Monday, September 13, 2010

On Dark Frame Subtraction

Some criticize K-7 and other cameras for Dark Frame Subtraction (DFS) during extremely long exposures (1/2 hour and longer). Effectively, DFS shortens the night by half.

What if it were possible to pre-perform the DFS exposure say by opening the shutter for an hour and saving a special DFS image file every 5 or 10 minutes. Then, during the actual shoot the photographer wouldn't have to wait for DFS, but rather camera will take the ready image from the card. The pre-shoot DFS exposure could be an option from the camera menu that will greatly improve the usability of the camera. The regular DFS can be retained of course.

Such a mechanism may mean somewhat weaker noise reduction performance but it will be the photographer's call to make.

1 comment:

Johan said...

Yes, wouldn't that be great. I havn't been able to work out the "off" switch in the debug menu either -- annoying.