Enhanced Resolution

Orion over Mt Whitney

I took this photo a couple years ago (it’s got a lot more snow this year). In the middle distance is the top of Mt Whitney. I was camped in the Lone Pine (California) Campground. This is a 15 second exposure at ISO 3200 taken with my Nikon D810. Below the three stars of Orion’s Belt, the bright star is Rigel. Just above Orion, the yellowish star is Betelgeuse. To the right the bright star is Aldebaran. The small group farther right is the Pleiades.

What’s new with this photo is that I used Lightroom’s new AI noise reduction to minimize the noise associated with the higher ISO and longer exposure. Below see the before and after image … zoomed in 300% so you can see the difference easier. (At 300%, you also see a little of star motion.) You see a lot of the color dots are gone … that was mostly noise. Unfortunately, a few were likely very faint stars. But mostly, I wanted to do a little show-and-tell. You can see it is smoother. Some images will benefit from this new feature more than others. Sorry, but you can’t use it on a JPG image (yet) …

Detail of the Aldebaran area: Before
Detail of the Aldebaran area: After

Alabama Hills and Mt Whitney

Alabama Hill and Mt Whitney

This photo was taken from the Alabama Hills just above Lone Pine, CA. The hills were a frequent film/tv location in the 40’s and 50’s. In the background you can see the Mt Whitney Portal road carved into the mountainside. The jagged ridge along the skyline is part of Mt Whitney.

Road to Whitney Portal

Road to Whitney Portal

If you click on the image to enlarge it, the road to Whitney Portal becomes much more prominent as the scar across the hillside to the right side of the image. Whitney Portal is one of the access points for climbers heading up Mt Whitney is the highest mountain in the lower 48 with an elevation of 14,505 ft (4421 m). It is in California just to the west of Death Valley National Park and less than 100 miles from the lowest point in North America.

According to some historians, the Pi Ute [Paiute] Indians called Mt. Whitney Too-man-i-goo-yah, which means ‘the very old man.’

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