Paranoid about grain?

smash

Recently I had taken a photo at the cannonball run (Large Photo) and someone asked me about the grain at full size. The thing is that I didn't do much PP except to increase the exposure a bit so I checked the original and it also had grain for no reason that I could think of.

So today I went out and took some photo to see what would happen and it's there again, but not as obvious, yet the photo is a little fuzzy.

It doesn't seem to matter which lens I use, although the 70-200 is slightly worse off. But the longer the exposure, the more grain I'm getting.

Got it serviced last year and haven't used it all that much since.

Here's a sample...

Photo taken:


Grain at 100%:


Metadata:


Am I being paranoid about this, or do you reckon I have a problem with my camera?

AnCatDubh

Grain / or more technically correct, noise from digital sensors, will 'live' or be more prominent in the darker areas of an image. Perhaps find something to compare to on flickr camera finder - something like this might be close in spec, (see bottom of image in particular - darker part of the image) - think that one is iso 200. But it has a not dissimilar amount of noise as what you show above in those taken today.

The ladies at the races one looks to me like post production induced; a bit of sharpening maybe that has exaggerated the natural noise in the image, or aggressive jpeg compression, or the photoshop facebook action - you know, the one which makes all your photos look sh*te , or um..., something else

Remember you'll never view at 100% and you'll be unlikely to print at 100% - at least regularly and print is way more forgiving than on screen anyhow. So in the full image which you've shown, (ice cream, taken today) it isn't particularly noticeable. This one, at 100% has the noise much less prominent than the ladies/races one. It has a loss of sharpness but perhaps that is the shutter speed of 1/30th causing it (was it shot handheld), and maybe the lack of sharpness is highlighting the noise a bit more to the eye.

Best thing i'd imagine is to find some similar images from the same camera on flickr, and see how they compare.

smash

Yea it was hand held, well leaning on something. The photo from the cannonball is a lot worse I know. Just annoying me a bit that I can't see it on the camera preview and then when I get the photo to lightroom I'm kicking myself.

I've previously taken darker photos in forests etc and not had that result.

5uspect

There is the idea that you should 'expose right'. That is, you should always overexpose (without burning out beyond your cameras log response) to maximise signal to noise ratio. Then underexpose your images in camera RAW.

This is pretty much how you would use any analogue to digital converter.

Also, if you're using camera RAW, have a look at the masking slider in the sharpening tab. Sharpening amplifies noise, the masking slider (hold alt when moving it) only applies sharpening to areas of high local contrast, edges basically. This helps decouple sharpening from noise reduction.

Rainbowsend

The shot above doesnt look like "noise" to me, it is just camera shake,
your shutter speed was only 1/30s and focal length 35mm, speed should
have been at least 1/35s or quicker, so increasing the ISO slightly would
have given you the extra bit of shutter speed needed to keep it steady
and sharper.

Snowie

Smash f/2.8 is never that clean and in detail is never what it is at say f/11 Mount it on a tripod and see if theres any difference? I think it's camera shake, your shooting at 1/30th at 35 you should at least be at 80th of a second...

Kenny Logins

Rainbowsend wrote: »

The shot above doesnt look like "noise" to me, it is just camera shake,

I was just thinking the same. That image looks to me like it could have been a video still.

Zillah

Rainbowsend wrote: »

The shot above doesnt look like "noise" to me, it is just camera shake,
your shutter speed was only 1/30s and focal length 35mm, speed should
have been at least 1/35s or quicker, so increasing the ISO slightly would
have given you the extra bit of shutter speed needed to keep it steady
and sharper.

This was my first thought. He even says that he's getting more "noise" on the longer exposures. He's getting a little motion during the exposure more like.

ScumLord

AnCatDubh wrote: »

The ladies at the races one looks to me like post production induced; a bit of sharpening maybe that has exaggerated the natural noise in the image, or aggressive jpeg compression, or the photoshop facebook action - you know, the one which makes all your photos look sh*te , or um..., something else

That doesn't look like jpeg compression issues to me?

In camera raw just below sharpening there's a luminance detail slider, just turning that on with an extremely low setting has taken out that kind of graining for me.