bad quality photo with flash

[leon_ephra_m]

<p>Hi there,<br>

I just bought a strobe set a couple of weeks ago and I took some photo's using the set yesterday. Everything looked fine on the camera display, but when I looked at the photo's on the computer and got a more detailed look (100%), I notices a strange 'noise' w covering all the photo's. (btw; It's not my subject, her clothes and skin look flawless in real life ;-) ).<br>

Does anyone have a clue what causes the noise. I know for sure it's not the iso (asa) value, this was set to 200 (the lowest my camera gets). I doubt it's the lens that's causing the speckles, I just got a new nikkor 50mm F/1.4 (but I haven't tested other lenses yet using the strobes). It also could have nothing to do with post processing. Because I know changing the levels in Photoshop can add some distortion to an image. But the photo's already have the speckles before post-processing.<br>

The link to a cropped piece of the photo showing the speckles. Btw; this is a 100% view, F14 (meaning it can't be bokeh because of the large aparture?, shutterspeed: 1/250s, whitebalance: auto): <br>

<a href="http://www.properdesigns.nl/speckles.jpg">speckles.jpg</a></p>

<p>If anyone could help me out, I would be very greatfull. Thank you!</p>

<p>information on my equipment:<br>

camera: Nikon d70s, strobes: Linkstar LF500 & LF300, lens: nikkor 50mm F/1.4, modifiers on strobes: 2 softboxes </p><div></div>

[simon p barlow]

<p>Hi Leon<br>

Were you shooting RAW and converting to jpg using software or were you shooting jpg and letting the camera do the conversion?<br>

Regards<br>

Simon P Barlow</p>

[duncanholmes]

<p>also what ISO? what software are you using to view the image?</p>

[duncanholmes]

<p>sorry, saw the ISO comment now, doesn't look like 200, could be conversion to jpg at less than optimum quality. Reshoot in raw with the same settings, no tweaking at all and view in the default raw viewer that comes with the camera.<br>

Cannon shots for example are sometimes a little soft straight out of the camera in RAW, but you can fiddle the camera jpg values badly and get nasty shaprening artifacts like this on the jpg.</p>

 

[nathan_stiles]

<p>Could be color abberations from shooting at such a high f-stop and too close to the subject. DoF is great enough to pick up refractions from the lens. I'd test it at f11 and see if you have the same problem. This is just a wild speculation, but in case it's not a conversion problem, I thought I'd throw out something you could test.</p>

[leon_ephra_m]

<p>@ simon & duncan, thanks for the reply and the help. The Nikon d70s doesn't support shooting in RAW, so the photo's were made in JPG, (no conversion of any kind).</p>

<p>@ nathan; thanks for the tip!; sounds like that could be the problem. i'll try shooting at a bigger aparture.</p>

[leon_ephra_m]

<p>@ simon & duncan, thanks for the reply and the help. The Nikon d70s doesn't support shooting in RAW, so the photo's were made in JPG, (no conversion of any kind).</p>

<p>@ nathan; thanks for the tip!; sounds like that could be the problem. i'll try shooting at a bigger aparture.</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>The D70s most certainly does support shooting raw!</p>

[leon_ephra_m]

<p>oh my mistake, you mean NEF right?</p>

[alice_trask]

<p>It's the camera...I have the same one and it's VERY noisy...I wish I'd bought another S2 instead.</p>

[leon_ephra_m]

<p>@ Alice, thanks for the tip, but I'm not sure if it really is the camera that's producing the noise. I've shot hundrends of photo's before with the d70s and none of them showed any signs of speckles. The speckles only come up on the photo's I took using my strobes. Nevertheless, I appreciate your help.</p>

[clarence1]

<p>I'm not familiar with Nikon settings and options, but the EXIF says "<strong>Gain Control = Low gain up</strong>".<br>

Is that normal?</p>

[leon_ephra_m]

<p>I'm not sure. I googled 'gain control' and found some photo's that looked fine, while showing the same EXIF output. </p>

<p>However, I found that in the menu on the display ISO=auto was still on. Apparently this overrides the iso settings using the wheel on top of the camera. I took some photo's with ISO = auto being turned off, and they came out much clearer.</p>

<p>Anyway, thank you all so much for your sugggestions!</p>

[terry thomas photos]

<p>First of all, DON'T have your White Balance on "Auto", use "Daylight" or "Flash".<br /><br />Next, I have a D70 and ONLY shoot RAW with it. Nikon calls the file NEF. Both Irfan View and Photoshop read the files.<br /><br />I've never had speckles like that. I suspect it's not the flash or the camera but your camera settings. Set everything to the normal defaults and Raw and Daylight and ISO 200 then you should be good to go.<br /><br />There is no reason to shoot JPGs instead of Raw files. Why would you take the time and effort to create the photographs then throw a large portion of the information away? That's nuts and it's what you are doing when you shoot JPG.<br /><br />Fast CF memory cards are so cheap today that cost of CF cards can not be a reason.<br /><br />PLEASE don't tell me you have a mismatched set of strobes! (That's where not all are the same power rating.) If so you have made a big mistake. You will not be able to see with your eyes what the camera sees. It's an often-made mistake so don't feel too bad. The other problem with an unbalanced set of lights is if you are out in the field and one light gets broken/stolen/lost then any other light can not take it's place. (It's happened to me.) So often students ask me, "Oh it's only a hair light. Can't I buy a lower power unit?" NO! For the reasons I've listed here.<br /><b>Signature URL deleted, not allowed on photo.net per the Terms of Use.</b>