Experimenting with the Night Landscape mode on the Nikon Coolpix P500. Night Landscape uses the fast capture capability of the Back-illuminated CMOS sensor to take a number of exposures in extreme low light and then stack them in camera to produce a single shot with increased sharpness, better color detail, and somewhat lower noise. There is also a Tripod setting, which uses a single exposure and aggressive noise reduction. The handheld mode is more attractive for general shooting, but it does require some processing time in camera.

This old inn in St Augustine was on my way back to the car after the opening festivities at the Florida Birding and Photo Fest. Besides the interest of the scene itself, I wanted to see how the camera would cope with the mix of bright lights and ambiance. The shot did require some additional noise reduction in Lightroom, and some fiddling with shadows and highlights…but I am impressed by the camera’s ability to get this shot handheld at all!

Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f3.2 @ a nominal 1/15th second @ ISO 280. Night Landscape mode.

Processed in Lightroom as noted above.