This photo taken across the water from Porto’s riverside district Ribeira turned out really well, considering it was handheld. (The tripod was too far away, in the back of the car — an excuse that comes up in nearly all my night shots posted here.) I leaned against a tree and held my breath.
I don’t remember where I first learned of this, but I read that you can be steadier holding your breath post-exhalation rather than post-inhalation. But don’t take my word for it — try both ways and see which one is easier for you.
The image still has some noise by Clérigos Tower, but an acceptable amount. You can view it larger by lightboxing the Flickr version. I took this with my older APS-C camera from 2008, which has the smaller sensor and needs more post-processing help.
Photography Notes
EXIF for the above photo
Software used for this image, in order:
- Photo Mechanic: ingest RAW file. (I manage all RAW files in Photo Mechanic as it’s faster.)
- Nikon Capture NX2: correct exposure, white balance in RAW (in this case, NEFs). Save as TIF.
- PhotoNinja: edit TIF for noise, tweak exposure/illumination/highlights/shadows.
- Photoshop: edit using RadLab plugin. Save to JPEG.
- Lightroom (non-destructive editing): straighten picture, further color editing. Export copy of file with edits using presets that I’ve customized for various social media (specific size/quality/watermark for blog, Facebook page, etc.). I only ever crop at the end, in Lightroom. I also never work with NEFs in Lightroom, almost exclusively JPEGs and only the occasional PSD and TIF.
That is FIVE different software programs for this single image. If the images were taken daylight outdoors or have no people in them, I usually skip PhotoNinja and Photoshop altogether. I mainly use Photoshop for portrait work. But no matter what the images, I use Photo Mechanic, Nikon Capture NX2, and Lightroom. I keep the RAW files and the JPEGs on separate external drives, and these days I’m up to seven.
To some, this may look like a crazy workflow. I work with a seven-year old iMac and I use older versions of all this software — even Photoshop (I use 10.0/CS3 because I really do not want to buy an Adobe subscription). Thankfully I didn’t lose any software in the Great OSX Upgrade of 2016. Only the Nikon Capture NX2 crashes once in a while, but otherwise everything still works fine and my workflow is intact. The reality is, I have all this software because there is no magic application that does everything. Some programs are better at some things than others, and I’d gladly drop any of these if they didn’t do such a good job at the specific functions I use them for. Until then, the Crazy Workflow stays.