Reducing High ISO grains on D70 Images

[anis]

Hello Pnet members..

 

I am wondering what do you use "Smoothen" grainy images off high

ISO? With my Nikon D70, even ISP 400 is displaying quite a bit of

grain in dark areas making any kind of cropping unacceptable. The

whole objective of bumping up the ISO to handle the lighting

situation is out the window..!

 

I was shooting humming birdsthe other day around 7:00 AM under

overcast condition and the I using ISO 800 and then at ISO 400

hoping that I can increase exposure using the RAW plugin. And every

single image was grainy... I finally went down to ISO 200 but I

couldnt even get a sharp image of the bird

(http://www.photo.net/photo/3678985) due to the

shutter speed.. :(

 

The worst being unacceptably high grains in dark areas at 800 and

1600 which I found out after trying to get a composite of the milky

way. (http://www.photo.net/photo/3677672)

 

So.. the next best thing will be to get a program that can do a

decent job of handling the grains.. is there any that is preferred

for this kind of work?

 

Thanks and Cheers

Anis

[ilkka_nissila]

Try Neatimage, there is a free version which watermarks your images and you can buy it fairly cheap.

 

What kind of lens did you use for the bird shot? Was it f/2.8 or at least f/4? Yes, they cost money but that's what they're made for: to stop action. However, I believe hummingbirds are usually photographed with flash to stop the motion. With flash, you'll be able to use iso 200 and still get a sharp bird (the flash duration is typically less than a millisecond!)

[ilkka_nissila]

There might be even special high-speed flashes for this purpose.

[anis]

Hi Ilkka,

I used Nikon 300mm f4 AFS for this.. I did realize that I was not going to stop the wings as I Was looking for about 1/250 or possibly higher just to freeze the bird... flash was not an option as this was during a camping trip and I just had this lens and my 105mm macro..

 

Let me get the neat image app and see if it can handle the milky way shot..

 

Thanks

Anis

[petequinn]

Noise Ninja is another PS plug-in or standalone application that will do a good job for you. I

use it on D70 and D2x images. I like the option to run a batch at a time with a supplied

camera/ISO profile. Saves me from having togo in and run each photo if I take a bunch so it

fits my workflow nicely. I shoot a lot of action and tend to run 800 fairly often and I am

pleased with the results Noise Ninja has done for me. They offer a free trial and then two

versions, Pro and Home user. Spend the money a get the pro version for its 16 bit support.

 

Pete

[lex_jenkins]

Noise Ninja is the most time efficient noise reduction utility I've used because the programmers provide presets designed to suit the characteristics of specific camera models at each ISO setting. Most of the time these presets work fine for my D2H with only slight tweaking, depending on the image. It's also easy to discern the differences between luminance and chroma noise and how to reduce one or both without oversoftening essential parts of the image.

 

The trick to seeing differences in how noise affect different channels is to click on the buttons in the toolbar. You can immediately see that some channels need lots of help while others need little or none. That's why some folks go as far as to separate their images into separate channels in Photoshop and apply noise reduction and sharpening differently for each channel.

 

Neat Image is also very good but there's some annoying lag time between clicking a button, adjusting a slider, etc., and the actual response. Even on a Pentium 4 it's a bit of a slug compared with Noise Ninja. The end results are very good, tho'.

 

I've recently been experimenting with noise reduction plug-ins from The Imaging Factory. One has a simple interface, the other provides greater control and still isn't too difficult to use. Customer support is top notch - I asked a question Friday evening and got a reply Monday morning. Other folks report a one day wait for replies during normal weekday hours. They also said they'll be offering a significant upgrade to this software by the end of the year to be more effective with file formats using wavelet compression - no cost for the upgrade to existing customers. Their plug-ins are standard Photoshop compatible types that also work with Elements and even the freebie Irfanview.

 

Bibble Pro, which is comparable overall to Nikon Capture 4, also includes a very effective noise reduction utility. There's a bit of lag time between adjustments and responses, but not as much as with Neat Image. Folks who own speed demon computers won't notice.

[ilkka_nissila]

Lex, when have you last upgraded your Neatimage? The recent versions are several times faster than those of only 1-2 years ago.

[aaron l]

Anis - You have a nice shot of the hummingbird. The wings don't have to be stopped and many times those shots look artificial. Facinating, but if that is what you were going for, you need more light and/or a faster lens. There isn't any way around that. So, you need sunlight or a flash. The flash at a low power setting would have frozen it for you. I know you said that wasn't an option but then getting a solid image isn't going to be an option, either.

 

Have you compared the grain of your D70 to 800/1600 neg film lately? I'll take the D70 'grain' any day.

 

Your Milky way picture is pretty nice, but once again you're shooting with the kit lens which will put you 1-2 stops dark. It's not an astro-lens as it's just too slow. You actually captured a decent portion, though. In my attached photo, I auto-contrasted and found a few things. It looks like you've got lens flare going in the lower right hand side. That an automatic contrast killer. Second, the blobs across the middle appear to be stratus clouds that you can't normally see but will reflect the ground lights. Either that or smudges. A UV filter might be killing you here, too. Not sure what's going on with the off-horizontal streaks, though.

 

I'll also attach a modified levels photo of the stars. I dropped the white point down to 89 and the mid to 0.49 or so. Increased contrast somewhat brings out the galaxy without bringing up the flare & cloud/smudges.<div></div>

[aaron l]

Here's the other image, WP 89, gamma/mid 0.49.

[anis]

Thanks for the info guys! I will download trial version of the software today and try..

 

Aaron, I really appreciate the effort!

In the milky way shot, the issue was primarily light from different camp sites and I had locked the exposure at f/4.5 and took series of shot at 800 & 1600 ISO with 20 seconds timing and tried to stitch them.

It turned out that the light levels were different for each of the frame and I got those ugly streaks after stiching them.. but still this was my best effort so far at getting milky way on a camera.. :)

 

I Will apply the de-graining software of the original image and try again and see if that will help in this case. I really like the second image, I was really hoping for the brightest portion of the galaxy ( near the tail of scorpio and Sagittarius ) to stand out.. but the grain/light pollution really messed it up..

 

Regarding the humming bird pics, I just wanted a crisp image of the bird (was not attempting to freeze the wings though).. and 300 f/4 AFS is the max I can afford so waiting for another opportunity to photograph the little guys in better lighting condition..

 

Regards

Anis