D70 tips and tricks to reduce noise at 1600 ISO

[lukas_kisiel]

I was wondering if some of you could share your methods on how to

reduce high ISO noise. I am particularly interested in D70 since

that's the camera I have. I shoot quite a bit at 800-1600 ISO in

dark concert venues and the noise is a problem. Not that it's a huge

issue on D70 (I think it's more less as good/bad as Canon 20D) but

the less noise I have the better.

 

The reason I need high ISO is because I want to have higher shutter

speeds to work with, of course. Most musicians don't stay still for

very long.

 

I've worked with no in-camera sharpening or contrast adjustments and

that seemed to help. Any other tips&tricks? I'd be interested to

learn any RAW/Nikon Capture/Photoshop noise reduction techniques as

well. Thank you!

[eric friedemann]

1. Shoot in RAW.

 

 

2. Turn off the camera's noise reduction and sharpening in importing the image into the computer.

 

 

3. Use Neat Image for noise reduction:

 

 

http://www.neatimage.com/

 

 

4. Then use PhotoKit Sharpener for both capture sharpening and final sharpening befor printing:

 

 

http://www.pixelgenius.com/sharpener/<div></div>

[cappoldt]

Download the trial versions of Noise Ninja or NeatImage software - they both work very well to reduce noise. That's my trick!

[paul beiser]

I do exactly what Eric suggests, and it seems to work well.

[briany]

Yes, I'm having very good luck with NoiseNinja Pro, though I've primarily used it for lower noise (ISO 400) images. I did recently play around with a high ISO shot and had good luck, I think the key is just to eliminate the minor color noise and reduce but not eliminate the luminance noise. If you try to get the luminance noise completely out, you increasingly run into problems smoothing real detail.

 

You can go nuts though -- you can potentially start making all sorts of selection masks to do local adjustments. Again, software runs the risk of blurring actual detail the stronger the noise is. In Eric's nice shot above, I'd like to see a bigger picture. To me, in the image he posted the area above the dog's eye and some areas of the fur look too smooth. As Eric said, shoot RAW and do not sharpen during conversion. Also don't underexpose. There's a good article on here about the 3 types of noise.. take a look at http://www.photo.net/learn/dark_noise/ Though I've not tried doing it manually, if you're serious you could make dark frames for a range of shutter speeds at a temperature and calibrate yourself, then do subtraction and possibly noise reduction (though profiles may not work anymore). I'd love to see the results or links (non-astronomy related) to others who have tried, else I may have to give it a shot.

 

Lex - regarding some of your recent postings - last night I was using Adobe Camera Raw on an image with lots of fine branches on a bright background. ACR introduced a lot of false colors, so I gave it a shot in Nikon View. Very clean. I was suprised how much better it was, but b/c I was using the chromatic aberration tools in ACR, I didn't want to change my workflow. The false color went away after a pass through NoiseNinja, but View was great from the outset. Does capture have chromatic aberration tools? Anyone have a good c.a. Photoshop plugin? I looked at DxO but wasn't sure about it and already have PT Lens.

[wilfred_wong]

low/no camera sharpening

don't underexpose. I sometimes even overexpose the pix (i shoot RAW) and adjust it in software if blow highlight is not an issue.

 

Eric...i just don't understand the need to turn in camera NR off.

 

I use NoiseNinja. esp when i 've to underexpose the pix to get proper shutter speed/keep highlights.

 

NR in NC4 is bad.

[briany]

Wilfred, I interpreted Eric's comment to mean turn off the manufacturer's (or other rAW converter) Noise reduction and sharpening when bringing into the editor, then use Noise Ninja or NeatImage. Regarding my link to the noise article, Bob Atkins had a follow-up that the calibration wouldn't do much for most images, yet the image of the person's face shows a dramatic improvement. Don't know who to believe. It may be too much hassle anyway, just depends on your needs / neuroses.

[lukas_kisiel]

Thank you, gentlemen. Very good tips!

[eric friedemann]

"(T)he dog's eye and some areas of the fur look too smooth."

 

 

I've made a 16-inch wide print of the image above. It is surprisingly good for an ISO 1600 image and is definitely better than what I would have wound up with if I'd shot 35mm, 1600 speed color print or slide film.

 

 

The posted image did suffer a predictable loss of detail in downsizing. Also, although the light fur on the dog's back is the correct color and tonal value, at ISO 1600, it was harder to maintain detail in that relatively bright area. And it was difficult to maintain tonality in the dark areas of the image- e.g around the eyes. Even if you do all the right post-camera processing, shooting at 1600 will not yield you the kind of quality you'll get at 200 or 400.

 

 

"Eric...i just don't understand the need to turn in camera NR off."

 

 

I don't think you can turn NR off in the camera when you are shooting in RAW. Even when I turn the camera NR off on D100s, when I pull the images up in the preliminary PSCS screen, the camera has still applied NR.

 

 

What I meant was that in the preliminary Nikon Capture or PSCS editing screen you need to go into the settings for the image and reduce the NR and sharpening to zero. Then, you import the image into Neat Image and do noise reduction followed by sharpening in PKS.

 

 

Using the camera's NR would defeat the purpose of using the more sophisticated Neat Image program. Also, you want all sharpening off until after noise reduction, as you don't want to sharpen noise.

[lex_jenkins]

Interesting info, Brian. Maybe that confirms Nikon's claims that only its own software can fully implement its NEF files.

 

Regarding Noise Ninja, if I'm recalling correctly it's programmed to handle the specific noise characteristics of many digital cameras at various ISOs. If so and it really works, at the price they're asking it sounds like a must have utility.