Snow in Grantham by night

I took some pictures late evening on Monday. Despise a drizzly weather and ice on the roads I took my bike and adventurously went to the town centre Unfortunately the snow + rain settled on my lens all the time, and as DA 16-45mm has quite a short hood it didn't protect it well. As I mentioned in another thread I will consider some cottage cheese or yoghurt cup next time I hoped to go to a few more places, but it started snow-raining even more and I fled home. My wife was more lucky, she went with children to the park around noon and they build a snowman and took some pictures. Not with Pentax though.

All taken with K20D on (cheap) tripod, DA 16-45 mm. The camera is really well sealed, and the lens survived as well

Now, much less bravely, there are some of my pictures. They are rather yellow, but I didn't edit that. First, probably I'd get best results converting RAW images, but I lack skills yet (and using linux I have limited tools choice). Second, the street lamps they cast that yellowish light and this is how I remember it. Well, maybe a bit less yellow

1) This one is overexposed, but looked so shiny Any idea how can I remove water-drop marks? I'm afraid I'm rubbish in postprocessing - I tried cloning them out, but the result was even worse than before.
ISO 200, f/8.0, 8.8 sec., 24mm
[IMG]http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo284/misiek_knm/imgp0524.jpg[/IMG]

2)
ISO 200, f/5.6, 1 sec, EV -1, 16mm
[IMG]http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo284/misiek_knm/imgp0533.jpg[/IMG]

3)
ISO 200, f/5.6, 2 sec, EV +0.5, 21mm
[IMG]http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo284/misiek_knm/imgp0536.jpg[/IMG]

4)
ISO 200, f/4.0, 0.7 sec, EV -1, 23mm
[IMG]http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo284/misiek_knm/imgp0539.jpg[/IMG]

Number 3 for me and the rest are pretty good

Yes 3 for me also, maybe you could try changing the colour temperature in the others to get rid of the amber cast, if that's what you are after.

No 3 is the nicest I think but I agree with Josh that you need to loose the amber colour cast.

Cheers, Kris.

I didn't realise that was where the Addams family lived

No3 gets my vote as well, although all are really good. Well done

I like no 2 and 3, very good

Thanks It's such a lovely feeling reading someone liked my pictures

Josh, Kris - you're right, I also thought I should get rid a bit of that yellow-amber tint. The problem is how to do that in the best way - as I wrote I lack postprocessing skills yet. I have DNG and jpeg images, I'll try to play with them a little over the weekend I wish I have a time-stretching machine

Not too far, true

Probably the easiest thing to do is tweak the white balance slider when doing the conversion from DNG in ACR or whatever your RAW converter is.

I just had a look at removing a colour cast in CS3 and it seemed strangely difficult, especially as I remember Elements having a simple colour cast correction tool.

Cheers, Kris.

Right Kris, In Elements6 either change the colour pre sets in drop down box or move slider to temp. required.

'Better late then never' - as an old man said missing the train.

I finally managed to get some 'results' with RAW files processing on Linux. I tried UFRaw, Rawstudio and RawTherapee v2.4. The last one is closed source, but gave me more options to experiment with, the initial processing was probably the most similar to the camera's, although is awfully slow. Below 'pictures edited'. I tried not to set the white balance too real - as the lampposts gave really strong amber cast.

What do you think about the results? And how to achieve better results? (Practice, probably)

St Peters Hill, Grantham
[IMG]http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo284/misiek_knm/PU/imgp0533.jpg[/IMG]

Guildhall at St Peters Hill, Grantham
[IMG]http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo284/misiek_knm/PU/imgp0536.jpg[/IMG]

Isaac Newton behind a tree, St Peters Hill, Grantham
[IMG]http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo284/misiek_knm/PU/imgp0539.jpg[/IMG]