Blech, digital! help!

[walterick]

Is this normal for digital?

I am very upset at the amount of noise in the clouds! Is this normal for digital? Am I doing something wrong? Can this be improved upon? Is it just a function of the (older) D70s I am using?

This was shot at iso 200 handheld at f5.3 with an 18-55 kit lens, shutter was around 1/1500.

Blech! Help!

[mn shutterbug]

Noise? Was it thundering? I don't see any noise on my monitor.

[gahspidy]

Rick, skies can be notoriously noisy, especially when underexposed which this looks to be. The 100% cropped image you have there is not too bad, although yes there is noise. Sometimes an image will be totally clean and another might have noise at the same setting.
I'm betting the underexposure had alot to do with it though. This can be easily cleaned up by just casually selecting the sky area, feather the selection a bit and use PS noise reduction filter. It should take care of it nicely.

[walterick]

Really? Interesting. Do you see any banding in the clouds in upper right quadrant of the frame?

[walterick]

Thanks Gary. I was autobracketing and just checked an overexposed image as well. You're right, the exposure is a factor but the noise is still an issue there, for me. I was hoping not to have to use PS to clean this all up, but if that is the way to go, I guess so be it.

So are you saying that noise like this in clouds is typical for digital? I was hoping for better!

Thanks,
Rick

[Photo-John]

Looks fine to me. Noise is always an issue. And I would bet good money that it's better than ISO 200 film :P

[Xia_Ke]

Somewhere I hear your FM2n and a roll of Velvia crying...LOL

[walterick]

haha yes I am glad I was also shooting Velvia 220 in the Mamiya! ;)

[walterick]

Good thing no one makes a comprable iso 200 film so we could compare ;)

The thing is, I can't get any lower in iso on the D70.

I think maybe I got spoiled by all those beautiful prints at PMA shot at iso 1600 and above. Then I looked at all the grain in my little iso 200 image and wanted to cry :sad:

[Photo-John]

Good thing no one makes a comprable iso 200 film so we could compare ;)

The thing is, I can't get any lower in iso on the D70.

I think maybe I got spoiled by all those beautiful prints at PMA shot at iso 1600 and above. Then I looked at all the grain in my little iso 200 image and wanted to cry :sad:

Your mistake was looking at your image at 100%. It's not really a good way to judge image quality. I evaluate image quality with prints. If you loupe film you'll see all kinds of grain. But you only see it in prints when you enlarge them a bunch. And even then, it's not necessarily a problem. And did you happen to ask anyone showing you prints made from ISO 1600 images if there was any post-processing done? Check out our digital camera sample photo section, pick a camera, and compare one of those images at 100% to yours. I think you'll find you're image is better than you think. Output size is all that matters. What you see at 100% is pretty much irrelevant. So don't look at it and it won't bother you

[walterick]

I'm a little shocked that no one is seeing what I am seeing in these clouds, and I am beginning to wonder if its my monitor. Even in the smaller image I see banding and massive noise in the upper bank of clouds. I guess no one else sees this? Odd...

Thanks for the feedback John. I will go and check that link.

It looks like I am going to get dragged kicking and screaming into learning Photoshop...

[another view]

I'm a little shocked that no one is seeing what I am seeing in these clouds

I do see a little noise but probably wouldn't have noticed it unless you mentioned it. John's right if your final image will be a print, because a print will look different and will tend to smooth out noise a bit. This is even true of a calibrated monitor - the print and the monitor are just very different "media".

Is this unusual? No, not really. I don't see the banding in either shot though. Earlier I looked at it on a crappy CRT but now I'm looking at on my Mac laptop and it still looks fine - and really it's good. Sure, the newest latest greatest may be a little better. But it's really expensive trying to keep up with that. I don't try - just bought a D200 myself. I do it for fun, but if I were a professional and thought a D3 could help me make money you can bet I'd have one. Photoshop really isn't the end of the world, but try making an 8x12 of this just to see how it looks.

Compare this to Ektachrome 200, which to my eyes looks like pointillism...

[freygr]

If you are shotting in JPG the compression will add noise in the clouds. The amount of noise add goes up with the jpg compression (smallest pkg files have more noise). If your using JPG Normal you need to test JPG fine and see if the noise level is fine for you or do like I do shot in RAW + JPG Basic. The only down side is you need more storage, and the nice thing is for resizing for the web JPG Basic is just fine, and it you get a keeper the RAW will give you the best prints or final high resolution files.

[gahspidy]

Looks fine to me. Noise is always an issue. And I would bet good money that it's better than ISO 200 film :P

John is absolutely right, Rick. If your interested in looking at a comparison I did with my Rebel XTi and film check it out here.
Digital Vs. Film

I am also interested to know what format you shot this in. JPEG (what quality) or RAW?
Jpeg will certainly show more noise, splotchy artifacts, and banding not only because of the compression but also because it only saves in 8 bit which will lose alot of the smooth gradations in tones, especially evident in skies.

[another view]

but also because it only saves in 8 bit which will lose alot of the smooth gradations in tones, especially evident in skies.

A little explaination if you're not familiar, but if you shoot in raw you'll be capturing a 12 bit file. Big deal - that's only four more, right? Well, it is a big deal because it's exponential. Where you'll see the difference (as Gary said) is in slight differences in tonality. Film is "continuous tone" but digital is not. The trick is to put so much information in there that the steps from one tone to the next are so close together that we can't see them, essentially, and it looks like continuous tone. Since 12 bit files have so much more information, you're closer to this than with an 8 bit file.

And then there's the issue of JPEG compression - basically the file is compressed by seeing the same color in some areas of the image and throwing the redundant information away. And, JPEGs are 8 bit by definition so you've got a double negative. Not to say that JPEG shooting doesn't have it's places, but I think you'll find yourself shooting in RAW and saving the final image to JPEG (or leaving it as a NEF if you're using Nikon Capture NX).

[walterick]

Thats a great comparison Gary I remember that now from when you posted it here. I was shooting jpg at fine quality. I don't shoot RAW because my version of PS Elements won't open RAW (I just tied) So it looks like I am shooting it at the best quality I can get.

[walterick]

Well, thanks Steve this is all making me feel a little better. I guess I am not shooting with inferior equipment after all Thanks for checking with two different monitors too that's a big help.

Since it looks okay to everyone else I guess this just has something to do with my monitor! It was calibrated a year or 2 ago I guess its time to go back and check it again. Thanks!

Rick

[Medley]

Rick, what camera and what version of Elements are you using? It could be that Elements simply does not recognize your files as Raw. Adobe puts out regular updates for their software to fix this. It could be as simple as updating the software. Worth a look anyway.

- Joe U.

[another view]

Two thoughts - first, monitors should be calibrated about every 30 days, but I'm not saying I've always followed that advice... Also, I don't know PSE's RAW capabilities but if you have a version that's pretty old it might not recognize a D70 file. A new version might fix it but also check out Nikon Capture NX ($130 from Amazon).

The quick tour of NX: Supposedly handles Nikon RAW files better than anything else out there. Inexpensive compared to Photoshop CS3. Needs a fair amount of computing power (I'm running 2g of RAM). Doesn't do a lot of things Photoshop will do, but process the image in NX first and you have PSE if you need it. Operates a lot differently than Adobe products; I have Vincent Versace's DVD tutorial on NX but am still working thru it - not much written or on DVD about NX (compared to Photoshop). 30-day free trial from the website I linked but check it out before you download to see if you think you'll like it (see "Case Studies" first).

[Medley]

Support for the D70 started with Adobe Camera Raw 3.0. Photoshop Elements 3.0 supports Camera Raw plug-ins up to and including ACR 3.6. It would have to be a very old copy indeed not to support the D70. Sounds like it's just a matter of downloading and installing an update.

Links to the ACR 3.6 update:

Windows: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloa...jsp?ftpID=3550

Mac: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloa...jsp?ftpID=3549

- Joe U.

[Frog]

Only elements 2 and under won't support raw.
You do need to get the plug in for your raw file type though. They're free.
You'll be amazed at what you can do with raw files.