500D upgrade?

• Esdras

  Participant

  December 10, 2012 at 9:14 am

  Hi Guys,

  This is my first post here, I hope that I can contribute to this forum somehow.

  I like night photography (I’m novice/newbie) and apart from the noise my 500D (T1i) takes around 30 seconds to process a long exposure shot. This is bad, why? I like to capture the northern lights and a lot can happen in 30 seconds!

  I don’t have the money to go to 5Dmk2 and If I’m changing my gear I want to go to full frame, what do you think about the 5Dc? How long does it take to process a 20 seconds exposure?

  Thanks!
  Esdras
  jodal1975

  Participant

  December 10, 2012 at 10:20 am

  Hi Esdras , welcome to the site . 2 things about your post , firstly , you say that “apart from the noise” are you saying the noise is very bad ? What setting do you have the ISO at? under normal circumstances you should always try to keep it to 100. There may be occasions ( particularly with night photography to stop star trails etc) where you you need a quicker shutter speed but keep it as low as possible . The second matter concerning how long it is taking to process the shot sounds you have noise reduction turned on . It takes equally as long to process as the shot you have taken.for example if your shot takes 1 second , the noise reduction will add another 1second before the shot is “processed”, or if you were to take a 15 second shot it would add on 15 seconds etc…. I won’t bore you with the details of what is happening but just know that it will take as long as your shot again….. So if your doing a 3 minute exposure… You’ve a long wait ! :-) you can change the level of or completely turn off noise reduction in the camera settings. Hope this helps.
  Esdras

  Participant

  December 10, 2012 at 11:02 am

  Thanks so much for your quick answer.
  This picture was taken with ISO 800 and 20 seconds exposure: http://flic.kr/p/bmaQx9″ onclick=”window.open(this.href);return false;
  It took around 20 seconds to be processed… I don’t know about the noise reduction configuration, I will check it today. Thanks!
  There was guy taking pictures with a D60 and his camera was awayyy faster than mine to process the shots. So, it’s the camera configuration and not the “cpu power of the camera?

  Thanks!
  Esdras
  jodal1975

  Participant

  December 10, 2012 at 12:16 pm

  I’m on my phone now , so no point looking at your photo till I get home. But definitely if you turn off noise reduction , your photo will only take 1/2 second to process (if that)… The downside is you will have slightly more noise . I would suggest setting your camera to raw and taking pictures with it rather than jpeg..you can then easily get rid of all noise simply in the software that was bundled with the camera…or you can download it. It’s even easier if you have photoshop .
  Esdras

  Participant

  December 10, 2012 at 10:14 pm

  Thanks again!
  After changing the settings on my camera the processing time is NONE. I’ve installed canon DPP and the noise reduction is working great with the software, good stuff!
  Now, I have to go out to shot the sky and see how that goes.

  Cheers,
  Esdras
  jodal1975

  Participant

  December 11, 2012 at 3:19 pm

  glad all worked out ! :-)