fields, London, on a Canon Powershot S-95 has 2 immediate defects that I have been unable to correct in Darktable 3.2: extreme luminance + chrominance noise and blown highlights in the Windows, the central one of which is important. For comparison see the images on Google Street-view.
I would be most interested to see the history stack and module settings that better informed users choose.
Thatâs a challenging image and Iâm still getting my head around denoising such high noise images myself, but hereâs my attempt in darktable 3.2 with scene-referred workflow.
One of the things that makes the noise so abundant when editing this one is the fact that this image seems to be exposed for the highlights, which also means that thereâs a lot of dark/shadows. Cranking up the exposure will lighten it up, but not nicely: It also introduces (a lot of) noise in the process. Add to that the noise that is created by, for example, the sharpen and contrast tools and it starts to overwhelm.
I decided to try keeping the exposure as low as possible (0.76 vs 2+) and try using other tools to brighten things up a bit. This one is a balancing act between clarity/sharpness and keeping the noise at an acceptable level.
(Comment applies to the work by member elstoc. Sorry, havenât figured out how to tie my reply to that posting)
Thatâs a magnificent effort on the blown highlights - every bit as good as what I can achieve in LR and just way ahead of my results in DT. I 'll look at your xmp to see how you achieved it. Thank you. Iâm, somewhat perversely, interested to note that there is still a fair amount of noise left (far less than with my efforts) and you say it is a challenging image in DT, so maybe I wasnât the complete failure I thought. Even so, my results in LR are, in my opinion, better - and that should not be so, given the far superior set of tools, options and parameters in DT. More thinking for me to do.
(Comment applies to the work by member gadolf. Sorry, havenât figured out how to tie me reply to that positing)
Wow, I am impressed. Great highlight recovery in all the windows (better than I achieved in LR). The residue of noise in the beautiful mahogany furniture is no consequence to me and better than I achieved in LR, where I tended to end up with a much reduced noise (of both types) but a noticeably plastic look to that wood. You even got the chandeliers to sparkle, doing justice to what was a tiny but super camera, sadly taken without my consent⌠I must examine your xmp to learn what I can.
You are right - I do remember exposing for the light coming through the East-facing main windows on the thinking that I would lose the interesting pattern of the metal tracery in the windows if I exposed for the interior of the building. I planned to use the âshadowsâ slider in LR to lighten up the interior and in general this worked well in LR but delivered all that noise.
I am delighted to see all the detail outside the windows magically return - I had forgotten about all that. I also like the appearance of that wood - which is impressive âin the fleshâ. I see you had a battle with the noise, though you came far closer to victory than I ever did!
I really like what you have achieved in the highlights and the dark wood. Given the amount of residual noise still visible in the plaster work of the roof and walls after such effective noise reduction in the wood, I think I may have been setting my expectations too high. That camera was much loved, but was designed at least 15 years ago, and had a very small sensor which was very noisy, even at 400 ISO (The âfastestâ I ever used it).
Just type a â@â before start typing the username and a list of users will show up, then just choose it.
Thanks! Like I said, I still find it a bit overdone, regarding nr, but itâs just an exercise. And, although the recent overhauled denoise profiled tool did most of the work, I still had to enable another denoise tool to start plastifying the image as in LR I almost never use this one.
By any chance are you on CHDK?
I love this tiny cameras! especially when powerd by CHDK.
I still have one that I sometimes use, an A3100 IS.
Sadly I no longer have this camera - taken by persons unknown. It went everywhere with me - throughout the world, especially when bike riding, being much favoured over my Nikon D300S because of its weight and size. I replaced it with Powershot G7X Mk II, thinking that this would be at least 10 years better. But the G7 is just too big and heavy for what I need, even if the sensor and processor are better. Donât know what CHDK is, but assume it is an alternative to Canonâs firmware? Should I be considering this for the G7 ?
Take a look at this interview I made with some of the devs. Not a great piece, as I am no reporter at all , but it was fun talking to those hardworking guys:
You should check at their supported cameras list. In my case, the main use was to get access to otherwise hidden raw files (probably G7 already let you grab the raws), but chdk has many other features.
A bracketed double/triple shot (+/- 4 EV overall spread) would have been nice for this specific scene. But that comes with all kinds of assumptions about that being possible at allâŚ
But I think it is always better not to clip the highlights (âpinpointsâ notwithstanding).
I almost never use this one.
, but it was fun talking to those hardworking guys: