Eliminating Grain

makenottake

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I was wondering if anyone here could give me any tips on eliminating or at least reducing grain and noise is my pictures. I'm shooting with a Canon PowerShot Pro 1. 8.0 Megapixels.

I was trying to take some macro-shots of flowers in my mom's garden tonight around dusk, and all my pictures came out grainy/noisy. I know it's because there wasn't enough light, but is there a way to help reduce that? I tried playing with the f-stop, shutter speed, and ISO but I couldn't get enough light into the camera with out the grain.

Any tips would be appreciated!
 
Try to lower the ISO and use a longer shutter speed. This would probably require a tripod or any other way to stabilize the camera since it may be a long exposure.
 
First off, there is no real "grain" in digital images. What you are seeing is "noise".

The best way to avoid noise is take the proper steps when you shoot the picture. The most important step you can take is to use the lowest ISO on your camera. This will often require that you work in reasonably bright light or that you use a tripod. ISO is the primary camera setting that affects noise. The only other camera setting that impacts noise is "Sharpness", and then only when shooting JPEG format and only to a modest degree. The higher the ISO and/or the higher the Sharpness setting the more noise.

There are ways to reduce noice after the fact, but these always compromise sharpness to a degree. There are specialized applications and Photoshop plugins that can do a reasonable job of balancing noise reduction with sharpness degradation. When you camera allows it, shooting in RAW format and using one of the better RAW processing applications will also provide you with rather good control of noise.
 
Thanks guys! I'll try your suggestions the next time I go out and let you know how it goes!
 

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