Excessive noise D800

I just got a used Nikon D800 with 23000 shutter clicks on it. The camera is in pristine condition and all functions seem to work well. I reset the camera to factory defaults and set it up like my other Nikon Digitals.

The results have been very disappointing. It has all the latest versions of firmware.

 

The photo seem to exhibit quite a bit of noise. shooting at a lower ISO of 320 the photos look like they were shot on grainy film.

double checked all the settings. Attached photo Iso 320

 

Please re post your photo. It doesn't show up in your question.

I keep uploading it

I click on it and it opens

 

I keep uploading it

I click on

it and it opens

Is this the OOC JPEG ie no adjusments or mods?

 

On my machine the EXIF has been stripped off so can't see much else about settings.

 

The scene has a very wide dynamic range and I wonder if the exposure is more balanced for the highlights and the shadows have kinda got noisy?

 

If you shot in JPEG only, that might have been the problem. RAW will have allowed a better capture of all tones.

 

I guess it was handheld (wonky horizon:)), and if so, what's the shutter speed and aperture? Base ISO would have helped, but if it was 320 'cos of camera shake, then a noisy image is better than a shaky, blurred one.

 

I agree it does look a bit weird, a bit like a slightly unreal botched HDR! Does noise make a pic look like that?

 

PS> There's also a small alien craft about to attack that Boeing 737.

Not all setting go back to 'factory default' when you do a reset, you have to check all settings and put on the starred choice.

It does look a little noisy, but then at 1:1 the D800 sometimes does (like looking very closely at the grain in a fast film); it does, for example, tend to look noisier at the same ISO compared with a D700, but only if you're scaling both at pixel levels; scale the image sizes to match and the noise goes away.

 

I'm not sure if this is true of the D800, but some cameras only have amplifier settings for whole stop ISO changes - so ISO320 might actually be ISO400, scaled. The sky looks a bit blocky, but I can't say how much of that is excessive JPEG compression and how much of it is running out of exposure in the blue channel.

 

Is active D-lighting on? That can sometimes fiddle with the ISO settings internally, and might be pushing noise into the low range. Sharpening tends to make noise worse, and there looks to be a bit of ringing around details that suggest sharpening is a little on the high side - but then I rarely use the in-camera JPEG engine, so I've no idea what's "default" there. I'm surprised it's not fixing the chromatic aberration by default, though.

 

So... I can see what you're talking about, and maybe it's a little worse than I'd expect, but I'm not sure it's a sign of a broken camera as such. What were you comparing to? If you still see grain at ISO100 I'd really worry.

Here are the EXIF data:

 

Nikon D800, 24-120 mm f/3.5-5.6 at 28 mm, 1/400 sec, f/16, ISO 32, shot as JPEG, sRGB, processed in LR6.

 

Sharpness 59

Luminance Smoothing 30

Color Noise Reduction 25

Vibrance +83

 

Sharpen Radius +1.2

Sharpen Detail 51

Luminance Noise Reduction Detail 50

Color Noise Reduction Detail 50

Luminance Noise Reduction Contrast 12

Color Noise Reduction Smoothness 50

 

Highlights 2012 +17

Shadows 2012 +100

Clarity 2012 +60

 

There are a few settings that will enhance noise: pushing the shadows (seems maxed out), clarity is also set rather high at +60. Not quite sure what to make of the sharpening values, but as Andrew pointed out, there's sharpening artifacts visible in the image. Apparently noise reduction has been applied in camera and again in post.

When I reviewed the D800 back in 2012, I captured a bunch of images at an indoor, high-ISO situation. These are pixel-level crops. Back then photo.net's requirement was no more than 700 pixels across.

 

I suggest the OP to capture (a lot) more images to compare. We shouldn't draw any conclusions based on just one image sample.

 

 

When I upgraded from a D700 to a D800 in 2012, I was shocked at how bad the images looked at 100%. Eventually I realized that an image that is a little over 16x24 native at 300 ppi really was not made to view at 100% (although I still do, some of the time).

Noise has been a different evolution of thought for me. There are many threads here and on DP Review that are very helpful. I still don't understand the physics, but the most surprising thing to me is that underexposing at base iso (iso 100 for the D800) and raising the exposure in post processing gives a less noisy image than shooting at higher iso initially.

Generally when I am using auto iso, I am setting 400 as an upper limit because some of the old reviews showed preserved dynamic range up to that level. With the newer thoughts about "underexpose-raise exposure post processing", I find that it is less noisy to shoot that way in low light situations. Now, generally the noise is in the shadow areas and there are limits to how much you can raise exposure without making a mess. I sometimes can create banding in shadows (OMG, not that!) if I push it too far.

At iso 100 it is common that even after raising exposure 2 stops and using shadow adjustment (photoshop is my program) I still only need a color noise reduction of about 5 to clean up.

I'm still using the D800, although I may upgrade. It is a fabulous tool, so take your time and get to know it. Push it past its limits so you know where the limits are.

Enjoy.