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The D70 even at 200 ISO produces a fair bit of noise when shooting in low light conditions. Can anyone tell me if the D2X is the same?

Ah noise. I understand what you mean about the D70. The D2x at iso 100 shows minimal noise, even for long exposures with plenty of dark areas (I guess it is a CMOS attribute).

Why can't we all live together peacefully with noise, and call it grain instead?

I don't know what i am doing wrong but i get much noise under ISO300.
In low light(dark bar mood lighting) i always shoot at f1.4 ISO 800 which produces a noisy image, it adds to the feel of the image and doesn't bother me at all.

I agree Heath it would be so much easier for those of us who grew up with film, but noise it is now I guess it was one of the dissapointments with the D70s that they didn't lower the ISO to 100.

Wendelt I agree that in some images, noise can add to the image, but in others it can be dammed annoying.

I imagine it has something to do with long exposures.

Dad was telling me when I was trying out pinhole cameras on my D70 that the more time you leave the mirror up and the sensor recording, the more noise you're bound to get as well as some odd colour vignetting.

I imagine that long exposures and noise are a weak spot on digi's at the moment.

Nnnnsic wrote:I imagine it has something to do with long exposures.

Dad was telling me when I was trying out pinhole cameras on my D70 that the more time you leave the mirror up and the sensor recording, the more noise you're bound to get as well as some odd colour vignetting.

I imagine that long exposures and noise are a weak spot on digi's at the moment.

Heat also plays its part in long exposures - hence the colour vignetting

Leigh I agree that whilst it is more noticeable in long exposures it is certainly not limited to them, and the D70 does have a small problem in this area from my experience.

Nnnnsic wrote:I imagine that long exposures and noise are a weak spot on digi's at the moment.

My experience is that noise is also a function of underexposure...
I have some very noisy images that were taken indoors without flash at 1/100s.
I've also seen 1600 ISO images with surprisingly little (if any) noise - Kerry is very good at those.
Long exposures can also be taken without much noise, but then the sensor heating and dodgy pixels become a factor then too...

I would hope that the noise profile of the D2x is better than that of the D70...

Noise has more to do with the lack of light from a poorly chosen exposure setting than the ISO sensitivity.

The D2X has some in-built noise reduction settings - to paraphrase: normal, aggressive, and off. By default it's on - ie. the camera applies a noise smoothing and detail losing pass before the data is written to CF.

Onyx and if the exposure settings are chosen by the camera..........?

I tend top use aperture priority and still get occasional problems with noise.

Oneputt wrote:I agree Heath it would be so much easier for those of us who grew up with film, but noise it is now I guess it was one of the dissapointments with the D70s that they didn't lower the ISO to 100.

Wendelt I agree that in some images, noise can add to the image, but in others it can be dammed annoying.

I reckon that in most cases people don't notice in print. On screen close to 100% or more it can be very obvious but it doesn't print much.

After having taken a few pics with Birdies D2X of a subject that i have taken photos with my D70 i can honestly say that he D2X has a much lower level of noise. Even in black, the noise is almost imperceptable, under the right exposure of course.

The D2X is much more forgiving for incorrect exposure.

Remember that any type of transducer, where one type of energy is converted into another type of energy, there will be some loss of the total amount of initial energy. In a CCD or a CMOS, that loss will be seen as noise.

Think this way.

- Light is made up of photons, which is light energy.

- The photons collide with the CMOS pits and are converted into electrical energy (electrons) dependant on their intensity.

- These electrons then are further processed and converted into voltage and current and further replicated through electrical components and integrated circuits until they emerge as logical voltages on your CF card.

The net result is that during the transition from PHOTONS to LOGIC there will be some loss or induced gain and this is inherent in ANY silicon and ceramic based circuit. Loss of energy in a circuit is actually a production of heat, which is also energy. (Note: Energy is FINITE)

- The less processing the less chance of loss.

Noise reduction algorithms will and do help, but if there is a lot of noise in the first place, then they will not be as effective. The camera software can only work with what it gets.

PCIGCO - Put crap in, get crap out.

But either way, the D2X is better at noise than the D70.

I'm not sure what the original question was now

Thanks Steve.... I think

I have to agree with you Oneputt. I have experience significant noise in some images especially in darker areas of the shot even at 200ISO. It seems to be a bit of a hit and miss sort of thing. Some images are much more badly effected than others.

Really good to see so many views and being the extremely quiet non vocal but do happen to own a D2X I'll throw in my 2 cents worth.

Until very very recently I was still using film which was typically Fuji Velvia iso 50 being prefered or ASTIA 100. Both are low in grain or "noise" or as low as you can really get in 35mm film.

That said I must admit that noise in the D2X appears to be lower in iso 200 than the film was in my opinion.

Most of my shots are very early morning or late before sunset and of consequence are long exposures of several seconds. Noise on the D2X is wonderfully low. Very hard to post and show as downsizing the massive file sizes to jpg'ing seems to ad noise.

I cannot give a view on noise and the D70s but have seen many of your work and it appears to be very good/low noise.

Could it be how we capture light at times that creates the noise?