Reply to thread

It's usually recommended that it be left turned off, but that's from people who do their own post processing and noise reduction. Very much like people who shoot raw. Sometimes the in-camera noise reduction causes some loss of detail. What you will notice when you turn it on is your camera will take the shot and immediately add an equal length dark frame, so your 20 second exposure will take 40 seconds.

I'm a more casual shooter and processer, and am a big believer in the try-it-and-see-if-you-like-it way of doing things. I'd try it and see what you think. Year ago when I first started doing solar imaging I decided to try a filter that typically is used for viewing the planets, not for viewing the sun. It ended up helping. It was one of those I-wonder-what-this-would-do? moments, so it never hurts to experiment. Its funny, even Sony doesn't seem to mention long exposure noise reduction in their how to shoot the night sky: https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00223374 Here's a guy that shoots with an a6000 and he doesn't mention in camera noise reduction, but again, I'd consider him to be an advanced shooter - he does his noise reduction in post. https://www.phototraces.com/photography-tips/how-to-take-pictures-of-stars/

When I've done my single frame shots, I've turned off in camera noise reduction, because it was suggested in an astrophotography forum by more advanced imagers.I figured I do mine in post too but I haven't had the skies to do some before and after comparisons. If you decide to move beyond single shot images, you'll turn off noise reduction and take multiple images, as well as bias, dark frames and lights, and stack them all together. Not only does this reduce noise, it increases signal. Most of the Oh-My-Gosh-WOW! Milky Way images you see online are done with multiple frames stacked together.

I'm wanting to experiment more, but like you, am in light polluted area for the next month or so. Until I get to better skies, the only night sky imaging I'll be doing is some shots of Jupiter through my scope. Not a good target for the Sony though. The planets is where a small chip is an advantage.

I don't have an example from the Sony to show noise reduction by stacking but I do have a couple recent images of Jupiter. This was taken from St Augustine through my scope at an effective 2400mm focal length using a small chip (4.8x3.6mm) monochrome UBS camera. I'm taking uncompressed avi videos and using a program to select and stack individual frames into a single image that's then sharpened. Finally I'll do some simple stretching in levels to improve contrast. The grainy image is a single 1/150sec frame, and the stacked image is composed of almost 500 frames combined from 1000 taken. The software throws out the worst frames. I couldn't even sharpen or enhance the single frame nearly as much as the stacked frame. No noise reduction was applied. Since most noise is random, stacking multiple images averages it out and enhances the signal. The same would apply when doing Milky Way shots. Obviously in that case, exposures would be longer, and you'd use less frames. FYI: The Great Red Spot is near the limb at the 3 O clock point and the dark spots near the dark cloud band are called barges. There are string of white ovals visible too. A Fun Fact is, you could drop the Earth into the Great Red Spot without touching the sides.  One thing I will tell you, is Florida has some incredibly steady skies!

FYI, I see that Big Cypress National Preserve is a International Dark Sky Place. Might be a place you could try for some more shots. You might not even have to go that far on 75 to get some dark skies. Dunno, I'm just a tourist, new to Florida.

I've been very impressed with what others have done with their a-series camera and I'm looking forward to learning how to do similar night shots. When I do, I'll share what I find.

[ATTACH=full]13402[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]13403[/ATTACH]