Stacking for noise reduction

[Boo53]

A couple of weeks ago I was out and about and ended up at a set of cascades. Didn't think they'd be much so didn't take a tripod. Still I thought I'd have a practice at using burst mode/stacking/mean to create the long exposure effect.

Then a couple of days ago I went up to the Chateau Tahbilk wetlands for a sunrise which would also include some fog.

No fog present so I tought I'd have a go at shooting handheld at high iso, then stacking to remove extra noise.

So the shot was 20 frames in burst mode, into PS in layers, auto align, smart filter, then layer/smart objects/stack mode/median.

It didn't do a bad job, but then used topaz denoise ai as well, which I won't worry about here

One of the original frames

Chateau Tahbilk sunrise early morning-41992 by boo 53, on Flickr

Original frame cropped to show details

untitled-41993-2 by boo 53, on Flickr

stack mode using median

stack median2 by boo 53, on Flickr


It's not.a keeper so I haven't done much with it, but I thought the technique might be of interest

[ameerat42]

Thanks for reminding us of this technique, John.

Can you please post your stacked full "original" frame as well for comparison, ta.

[Boo53]

Thanks for reminding us of this technique, John.

Can you please post your stacked full "original" frame as well for comparison, ta.

Actually that file was about 5Gb and I wasn't going to keep it si I've already deleted it

[ameerat42]

^I meant the stacked and then flattened version. Ie, the full scene.

[Tannin]

What an interesting idea!

The first picture does seem very noisy indeed for ISO 3200. DxO Pure Raw or Photo Lab would clean it right up, I expect. I'm amazed at just how good that software is. (It offers a free 30-day trial, well worth a look.)