[pres589]

I took a few rolls worth of film to photograph fireworks on the 4th of July. I got scans back last night from the lab that developed the film. I under exposed a lot of the shots (which was a surprise on my part, probably due to too small of an aperture used when shooting). Here's one of the shots that shows how that went;



How much can these be "fixed" with noise reduction in processing and what are my options for a low cost noise reduction solution? I'm on my laptop where I don't have Lightroom or Photoshop and I'd rather not buy either as I'll have my desktop computer set up again in a few months so this is mostly temporary.


I got jpeg's back from the lab; I'll have the negatives to copy with my K-5 II and RAW file output from there. I have an assumption that RAW vs JPG isn't really going to matter much here when the source is developed film.

Oh, and I think these were taken on Fuji Superia 200 ISO film. There was also a roll of Ilford XP2 in the mix; that roll had fewer underexposed shots, which shouldn't surprise since it's a stop faster film, and I think it might be more forgiving of this sort of mistake. Lens was my Kiron 28mm f2.0 and I think I shot everything at f8. Would use f4 if I could do this over again.

[robgski]

Take a look at Topaz Denoise, I use it and like it a lot for digital or scanned analog film pix. IIRC, there is a free trial period , and if you like it there is a PF discount code

[subsea]

I don't know whether you are using a Mac or Windows, but you can buy a relatively inexpensive piece of software, such as Topaz DeNoise AI to handle the noise and use whatever piece of photo processing software you are already using to adjust the contrast. I did this in about 5 minutes and ended up with this (without a lot of effort or care – i.e. didn't bother with any fine tuning). You may or may not be happy with these results, but you can adjust to get what you want within the software.

[pres589]

I don't know whether you are using a Mac or Windows, but you can buy a relatively inexpensive piece of software, such as Topaz DeNoise AI to handle the noise and use whatever piece of photo processing software you are already using to adjust the contrast. I did this in about 5 minutes and ended up with this (without a lot of effort or care – i.e. didn't bother with any fine tuning). You may or may not be happy with these results, but you can adjust to get what you want within the software.

That works for me. I had heard good things about Topaz Denoise before. I'll see if I can't get it on the discount over the weekend. Would be useful to have something like this going forward anyway.

[robgski]

That works for me. I had heard good things about Topaz Denoise before. I'll see if I can't get it on the discount over the weekend. Would be useful to have something like this going forward anyway.

There is also a recently created Topaz User Group on PF, please feel free to add your results there so we can have a central repository of knowledge and share lessons learned.

[syyrmb]

Maybe shooting raw can help since raw file has better dynamic range, so you can mess with NR or exposure without causing artifacts. Anyway I applied some noise reduction/sharpening to your jpeg file with Rawtherapee. Of course you can apply even stronger (or weaker) NR/sharpening to your taste.

[stevebrot]

I took a few rolls worth of film to photograph fireworks on the 4th of July. I got scans back last night from the lab that developed the film.

The noise is scanning artifact and chances are the shots are not underexposed. Fireworks are very bright. When you rescan using your K-5, remember that the black parts are supposed to be black and expose the "scan" appropriately.


Steve

[aaacb]

The scans have the black point too high, before noise reduction you can adjust that and see if it's enough (overall higher contrast also can achieve it, as subsea mentioned above). I've also noticed this with lab scans, the scanner really wants to find details where there are none.
Btw the camera settings seem fine to me, the highlights are bright but still retain details.

[pschlute]

Maybe shooting raw can help

He was shooting raw....film

[FozzFoster]

Here's my attempt:
More so hiding the noise in the shadows than over powering with noise reduction -
All with your friendly neighbourhood Lightroom.

[Bob 256]

I think FozzFoster has the best approach. When I first looked at your shot, it looked overexposed. You could probably have dropped the ISO considerably when taking the originals and that would have helped with the noise quite a bit but for these shots which you're stuck with, increasing the contrast and using curves can help a lot. You could also use an unsharp mask and increase the contrast selectively for the dark portions of the image. That will also add some "vibrancy" to the fireworks themselves. You do lose some details in the lower horizon of the photo but with a little work, you could preserve those if needed.

[pres589]

Bob, when you say 'drop the ISO when taking the originals', that's not really easy to do when shooting film. I kind of wanted Ektar 100 for these but I couldn't find any fast.


Interesting to hear that this is a scanning issue and not under exposure. When I saw these I was really surprised; most of the shots taken were two to three seconds of exposure time. It's worked in the past... And normally I really prefer film for how it handles long exposures vs. digital.


I won't have my full setup for copying and post processing negatives (funny phrase) for months. When I do I will scan all it all myself and see how that goes. Fozz and Bob, you both gave me good things to think about. Here's something I did in about a minute in Paint.net without hitting the (not great) noise reduction function;



I would work with it a bit more, just wanted to say that I think I got it, and I really appreciate the advice that I've received here again today.

[syyrmb]

He was shooting raw....film

Well, OP talked about digitalizing his negatives with K5 IIs, that's why I said shooting raw helps.

[DonV]

I'll bet if you print the negatives, you will not see anything close to "noise".
It has been a long while since I shot fireworks with film, but they are either good, or just dark/black- IIRC. I suppose if one pushed the speed you could create grain in b&w- but color?

I'm not really "getting" why you would shoot film and then scan ; don't you do you introduce more noise? ... doesn't any copy of a negative have less info than the negative?

[Bob 256]

Bob, when you say 'drop the ISO when taking the originals', that's not really easy to do when shooting film. I kind of wanted Ektar 100 for these but I couldn't find any fast.


Interesting to hear that this is a scanning issue and not under exposure. ................................

Sorry, my bad! I missed the point that you shot with film. It, then, is definitely a scanning issue. Since you shot on film, the negatives might be a little on the thin side and the scanner compensated for that. You may need to make some manual scanner adjustments (if you do the scans yourself) to drop the black level of the scans. A good way to judge is to look at a histogram if you have software which will generate one. Here's the histogram of the shot you provided. That 'bump" to the left represents the sky for the most part. You want a scan which pushes it further to the left (maybe even "clipping" the left side of that bump a bit). That will darken the sky more and get you less noise in the sky area as well as improve the rest of the tone rendering. The second histogram is that of the corrected image I posted. You can see the differences but if you have the original negative to work from, you can do an even better job at this (smoothing those jags in the histogram).

The scanner was probably trying to pull all the details out of the shadows that it could, which allowed the histogram bump to drift to the right but at the expense of the night sky and noise in the sky area. Playing with scan controls should give you some considerable improvements on this shot.