To speckle or not to speckle...

[mad_malteaser]

I've read so many posts where people go on about removing noise from photographs, even when, to me, it looks pretty good! Maybe I'm way off the mark here, but what's so wrong with a little noise?

 

[santino]

numero due

 

[Alison]

I'm with Santino, just depends on the feel you are going for with the photo. There are times when I really want everything to be crisp and clean, others when I want a little "noise" for mood, esp with black and whites for me.

 

[ferny]

Sometimes I want to get rid of it completely. Sometimes I add it to the photos. It depends entirely on what the photo is and what feel I'm going for.

 

[ksmattfish]

I don't mind film grain in some images, particularly BW. I think of it as more of a texture, and it's appropriate for the mood in some images. Digital noise, on the other hand, usually looks like bad TV reception to me, and personally I don't like it. Maybe I just haven't seen it used well, though.

 

[will965]

How does a photo with lots of noise look different to one without, ie. what is noise? :?

 

[ksmattfish]

How does a photo with lots of noise look different to one without?

As far as film grain goes, here are a couple examples of grainy images (although it might be hard to see it in the low res file)...

And here are a few with very little grain...

If no one posts a digital example, then you could probably try to find pics taken by a very cheap, low mega-pixel, digital camera (not manufacturer samples), and compare it to images taken with a DSLR.

 

[danalec99]

what is noise?

Digital language for grain.