Help a newbie with Noise!

DreamWeb · Sep 16, 2004

Hello everyone. I own a Nikon D100. And, I've been having problems with noise at low light settings.

This first shot is a wide. As you can see, it appears to have nice detail in the coat, face, etc.

However, when zoomed in at 100%

You can see that there is an incredible amount of noise and loss of details in the dark areas (right side of his face.. viewer's left side of frame).

---

ExposureTime - 10/800 seconds
FNumber - 14.00
ExposureProgram - Manual control
ISO - 200
FocalLength - 50.00 mm

Any suggestions on how to shoot WITHOUT getting that nasty (coloured) noise in there? And, also, this seems to be as sharp as the D100 will shoot for me in low light settings... I can understand it maybe being a bit smudgy on the right side of his face, but the left side could hardly be considered as low-lighting... Shouldn't that be crisp?

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

d.

DreamWeb · Sep 16, 2004

I should add that the background (wall) isn't full of noise.. that's the texture of the wall.

Karalee · Sep 16, 2004

I dont know if this helps or not but I use a noise filter to run my shots through to get them noise free. Something like Helicon is easy to use and free to download.

http://helicon.com.ua/pages/index.php?id=440

and for reference heres a couple of before and afters

Before

After

Hope this helps.

voodoocat · Sep 16, 2004

All digital sensors have noise in the shadows... it's just one of the drawbacks of digital technology. You can get better results by exposing correctly and you can also load a custom curve on the D100.