UFRaw
I’ve been using UFRaw, a GIMP plugin to work with the RAW shot of the moon. The images was quite under-exposed to start with, but still it gives me very many colours in the sky:
It uses dcraw that I talked about earlier. Do you have any experience with dcraw or utillities based on it you’d like to share? I’ll spend some time learning this tool so that I can get better results than this redish sky.
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It looks like you’re getting some camera noise. This is common in long exposures. I’m not sure that UFRaw is going to be able to remove all of that. Here’s my advice FWIW, I hope it isn’t just stuff you already know.
Treatment:
You should probably try a some other functions in your graphics software to remove the noise from this shot. Depending on the software you’re using this can be fairly easy. Paint Shop Pro 9, for instance, has several noise-removal functions that work quite well. The plug-in does work independant of the Gimp to convert RAW files, but I assume you are using the Gimp. I’m not as familiar with any really slick noise reduction processes. You might try Selective Gaussian Blur.
Prevention:
Some digital cameras have a noise reduction function that takes care of this when writing to the memory card. It takes a long time on really dark shots, but sometimes it’s worth turning it for night photography. Also, if you can set your ISO, set the number lower and use a tripod to support the camera. Lower ISOs mean longer shutterspeeds, which give you less noise, but more chance of blurring the image due to motion. The converse is also true. If you can shoot with a tripod, make sure to turn off any feature that automatically selects the ISO. The camera doesn’t know if it’s on a tripod or not, and will try to give you a faster shutter speed (and noiser picture) than necessary.
I’ve made some recent posts about UFRaw on my blog:
http://phototechnic.blogspot.com/
http://phototechnic.blogspot.com/2006/01/color-management-with-linux_18.html
http://phototechnic.blogspot.com/2006/01/color-management-with-linux.html
It’s nice software, but takes some time to get the hang of. My latest thing is trying to capture the correct photo in the jpeg, since adjusting the raw files is so time consuming (I still use JPEG + RAW mode though).
http://phototechnic.blogspot.com/2006/01/white-balance.html
Hopefully, as I get better at color management, the time needed to adjust the raw files will decrease.