noise problem.

[Menthol]

I am a small fish in a big pond when it comes to photography but my passion as as high.

my problem is digital noise no matter what I try. But first I will list my equipment.

first camera
Sony a450 with kit lens and a sigma 70-300 macro, jessops 360 flash and a wireless remote trigger.

second camera
canon 1100d with the kit lens (with no stabilization) and a wireless remote trigger.

I shoot mostly on the tripod using a remote trigger and I use the lowest iso with iso 800 being the highest or dark areas. I clean my gear all the time so the noise is surely not down to dust or dirty lens.

I can't give samples right now as I am on the phone miles away from my computer. will upload samples in due course.

if it is relevant, I shoot raw and process in lightroom 4.1


why do I still get grainy images. why can't I get sharp images?

Samsung galaxy s2 ..... live from hospital bed. am not too bad lol.

Sent from my Galaxy SII using PhotoForum

 

[Tony S]

How much are you having to raise the exposure or brightness in your RAW conversion? Any time you do that you get more noise in the darker areas of an image. If you have to raise it at all you are going to get more noise, so it might be a problem of under exposing to start with.

Without more information about a specific image and your settings it's tough to give more specific advice.

 

[jake337]

Grainy viewed at what percent? 100%?

 

[panblue]

Menthol,
I think 800 ISO is pushing it a little with both those camera models. According to DXOMark, both sensors signal-to-noise ratio degrades above ~750. You could try shooting at a lower resolution JPEG; I find with some cameras this produces less noise. Otherwise, you may have to use stronger noise reduction when you edit your raw files. Make sure your exposures are as good as possible, checking the histograms.

 

[KmH]

The in-camera conversion to JPEG includes noise reduction.

Unfortunately the in-camera conversion to JPEG also involves adjustments to contrast, saturation, and sharpening, while throwing a way about 80% of the color information the camera recorded. The editing headroom of a JPEG is further limited, if any editing headroom is even left, by converting the image pixels into 8x8, 8x16, or 16x16 pixel - Minimum Coded Units (MCU's)

 

[Menthol]

thank you ever so much for your detailed responses to my noise problem.

learnt a lot more than what the manual told me. So cheers guys.

Sent from my Galaxy SII using PhotoForum