jeff__2 Posted January 20, 2004 Share Posted January 20, 2004 Anyone else use flash with a Nikon D100? I have taken many portraits with hot lights and had good 11 x 14 prints made with no "noise". Now that I have switched to strobes (Speedotron Force 10 or even an Sb-80 DTTL) I see horrible noise/pixelation. I tried turning off sharpening and tiff instead of jpg, but the problem persists. ISO 200 1/125 f8. Is there something wrong with my CCD or is this as good as current technology allows using flash? Jeff<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark_s. Posted January 20, 2004 Share Posted January 20, 2004 Did you try 1/60 sec? I do not have D100 and not sure what speed you can sync at w/ that flash setup. Just a thought! I would give it a try! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greglyon Posted January 20, 2004 Share Posted January 20, 2004 Mark, the D100 syncs up to 1/180 second, so I don't think that's the problem. Jeff, I usually shoot in 'raw' with my D100. I just looked at several shots with clear areas against out of focus backgrounds, shot with SB28 (not DX though I can't imagine how that could make a difference). I can't see any pixelation until I zoom in to at least 300% and then it's very fine and square shaped. That noise your examples show is really odd. If I didn't know otherwise I'd swear it was film grain...I'm sure part of it is that photo.net has further compressed your jpg examples, but you should be able to get MUCH better results than that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_ladoulis Posted January 20, 2004 Share Posted January 20, 2004 Jeff, are these full frame balloon shots? I've used D100 with SB-80DX, SB-28, and studio strobes. None exhibit this amount of noise. I can, however, see this much noise in a close zoom/crop. Were these straight out of the camera, with no other adjustment? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greglyon Posted January 20, 2004 Share Posted January 20, 2004 Here is a 100% section of a closeup of some Vitamin E capsules. The only source of light was a SB28. Image capture mode was RAW, converted from NEF to photoshop using Adobe's builtin capture. It's been converted to JPG with adobe photoshop CS using 'save for web' option and quality of 80. I'll try to find one with a lot of blue too in case it's a channel issue.<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greglyon Posted January 21, 2004 Share Posted January 21, 2004 Ok here's a shot that has some noise...but it is iso 640. Here are the details:<ol> <li>D100 <li>SB28 flash (not dx) <li>ISO 640 <li>Large Fine JPG <li>100% actual pixel crop from photo. It's a closeup of an elbow in a velvet dress, red painted background just behind. <li>converted to jpg using Save for Web in Photoshop CS. </ol> Is there any chance that your shots were at a higher ISO than 200 or that you were using small/basic for JPG settings? In any case it wouldn't explain the TIFFs. There's definitely something wrong though! I suggest you take a really careful walk through ALL of the menus and make sure that you don't have some rogue setting that's causing the trouble. <p>I'd be really interested to hear when you figure out what's causing the trouble! Good luck with it.<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeff__2 Posted January 21, 2004 Author Share Posted January 21, 2004 Thanks for the thoughts. I think I'll try to take my camera in for evalutation. Any idea what the "rogue" menu option might be? I have checked everything, ISO 200, not greatly magnified, etc. Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_ladoulis Posted January 21, 2004 Share Posted January 21, 2004 Before you send it in, try a CSM "Reset". It's the button on top of the AC Adapter socket on the side of the body. That will clear any "rogue" settings. Can't imagine what they would be, unless you had Auto-ISO on and the strobes somehow underexposed... Does the EXIF data suggest anything weird going on? Bummer if you have to send in for repair. (Mine leaves Thurs for Nikon Torrance,CA. Ugh.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greglyon Posted January 21, 2004 Share Posted January 21, 2004 Well, there's different levels of sharpening, different qualities of JPG, different contrast levels. Doing a reset is a good bit of advice. Do you get the same noise without the flash? I think you don't but I'm not certain from your post. I wonder if it's possible that the flash is causing something to change in the camera settings? Seems like a long shot to me, but I can't think of what else would make your flash photos so different in quality from hot lights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elliott_shannonhouse Posted January 23, 2004 Share Posted January 23, 2004 I don't have a D100 but I read in a review in one of the magazines that the D100 got dinged for being more noisy than other digital cameras. I have a Fuji S2 Pro, and I would definitely say that shooting in RAW format and converting in software is much superior to shooting JPGs in the camera. Everything that's been said before makes sense. Anything ISO 400 or above is going to generate some noise, but at your settings it seems excessive, unless the images are underexposed. In general, CCDs need a lot of light. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeff__2 Posted January 25, 2004 Author Share Posted January 25, 2004 SOLUTION: The problem was "Auto ISO" setting was turned on. Photos are now very smooth with speedlight and studio strobe! Thanks to all, Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greglyon Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 Hey that's great Jeff! Awesome you got a resolution to the issue that didn't involve sending the camera in. Also a tip to add to the list of 'what to check when things aren't as expected'... Happy shooting! Greg. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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