Noise or grain.....

[ajo43]

There has been quite a bit of discussion lately on the forum about noise so I thought this might be topical.

Last week at the barber I was sitting waiting for the chop and there was a bunch of old National Geographic magazines which I was flicking through. As we all know NG is renowned for its photographs and the skill of the photographers.

The magazines were all from the early seventies and a very high proportion of the pics had very visible grain (worse than a D70 at 1600 ISO). Not only that the colours were often off.

These days we get totally bent out of shape over noise that we once just lived with (and often admired) in a photograph.

Now we are obsessed with white balance where once we once just accepted a bit of colour cast generated by different films.

Photography has advanced so much that we are now hyper critical of things like noise and lack of sharpness (it wasn’t that long ago that cameras were manually focused). In principal I have no objection to aiming get the best and sharpest picture possible from our camera. BUT, if we are so worried about noise that we forget about composition, lighting, the message, colours etc then we have just become a bunch of techie gadget freaks, not photographers.

[Oneputt]

Jonesy everything you say is right.........................but we have moved on We now expect more, and I am no exception

[sirhc55]

Absolutely bloody right Jonesy - take pics and be happy

[lejazzcat]

I have to agree with the sentiment of this post - we have to wonder if the great authors of literature worried about the qualities of their typewriters,ink, pens, paper etc - upgrading to the latest version and obsessing about the virtues of the next release -
or did they worry more about what they had to say with the tools at hand ?

Its like the phone - from the old telegraph, to the latest mobile phone - but have people learned to say anything thats worth hearing?
How often do we overhear banal mobile conversations ??

Its often a case of the irony best satirised by the million dollar "pen that writes in outerspace! " R&D by NASA, that was solved by the Russians who just used a 10cent pencil !

[krpolak]

I agree with you guys.....but there is always other side.

Lets take as an axample old, great masters, as you mentioned Lejazzcat. Would be appreciate their talent and genius if they would create on poor canvases with poor paints that would not survive 50 years not even mention hundreds? Or great writes if they would create on toilet parper? How many of their works would be seen by our eyes?

Should we really drawback with all advances we allready have achieved and if yes, my question is - in sake of what?

Regards,

K.Polak

[Killakoala]

I recently took a large amount of photographs of Christmas Island and environs and many of the images show noticable noise. To me, they are not that good a photo, but to those who don't really know much about noise, they reckon the images are great.

So is it just us, the photographers, who think that noise is a bad thing? What is it we are really worried about?

I no longer worry about noise and now i just think of it as being grainy film and adding character to an image.

[xorl]

Its often a case of the irony best satirised by the million dollar "pen that writes in outerspace! " R&D by NASA, that was solved by the Russians who just used a 10cent pencil !

There is an interesting write up at Snopes about this .

[Alpha_7]

I took some photos for a guy of his car that he wanted to sell, didn't check the ISO and had it at 1600. I was appalled by the quality and offered to reshoot the shots, but he thought they were fantastic straight out of the camera noise as all buggery.

[PiroStitch]

Each to their own. Noise is great and can really give you that extra oomph in giving life to the environment of the photo (ie. a bar or alleyway, etc). However with landscapes or macros where you want to depict the sharpness then it's no good but as I said each to their own.

I personally like a bit of noise/grain in the photos I take as I really think digital images are sometimes too sharp for their own good.

[Michael]

To me

Noise: Is grain with mottle colour in the grain pattern as well as just standard grain.

Grain: to me is just anything that looks like it came off ISO 800 film without mottled colour.

[lejazzcat]

Its often a case of the irony best satirised by the million dollar "pen that writes in outerspace! " R&D by NASA, that was solved by the Russians who just used a 10cent pencil !

There is an interesting write up at Snopes about this .

long live another urban myth!

[TonyH]

I'm prob going to get flamed for this but...... With the money we invest in equipment and the time and expense to get the shot (car, fuel, accommodation etc) I expect perfect sharpness and colour.

Noise and soft focus is something which personally drives me nuts and I'm very rarely satisfied with my digital results.

Regards to the old masters etc. they had to put up and make do with whatever technology was available at the time, but I'm sure they used the best that they could find for whatever field of the arts they were involved.... we have more choices.

For the money we invest in equipment I believe we are still quite often undeservedly used as a tool by the manufacturers to perfect their products by negative consumer feedback from the market place and then improve with the next model.... which they do expect us all to buy of course!

Digital compared to film is still very lacking in quality IMHO, it's just much cheaper and more convenient to click away with a digital setup. However for the forseeable future I can't see myself retiring my film equipment completely.

[Link]

I agree with the spirit of the first post. Those grainy NG photos are just magnificent and, in some cases, grain can actually bring up more mood and atmosphere in a picture.

I think most people are more critical because it has become easier and more common to check pics at 100% on a computer screen... Then obviously defects such as softness are more obvious! Without checking photos files at 100%, without trying to bring up details in shadows with PP; then noise wouldn't be an issue.

I still think it's good to learn how to spot a soft image, or a photo where noise/grain is disturbing, because it helps a lot when doing large prints. It also teaches how to become a better photographer when taking the picture. But for the vast majority of snapshots, which will never be printed above 15*11 cms, no worries at all!

Link.

[TonyH]

Hi Link,

If your comment is correct then what are we all doing spending the vast sums that we do? An elcheapo point and shoot digital under that criteria gives a decent 15x11cm.

A soft shot will always be a soft shot and I'm sure for most people unacceptable.

Detail and sharpness surely must remain paramount and the rest is just an excuse for poor photography?

[krpolak]

TonyH

Regards to the old masters etc. they had to put up and make do with whatever technology was available at the time, but I'm sure they used the best that they could find for whatever field of the arts they were involved.... we have more choices.

We have exactly the same range of choice as them: to put up and make do with whatever technology was available at the time That is the reason of talking about noise Humans nature hasnt changed too much

Regards,

K.Polak

[PiroStitch]

Detail and sharpness surely must remain paramount and the rest is just an excuse for poor photography?

I beg to differ...if you have a look at the styles of a few photographers on this forum, you'll see that their best pics are not necessarily the sharpest. It depends on what the photographer is trying to achieve. If sharpness is your baseline for deciding whether it's a top pic or not, then so be it but it doesn't mean blurred pics are always a case of bad photography.

[JordanP]

There are many more factors to good photography in my opinion. Blur and noise/grain to me are components that at times can be used to enhance or avoided depending on the desired outcome. The limitations or not of my camera equipment are rarely (if ever) to blame for a poor shot.

If I were to list the factors I think we may have become too critical of, it would be:

Noise/Grain
Sharpness
Blown highlights

I don't believe any one of these factors in an image can define it as 'poor quality' - it all depends on the desired outcome of the photographer.

cheers,

[chris1968]

lest we forget the National Geographic guys and gals are typically off in the middle of nowhere. Back in the 70's the world was arguably a larger place than it is now so, there they were, one lot of film, budget so big they could not return empty handed, so they made the most of what they had - if that meant pushing / pulling film to get the shot, with resultant effect on grain / colour then so be it - it was a choice of necessity, perhaps sometimes even their personal preference for effect, either way they got the shot.

In the digital era we (indeed they) are fortuntate enough to have one box of tricks that can cope with the myriad variations we might face - at the end of the day our digital kit will provide pin sharp images if we use it correctly. If we use it 'incorrectly' - by accident or by design - the results may vary from the 'pin sharp' but who's to say its not a worthy image?

put it another way - presented with the shot of a lifetime do you pfaff around and miss it through making sure everyting is right for that pin sharp image or do you shoot and be damned......

Just my two penorth....

[TonyH]

If a person specifically sets out to achieve a "Soft" result in their image fair enough....... if the person has a soft or noisy result not being their intention then this is what I'm questioning.

How much is the photographer and just how much is equipment or the digital medium itself that excuses are made for. We are sold equipment locally at drastically inflated prices which quite often will not do the job adequately that the photog purchased it for.

I recently wanted to buy a film scanner, went to a large supplier here in Brisbane. The scanner I was looking at was a Nikon product. I asked about a demo of the product, was told that was impossible as their computer equipment was not up to standard to allow this. The salesperson told me "it is a Nikon and we've had good reports about it". Now why would a person buy something untested, he expected me to.....

The reason for all of the above is that I feel we are hooked into buying a product purely because of the name badge on the side of the product. The result of this is Nikon and other manufacturers are producing products for a price market. We believe that if it is a XXXX then it must be good. Wrong! In many cases unless you are purchasing the top end equipment you are buying ordinary gear and will end up with soft images and noise.

There are not too many photogs out there with unlimited budgets, the rest of us have bought because of brand recognition expecting that product to be up to acceptable standard. Case in point... anyone want to buy a 70-300 F4-5.6 G series lens? I now know that this is an very ordinary quality lens, but the salesperson told me its a Nikon so it has to be good.....

I want the ability to shoot soft images when I want to, not because the equipment only has the ability to do that and occasionally FLUKE the odd good image.