How much noise is too much noise?

oO Stevie Oo

oO Stevie Oo

oO Stevie Oo

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Evening :)

Im struggling with my ISO, My camera hates going above even ISO 400 :eek:
I always try to shoot the lowest ISO possible but am I loosing detail doing that?
I usually go by ISO 100 for sunny daylight, 200 for cloudy but bright and 400 for 'looks like its gonna rain' and last light.

I thought this was pretty much ok but I keep seeing noise on pictures I wasnt expecting to see it on, mainly around ISO 400.

Also I am struggling to setup the flash for manual mode in the house etc, I normally go widest aperture and vary the shutter between 1/100 and 1/200, with the flash on TTL or 1/64 - 1/128, but again I'm struggling with the ISO in this area too.

So basically Im just looking for a few tips on what ISO margin to stay in and how to do flash photography correctly in manual as I'm just guessing at the moment :p

Any help appreciated
Cheers
 
oO Stevie Oo said:
Evening :)

Im struggling with my ISO, My camera hates going above even ISO 400 :eek:
I always try to shoot the lowest ISO possible but am I loosing detail doing that?
I usually go by ISO 100 for sunny daylight, 200 for cloudy but bright and 400 for 'looks like its gonna rain' and last light.

I thought this was pretty much ok but I keep seeing noise on pictures I wasnt expecting to see it on, mainly around ISO 400.

Also I am struggling to setup the flash for manual mode in the house etc, I normally go widest aperture and vary the shutter between 1/100 and 1/200, with the flash on TTL or 1/64 - 1/128, but again I'm struggling with the ISO in this area too.

So basically Im just looking for a few tips on what ISO margin to stay in and how to do flash photography correctly in manual as I'm just guessing at the moment :p

Any help appreciated
Cheers
Click to expand...

Seems like you should try your best to stay below ISO400.
Use your lenses at the widest possible aperture, slow your shutter, but keep it fast enough so you don't get blur.
When using flash, keep the ISO at 100/200 and up the power of the flash, and also you should be able to slow the shutter speed even more to let the ambient burn in, as the flash freezes the action.
 
Try ETTR (exposing to the right, basically overexposing by 1/3-1 stop deliberately), the D80 is a pretty old camera now, and I don't think the noise floor is particularly great. (The noise floor is the noise that's in every image in the blacks, even at really low ISOs.) This becomes apparent if you're underexposing and then boosting the image. In many situations you may find that a slightly (deliberately) overexposed shot at, say, ISO 800, which you then recover (drop the exposure in post with the RAW) has less noise than the same shot at ISO 400 if that would mean underexposing and having to bring up all the shadows.

Obviously a catch all solution would be either really bright primes or a newer body, but for the moment it'll be hard to do.

With regard to the indoor flash, using wider or stabilised lenses will allow you to have slightly longer shutter speeds, which will mean you can get more ambient light into the shots, if you want to bump up the flash power but not overwhelm the shot. If you don't mind bumping up the power on the flash on its own, the flash should in most situations be more than capable of bringing ISO down to 100, and with careful bouncing etc. it shouldn't look /too/ artificial.
 
What flash do you have? Is it a Nikon one or a compatible. If its the Nikon one, setting it to ttl should just about be it and the cls system works it out for you. The only time you will have a problem is in trying to light too large an area and the flash cant cope, so the iso needs to be upped.

I wouldn't bother using ISO100 on the D80 either. This is not a true ISO100 as the sensor is rated for ISO200. The signal gets amplified to make it ISO100, so ISO200 is actually the same, if not better quality than the 100.

I had a D80 a few years ago and shooting above ISO400 wasnt a problem. You never mentioned whether you shoot in jpeg or raw. If you think your images are noisy there is a lot you can do in post processing to remove it.
 
One thing with high ISO is that if the exposure is perfect then you tend to get very little noise across the frame, if the exposure is off slightly then noise (the bad kind) shows up much easier.

I'd check your metering and test out different EV compensations to see which works best at iso400-800.

I had a Nikon D70s ages ago and was fine shooting up to ISO800. RAW shooting btw, not jpeg, ever!
 
Cheers all
A new body is in the pipeline,
Flash currently is the stock built in flash (weak I know)
I only shoot in RAW

I'll try the over exposing though and see if that helps :)

cheers
 
The thing is with noise is that it looks ugly when viewed at 100% on a screen, print out the photo even reasonably large and you wont have much issue.
The D80 noise while moderately high is also not an ugly kind, much more grain like since it is in the luminance channel.

For soem scenes then noise reduction software is really great. A classic example si when you shoot wildlife and say have a bird overed a blurred background. The background may show a lot of noise but not so much on the bird. You can remove all the noise on the background through a layer while maintaing the details in the bird.
 
Stick to ISO400 or lower, 800 when you have no choice. That's the best (and simplest) advice in my view. Then save for a new body.

Nikon's metering's pretty good, even on the D80, so I'd avoid deliberate overexposure as a rule, know when it's appropriate and use it then but don't as a rule, you'll ruin more shots blowing highlights than you'll save in the shadows.
 
I think as a rule, I'd rather have a sharp but noisy image, than a blurred image, at least you can try to process out the noise in something like LR3, if its blurry then basically you're knackered !



Regards Simon
 
My D80 doesn't go above ISO800, though I have taken several usable shots at ISO1600.

If I'm honest, lately I've been using Auto ISO and just setting a maximum sensitivity of 800.

The camera seems to choose pretty much the ISO I would have chosen nearly every time anyway.
 
I never really worry about iso related noise. If I need to max out the iso to get an image I will I just treat it like film grain a side effect of getting the shot a black and white conversion often helps to minimise the appearence or at least the negative aspects of it.

This is another of those areas digital has made us a bit obsessive over, images don't need to be perfectly smooth and shiny a bit of grain and roughness done right can add to the appeal.
 
just get the picture best you can. Don't get sucked into all this noise rubbish. Yes shoot as low as you can but don't be put off by upping your ISO. Thats what its there for. Usually best to keep the ISO low for landscapes and portraits you can stretch it abit if you are out and about.
 
a1ex2001 said:
I never really worry about iso related noise. If I need to max out the iso to get an image I will I just treat it like film grain a side effect of getting the shot a black and white conversion often helps to minimise the appearence or at least the negative aspects of it.

This is another of those areas digital has made us a bit obsessive over, images don't need to be perfectly smooth and shiny a bit of grain and roughness done right can add to the appeal.
Click to expand...

There's a fair difference between grain and digital noise though, if you're shooting in colour it's completely different, black and white can work but it's still easily noticeable if you know what they actually look like.
 
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