Noise

[kane230]

hey there,

i've been looking through this site for a while and loving it, was after a bit of help on this photo. there seems to be so much noise on all of these shots and i dont think the iso was any higher than 400 and the shutter speed was always at least 1/50. any help? it was taken with a canon 400d/ xti ...with a 50mm f1.8 II

[beunky]

Well, I try to keep the iso as low as possible (preferably at 100) and I use a tripod for this kind of shots, allowing me to use a lower shutter speed. It also helps shooting razorsharp images. That way you don't add noise by sharpening the image with Photoshop or another PP-tool.
In the PP proces I like to use the Dfine 2.0 plugin for Photoshop CS 4 by NIK software if a shot still is noisy.

[Doug Pardee]

Can you provide a larger image, and the EXIF information? I can't tell anything from that one.

I'll take a few guesses, though.

Noise is most noticeable in dark areas and in blue sky. That photo consists mostly of dark areas, so it will be somewhat susceptible to noise.

When dealing with dark areas, you'll increase the noise if you try to lighten them in post-processing. You can get rid of an awful lot of noise by simply forcing your shadows to black. Your XTi/400D probably does that for you if you shoot in JPEG.

Maybe most importantly: Noise is not nearly as bad as it looks. It's really easy to get worked up over noise when "pixel peeping" on your computer screen. But when you print the picture, you'll be amazed at how clean the result is. Similarly, it's easy to go way too heavily on noise reduction when post-processing, with the result that your attempts to remove "invisible noise" only remove visible sharpness.

[dcclark]

At this image size, it's really hard to tell what is actual noise, and what is artifacts from the small image / heavy compression on the forum. A larger size would really help.