Botanic Specimens

Ronman · Dec 20, 2007

I brought these flowers in last Summer, placed them in front of a black background and lit them with a desk lamp. What do you think about these?

1 ?

2 Common Fleabane

3 Bluette

Trenton Romulox · Dec 20, 2007

They all seem really noisy and slightly underexposed to me, to be honest.

Sideburns · Dec 20, 2007

way too noisy. They're pretty good, but I'd like to see less noise.

Ronman · Dec 20, 2007

Thanks, I'm trying to figure out where I'm introducing the noise.

Hell, I'm just figuring out what noise is. Thanks again. Ron

Ls3D · Dec 20, 2007

Noise is that graininess where there should be smoother gradients. I'm just a noob, but I'm guessing a larger aperture will let more light hit the sensor and reduce the effect (assuming digital). The ISO could be too high as well, or maybe a desk lamp is too warm - a combination of problems?

This should get the pros chiming in!

-Shea :mrgreen:

Trenton Romulox · Dec 20, 2007

I'd say the most common means of introducing noise to an image, if using digital, would be too high of an ISO. At least that's where I've run into noise. In fact, that's the only time I run into noise, is when shooting at anything above ISO 1250 or so, but that's usually minimal. I run into a lot of noise at ISOs 3200 and 6400. The level of noise when using a digital camera can depend on what body you're using.

Ronman · Dec 20, 2007

Maybe it's this old camera I'm using, it's an Olympus 7000C. It has a 1x1.8 CCD sensor, 7.1mp.

I use Paint Shop Pro 8 for processing. My full size images do not look as bad as the ones from photobucket. The petals on #2 are much better on the larger files, the shaded and less exposed areas are not much different.
Am I doing something wrong when they are compressed. I can print 8.5x11s that are real nice.

Ronman · Dec 20, 2007

Maybe it's this old camera I'm using, it's an Olympus 7000C. It has a 1x1.8 CCD sensor, 7.1mp.

I use Paint Shop Pro 8 for processing. My full size images do not look as bad as the ones from photobucket. The petals on #2 are much better on the larger files, the shaded and less exposed areas are not much different.
Am I doing something wrong when they are compressed. I can print 8.5x11s that are real nice.

My fastest ISO is only 400, I'm usually at 100.

Ls3D · Dec 20, 2007

Your printer inks may be sublimating and actually smoothing out the noise. Post a 100% sample crop if you want the noise evaluated at full resolution.

-Shea

Ronman · Dec 21, 2007

Something like this?

Ls3D · Dec 21, 2007

Something like this?

Are you seeing the noise now? It is pretty bad. Compare it to some of the other post here. Hopefully you can produce better results with some different settings. Someone with that camera may even be able to help you out.

-Shea

Ronman · Dec 21, 2007

I think I'm going to move ahead with my plan to purchase a DSLR. I think I had decided that this was the limitation of the camera. I didn't know they should be so much better. New camera should solve this problem.

Thank you all, Ron

AncientSnapper · Dec 21, 2007

Noise can be a problem with old cameras (and even modern ones) - I use NeatImage. Your crop is a bit too damaged to correct it properly, but this is the sort of result you will get (although it would be better on a full image) - really well worth buying.

You can profile your camera and then run it as a matter of course. I've got a page on it on my web site.

Also doing a lot of post-processing can introduce noise - especially colour saturation and sharpening, so beware and inspect your images at 100%.