Ever since photography was invented more than 190 years ago, all photographers have always had a problem. If there is not enough light for a correct exposure, a more sensitive film or, in the case of a digital camera, a higher ISO number must be set on the camera. This results in image noise, which is very unsightly in the recordings. A practically unsolvable problem for 200 years, since even the most expensive man-made denoising software programs were only very poorly able to remove the image noise. I still remember my first visit to Japan in 1994, when I happily searched the Yodobashi Camera store in Shinjuku for the Fujichrome Provia 1600 that was not available in my country at that time.

Of course the results were a far cry from what you'd expect from a Velvia, but you'd gained 5 full stops with the same exposure time and it was amazing. Let's say that 1/30sec is the shortest exposure time that you don't shake from your own hand and you go looking for a motif without a flash in the twilight, the Provia 1600 allows you to virtually reduce the exposure time to a whole second. However, this issue of high-speed films was quickly resolved when digital cameras conquered the world market around 2000. A blue sky suddenly no longer had millions of colors when enlarged on the monitor, but was uniformly blue. What a difference to scanned images. But the digital cameras also had to increase their signal internally in order to simulate high ISO numbers when there was less light.

This was a real problem for a long time, up to the Nikon D3(s), because image noise is one of those phenomena that you don't want when you look at your beloved snapshots on the monitor afterwards. And even with the introduction of the legendary Nikon D3s, there was still the problem that ISO 6400 could be used, but extreme applications such as exposure times of several minutes were impossible. Because the sensors were red hot and also produced very high levels of noise in such unusual applications. Until 2023 there was no other choice but to trust expensive human-written software like Topaz Labs and try to remove the image interference to some extent, which, between us, never succeeded.

The results always ended up looking awful and weren't for sale at Getty Images because they didn't even pass quality control. Only with the integration of artificial intelligence in programs like Adobe Photoshop Beta v24.7 did a quantum leap in noise reduction from photos succeed in 2023. Okay, it should not be concealed at this point that this AI almost needs a "Nasa computer" to be able to send the incredible flood of data back and forth at an acceptable speed, but it's really worth it. For example, in 2016 I had the crazy idea of using a Nikon D7100 to take long-term exposures in the UVA spectrum at night of temple complexes that I had illuminated myself in various ultraviolet spectra.

Original D7100 NEF file - 345sec f/3.5 ISO6400

The 300sec exposure time required for this not only caused the camera sensor to glow but also caused such strong image noise in the files that practically all the photos were unusable. Thanks to the incredibly good AI from Adobe, however, irredeemably bad recordings suddenly become attractive and presentable photos again. An incredible step into the future. I really don't have the words for how artificial intelligence is superior to humans here

And this is what the result looks like with the new AI…..

Even completely wrongly exposed shots taken with ISO 6400 f2.8 and 300sec exposure time in the Upper Antelope Canyon with my Nikon D3 can suddenly be saved, which is absolutely unbelievable for me…

The original file: