Is it me, or the camera?

[elementgs]

Based on common teachings, numerous articles, and in speaking with other photographers, I have learned that generally any issue I might have with my photos can be quickly narrowed down and resolved with the likely conclusion being drawn that my own lack of experience and/or ignorance caused the problem.

With this acknowledged and stated, I would really love to narrow this down and determine once and for all what the actual issue is...

My bottom line question here is, can the Nikon D3200 do great looking night shots, and/or low light condition shots, with no visible noise?

I was camping in Big Sur last month and shot the full spectrum with my Nikon (using the Nikon 12-24mm lens) and was unfortunately dismayed by the fact that no matter the setting, noise was a visible problem during the development phase. I tried everything from f4 to f22, ISO 100 to ISO 1600, short shutter speeds and long exposures and no combination of settings allowed me the ability to eliminate the noise.

The scene was fairly simple, very low ambient light, no fog or haze on the coast (for once) and the milky way was clearly visible to the naked eye. What an opportunity...

Before I go and drop the $10k for the holy trinity, I'd like to know if it is just me and if perhaps I'm simply missing something simple.. or if I'm just pushing the limits on my camera's ability.

Has anyone tried night photography with a camera like the D3200 and actually had any luck?

Thanks for reading!

 

[weepete]

What was your exposure times and how much noise reduction did you apply in post?

 

[CaptainNapalm]

You should have noise free shots when shooting at night with ISO set to 100. With the D3200, noise will start becoming a problem beyond ISO 800. I took some crystal clear, visibly noise free, long exposure night shots with my D5100 and was impressed with the results. The D3200 has comparable sensor performance.

 

[pgriz]

You know, doing a test will probably do a better job of answering the question than all the internet experts can tell you. Camera on tripod. Use aperture-priority and shoot wide open.. Set your iso to the base ISO. Take one shot. Change Iso to up to next level, taken another shot. Continue doing this until you run out of ISO. Now go back and examine your images. Since they were all automatic, the exposure level should be the same. By examining them you should be able to see at what ISO you start getting "unacceptable" noise. Next turn on noise reduction, and run through the sequence again. Examine and draw you own conclusions. Really - it's not hard to test these questions out and know what your equipment is capable of.

 

[KmH]

Pixels develop a voltage proportional to how much light hits the pixel. The voltage the pixel develops is known as a 'signal'.
Pixels that don't 'see' any visible light do see light that is invisible to humans. The voltage a pixel develops from that invisible to humans light is known a 'noise', and is just 1 kind of image noise. There is also thermal noise caused by the image sensor heating up, either from a long exposure or from being out on a hot summer night.

When the signal to noise ratio (SNR) is low, we see more noise in our digital photographs.

What we want is a lot of signal, and we want to minimize in every way we can the noise signal the pixels that aren't getting a lot of visible light develop.

So when you shoot at night, lots of pixels only 'see' a little light.
We increase our exposure which means those dark pixels see more of the invisible light, and maybe the image sensor heats up more because our exposure time is longer.

Not good for minimizing image noise. Digital Camera Image Noise: Concept and Types

Read this Adobe article, and pay close attention when you read page 5 and the top 1/2 of page 6 - http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adob...ly/prophotographer/pdfs/pscs3_renderprint.pdf

For insight into how digital photographs work read this - http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/linear_gamma.pdf

 

[elementgs]

Thank you all for the responses, much appreciated.

I ran some isolated tests last night, shooting from ISO 100 to ISO 400 f22 to f4 in a closed environment of a simple object in a dark room lit only by a small glowing ice cube. Simple shots but effective in allowing me to test the range as far as I was concerned at the time.

What I noticed were my subject was completely lit and generally perfectly crystal clear, however, the blackness surrounding the object was absolutely horrendous rendering the photo almost entirely unusable. That remained consistent through every shot.

That's what I'm fighting.

Is it simply not possible to have my camera detect black and simply call it black?

 

[TheFantasticG]

I believe what you're looking at is a dynamic range limitation in the camera. That noise in the blacks you're talking about is why I went from the D90 to the D7000. I have to get my exposure 100% perfect though to not be annoyed by the noise in the shadows. Although if I get close enough I can usually pull the shadows back to the right about a stop before I get grossed out by the noise.

Perhaps upgrading to the Df/D3s/D4 might help

 

[sk66]

I find noise problematic in blues, at least w/ Nikons. I believe it's a demosaicing issue in that there are very few blue sensitive photosites, the rest are "calculated." I get noise in blue skies even w/ my D4 in good light.
Night/black has a lot of blue to it (if not artificially lit). My best suggestion is try a high color noise reduction setting. You can remove a lot of color noise without significantly impacting image detail, unlike luminance noise reduction.

 

[runnah]

Thank you all for the responses, much appreciated.

I ran some isolated tests last night, shooting from ISO 100 to ISO 400 f22 to f4 in a closed environment of a simple object in a dark room lit only by a small glowing ice cube. Simple shots but effective in allowing me to test the range as far as I was concerned at the time.

What I noticed were my subject was completely lit and generally perfectly crystal clear, however, the blackness surrounding the object was absolutely horrendous rendering the photo almost entirely unusable. That remained consistent through every shot.

That's what I'm fighting.

Is it simply not possible to have my camera detect black and simply call it black?

Certainly hitting a wall on the camera's ability to deal with light. In any case, post processing helps greatly.

Here are some comparisons from my stuff

Nikon d300
sky2 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Canon 5d MkIII
nightsky | Flickr - Photo Sharing!