Watkins Glen Falls

[joe_r]

I'm new to long exposure shots. It was still pretty dark, and when I bumped up the exposure and brought up the shadows, the colors in the dark areas on the left got a bit pixelated:




Canon Digital Rebel XT with kit lens
55mm @ 30s @ f/32
Post-Processing in Aperture

[waffles]

The water looks great to me. I really like how you captured what looks like silk. But the colors overall seem a bit dull.

[clockdoc]

Nicely composed and exposed.

[RexK_Cozumel]

For the small image posted here it looks pretty good. However when you view the large image on flickr there is a lot of noise in the shadows. I am just curious as to why you shot this at f/32. You should try to not use apertures that small at it can add distortions to your images.

[joe_r]

Rex,

I shot f/32 because I've never heard not to, this is definitely something to keep in mind. For long exposures (or I guess any for that matter), what is the smallest aperture you would recommend?

Also, I'm new to Aperture (this was actually the first image I've edited with it). Does anyone have any tips on bringing up the shadows without adding in the noise?

Thanks,

Joe

[RexK_Cozumel]

Unfortunately when you brighten an image the first place noise is going to show up is in the shadows. There is really not too much you can do other than run a noise reduction filter on it but sometimes that wont do too much. This is why it is better to overexpose an image slightly since you can always darken an image and get back the detail with out adding noise but you can not lighten an image to get detail with out adding noise. As for the reason for not shooing at f/32 here is a link

[joe_r]

That is very helpful, thank you.