Camera Labs

I have the canon 400d and I have been noticing that I have more noise than is acceptable to sell as stock. When I saw the difference in noise between the 400d and the nikon d80 http://www.cameralabs.com/features/10Me ... ge4c.shtml , I was suprised that the d80 was so much better. Does anyone have any on-hand experience between the nikon and canon when it comes to noise?


Vivian

Hi Vivian, welcome to the Cameralabs forums!

You shouldn't judge a camera solely on this particular test though as the flat colours of this test chart are very good for hiding noise and noise reduction problems.

This one with a real life subject is much more useful:

http://www.cameralabs.com/features/10Me ... e4ca.shtml

I'd also urge you to compare the high ISO sample images in the gallery of this feature.

May I ask what kind of photos you're trying to sell? Are they taken at high ISOs? Do you have an example to show us?

To be honest, most of these DSLRs have roughly similar noise levels, so you won't notice a massive difference switching from, say, a 400D to a D80 - certainly not enough difference so that a library rejecting a 400D photo would then pay for one from a D80.

If you shoot at high ISOs and want much lower noise, you'll need to consider a different type of camera, like a full-frame DSLR.

Or of course shoot at lower ISOs, or apply noise reduction using software later.

Gordon

Hello Gordon,


I am mostly selling outdoor photos, including landscape, detailed flowers with a bokeh effect, and others. I am faithfully using ISO 100. The noise i get is in the obvious places like sky, solid colors and low shadow/low detailed areas. I have also had many tips on how to use photoshop (cs2) to lower noise. Even though it was quite effective, it created a lot of blur that created a very unatractive effect. Then also I had receved tips on how to get rid of the blur by sharpening. It all ended up making the photos look fake

I also am having trouble getting a cropped photo up on this forum, can you give me instructions?


About full frame cameras, maybe I am mistaken, but it seems that the noise on a full frame camera is about the same as an ap-s camera (that is just from the reviews and image examples i have seen). Please correct me if I am wrong.




I appreciate any information and/or tips you can give.


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Hi Vivian,

you cannot upload pics to the CameraLabs forum directly! You first have to upload them elsewhere (flickr, your own homepage) and then link to them via the tags.
Would be nice to see some of the incriminated photos!

And yes, you're right. FF is only marginally better at noise when you shoot at ISO 100.

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Hi Vivian, yep, we'll need to see a sample to judge it - maybe you could just upload to flickr, then give us the link to the picture.

In the meantime, if you shoot in RAW mode, you'll have more noise reduction options using Adobe Camera RAW in CS2.

Noise Ninja is also a neat noise reduction tool...

Gordon

Sorry for the long wait. I have been on vacation and just came back. The only way I could figure out how to post my ISO 100, 100% crops was to make a blog. Check it out....
http://dancestrokes.blogspot.com/

Were those taken at 100 ISO?

The only way to tell if its too much noise to sell on a library is to submit the images and see if they're accepted.

As mentioned earlier though, the noise levels at the same ISO aren't really much different on other DSLRs - it's more a case of noise reduction differences, so you might want to play around with programs like noise ninja. See http://www.picturecode.com/

But be careful not to smear out all the fine detail with noise reduction!

Gordon

Thanks for all of the advice. I have recently took some photos that I think are very good and quite noise free with the help of some noise reduction software.

Vivian

Hi Vivian!
The sky in your second pic in the blog certainly looks grisly. Is this a 100% crop that you get when you click on the pic?
You can see what my D80 does with blue sky at ISO 200 here (beware LARGE original jpg-file - no extra noise-reduction)

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Yes it is. I cropped it at 100%.

The noise in your photo seems, to me, to be the same as my photos at ISO 200. The darks areas are also similar in my photos at 200. Like you said, Gordon, the noise is not much different from camera to camera.

Is there any difference in noise when comparing sRGB to Adobe RGB…or maybe jpeg to RAW?

And also I have heard that lenses and polarizes can cause noise. I am not sure if this is true. Can anyone comment?

My observations so far (and the laws of physics) indicate that you're partially right:
- If you use a lens that has a max aperture of say f2.8 vs. one with f5.6 and you shoot at max aperture the f2.8 lens can get +2EV more light on the sensor (if you reduce your ISO-setting accordingly). That might lead to less noise.
- If you use a pol- or ND-filter again you lose some light (like up to 2EV). That might lead to more noise.
- If you convert RAW to jpg a whole bunch of algorithms is applied. Depending on the in-camera processor or the postprocessing sw that you use, there might be a slight difference in the resulting noise in the jpg. e.g. the more sharpening is applied the more noisy the jpg will become.
- Another source of noise is certainly postprocessing sw. If you sharpen the image, increase the contrast or lighten up dark sections of a pic, you will certainly amplify noise. Also some HDR-algorithms result in an incredible amount of noise (see my examples here: http://www.cameralabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=781 )
- But I doubt that you can see a difference in Adobe-RGB vs. sRGB

-----Disclaimer: Pls. register all the "ifs" and "mights"-------

Add-on: Don't let them fool you! Even two cameras with identical sensors, like the Sony A100 and the Nikon D80 exhibit visible differences in noise. This comes down to the in-camera sensor-filter and the processing algorithms. So not all "apples" are "oranges"...

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

I see what you mean. What it sounds like is that the certain algorithms produced by the sensor can create a different looking noise than other sensors. I have not thought of that before.

In those photos that you posted I noticed that the first one had no noise problem, and then the second one had a lot of noise. The part that caught my curiosity was the skin on both of the pictures. Is it freckles that I am seeing or is that noise?

Hi Vivian,

is this the specific picture that you refer to?

Well, the noise on the right side comes from a specific algorithm trying to make a HDR-pic out of the normal pic on the left. So that noise on the right is not normal! Even the left side has a little increased noise as I added +1EV to the normal photo to make it comparable to the HDRed one.
The original and unbiased noise can be seen here. You can see in the original size that the result is a mixture of freckles and noise In this picture I would not complain about noise. I can see it, but find it quite natural.

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

That was the one I was talking about.
I'd say that the noise looks better in that picture than what my camera produces. (especialy since you took it at ISO 200) What is your oppinion when you compare the sky picture that I posted and your photo?

Vivian, I just want to add my two cents that you might have something wrong with your camera -- either that, or with your camera settings. The amount of noise that I see in those crops is more than ANY DSLR should product at low ISOs.

Caleb