Does cranking up the ISO, give you too much noise?

FlowtographyBerlin

Just to straighten the record for those that might have missed it, the "Even at ISO 100, I often end up applying fairly aggressive noise reduction (nr)" statement was for the 100% crop very rare occasions. At that level of zooming, the D800 will display noise at any ISO, especially on the shade side and mid-tones.

Hm. Upon re-checking, I must say I wouldn't agree to that anymore. I'll dig up an example of some 100% crops from sky areas. With "very rare occasions", are you referring to the fact the use case of 100% crops being rare or to the fact that visible noise is rare?

FlowtographyBerlin

Ok, so here's a comparison. 5D Mark II vs. D800.

The crop on the right is strongly contrast-enhanced using levels. I saved the final image as JPEG Quality 11 out of Photoshop, so the artifacts from the compression are minimal, on my screen it pretty much looks the same with or without compression (I could start seeing artefacts with Quality set to 10).

PB_PM

Why use ISO50 from the D800? It's not within the native ISO range (it the LO setting).

FlowtographyBerlin

@PB_PM: I didn't take these images today and for this purpose, but I just used two lots-of-boring-sky images that I could find on my harddisk. Since it's not native ISO anyway, I'd say it doesn't matter in this comparison.

PB_PM

Okay, sounds reasonable.

spraynpray

The sky on the 5D2 shot looks darker to me so would give up more noise when lightened - is that a fair comparison? Not that I am defending the canon of course.... :P

FlowtographyBerlin

The sky on the 5D2 shot looks darker to me so would give up more noise when lightened - is that a fair comparison?

*Sigh* :-) Overall yes, but the area from the crop should not be THAT much darker that it would be the reason for the noise difference. I'll crop a lighter area then and post it again.

kyoshinikon

Is my D700 a basket case? It seems noisier than my D7000 at ISO 3200... Ill post samples soon...

spraynpray

I am finding that noise is now more dependent on light than ISO setting. By that I mean if there is a fair bit of light around, the high-ISO performance of my D7000 is good, whereas if I am doing sunset/sunrise/night shooting using medium apertures and slow shutter speeds, the noise ramps up a lot and the image quality in terms of the colours and resolution plummets. Unfortunately I do a lot of that type of shooting. I would like to see less noise and better colour depth at extreme low light in the sensors soon. ETTR is my friend, but it isn't the whole answer.

Maybe it is an FX/DX thing? The only way I would know is to have a D700 next to my D7000 taking the same shot.

sevencrossing

spraynpray
when it comes to high ISO shots you will normally be better off with FX

but sunset/sunrise/night shots can be high contrast, and one thing you lose at High ISO values is dynamic range

I think for those subjects regardless of DX / Fx if possible you need ISO 100 and a tripod

JJ_SO

I slightly disagree: Only if your workflow is based on low ISO, th epost processing will be noticeable worse. If I already shoot (whatever the reason is) in HighISO, my workflow would include the fact of lost dynamic and at the end the recommendation remains "use the lowest ISO possible".

If one needs high ISO and is not using it by error, he/she has reason to do so. Maybe otherwise the shot can't be done. And as comfort: Often the light conditions in high ISO situations are so horrible that even 20 f-stops dynamic range would not be sufficient. It's all about how to expose.

spraynpray

Thanks for your responses guys.

@sevencrossing: @PitchBlack: I always use ISO 100 and a tripod for those shots and I am usually shooting a bracketed set, but recently the wind has caused me to have ghosting problems. I use Photomatix Pro which helps with its anti-ghosting facility, but the wind still causes a lack of sharpness.

@JJ_SO: You say your PP includes the fact of lost dynamic? I am interested in how you can reverse the contrasty data your sensor captures in poor light using hi-ISO. My simple way is a three shot bracket and Photomatix Pro.

Golf007sd

@sevencrossing & PitchBlack: I agree with you both in that high ISO will affect dynamic rang. The acceptable result however is all up to the photographer.

@spraynpray: In situations where you have poor light, 3 brackets shots will not be enough at times. Try 7-10 shots with +/- 2 EV at about 1/10-1/30. Depending on your distance to subject use f/4-5.6

sevencrossing

spraynpray
with sunsets I sometimes use 2 exposures one for the sun, the other for the foreground
make 2 layers in CS5 then merge the two

spraynpray

@Golf007sd: There ya go trying to get me to buy the pro control gear again! D700 only does three shot brackets without using U1 and U2 and BTW I am getting less good results in really low light with 2 stop increments - colour banding. Better results using 1 stop or maybe 1.5 at a stretch. Maybe I'm doing summat wrong tho.

@sevencrossing: Interesting. I can see II'll have to get more into PS.

JJ_SO

@spraynpray I was not referring to stills of unmoving objects where there's no need to raise ISO. With moving objects, bracketing is pointless. My PP includes the fact of lost dynamic, because it already happened (at the moment of PP the shot was already on the card) and if I needed high ISO and don't want to flash around I have to live with what is possible.

I will not try to get lit shadows, I just try to get okay highlights. I'm talking about situations in lowlight. Lots of dark spots are less disturbing (to my eye) than lots of white, blank spots. And most of the time, Capture One or Aperture can handle those sahdows much better than burnt lights.

But I'm nt one of the people complaining about noise, matter of fact I really don't mind much about.

FlowtographyBerlin

Update!

Isn't it the best when you revise old impressions that you have because you learned new things? I just had to revise my verdict over the 5D II performance, because I discovered that my impressions on the "noise" in sky images were actually not so much due to the sensor, but more to the JPG-processing of the camera. Unfortunately, in the above image, I accidentially took an out-of-camera JPG file instead of the RAW file, which I just noticed now. The comparison changes quite dramatically when you look at the result between the correct files:



Nevertheless, my impression wasn't based on nothing. One was my absolute impression (without any comparison to other cameras) when I was retouching the first files back when I got the 5DII. I.e. there was a lot of "noise" in skin tones in studio shots.

The other thing that might contribute to the impression is the notoriously worse JPG-processing engine of the Canon versus the Nikon; many of the images that contained sky were shot in vacation photos or in more casual (event etc.) jobs where I used JPEG and not RAW, although always on the maximum quality setting.

So, both things, (skin rendering in RAW, sky rendering in JPEG) I'll have to compare again side-by-side to see if these impressions are valid or not.

blackfox

hmm i suppose it really depends on you subject matter and need to crop your image ,noise can be a problem with wildlife and macro shooting ,but one thing i do know is nikon handles it far better at the p&p stage than most if not all of its rivals .i currently use a d300s(camera of choice ) but also have a d7000 as well as a canon 1dmkii ,,i honestly can't think of a image taken in the last two years that i have had to dump from the point of noise ,out of focus yes ,camera shake yes ,but just bad noise no .but then perhaps my standards and also pockets are not as high and deep as some .its what takes the eye that counts .
and yes i went through the cupboard under the stairs darkroom stage before getting access to the spare room and well remember 800 iso grain and hard paper pushing to enhance the grain .
what we deem as unacceptable now in 10 years might be the height of fine art ,so hang on to them old dslr's LOL