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Crappy cameras, what to do with them? Anonymous
How do you deal with crappy cameras and the resulting awful, noisy photos?

Before people tell me to just go get a real camera, I do also have an EOS 350D that'll shoot decent photos. However, I do have a couple really bad cameras. The worst being this logitech webcam (orbit).

Basically, what I'm wondering is what techniques do you guys/gals use to minimize noise and other unwanted junk when/if you're forced to use a bad camera. Obviously, shooting at times when there's lots of light helps, as do tripods or otherwise stabilizing the camera to not have everything washed out in a big blur. But when this still results in poor images, what tricks do you have up your sleeves for getting the best possible results with any given camera?

As shown with this godawful photo taken during the night (yeah, still somewhat bright, since I live in Norway) things look grim. But seeing as I just shot some random nonmoving objects this time I decided to not take one, but 25 images in rapid succesion, set one as a background layer in PS and add all the others on top at 5% opacity, averaging out the noise between the images. This helped quite a bit, but there's still lots of unwanted crap left. Anyone got any ideas on how to improve the results further (leet PS tips work too, I guess)?
>> Anonymous
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>> Anonymous
Just stick to low ISOs and take advantage of the fact that almost every such camera has no vibration going on in it when the shutter goes off. Sharply handholding a decent-sized point-and-shoot is possible at speeds under 1/10th of a second, even without IS. If it has an articulating viewfinder, put it around your neck, walk around with it out like a waistlevel finder, and hold it steady by holding one side normally and the other pushing down a little bit to let tension on the neckstrap keep it a bit steady.

And then, of course, keeping it out of direct sunlight and otherwise as cold as possible. The hotter the camera is, the more noise there will be.

Something else, though I'd imagine the balance of these two factors will be different on every camera: always try to expose spot-on as much as possible when shooting JPEG, even if it means the ISO has to be bumped up. Underexpose will bring out a huge amount of noise, too. Of course, there's an upper limit, but if you're trying to decide between underexposed by a stop at ISO 200 and properly exposed at 400, I've found the 400 will have less noise. With RAW, you want to expose as brightly as possible without clipping highlights.

And then, of course, there's NR in Photoshop or a plug-in to it if it's that bad. But even on 1/2.5" sensor cameras, I leave that alone at any ISO less than 400 unless it's going to be viewed very large. It just doesn't really show up in files appropriate for viewing on a screen or prints.
>> Anonymous
1) Take 10, 20, 30 photos of your scene without moving your camera. Subject must be similarly stationary. Point is, you need a bunch of identical photos, and the more the better.

2) Put all the photos into a Photoshop document as a series of layers. Let's say we have 8 images, henceforth numbered 0-7.

3) Set the opacity of layers 7, 5, 3, 1 to 50%.

4) Merge the layers down in pairs. Merge 7 to 6, 5 to 4, 3 to 2, 1 to 0. You should have 4 layers now, 6, 4, 2, 0.

5) Set layers 6 and 2 to 50% opacity, merge down in pairs. 6 to 4, 2 to 0. Set layer 4 to 50%, merge to 0.

It's called image stacking, and you can also use it to combine a bunch of underexposed images into one perfectly exposed image.
>> Anonymous
That sounds like a recipe for a shit load of noise.
>> Anonymous
>>68033

It's not. Noise is random, so when you merge a bunch of images of the same subject together, it averages out.