Beginner Is it just me that prefers noise?

Forkbeard

Forkbeard

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Name
Jim
Edit My Images
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I've been playing about with shooting/processing .raw on my D3200 with mixed results, but one thing I've noticed is that I don't really mind noise. I shot some low light shots at ISO3200 and the noise in the raw files looks better than the processed file (at least to me). With lower ISO the processing works fine, but at 3200 the jpegs out of the camera don't look so good. I was thinking they would look better with a little more noise and less processing. Just looking for other opinions on this.

P.S. Are there any decent tutorials on using Raw Therapee? I'm a bit lost with it to be honest - it seems like a lot to learn.
 
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Pics made from Raw files nearly always look better than the out of camera jpeg .. its not to do with noise per se but the limitations of the jpeg processing in camera
 
I'm happy with the fact that we get noise at high ISO's.

BUT if you prefer noisy JPEGs to your processed RAWs, it's your processing, not your opinion, that's faulty. The secret to successful image editing is subtlety.
 
Phil V said:
I'm happy with the fact that we get noise at high ISO's.

BUT if you prefer noisy JPEGs to your processed RAWs, it's your processing, not your opinion, that's faulty. The secret to successful image editing is subtlety.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

James, why not most up some samples?
 
OK, the first crop is the raw:



And this is the out of camera jpeg:



I haven't finished with the raw file yet (levels etc), because I'm still learning/playing with the sharpening/noise reduction in Raw Therapee, but as it stands there seems to be a lot more detail in the raw conversion.
 
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A couple more raw crops after a bit more playing around. Overall I prefer the last one (post#7), then the first one and prefer them all to the camera jpeg. The first one looks best until you have a closer look, then it's less noisy but the sharpening is wrong - it gives it an odd quality:



 
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This one is a raw conversion, no noise reduction at all, just some sharpening and saturation/contrast etc. that somehow came out having noise that looked better than some of the others with noise reduction!

 
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This is another raw editing attempt, I think I went too overboard with the noise reduction. Any opinions advice would be appreciated.

 
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Phil V said:
The secret to successful image editing is subtlety.
Click to expand...

Exactly.
I find pushing the noise reduction too far creates a weird blur and loss of texture. It's particularly noticeable on peoples faces and looks like a (very) bad attempt at skin smoothing. Pulling it back leaves some noise but looks much better.
You can usually adjust the camera's jpeg settings/picture style to suit your tastes, tweaking contrast, vibrancy, noise reduction etc. where needed.
This is the reason shooting raw and doing it yourself is so often recommended; Taking control of your images and not relying on a pre-set made by someone who has never seen what you are looking at.
 
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I know these are only test shots but... the white balance looks to be more of a problem than the noise but maybe WB is something I care about more... Anyway, as mentioned above, raw and careful processing should usually give better results than in camera JPEG's.

Other than that what works for you is what matters and if you like a bit of noise all's well with the world. Personally I prefer a sort of happy middle ground between too much noise and too much loss of detail due to noise reduction. I do think that sometimes noise can even add to a shot but maybe more often than not I'd prefer a nice clean and detailed image :D
 
If I look at your first set of pictures I prefer the first raw, you can easily see the jpg is smearing the detail even with the web sized images.

The other differences are in the white balance and contrast curve.
 
woof woof said:
I know these are only test shots but... the white balance looks to be more of a problem than the noise but maybe WB is something I care about more... Anyway, as mentioned above, raw and careful processing should usually give better results than in camera JPEG's.

Other than that what works for you is what matters and if you like a bit of noise all's well with the world. Personally I prefer a sort of happy middle ground between too much noise and too much loss of detail due to noise reduction. I do think that sometimes noise can even add to a shot but maybe more often than not I'd prefer a nice clean and detailed image :D
Click to expand...
This^
 
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