Clean night images with ISO 1600? No problem :)

[Pe11e]

As we all know, Sparky doesn't have a very good sensor, resolution on 100% zoom is quite bad, and it's prone to high noise levels at higher ISO values.

Took these with ISO 1600, shutter was 1/8 or 1/6, the air wasn't calm by any means so I had to keep "shorter" shutter speeds. It was pretty dark, maybe 20 to 30 minutes after sunset.
What is the trick? It is called stacking. You must take few identical photos, and stack them in Photoshop. Higher the number of photos stacked = lower the noise. I usually take 10, you can freely take 20, I believe the noise will be completely gone.
You can also take 10 AEB photos (30 in total), create 10 HDR photos from them, and stack them in Photoshop. Results will talk the rest of the story.
I still didn't took my Spark to fly around the city and demonstrate with proper photos, but I guess these few below will help you to get the picture.

Tutorial for stacking:

 

[Rafiky]

Very interesting and great job. Do you know if there is a similar technique for reducing noise in videos too?

 

[Pe11e]

Very interesting and great job. Do you know if there is a similar technique for reducing noise in videos too?

Only with good plugins like Denoiser.

 

[Linky]

Good effort. ??

 

[MySpark53]

I checked the exif data for 505 & 537. I'm new to exif but concluded that Lightroom processing added some color corrections to each photo but evidence of image stacking performed along the way was not found in either of the image's exif , using 'exiftool'.
The image file directory was the drones camera :
DCIM/100MEDIA/DJI_0505.

I tried making a hand held drone stack of images at your ISO1600 & 1/8 suggestions. My stacked image exif mentions the stacker software I used (image description - modified by CombineZP) and the laptop file directory.

 

[Pe11e]

I checked the exif data for 505 & 537. I'm new to exif but concluded that Lightroom processing added some color corrections to each photo but evidence of image stacking performed along the way was not found in either of the image's exif , using 'exiftool'.
The image file directory was the drones camera :
DCIM/100MEDIA/DJI_0505.

I tried making a hand held drone stack of images View attachment 9587at your ISO1600 & 1/8 suggestions. My stacked image exif mentions the stacker software I used (image description - modified by CombineZP) and the laptop file directory.

I think that I color corrected all the photos first in Lightroom, exported, then stacked them in Photoshop, and finally saved as JPEG. I think that Photoshop doesn't save stacking data to exif.

 

[MySpark53]

I think that I color corrected all the photos first in Lightroom, exported, then stacked them in Photoshop, and finally saved as JPEG. I think that Photoshop doesn't save stacking data to exif.

Nice scene and end result.

 

[Sparky007]

That’s really neat and I will have to give it a try!!!