 Richard A. Ackerman |
Digital Noise I was reading about digital cameras in a discussion forum and I came across the term "noise". There were a few complaints about the camera which I own and use exclusively, the Olympus E-10. They complained that the E-10 had digital noise. What is digital noise? Am I blind? My photos look great if I compose the shot correctly, and use the available lighting or flash correctly. What does noise look like? The camera is idiot proof.
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Brenda Tharp |
OK, I'm a novice in the digital world having just bought a Canon G3, but noise, as it's been simply defined to me, it very similar to grain on high speed film. Some of the compact point-and-shoot type digitals have more problems with 'noise' than the SLR digital cameras. This means that your pictures may look grainier than you want even if you made them using an ISO of 50 or 100. But one thing I have noticed is that some of those reviews are very picky about any noise at all, so the bottom line is that if your pictures look great, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Also, there is a product out there, call 'dfine' that is a noise-reduction software; I've been hearing great things about it, so if noise does become an issue at some point, you might want to check into that program. Good luck, hope this helps!
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Tim Devick |
I have an E-20 and have read the same thing about its noise profile, but have yet to see a problem. Brenda is right about the reviewers being picky - the reviewers are looking for noise in the pictures in order to compare cameras. While camera "A" may have noisier images than camera "B", in the real-world it may not make a bit of difference. I set my E-20 to ISO 50; I have noticed that if I increase the ISO, the images get noticeably grainer.
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Richard A. Ackerman |
Brenda and Tim, thank you both for responding to my questions about noise. I have followed the instruction manual and I have left the ISO setting on AUTO. Auto selects the proper ISO and it seems to work well. Perhaps this is why I have never noticed the appearence of grain in my photos. Now I just re-read the manual, I have never taken a photo of a dark subect so as to need the increase in ISO setting. Thank you both again!
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Bob Goldberg |
Noise becomes a particular problem when you either crop a picture or enlarge it or both. Check out the NIK plugin "Define." I use it with my E10 and in conjunction with Genuine Fractles can enlarge to 20"x30" with little or no noise evident. The Define program provides optional modules for specific cameras and there is one for the E10. Also you can reduce noise in areas without great detail (i.e. sky) by going to the Blue channel (in Photoshop) and bluring slightly.
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Brenda Tharp |
Great Ideas, Bob - I had just heard about DEFINE and have yet to buy it - now I know I will for sure. Thanks for your input to this 'noisy' question!
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Richard A. Ackerman |
Thanks for your respose Bob. I don't know what you mean by NIK or plug in. I do use Photoshop for basic croping and editing, but I don't claim to be a power user. How do you use a program (Define or Genuine Fractles) with your E-10? Richard
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Wing Wong |
The higher the MP count on your camera in relation to the actual sensor size, the more "noise" that you will get. Check out www.dpreview.com for noise stats on various cameras. For noise removal, there are several programs out there. Nik DFine is one, though I haven't seen very good performance out of the demo I tried out. : The one I am using right now is NeatImage. It creates profiles of your camera at different ISO's to remove noise and it is a near miracle worker. :) Another one is Noise Ninja. Noted to work quite well as well. Both programs were reviewed on a site called Luminous Landscape(www.luminous-landscape.com) where pro/semi-pro hardware and software are reviewed. Genuine Fractals will not remove noise, it will only assist you with scaling up pictures without too much artifacts. Blue channel blurring only works in the case where the noise is a blue channel issue. For noise due to a high ISO, blue channel blurring really doesn't help as much as one would hope. Check out NeatImage. I think one will find it useful, especially when shooting at ISO400 or higher. :) I use it with my Minolta A1's images at various ISOs and find it to be very helpful. Richard, a plug-in typically refers to an additional piece of software that you install so that Photoshop can use it like you would a blur filter. Ie, you download and install a NeatImage plugin for photoshop. You start up photoshop and select filter and when the list shows up, you will see the neatimage entry added. Use that and you will get the options to filter out noise for your currently open image. The same would be true of other plugins like Nik or Genuine Fractals. It isn't a program you run or add to your camera.
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