ISO noise

[Mr Ohno]

I have searched for the answer to this but can't find it.

As a film photographer I didn't like 400asa film as I found it too grainy. I used 100 in the summer and 200 in the winter, that way it covered most of my needs. The problem is I still hate to use anything over 200 ISO in digital format.

The questions I'd like answered are,
Has digital imagery got the same problem as my old film fears, now known as noise?
Can todays software retrieve the clarity from using a high ISO setting? :shrug:

 

[cowasaki]

I have searched for the answer to this but can't find it.

As a film photographer I didn't like 400asa film as I found it too grainy. I used 100 in the summer and 200 in the winter, that way it covered most of my needs. The problem is I still hate to use anything over 200 ISO in digital format.

The questions I'd like answered are,
Has digital imagery got the same problem as my old film fears, now known as noise?
Can todays software retrieve the clarity from using a high ISO setting? :shrug:

But the AMOUNT of noise is not what the ISO standard refers to it is the sensitivity. The D700 for example has a default minimum ISO of 200 but you try and find any noise on that. Take it to 400 or 800 and again virtually no noise at all.

 

[gnom]

Has digital imagery got the same problem as my old film fears, now known as noise?

To some extent, yes.

Can todays software retrieve the clarity from using a high ISO setting? :shrug:

Not sure what you mean, but today's post-processing software has some astounding noise reduction features in them; as well as new DSLRs are exceptionally good at high ISO settings.

 

[dod]

I'll quite happily use ISO 3200 now, 6400 isn't too bad. You can see it at 100% but that's a bit pointless when normally I'm printing at 7X5 or 8X6

 

[Mr Ohno]

Thanks folks. I must kick that old habit then, but it won't be easy.

 

[grahamsewelluk]

I used to worry about the higher ISOs on my 40d until I did some tests. What I did was quite simple. There was a medium silver grey car parked in sunlight about 50m from our house with its exhaust pipe pointing almost directly at me. The exhaust pipe was matt black inside (as they tend to be) so I took a set of shots of the car using just P settings as the medium grey was an easy target. For each shot I ramped up the ISO by another stop starting at 100 and finishing at 1600 (did not go to the extended ISO range).

Then a little pixel peeping showed that upto 400 was very little difference. And on printing, the noise in the matt black exhaust was all but invisible upto 1600.

So now, yes I still use the lower ISOs in preference but I don't worry too much if I need to push it.

Note that most of the time you'll never notice the noise in parts of the shot that are not already dark.

Your mileage may vary and this is just the results for my own camera.

 

[Undercrank]

It's still pretty good advice to shoot at the lowest ISO possible. Thing is, it's true DSLRs these days do really well with noise but things can look a bit off in the shadows when we have to process the image. That in turn leads to other software techniques that can tone it down a bit. Underexposure (as opposed to selectively reduced exposure) will make higher ISO noise worse.

So the diffs we face with noise are often in the processing not the cameras output.

 

[trencheel303]

high ISO noise can be a problem but if you use it to your advantage it's not such a bad thing! Noise/grain in some images can actually look very nice.

 

[MatW]

Used to worry about it, but then I realised that most people don't usually notice it unless they're also in to photography. I'd rather get a decent, sharp picture with a little noise, than a blurred picture, or no picture at all!