JFK 11/16/2010 Korean Air 747 Starcraft

[lijk604]

Manny, AWESOME work! I am truly envious. Which noise software did you use?

[gonzalu]

Ahh, thanks... well, lots of tricks here... PLASTIC LOOKING yes, but we get away with it with small pictures LOL.

So, in order to hide the mud as best as possible, here is my workflow.

--DO NOT GO above your camera's highest calibrated ISO. For Nikon, this means NO HI+1 or similar. On my D3, it is ISO 6400, on the D2Xs, ISO 800 :-(
--YOU MUST begin with a truly SHARP image to begin with. If not sharp, you will really be in trouble in the end and end up with plastic mud, worse than plain plastic or plain mud... your choice!
--If the above are met, then you should also have a slightly overexposed image. For night shots this is much more important. IF YOU HAVE to increase exposure in post, you're doomed, do not even try. it will suck even more.
--Open the file in Lightroom 3.3RC or Photoshop ACR 6.3 Beta (Only because they have lens correction profiles for my 200-400mm f/4)
--Go to the Camera Calibration tab and select a relative calibration profile. I chose either Vivid, Landscape, Standard or Neutral, depending on the shot. Landscape and Vivid really darken shadows so if I want to retain detail, I select Neutral.
--Go to Lens Corrections tab, select my lens or auto.
--Go to the Details tab and dial in (to taste, but mostly these numbers work for me) in order from the top down: 40,1.0,40,50 -- 50,50,0,25,50. The Masking of 50 is only for HIGH ISO images, otherwise 25 works for me usually. As for Noise Reduction, 50 for high ISO, otherwise 25
--Go to the Basic tab and dial in the white balance, I mostly do not rely on presets and usually use the eye dropper on WHITE, GRAY or BLACK areas. As long as it is neutral. IF I have a nice upside down bell shaped histogram, I will try to eyeball the WB to taste and line up the RGB.
--Open the image. Once open, I will use either Neat Image or Imagenomic Noiseware Pro to further denoise. Once I finally output the final sized file for web, I may denoise again very slightly.

With the above techniques, I get usually very clean super high ISO images, but very plastic un real looking. I just happen to accept them as is. Some people really hate plastic look. But you have to chose. Most cameras have noise even at base ISO.

I also find that if using Nikon Capture NX 2.0, I get much better noise profiles as the software really is designed for the files the cameras produce. But I HATE the workflow of Capture NX or View NX. I guess if my picture was to be published in a magazine, I would approach it differently.

The above workflow also applies to day to day normal low ISO images... I just tweak the numbers a bit on the sharpening, masking, denoise, etc.

[Delta777LR]

Manny those take off shots are splendid! what speed did you use for those images?

[gonzalu]

Sergio,

Thanks for the kind words.. trust me, these SUCK ... lol, but thanks... :-)

I usually leave the EXIF data intact on my images so feel free to look through that for all the dirty details. But if you don;t want to spend the time, the KLM was 1/25sec, the LOT was 1/15sec... all were at my max calibrated ISO of 6400 on the D3 and the D2Xs was at ISO 800 or Hi.1 which is like ISO 3200.

The ground shots weren;t so bad because movement is slow. However, what I really want to do is use a TRIPOD and ISO 100 long exposures :-) Some nice HDRs would be killer from here. Well, for JFK is the most we can get. Probably easiest at Amsterdam or Brasil where you can do pretty much anything at any distance.

[gonzalu]

BTW for those who don't have a EXIF tool, I like the IEXIF 2 Viewer from Opanda.