Noise / Grain - Is this much normal?

[sarah_uecker]

<p>I've picked up my camera after a long time away, and I was surprised by the amount of noise I'm seeing in photos. I know that the higher the ISO, the higher the amount of noise but I don't remember it being this bad.</p>

<p>Please ignore the out of focus aspect, I'm still working on that. Plus, I handheld this one because I was just testing out the ISO issue. :D</p>

<p>Shot at ISO 1250, 1/13, f/5.6. Shot in RAW, the following is at 100%.</p>

<p>I'm basically just wondering if this amount of noise is normal or if something is wrong with my camera.</p>

[sarah_uecker]

<p><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_KmnqMCYfcdA/TTGSMKhi1tI/AAAAAAAAA90/SlzxV2Hia2g/s640/grain.JPG" alt="" /></p>

[alvinyap]

<p>I think the photo is underexposed - this will cause more noise to show up in the shadow areas. If not, IMO it looks about right for iso 1250.</p>

<p>Alvin</p>

[sarah_uecker]

<p>It's definitely underexposed. Shot in my apartment at 3 in the morning with bad light. Yep, definitely underexposed. I didn't know that could cause more noise though.</p>

[marc_batters]

<p>Sarah, Camera and lens info would be helpful. Image stabilization on or off? Auto or manual focus?<br>

Can you upload some images shot at 100-200-400 ISO range, again at 100%, for comparison. </p>

[jim_manganella]

<p><img src="http://www.manycoyotes.com/grain_noise_reduction.jpg" alt="" />You can get a noise reduction program. Neat Image is very good. It's available as a free standing program or a Photoshop plugin.</p>

[sarah_uecker]

<p><strong>Marc - </strong>I haven't shot any low ISO images lately. I literally picked up my camera today for the first time in about 8 months. I'm hoping to go out tomorrow to shoot and get reaquainted with it again, so I'll hopefully be able to provide images tomorrow.</p>

<p>No image stabilization, autofocus shot at 50 mm on a 28-80mm f/4-5.6 attached to a Nikon D200.</p>

<p><strong>Jim - </strong>That's pretty slick, I'll have to take a look. I have PS and Lightroom, so a PS plugin would be fantastic.</p>

[jim_manganella]

<p>Sarah, nothing beats a proper exposure and a low ISO to begin with but we have to play with the cards we're dealt. I use it to remove noise from indoor wedding photos shot at up to 5000 ISO.</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>Sarah, that's really pretty good for a D200 at ISO 1250. The D200 is a fairly noisy DSLR by modern standards.</p>

[howard_m]

<p>if you already have LR (esp LR3) and PS, then use LR's noise reduction and/or open the image in Camera Raw and use it's noise reduction. You can purchase a plug-in if you want but you already have several good tools at your disposal.</p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>Sarah,</p>

<p>LightRoom can do that just as well. Just go to the Detail panel in the Develop Module.</p>

[gulfbeach47]

<p>I have CS4. I have run into noise on numerous occasions and imagine I will again. Is Neat Image a free plugin or is there something with CS4 that is already included for noise reduction that I have not discovered yet? There are many features that I have not learned about in CS4.</p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>John open your image in ACR a part of CS4 and you get the same noise reduction sliders, you already have a very powerful noise reduction program.</p>

[gulfbeach47]

<p>Scott- I googled and looked on utube for ACR, CS4-ACR, ACR-CS4 etc... but no luck. I opened photoshop and typed in ARC under Help section and nothing for ACR. Sorry, but what is ACR? </p>

[alvinyap]

<p>Hi Sarah,<br>

Try shooting at high iso in a scene where there are both darks and lights area, you'll notice that the noise tends to be more obvious in the darker areas - hence if the photo is underexposed, it moves the subject matter into the darker region - more noise. However, I'd usually take a noisy shot that has no blur, vs a cleaner shot with subject blur. Noise imo isn't such an issue, it's the decrease in dynamic range that annoys me.</p>

<p>I like using noise ninja (it's built into Bibble 5, the raw converter I use) to remove the chroma noise, and none of the luma noise - that tends to resemble the jpeg output from the camera, though the camera's high iso jpeg outputs have coarser noise patterns. HTHs!</p>

<p>John - ACR is Adobe Camera Raw. Can't tell you more as I can't use photoshop :-/</p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>John, sorry it is always difficult to know what people don't know!</p>

<p>Anyway as Alvin said ACR is Adobe Camera Raw, it is a module inside Photoshop. Basically Photoshop doesn't understand camera RAW files, if you try to open an .nef (Nikon) or .cr2 (Canon) or any other type of RAW camera file the box you get is ACR, in it you can change all kinds of things, white balance, exposure etc, you can also do noise reduction and lens corrections. Once you have done whatever you want to you click the done button and the picture opens in Photoshop proper.</p>

<p>Now if you don't shoot RAW files, and there are many advantages to doing so, but there are also good reasons to not (as always), then your camera will save your files as a .jpg, Photoshop can read these natively, when you open the file it doesn't go through the ACR module first. However all is not lost, if you want the power of ACR on your jpegs just open Bridge, click on your file and then go File-Open in Camera Raw, or COMMAND and R.</p>

<p>Hope this helps, Scott.</p>

[kari v]

<p>Lightroom is a very powerful tool for RAW files and has excellent noise reduction module. I'm not sure why you're looking for a PS plug-in or PS noise reduction tool when you could run everything through LR and only handle more demanding local adjustments in PS.<br /> LR -> edit in Photoshop makes a high quality work copy (with or without your LR adjustments) and opens it in PS, after that the PS edited file is stacked in LR with the original. This way it's very easy to keep multiple versions in order and always have the best possible file to work with.</p>

<p>If you find LR noise reduction module worse than some other tool you can use external noise reduction editors in LR too, same as in PS.</p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>The noise processor, in fact the entire RAW processing engine, is exactly the same in LightRoom and Photoshop, anything you can do in Adobe Camera Raw, the RAW processor module of Photoshop, you can do in LightRoom.</p>

<p>For digital photographers, LightRoom is the best $300 you can spend on your wok/hobby. Put off the next lens or body purchase until you have a copy. For photographers LightRoom is far more useful on a day to day basis than Photoshop.</p>

[sarah_uecker]

<p>Scott - I have lightroom, and am working on using it more effectively. When I first got it I used it all the time, then I stopped using it as much. Now I'm working on re-rating all my photos, tagging, organizing and in general perfecting my digital workflow. I feel like such a noob, but I completely overlooked the noise tools in both photoshop and lightroom. I definitely agree that it's much more useful to my workflow than PS, or at least I should say it's increased the speed of my workflow. I'm working on making it an essential tool to my photography, and as soon as I get my 5000+ photos better tagged it will be fantastic. </p>