JPEG engine highly dissappointing in nighttime shots

Unfortunately I cannot upload the orf file.

I just did a test on nighttime shooting, shooting both ORF and JPEG, and for nighttime shots, the JPEG introduces significant noise around lights at night.

Running an e-520.

Any suggestions? I'm thinking I should either change a setting in the camera that would produce JPEGs with less noise, or find a software solution and convert my orfs to JPEG on the desktop computer.

as a side note, I'm running a mac. Is there any good photo imaging software for it?

vjk2 said:

Unfortunately I cannot upload the orf file.

I just did a test on nighttime shooting, shooting both ORF and JPEG, and for nighttime shots, the JPEG introduces significant noise around lights at night.

Running an e-520.

Click to expand...

tripod, base ISO, turn IS to off

vjk2 said:

Any suggestions? I'm thinking I should either change a setting in the camera that would produce JPEGs with less noise, or find a software solution and convert my orfs to JPEG on the desktop computer.

as a side note, I'm running a mac. Is there any good photo imaging software for it?

Click to expand...

--
Riley

any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental and unintended

I'm running a Mac also and suggest you to install DxO optics pro software for the 30 days you can have it for try. You'll be amazed of what it can do automatically - no need to do setting. As you get familiar with it you can reach personal refinements, too.

After the 30 days either to buy the liscence - I bet you, too, will. Or uninstall it and search for a better one. The are many who'll recommend some other software.
Don't worry - with a proper raw converter the problem is solved.

English is not my native language - don't get mad about language as this is a photography forum. Linguistics forums are elsewhere.
Cheers!
Kari

vjk2 said:

Unfortunately I cannot upload the orf file.

I just did a test on nighttime shooting, shooting both ORF and JPEG, and for nighttime shots, the JPEG introduces significant noise around lights at night.

Running an e-520.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry.. but the JPEG will NOT introduce more noise versus the RAW file. The RAW file is essentially an almost unprocessed read from the sensor and the JPEG is the post-processed version of it.. The JPEG engine does not introduce noise.. it can only alter it/reduce it via noise reduction.

vjk2 said:

Any suggestions? I'm thinking I should either change a setting in the camera that would produce JPEGs with less noise, or find a software solution and convert my orfs to JPEG on the desktop computer.

Click to expand...

Sorry.. but how can you expect any suggestion if you're not providig ANY data..

Of course you can reduce noise via camera settings: You got various strength of noise filters (at the expense of texture) , you got dark frame substitution etc.. You can lower ISO, use large aperture, use faster lens in general etc.. But again, please provide more data if you want somebody to efficiently help you.

vjk2 said:

Unfortunately I cannot upload the orf file.

I just did a test on nighttime shooting, shooting both ORF and JPEG, and for nighttime shots, the JPEG introduces significant noise around lights at night.

Running an e-520.

Any suggestions? I'm thinking I should either change a setting in the camera that would produce JPEGs with less noise, or find a software solution and convert my orfs to JPEG on the desktop computer.

as a side note, I'm running a mac. Is there any good photo imaging software for it?

Click to expand...

Not having seen the photo, I can't say. However, if it's a long exposure, then you may be experiencing thermal noise, which is a result of the sensor heating up on longer exposures.

A solution to this is to stack several shorter exposures. For example, let's say you were shooting a four second exposure at ISO 100. Try stacking four one second exposures at ISO 1600 and see if that doesn't help. The reason for raising the ISO is that many sensors have less read noise at the higher ISOs (don't know about the E520).

In any case, the more photos you take with shorter exposure times and stack, the less the noise. There's software which will do the stacking automatically. One program (I forget the name), will even take care of objects moving in the frame during the exposure!

vjk2 said:

as a side note, I'm running a mac. Is there any good photo imaging software for it?

Click to expand...

Good photo imaging software? For a Mac? Hard to believe that's a serious question, but who knows?

Let's see, just to get you started there's:
Adobe Photoshop,
Adobe Photoshop Elements,
Apple Aperture,
Adobe Lightroom,
Olympus Master (unpopular but it's free and capable of good image quality),
GIMP (also free)
and many, many others...

Phil

http://pirose.zenfolio.com

I took photos at night in Las Vegas with my E-510 quite a few years ago. The pictures came out great...all hand-held or braced on pedestrian walkway walls. I took these all as JPEGs too. I didn't notice any problems with noise.

I think you would be well advised to post an image so we can troubleshoot it

--
Riley

any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental and unintended

1. Make sure you have the latest Olympus viewer 2 download/installed & patched.
2. shoot in RAW
3. Bring the RAWS into Olympus Viewer 2 and choose RAW editing

4. Go to the advanced settings tab (that's the one with a wheel and some lines). Open false color suppression

5. un click auto (if it's clicked on auto), and move both sliders - false color suppression and isolated point removal all the way to the right.

This should remove a lot of the chroma noise of the shot and will make it more pleasing. You may want to try to taste if you see it's robbing too much color that you want to keep but in general that hasn't been an issue for me.

--

Raist3d/Ricardo (Photographer, software dev.)- "You are taking life too seriously if it bugs you in some way that a guy quotes himself in the .sig quote" - Ricardo