Noise Reduction

[AkumaX]

Went to a fashion event (indoors) and took some pictures of models down the runway. Was sitting pretty far, so found myself using the "beer can" (70-210mm f/4). Set to use Aperture Priority @ 4. Still, event wasn't well lit, and found myself, in order to take fast (non-blurry) shots, setting the ISO to 1600 (3200 is just way too much noise).

Looking at the aftermath. So sad...

Question: I played w/ CS3's Noise Reduction, and it kinda/sorta worked. Not sure if its worth the effort for every. single. pic. Is there a better way?

Example: (3.6mb)

 

[twistedlogic]

PictureCode Noise ninja works pretty well.

Haven't messed with it (I used auto-profile) too much but results were fantastic.

 

[996GT2]

Noiseware professional works even better than Noise Ninja: you have separate control over luminance and chroma NR.

Post an original JPEG or RAW (preferable) and I'll see what I can do

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: 996GT2
Noiseware professional works even better than Noise Ninja: you have separate control over luminance and chroma NR.

Post an original JPEG or RAW (preferable) and I'll see what I can do

Doesn't Photoshop also have a way to separate luminance and chroma NR? I'm using PS2 and I remember being able to do so.

 

[AkumaX]

Raw (.ARW - Sony Format) - Requires CS3+ (Because Camera Raw Plugin doesn't work for this file on CS2 and below)

http://www.sendspace.com/file/051qx8

 

[twistedlogic]

Originally posted by: 996GT2
Noiseware professional works even better than Noise Ninja: you have separate control over luminance and chroma NR.

How is Noiseware Pro better? Just wondering, I've never tried it.

I see in NN a slider for luminance and a slider for color, I'm guessing the color slider = chroma noise.

Originally posted by: 996GT2
Post an original JPEG or RAW (preferable) and I'll see what I can do

Posted in original post

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/9572/dsc02971mjl.jpg

 

[Fardringle]

Originally posted by: twistedlogic

Originally posted by: 996GT2
Noiseware professional works even better than Noise Ninja: you have separate control over luminance and chroma NR.

How is Noiseware Pro better? Just wondering, I've never tried it.

I see in NN a slider for luminance and a slider for color, I'm guessing the color slider = chroma noise.

Originally posted by: 996GT2
Post an original JPEG or RAW (preferable) and I'll see what I can do

Posted in original post

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/9572/dsc02971mjl.jpg

Wow, that's rough! It's not great, but just for comparison, this is what a quick run through NeatImage was able to do.

 

[shortylickens]

Corel Photo Paint 12 has some noise tools, but they arent great. Any film speed 1600 or above and it wont do much. I prefer to manually set a low ISO and then play with the apeture & shutter as much as possible. High ISO noise is always a hassle.

EDIT:
According to EXIF you used an ISO 1600 and shutter 1/250. I dont wanna cry over spilled milk because obviously thats pointless, but for the sake of my curiosity would an ISO 800 or even 400 been possible with a reasonable shutter speed?

As for me, I seriously need a f/1.4 lens one of these days.
http://www.nikonusa.com/Find-Y...ctDetail.page?pid=1902

 

[AkumaX]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
Corel Photo Paint 12 has some noise tools, but they arent great. Any film speed 1600 or above and it wont do much. I prefer to manually set a low ISO and then play with the apeture & shutter as much as possible. High ISO noise is always a hassle.

Yeah, if I had a choice, I would have. But f/4 is the lowest I can go on my lens. Is it worth 4x the $$$ for the equivalent f/2.8 version? Maybe... probably... must sell kidney...

 

[996GT2]

Originally posted by: AkumaX

Originally posted by: shortylickens
Corel Photo Paint 12 has some noise tools, but they arent great. Any film speed 1600 or above and it wont do much. I prefer to manually set a low ISO and then play with the apeture & shutter as much as possible. High ISO noise is always a hassle.

Yeah, if I had a choice, I would have. But f/4 is the lowest I can go on my lens. Is it worth 4x the $$$ for the equivalent f/2.8 version? Maybe... probably... must sell kidney...

Looking at your EXIF data, I would have used ISO 800 or even 400 and let your Sony's built in image stabilization do the work. The shutter speed in the shot you uploaded was 1/250 sec. Since the models probably aren't moving very quickly, I think you could have gotten away with shooting at 1/125 or even 1/60 or lower with the SteadyShot IS turned on. Had you turned down the ISO to 800 or 400, there would have been a lot more detail left in the models' hair.

Remember, IS is just as good as a fast lens if the subjects aren't moving very quickly. I mean, it's not like the models are trying to sprint down the runway as fast as humanly possible. I'd assume the models would stop to pose, so you would have likely been better off shooting at 1/60 sec, ISO 400 with IS enabled. I mean, built in IS is one of the primary attractions of Sony DSLRs anyway, so why not put it to good use?

That said, here is an attempt I made on Noiseware. It's not pretty, but you can't retrieve detail that wasn't there in the first place. I saved it as quality 8 in Photoshop to fit under Photobucket's 1 MB limit, so there might be a bit of JPEG compression artifacting going on.

 

[AkumaX]

At the beginning of the Fashion Show, I was using ISO 400, but as the show progressed, it got slowly "darker". Another Example 4.2mb

I kinda wish the Auto ISO mode would go up to at least ISO 800, otherwise I have to constantly switch between ISO 400/800/1600. Got lazy and just kept it at 1600, since I kept it on Aperture Priority the entire time.

These shots were taken while I was sitting down (unfortunately) and my arms raised high in the air above my head, using the tilt mode on the Live-View Viewfinder, like this (no grip)

With most of these pictures, I took in RAW, and used CS3's built-in scripter to batch all my RAW->JPEG Conversions w/ Quality 10 (no Post Processing).

Juggling w/ pictures, I also took a video, 1280x720 @ 60fps. I could post a small cut of that also, if you guys want

 

[idiotekniQues]

Originally posted by: 996GT2

Originally posted by: AkumaX

Originally posted by: shortylickens
Corel Photo Paint 12 has some noise tools, but they arent great. Any film speed 1600 or above and it wont do much. I prefer to manually set a low ISO and then play with the apeture & shutter as much as possible. High ISO noise is always a hassle.

Yeah, if I had a choice, I would have. But f/4 is the lowest I can go on my lens. Is it worth 4x the $$$ for the equivalent f/2.8 version? Maybe... probably... must sell kidney...

Looking at your EXIF data, I would have used ISO 800 or even 400 and let your Sony's built in image stabilization do the work. The shutter speed in the shot you uploaded was 1/250 sec. Since the models probably aren't moving very quickly, I think you could have gotten away with shooting at 1/125 or even 1/60 or lower with the SteadyShot IS turned on. Had you turned down the ISO to 800 or 400, there would have been a lot more detail left in the models' hair.

Remember, IS is just as good as a fast lens if the subjects aren't moving very quickly. I mean, it's not like the models are trying to sprint down the runway as fast as humanly possible. I'd assume the models would stop to pose, so you would have likely been better off shooting at 1/60 sec, ISO 400 with IS enabled. I mean, built in IS is one of the primary attractions of Sony DSLRs anyway, so why not put it to good use?

That said, here is an attempt I made on Noiseware. It's not pretty, but you can't retrieve detail that wasn't there in the first place. I saved it as quality 8 in Photoshop to fit under Photobucket's 1 MB limit, so there might be a bit of JPEG compression artifacting going on.

this makes sense.

for NR, i find noise ninja to be a good product.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: AkumaX
Went to a fashion event (indoors) and took some pictures of models down the runway. Was sitting pretty far, so found myself using the "beer can" (70-210mm f/4). Set to use Aperture Priority @ 4. Still, event wasn't well lit, and found myself, in order to take fast (non-blurry) shots, setting the ISO to 1600 (3200 is just way too much noise).

Looking at the aftermath. So sad...

Question: I played w/ CS3's Noise Reduction, and it kinda/sorta worked. Not sure if its worth the effort for every. single. pic. Is there a better way?

Example: (3.6mb)

Wow, that's awful.

Have you tried working in Bibble Pro? I've found it to be much better for batch processing photos and it contains a basic implementation of Noise Ninja standard (full Noise Ninja functionality is available if you already own the plugin). There's something off in whatever noise reduction setup you're currently using because shots should not look that bad.

For comparison, here's an ISO 1600 shot from my A700, 1/160 second, F/2.8, that I processed in Bibble. ISO 1600 Example I tend to turn off the Luminance noise reduction entirely.

ZV

 

[twistedlogic]

I ran across this article today.

Ronald R. Martinsen's Noise reduction round-up

Noiseware professional came in first by only a few points, second was Nik Software Dfine only by a hair, and in third was Noise Ninja which he says "in the end it will give you the greatest control over reducing noise without losing detail of any product here." but also requires a significant time investment.

 

[AkumaX]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt

Originally posted by: AkumaX
Went to a fashion event (indoors) and took some pictures of models down the runway. Was sitting pretty far, so found myself using the "beer can" (70-210mm f/4). Set to use Aperture Priority @ 4. Still, event wasn't well lit, and found myself, in order to take fast (non-blurry) shots, setting the ISO to 1600 (3200 is just way too much noise).

Looking at the aftermath. So sad...

Question: I played w/ CS3's Noise Reduction, and it kinda/sorta worked. Not sure if its worth the effort for every. single. pic. Is there a better way?

Example: (3.6mb)

Wow, that's awful.

Have you tried working in Bibble Pro? I've found it to be much better for batch processing photos and it contains a basic implementation of Noise Ninja standard (full Noise Ninja functionality is available if you already own the plugin). There's something off in whatever noise reduction setup you're currently using because shots should not look that bad.

For comparison, here's an ISO 1600 shot from my A700, 1/160 second, F/2.8, that I processed in Bibble. ISO 1600 Example I tend to turn off the Luminance noise reduction entirely.

ZV

Oops, I should clarify that the Example was of a RAW->JPG Conversion (no NR)

Here's a video I took

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG1HgsLNBPI&fmt=22

 

[foghorn67]

I use Nik Software's Dfine and Noise Ninja. Best of both worlds.
I give the edge to Dfine, it looks slightly better on print. Not sure why.

 

[shortylickens]

Just used the demo of Noiseware Pro on some photos of mine. It does a decent job without losing detail. However, when I went to the Open dialog it only let me work with BMP, TIF, JPG, PNG and GIF. This sucker does not import from RAW's or NEF's. I dont know if thats a limit of the demo or the program itself, but it sucks. You would have to convert all your RAW's to tiffs or bitmaps first, and that might be more hassle than you wanna deal with.
Kinda funny actually because some programs will allow only RAW's to be noise-reduced when you import a file.

Also, they have three different versions that arent much different from each other.
The Community version doesnt allow you to do much, its save options are limited. Standard lets you save PNG's and low quality tiffs. Professional lets you save higher quality tiffs.

EDIT:
Community is a nice way of saying "free". Its cool they have a free version, but it wont preserve EXIF data, so be aware of that.

 

[randomlinh]

Man, Nik's software is so expensive. Why don't they have a LR only set like the Aperture only set?

 

[extra]

Originally posted by: 996GT2
Noiseware professional works even better than Noise Ninja: you have separate control over luminance and chroma NR.

Post an original JPEG or RAW (preferable) and I'll see what I can do

Hmmm... Have to disagree with this one. Although not a factually inaccurate post, it implies something that I hafta correct. Not a big deal, but:

Noise ninja has separate controls over luminance and chroma NR. Plus many, many, other controls. You can control the smoothness of the grain it looks for. You can print out test patterns to take pictures of and build an automated custom profile for your camera. Etc.

Now, I honestly don't think it's really *better* than Noiseware or Neat Image or whatever, just different, but it's a good program.

OH and if you use a canon camera and shoot in raw, use DPP to denoise stuff vs. ACR, DPP does a much better job.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

The most important thing to remember when shooting in high ISO is to expose the subject properly. Even a slight under-exposure will cause a lot of noise when you bring the exposure up in post. Always shoot RAW. I use Neat Image to clean my pictures up.

I spent a weekend shooting ISO 3200 and my results were pretty great with a Canon 30D.
Example 1
Example 2

These were exceptional circumstances where there was really VERY little light (you can see that the shutter speed was still quite low despite being at f/2.8 and ISO3200) but it's doable. You have to be prepared to have lots of throw-away images for every keeper.

 

[extra]

I de-noised it for you with noise ninja. Profiled manually and did it in two steps. Way more Lum NR applied to things that weren't on the models. Got much of the background noise gone without impacting the detail in the hair (what very VERY little there is). There is some huge color posterization though in the original image (yuck!), I tried to smooth away some of it in a pass on a color range (for example on the chick in front middle's noise and left side of her outfit). However, you can't create detail that wasn't there as 996gt said (his advice is almost always spot on, I'd listen to his recommendations imho).

This took about 15minutes to do. Fine for one image. Not appropriate for batch proecessing.

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/9572/dsc02971mjl.jpg