Nightscape

It was a clear and warm night last week with a nearly full moon at a 45 degree angle, perfect for heading out to the beach for a super long exposure.

I hiked about 1/2 mile down the beach in the dark to an unusual collection of sea stacks and cliffs. It was difficult to compose this because not only could I barely see through the viewfinder, but I wanted to get close to where the waves were breaking. Since I knew it would be at least a 1/2 hour exposure, I wanted to be just out of reach of the biggest wave that would hit during that time.

After watching the waves for about 10 minutes, I set things up, opened the shutter and sat on the beach to wait it out. It was about 28c at 10pm, but it was difficult to enjoy it completely because I was worried about a big wave hitting. I barely got away with this as some waves came very close.

This is exactly what I saw in the viewfinder. Bright as day, and when I looked out, there was in fact the same colours, but very faint to my eye. I actually did no processing to the raw file at all. I just converted it to a TIFF.

The big problem was noise. There were individual pixels that were easily handled with the 'Despeckle' option. But then some areas had these blue and orange blobs that were about 5 pixels in radius. I assume these are heat related blobs. They could only be removed by cloning each of them out. It was not too difficult.

I know that noise reduction involves taking a second exposure of the same length so the camera can compare them. Is there another way to reduce noise?

30 minute exposure @F5. No filters. 

Date Added:	29 Oct 2007 - 14:53
Camera:	Canon 5D
Lens:	Canon 17-40L @18
Film:	RAW (digital) ISO 50
Categories:	Landscape / Travel General
Geo Data:	Show Map Position
Tags:	coyote beach, long exposure, california, star trails
Readers' Votes:	203