Noise

simplyelegant · Jul 25, 2012

So, I am seeing a lot of noise in most of my pictures and I don't understand what it is that I am doing wrong. I rarely use high ISO or shoot in low light. I am usually using an F stop around 4-5.6.

5.6
Iso 400
1/200
55mm
i cropped to 8x10 at 240 res.

I cant figure out how to make this bigger. But this photo I was working on today and the background seems to be really noisey to me. Or maybe I am just thinking too much about it. I dont know if I am doing something in camera or photoshop. Any feedback would be great!

amolitor · Jul 25, 2012

There's a tiny bit of noise, I guess, in the shadows to in the upper right corner, is that what you're referring to?

If you think you could have introduced it in photoshop, you should check the original!

It looks pretty good to me, the subject looks nice and clean.

Big Mike · Jul 25, 2012

My first impression is that you're being too picky. If you zoom in enough on any image, you will start to see flaws and noise etc. This example looks pretty good to me.

But to really get into the issue, it would help to know the camera model you're using, what processing program and techniques you are using etc.

Lastly, how was your original exposure? If you underexpose your images and have to brighten them in post processing...you will see A LOT more noise than if you get the exposure correct or even slightly overexpose and fix.

simplyelegant · Jul 26, 2012

I have Nikon D3100. I use photoshop levels and sometimes shadows/highlights. The image was pretty well exposed. The histogram on the original looked good to me. I am probably being way to hard on myself.

Garbz · Jul 27, 2012

Err at ISO400 that looks par for the course for that level of camera. You are being too hard on yourself. I didn't even see the noise at first, I opened the image again after someone told me where to look.

domu221 · Jul 27, 2012

simplyelegant said:
I have Nikon D3100. I use photoshop levels and sometimes shadows/highlights. The image was pretty well exposed. The histogram on the original looked good to me. I am probably being way to hard on myself.

For me, D3100 has acceptable noise up to ISO 800 and you'd start to see some grain at 1600. But noise at 1600 is so minor that even at that level, you can still apply some noise reduction using photoshop/camera raw.