A simple cameraphone photo of a mountain scene, handheld, and wobbling around atop a mountain ridge, wishing to not to topple over and ride out a posthumously embarrassing 1000m fall.

A lot of noise, and the moon is overexposed [Pixel 7]....



The next day, after making it back down to the valley, below, and after coming back from the bar, I pulled out the 80-400mm and took a photo of the moon through the apartment window, with the specific intent of addressing the over-exposed moon from the night before with a composite image, and some noise reduction...



D850 w/ 80-400 the following evening...



[Absolutely blitzed for both photos, if recollection serves.]

France.  The photo is taken from a catwalk at the Cosmiques Refuge, atop a ridge at the edge of the Col du Midi, and looking towards the Dome de Gouter, on the flanks of Mont Blanc.  The higher set of lights on the glacier are at the Refuge des Grands Mulets, with the lower set of lights being a pair of ascending climbers, maybe even two separate parties, making their way up to the refuge, and perhaps just intending to truck on right past it in a one day push to the top.

Revisiting the elevation profile, I'll revise the 1000m downwards and estimate it to be a 500m drop to the glacier/seracs below.  (A little further away, at the Aiguille du Midi station, it is a bona fide 1000m down to the snow/talus fans)  From the Cosmiques Refuge where the nighttime photo was taken, it's 2600m elevation drop to the town lights.  For perspective, that 2600m elevation difference is roughly 1500ft greater than the elevation rise at the top of Grand Teton to the Snake River in Wyoming.

It's really hard to describe the scale.  From the coffee shop in town to the top of Mont Blanc, it's a 12,700ft difference.  And over the course of a mere 5 to 6 miles.

Here's a photo of the Refuge taken from down in town.  There are two or three rock outcrops at the right of the photo, depending on how you count.  The Grands Mulets Refuge sits atop the first, foreground outcrop ... look closely and you'll see it.  



And the unprocessed .jpg...

An impromptu trip from this past May.  I was working on another moon photo edit, also taken in haphazard circumstances, which reminded me of this one.

A photo that I edited on my tablet, up at the apartment in NH, and possibly even from a .jpg file, rather than a .NEF file - I'd have to go over to my tablet to be sure.

At any rate, it's horrific with respect to noise...



But, here's how it looks after running it through DXO PureRAW 1.6...

The timestamp on this file makes me think I did this edit in a bar in Estes Park.  The second photo being an edit a year or two later, running it through DxO PureRAW, and being more critical about tone and contrast.  The laptop monitor I would have used for the initial edit is abysmal, but at least I knew I had a good photo to work with once I got back home to a better setup.

 

Right, I adjusted the tones to draw the eye to moss/lake/peaks, so that meant toning down the foreground rocks, and bringing out/restoring the tones of the peaks to what my recollection was, maybe not what my camera captured, but what I remember from being nose to those peaks the day prior.

The Park Rangers set me up wonderfully with 3 nights of bivi permits for Sky Pond, to accommodate my original plan to climb the pencil-thin-profile spire by myself.  A day before I was to head in, a guide called me asking if I wanted to climb it with him, as he was bringing a client in there a few days later, and wanted to refresh his memory of the climb because he was not only going to have his client in there, but having another senior guide in tow, doing a skill eval.  So, I got to go in a few pound lighter, a day ahead of my climbing partner and splitting the weight of the gear between us.  Unfortunately, it meant that once he hiked out, I didn't have the gear to climb another route if I wanted to.  But, with all the camera gear I had in there, I managed to keep myself occupied after we did our climb.  Even got some photos of him coming back in with his client.

I can't thank the rangers enough for setting me up with primo accommodations.

A photo from a few years back up in New Hampshire, and one I've always liked, probably because of the composition ... because after seeing it with fresh eyes, it certainly wasn't for the tones.  End of the day, and I just set a GoPro on the tracks on my way out from a day's climbing.






And the original image ...

The bright light is some climbers bivi'd on the other side of the lake.  Because it's an ultrawide focal length, they look much further away than they really were.  Per the special climbing bivi permits we are issued, they aren't supposed to be camped that close to the lake - the Park Service requires us to use the designated bivi areas, which are generally out of the normal viewsheds - no tents allowed, and everything stowed under boulders by sunrise - low profile stuff like that.

LR's enhanced NR is nothing short of amazing.  I usually don't use it, because it takes a lot time to process (this one took about 31 minutes), but it's there if I need it.  And there's two things I hate; noise in imagery, and the Dutch :)

For this shot, there's a larger issue of me being in a hurry and not stepping down the aperture (the 200-500 is sharpest on my body at f/8; this one is at f/5.6), but the enhanced NR does a good job of cleaning up some sharpness even after using the normal sharpening tools.

Here's the original frame, as shot:

Immature Baldie Perched OOC by FredMan, on Flickr

First version, using normal NR

Immature Baldie Perched by FredMan, on Flickr

Final, after apply the enhanced NR.  This isn't a tremendous example unless you look at a 100% crop, but the original is noisy.

Immature Baldie Perched Enhanced NR by FredMan, on Flickr

Fred,

The noise reduction from #2 to #3 is really good. sharpens the whole thing right up.

EBR

The original frame doesn't look nearly as noisy as the crop; I think "zooming in" on the crop brings the slight noise at full resolution to more noise.  Same noise, but more evident when zoomed in.

Heading into Rock Springs, WY, during some intermittent rain.

A single frame crudely processed from a .JPG file...



A different single frame from a single .NEF file, perhaps when I got into a bar at Rock Springs...



Multiple frames, processed through Sequator to reduce noise and remove transient artifacts - such as the satellite, as many as I could get in between vehicles, 6; as well as some light painting by me with a headlamp for some foreground detail, and the help of an oncoming vehicle.  And then reapplication via layering of one of the headlight frames to bring back the vehicle - Sequator did a pretty good job of removing it as a transient artifact, so good, that over the last two years, I forgot it was there - only recently revisiting this series of photographs.

Raw file:

Attached File


Post-processed and retouched:

Attached File

My boss shot this and I said "What the fuck?"

Attached File


So I fixed it.

Attached File