[ShortcutToMoncton]

Hello all. I've got a question about some noise issues on some of my photos.

Alright, well here's the deal: I made the mistake of getting in to the digital photography craze a little early, and right around the time when "pro/consumer" 5MP SLR cameras were first coming out. The first round of them had crazy issues with noise, which was subsequently taken care of in later models. I wasn't so lucky. I got a Minolta DiMage 5i, which was a fixed-lens SLR and which has so much noise it makes my head hurt. (Even shooting at 400 ISO in poor light results in outrageous noise.)

So, the issue comes down to doing the best to get rid of some of it digitally. Unfortunately I'm not a software whiz, and I can't afford Photoshop or any of its fancy plugins. I did just get Aperture, but I'm still unfamiliar with it and don't think it has the same kind of noise reduction that Photoshop is supposed to?

Here's a couple pictures in particular that I really enjoy, but the noise makes me sad. The first picture is of the Foo Fighters in Toronto, and it was the first time I'd ever used my camera in a low-light situation and when I discovered that 800 ISO was absolutely unusable (after the concert, of course). As an FYI, if anyone ever watched the Foo DVD, you can see my camera taking pictures in a couple places, and there's a similar video shot to this one in the encore.

Anyways, my question was...do any of you digital crazies out there have any suggestions about whether anything can be done, especially to the Foo Fighters one? (I think it's a pretty great shot, if only the noise wasn't off the charts.)

Finally, yes, I know they're only .jpgs. My other problem is that I did most of my shooting in RAW format...but Minolta went out of the camera business years ago, and their RAW camera application died with them. I got Aperture, and lo and behold it doesn't recognize Minolta's RAW format. I am cheesed.

greg

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Wow, 48 looks and not one suggestion. You're all laughing at me aren't you.

greg

[Oisín]

I don’t see any horrible noise... That’s what most of my concert pics look like, too (only with different singers, of course).

I do wonder, though, how you can afford Aperture, but not Photoshop Elements?

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Heh...I'm a student. I can't really afford either with the help of loans. Choices have to be made somewhere, and Aperture seems to be a solid investment from what I read (although Lightroom might've been a better choice in hindsight).

Anyways, back on topic: Do you really not see the noise? Did you look at the full-size pictures? Look at Dave Grohl – he's almost indistinct it's so spotty. It's very bad along the streams of light in both pictures.

greg

[Oisín]

Nope, I honestly don’t see any noise that’s any worse than most other concert pictures.

I’d still say Photoshop Elements would have been a better investment than Aperture, but that probably also depends a lot on what you do most and so on—and anyway, it’s bought, so it’s rather a moot point.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Yeah exactly. It was a bit of an impulse buy with my new Macbook Pro; they were late in shipping it, so I got a bit of a discount and figured what the hey.

And I can't believe you don't see extraordinary noise on there! The Foo pic is, to me, almost physically painful to look at. I thought I got great composition and lighting and feeling (in both of them), but that one can't be printed at anything bigger than 4*6 without looking horrible.

Regarding Elements, does it have good noise elimination? Say some filters or something?

greg

[Oisín]

I don’t actually know, since I’ve never used it; but from what I understand, most features are quite similar to the full version, I’m just assuming that goes for noise reduction tools as well.

Can you really ever print a 5 MP picture at much more than 4 x 6 without getting artefacts and graininess, though? If you want concert pics that can be printed that big without any noise in such lighting conditions, I think you’ll have to spring for a higher-end camera. I don’t think my 350D would cut the mustard there, either (at least not with the kit lense I have).

[Demonhood]

Aperture has noise reduction (not the greatest, but it works ok).
try running it thru Neat Image and see how it comes out. you'll have to use a smaller version (1024 i believe), but it should give you a good idea if it's the app for you.

[Axell]

Hey, just read through your post and I thought I'd leave a comment.

First of all, as Oisín wrote already, there is no uncommon noise in your photos. It's perfectly normal that such noise be present given the low light condition. Of course, the better the lenses used, the less noise you'd get, but then we're talking several thousands bucks for such good lenses...

Anyway, if you got noise on your photo that's so present, you should use it as an ally to give your picture a personality instead of trying to fight a battle that you can't win, trying to subdue it.

If you want good print size, 5MP just won't cut. I'd say, today you should be looking at 10MP bare minimum or more. But again, in some cases, you could manage a nice printout with only 8MP, depending the subject of the photo, your style and the printing method... and the size of the printing obviously.

Regarding Photoshop Element, it's got virtually all the same functionalities of his big brother Photoshop, but the main (although not only) difference is that it can't handle CMYK color mode. Now, you might say: huh big deal!, but it is indeed a real big deal for graphic professionals as CMYK is a necessary step of the offset professional printing process.

I personally use Adobe Lightroom after trying both Aperture and Lightroom for a while. First, I was going to buy Aperture cause it was the first to come out, and then because I must admit I got a crush on Apple things (they really do good thing overthere...), then I finally realized that Aperture wouldn't support my wife's camera (a Leica D-Lux2) which support RAW and does really nice pictures. So I went with Lightroom, and I'm so glad I did: it is much more responsive with less recent hardware and the interface is so sleek and easy... it's a killer app.

Last thing, if you're going to try noise reduction software on a smaller size image, I'm sure you already know that you should CROP your file to the intended size and not RESIZE it.

Cheers.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Yeah, 8*10 is the absolute furthest I can push my camera, and even that's pretty much got to be a very good shot to look decent. I do have the second (Arcade Fire) pic at 8*10 on my wall, and I must say it looks pretty nice.

But I'm still astounded that you guys feel that's "acceptable" noise, especially on the Foo picture. That's an 800 ISO shot, whereas the Arcade Fire one is only 200, and the difference is shocking. If I could only sharpen poor Dave up a little....

And yeah, that's been a real piss-off for me regarding Aperture as well. It doesn't support my Minolta's RAW format; at the moment, I've got no way to even view all the RAW photos I've taken over the years. I'm pretty pissed off about it.

Finally, I'd love to get a new camera, but I'm paying crazy tuition and I just can't justify it at the moment. When I bought this one, the Canon 10D was just coming out and I was incredibly disappointed that I just couldn't afford it; what I could get for $2000 now would probably blow me away.

greg

[Axell]

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton 

But I'm still astounded that you guys feel that's "acceptable" noise, especially on the Foo picture. That's an 800 ISO shot, whereas the Arcade Fire one is only 200, and the difference is shocking. If I could only sharpen poor Dave up a little....

All right, you're making a confusion between what's common and what's acceptable. Nowadays, car accidents are common: does this fact make them acceptable? Acceptance is another matter, it depends on different factors, in your case the photograph's opinion, the client's if any, the intended audience... Nobody here said it was or wasn't acceptable, we leave that to you since this is a picture you took for yourself.

That's a 800 ISO shot, so of course it will look more grainy than the 200 ISO shot. The higher the ISO, the more noise you get. High ISO means more sensitivity, hence more potential light interference and consequently more unwanted noise.

Lightroom has a fairly extended support for the Konica-Minolta camera and I think yours is supported. You can still review the official list of supported camera here:

Adobe - Adobe Photoshop CS3: Digital camera raw file support

Cheers.

[Veltliner]

NoiseNinja is a very good app, but I'm not sure if you can still get it as a standalone, since it has been bought by one of the RAW converter software apps.

You might try getting a used version, if you can't get a new one.

Regarding the noise, it's not that bad, at least at this size and especially regarding the age of your DSLR. Canons, until recently (Nikon D3, D300 to come) have been tops with low noise, even with older cameras.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton 

Here's a quick and dirty filter pass in PS CS3 and ACR.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Hmmmm, that's not bad; if I could tweak it a little and remove a little of the soft effect that would be pretty nice! I don't have CS3; what's "ACR" by the way?

greg

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton 

Hmmmm, that's not bad; if I could tweak it a little and remove a little of the soft effect that would be pretty nice! I don't have CS3; what's "ACR" by the way?

greg

ACR=Adobe Camera RAW. It is a part of PS CS3 that allows you to convert proprietary camera files into common file types. But it also has a noise reduction filter for jpgs and other common file types.

With a little work with layers, selective masking, and noise reduction, you could clean up the file a lot more.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Ahhhhhhhh. So that pretty much requires CS3 huh? That's about as attainable for me as the moon.

It was clearly a mistake buying Aperture. Sigh. :thumbsupdow

greg

[godzookie2k]

There is really only so much you can "fix" in photoshop or apeture. Noise is one of those things that you can only kinda fix a tiny bit, but most of the time photoshop and apeture will just **** up your photo. Also, you're gonna get a bit of it no matter what camera you use. I'd say worry about investing in a better camera and lenses, since it seems photo is what you "do", than anything else.

[Demonhood]

if you want to post a larger size image, i can run it thru Aperture, Lightroom, CS3 and neatimage as well to see how they differ.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by Demonhood 

if you want to post a larger size image, i can run it thru Aperture, Lightroom, CS3 and neatimage as well to see how they differ.

2nded.

Post a link to the RAW file. i have a couple days of downtime coming up, I'll see what I can do.

It would be interesting to see what a few different people can come up with.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton 

Ahhhhhhhh. So that pretty much requires CS3 huh? That's about as attainable for me as the moon.

It was clearly a mistake buying Aperture. Sigh. :thumbsupdow

greg

Aperture is more of a workflow management software piece. It allows me to quickly throw away near duplicates and to rank pictures.

Adobe Bridge that comes with CS3 is nice and has mostly replaced aperture for me.

[Railroader]

I spent about 10 minutes total here:

There is a little more detail in David G.

I have been fighting some noise problems in a recent set of portraits, so I am pretty interested in learning as much as I can about noise filtering.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Wow. Sorry about the delay, but I'm right in the middle of exams so things are hectic. Railroader that's worlds nicer than the first rough pass; I'm shocked that only took a few minutes! I tried fooling around with the noise adjuster in Aperture and got absolutely nowhere compared to that.

I don't have the original RAW file on me; it's on my backup drive in Toronto. I will be there in a couple days, so I can post it then. In the meantime I'll see if my bro will hook it up and email it to me, but he's got some project due at work so that might be iffy.

Thanks for the replies! I should return shortly....

greg

[Axell]

Originally Posted by Railroader 

Aperture is more of a workflow management software piece. It allows me to quickly throw away near duplicates and to rank pictures.

Well, in fact Aperture is an extremely good tool, for professionals working with professional quality photos, that's the catch. It can do so much more than just manage your workflow (which is by the way a hard thing to do right).

As with any good tool, if use incorrectly or with inappropriate material, it fails to deliver satisfactory results then the user swears and regards it as not capable...

The main problem here is that the quality of the picture to start with just doesn't give any room for improvement. And by the way, I think it has more guts in its initial version (yes, with the noise in it) than in her poor soulless smoothed out sibling. If you remove the noise, which you can't properly anyway, you remove the ONLY source of details in the photo. What's left, ... Nothing.

Humanity is full of noise. Get use to it.

Cheers

[Veltliner]

Both Lightroom and Aperture are great workflow apps, that apply non-destructive edits to RAW files.

For advanced pixel editing, images get exported into Photoshop.

Newest cameras like the Nikon D300, or, even more so, the Nikon D3, have far, far lower noise levels than what we were used before.

Also the quality of the noise has changed, and looks finer, almost, so I read in a review about the D300, like film grain.

[Oisín]

The main problem here is that the quality of the picture to start with just doesn't give any room for improvement. And by the way, I think it has more guts in its initial version (yes, with the noise in it) than in her poor soulless smoothed out sibling. If you remove the noise, which you can't properly anyway, you remove the ONLY source of details in the photo. What's left, ... Nothing.

I agree completely. The original photo to me has personality and depth, despite (or perhaps even because of) the noise present. The edited versions both look blurred out and without personality to me.