Fuji X10 at night: how to deal with the orbs

Brisbane at night. January 20, 2012 | flickr

I think the best title for the photo above is "Watching the orbs" or something like this :-) And yes, the photo has orbs in it, but I would not call the orbs obtrusive in the image of that size. Actually, I like the picture. The colors might be too yellow, but it turned out that I like these OOC colors. The image was rotated ~2 degree, and I cloned a tiny strip in one corner to fill in the background. 

I went to the city this Friday night to take some pictures with the Fuji X10. Generally I do not do a night photography, but I was curious about orbs, or white discs, appeared in photos taken at night as  a result of sensor blooming around overexposed areas. I wrote a few posts on the orbs issue, but till now I had just a few snapshots taken at dusk in my first days out with the camera.

It seems that the orbs do not appear at twilight but only present in photos taken at night, with bigger contrast between lights and background. I am talking about subtropical night in Brisbane, so it is very dark. The photo below was taken at iso 200, dynamic range 200%, F4.5, exposure 0.77 sec, exposure compensation -2.0, 12 megapixels. The photo was resized, and the 100% crop is provided below. 

test for orbs at iso 200

100% crop from the image above

The same scene was taken in EXR mode. I think I used high sensitivity/low noise option for the photo below.  In this mode the pictures are recoded at 6 megapixels.  The tech: iso 1600, F2.8, 1/27 sec, exposure compensation -2.0. With such exposure time it might be possible to take this shot without a tripod. Moreover, the highlight clipping areas do not have sharp borders anymore!

test for orbs: EXR mode, iso 1600

100% crop from the image above

So, it seems that it is possible to get rid of orbs in night shots by using EXR mode (high iso/low noise). It comes at price of  reduced resolution and visible noise at high iso. On positive side: it is possible to take such shot without tripod. Usually I use the lowest level of noise reduction in the camera, so the results can be better. I guess it is an interplay between contrast and the camera's ability to handle it, so it it possible that in harsh conditions even EXR mode would not be able to combat the orbs.

I have not tried to shoot the same scene with iso 1600 in standard Aperture priority mode at 12 megapixels. I suspect the noise will be very high but the orbs might be still there. I tried iso 400 with dynamic range 400% and the orbs were still visible.