Digital noise?

NewCreation517

Hi all, new guy here ...

I shoot with a Canon 20D, stock 18-55mm lens and sometimes the Canon 75-300mm tele.

I use Program mode often and shoot in low light with ISO1600. As you probably know, I get lots of grainy digital noise in the pics. Is there any way to fix this, short of forking out hundreds for a faster lens? Any progs that do the trick? Should I work in RAW?

gus

NewCreation517 wrote:

Hi all, new guy here ...

I shoot with a Canon 20D, stock 18-55mm lens and sometimes the Canon 75-300mm tele.

I use Program mode often and shoot in low light with ISO1600. As you probably know, I get lots of grainy digital noise in the pics. Is there any way to fix this, short of forking out hundreds for a faster lens? Any progs that do the trick? Should I work in RAW?

Noise Ninja is one popular choice for noise removal but remember it cant do the impossible & everything has a trade off ie it smooths the noise out & the photo also. I have the programme but dont use it for that reason.I sort of like noise.

What are you doing..? indoor sports ? Remember grain is photography so dont get to hung up on it. I swear some people spend too much time talking about colour & noise..technique etc so much that they forget to go & shoot.

gluwater

I'm with Gus on this one. Embrace the noise, love the noise. Most of the time when I'm shooting indoors at partys and such, even at f/1.4 I'm usually at ISO1600 or ISO3200.

NewCreation517

Ug ... I wish I could love the noise. But what could be a wonderful photo ...



... is severly damaged by gross rainbow-esque strobe noise and dull colors. This picture already has a blur effect to tone down the noise Perhaps the exif info for this pic could indicate what I'm doing wrong? Thanks guys!

mercphoto

The problem with that photo isn't noise.

gluwater

mercphoto wrote:

The problem with that photo isn't noise.

I'm sorry but I would have to agree with Mercphoto. You have to keep an eye on your settings. You were at f/14, ISO1600 and 1/640th. If I did my math correctly you could have shot this at ISO400, f/5.6 and 1/500th. That alone would have gotten rid of the noise you dislike. But as Mercphoto said there are other things that could have improved this photo. The larger Aperture of f/5.6 would have blurred your background some to get rid of the distracting cars and telephone poles. You could have also zoomed in more to focus more on the two girls. Here is a quick edit I did to show what you could have gotten. If you want me to take it down I will. Take this as a friendly critique and if you'd like to know how I did this I would be more than happy to share.

mercphoto

NewCreation517 wrote:

... is severly damaged by gross rainbow-esque strobe noise and dull colors.

That rainbow is lens flare and is the result of trying to photograph into a strong light source. Different lenses will flare more than others or under different circumstances, but that's not a noise issue, that is photographer error (unless you want the flare). Dull colors are either camera settings, post-processing errors, etc. But note that you have a ton of dynamic range in this shot, more so than the camera can record. Something will have to give, the only question is where do you want that to be? Certainly not in the grass, or in their clothing. Last, as already pointed out, your depth of field is too deep. The in-focus background is visually distracting. In fact so much is in focus that the eye has a hard time anchoring to anything in particular, when what you want your eye to do is anchor on the people.

thebigsky

I have to agree with the other posts, f14 was a strange aperture choice for this image. Open your lens up some more and you won't have to crank the ISO up so much, hence less noise.

Seefutlung

Mercphoto is on he mark. What you are calling noise is more lens flare than noise (but shooting over 400 ISO will create noise ... the higher the ISo the greater the noise. Programs like Noise Ninja will soften the noise but also soften the photo as well - that's the trade off. So one has to pick a point where one maximizes the reduction of noise yet still retain sharpness). Shooting directly into any strong light source will produce lens flare (the light is reflected back and forth between lens elements before hitting the sensor) and dull colors.

Mercphoto is correct on your dynamic range (think of the photo in B&W ... look at the white at zone 10 the black as zone 1 then all the other distinct gray tones inbetween). Digital cannot capture all the tones from white to black (dynamic range). So based upon your exposure, the sensor will capture the high end and part of the high-end middle range, the low end and parts of the low-end middle range, or the middle - dropping out detail in the dark and light areas. Film has a greater dynamic range than digital.

One of the nice things about digital is the ability for post processing manipulation. One could meter, expose and shoot for the people (lower end of the dynamic range) then meter, expose and shoot for the sun, then easily combine the two image in a post processing program creating a HDR (High Dynamic Range) image out of two. This would work best on a tripod otherwise it would be difficult to perfectly overlap the two images.

NewCreation517

Hey guys, thanks for all of your help. I'm very new at photography and am trying to learn - I had no idea so many factors fell into this art!

I shot with Program mode, and I think AWB. My guess is it picked up the sun as the light source, hence the strange aperature setting. I really need to stop using Program mode because I think while it is easy, it is also cheap and dirty.

How to know which aperature, ISO, and shutter speed combination for good results? Any helpful hints?

meewolfie

This is only the beginning, but here are some links that should get you started.

On Aperture and Shutter Speed Settings:

http://www.photonhead.com/beginners/shutterandaperture.php
http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial_aperture.html
http://www.armadillocamera.com/tutorial/effects_of_shutter_speed.htm
http://www.shutterbee.thinkrandom.com/

And a little bit about focal length:
http://www.paragon-press.com/lens/lenchart.htm
http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial_focal_length.html

Mary

wxwax

NewCreation517 wrote:

Hey guys, thanks for all of your help. I'm very new at photography and am trying to learn - I had no idea so many factors fell into this art!

I shot with Program mode, and I think AWB. My guess is it picked up the sun as the light source, hence the strange aperature setting. I really need to stop using Program mode because I think while it is easy, it is also cheap and dirty.

How to know which aperature, ISO, and shutter speed combination for good results? Any helpful hints?

After reading those links, walk around for a day shooting in one mode only. For example, shoot only in Aperture priority, only changing your aperture size to change your depth of field and shutter speed. Pretty soon you'll get the hang of it. Then move onto to Shutter Priority, and then Manual.

Set your ISO wherever it needs to be to get a reasonable shutter speed. Generally you want it to be no slower than 1/focal length. So if you're shooting with a 50mm lens, you'd want your minimum shutter speed to be 1/50 in order to avoid camera shake.

Experiment! Have fun!

Steve Cavigliano

NewCreation517 wrote:

Hey guys, thanks for all of your help. I'm very new at photography and am trying to learn - I had no idea so many factors fell into this art!

I shot with Program mode, and I think AWB. My guess is it picked up the sun as the light source, hence the strange aperature setting. I really need to stop using Program mode because I think while it is easy, it is also cheap and dirty.

How to know which aperature, ISO, and shutter speed combination for good results? Any helpful hints?

NC,
Check this site out

Yep, you need to move away from P mode. Dip a toe into the manual world by using Aperture or Shutter Priority. These semi-auto modes will get you more familar with the relationships between ISO, shutter speed and aperture.

Good luck,
Steve

mercphoto

NewCreation517 wrote:

How to know which aperature, ISO, and shutter speed combination for good results? Any helpful hints?

The three combine to determine whether you get a proper exposure or not, based on the scene you are trying to photograph. There are a lot of "proper" exposures for any given scene. For example, f/5.6 at 1/125 and ISO 200 might give a correct exposure. But you can double the shutter speed if you double the ISO and also get a correct exposure. Or go to f/4 and ISO 100. Or... you get the idea.

So, the trick is, given a wide variety of "proper" combinations of ISO, aperture and shutter speed, which do you choose?

Really, really, really brief and simplistic tutorial to follow:

Aperture determines your depth of field -- how much in the scene is in-focus. Small numbers give shallow depths of field, whereas big numbers give deep depth of field.

Shutter speed determines how much action is stopped. Photograph a water fall at 1/20, 1/60, and 1/500 and see what I mean. Photograph a baseball pitcher at 1/1,000 and at 1/125 to see what I mean. Some scenes require fast shutters, some scenes require slow shutters.

You usually end up choosing the aperture and shutter speed you want for a given shot, and then choose the ISO to match that combination. That is because ISO will mainly control noise, and noise is the least important aspect of a photo. I've seen some incredibly moving photos that were grainy as anything. Yet they are still incredible photos.

Digital has made people too focused on the technicals of photography, especially grain/noise. Its about emtion.

Again, the above was brief, too brief, on purpose. There's a lot that goes into determining what camera setting you want. But this will get you started.