Noise again

[Oneputt]

Some time back I posed a question about noise. I had some failry low light shots at from memory 600 ISO which were very noisy.

I have noticed the problem again in some low light shots at 200 ISO!!!

On both occassions I was shooting with the kit lens. I noticed someone else with a similar problem on the dpreview site and he got rid of the body.

Any ideas?

[JordanP]

Hi,

It might be good to give us examples so that we could see just how bad it is. I personaly have noticed that any underexposed shot that I take (regardless of iso rating) will have a lot of evident noise. Especially if I try and correct that image through Nikon Capture or Photo Shop.

At 200iso or even higher I find there is very minimal to no noise when viewed at 100% - so long as the exposure is spot on (or even a touch overexposed). If you are experiencing alot of evident noise at 200iso and the shot you took is well exposed then I would be doing some tests to try and isolate an issue with the equipment.

Cheers,

[Oneputt]

Jordan thanks for that you have given me some food for thought. I will go back and look at the images involved again.

[JordanP]

no worries - good luck!

[Onyx]

Oneputt - as JordanP mentioned, underexposure tends to show up noise characteristics much more than high ISO. The D2H especially is very unforgiving in this aspect, so thank your lucky stars the D70 isn't so bad.

When exposed properly, high ISO shots can yield surprisingly clean images. I believe it was MJ who had a post in the image review section where he went out one day and shot in broad daylight at ISO1600. The images contained no visible grain or evidence of the ISO setting used.

Install Capture 4.2 if you haven't already done so. You will find much better noise reduction options available compared to Capture 4.1 or earlier versions. The available options are in line with 3rd party stand alone noise reduction software I've used in the past - which is great that they're integrated into Capture now. It can reduce the amount of visible noise or turn your shots into Canon pictures with its plastic-like smoothness and lack of fine detail.

[Oneputt]

Onyx I only installed Nikon Capture yesterday (thanks for the info Birddog) so really haven't had a chance to play with it yet. However rest assured that I will.

At this stage I am inclined to go along with the underexposed suggestion rather than equipment problems.

[gstark]

At this stage I am inclined to go along with the underexposed suggestion rather than equipment problems.

That would be my expectations too.

One other point - look at the image and the contrast range that you're hitting. If you have a high range of contrasts within the image, then while the image may, on the whole, be correctly exposed, you might be trying to operate beyond the contrast range of the camera, and thus may have some areas of the image that are being (relatively) under-exposed, and thus more prone to apparent noise.

Look at the image's histogram; it may be able to help you in this area, as might technique changes such as using fill flash or a reflector to reduce the contrast range limits that you're bumping in to.

[Oneputt]

I'll look at the histo this evening. The last images I noted the problem on were very early dawn images and you could well be right that I was operating beyond the limits of the camera. I was certainly shooting in fully manual mode.

[Oneputt]

Just to say that you guys were right. Everwhere I have experienced low ISO noise it has been an underexposed problem. Thanks guys.

[nigels]

Hi Guys,

A number of shots I took at the Australian Open were underexposed and when I corrected them in Photoshop, noise appeared.

It's not the camera, rather the user

Nige