Noise at iso 200? (another one, i know, canon 200d)

Hi all, long time lurker, first time poster.

to not make the story too long, i just wanted to have some insight as into if im being too nit picky or there is somethingfunky going on. i seem to be getting some noise on my shots (visible zoomed in on lightroom web) even at iso 200?

im shooting with a cannon 200D and the meter on the cam looks to be properly exposed ...

im attaching some samples at 100,200,400 and 800 ISO , these are just exports (no editing) using lightroom (web) ; like i said, you may need to zoom into the image and blow it up to see it.

these were all taken on a tripod, using F/1.8 and simply changing the ISO and shutter speed (Red stripe is a cloth on the counter i used)

thanks all !

100

200

400

800

It is a bit hard to evaluate from a website but these look perfectly fine to me, even at ISO 800. I have a 7D and I am having more noise than that!

But if you are a freak of pitch sharp and perfect photos, maybe you should look at Topaz DeNoise AI and Sharpen AI. I am shooting at ISO 6400 and removing most of the noise with my 7D. In my mind, my 7D was scrap until I discovered these two applications (Windows only).

That looks about right for the 200d.

BalanisUK wrote:

benjilafouine wrote:

It is a bit hard to evaluate from a website but these look perfectly fine to me, even at ISO 800. I have a 7D and I am having more noise than that!

But if you are a freak of pitch sharp and perfect photos, maybe you should look at Topaz DeNoise AI and Sharpen AI. I am shooting at ISO 6400 and removing most of the noise with my 7D. In my mind, my 7D was scrap until I discovered these two applications (Windows only).

from a ben to another ben

so i may just be over ocd'ing it by super zooming into the image? hmmm ill have a look at topaz, i did do a trial run for a single image... qq, do you edit then denoise, or denoise then edit?

First, I convert the RAW file to JPEG using Lightroom with no post-processing (just the in-camera processing).

Second, I run the file through DeNoise AI making sure the sharpening slider is at 0. Depending on the level of noise, you have so select how much noise you are going to remove (too much is like not enough).

Third, I run the DeNoised file through Sharpen AI. Depending on the picture, you have three options there: sharpen, stabilise and clear. Most of the time I will use the stabilize option, especially with birds. The sharpen option is my second choice. Again you have to select an appropriate level of sharpening and since noise was already removed in step 2, I move the noise slider to 0. Both with DeNoise and Sharpen, make sure the quality level when saving is at 10 (highest quality).

Fourth, from then on, it is either Pixelmator and/or Pixelmator Photo Pro and/or Adobe Photoshop. This is where I make the final colour adjustments and editing.

Hope this helps.

The shots benefit from increasing exposure, noise-wise. The limit to exposure is the clipping of important highlights in raw.

BalanisUK wrote:

Hi all, long time lurker, first time poster.

to not make the story too long, i just wanted to have some insight as into if im being too nit picky or there is somethingfunky going on. i seem to be getting some noise on my shots (visible zoomed in on lightroom web) even at iso 200?

im shooting with a cannon 200D and the meter on the cam looks to be properly exposed ...

im attaching some samples at 100,200,400 and 800 ISO , these are just exports (no editing) using lightroom (web) ; like i said, you may need to zoom into the image and blow it up to see it.

these were all taken on a tripod, using F/1.8 and simply changing the ISO and shutter speed (Red stripe is a cloth on the counter i used)

thanks all !

100

200

400

800

FingerPainter wrote:

BalanisUK wrote:

Hi all, long time lurker, first time poster.

to not make the story too long, i just wanted to have some insight as into if im being too nit picky or there is somethingfunky going on. i seem to be getting some noise on my shots

The only digital photographs that will have no noise at all are those where every pixel is blown (pure white), and possibly ones in which no light at all has been captured (pure black).

Noise in a photo is variation in pixel values. Most noise in a photo is due to naturally-occurring variation in the arrival rate and colour of photons that are captured by your camera's sensor. Since light is full of variation it follows that photographs have variation too.

The way to produce a photo in which the noise is not apparent is to capture so much light that all the variations seem to average out. It follows that if you find your photos too noisy. the only way to address that at capture time is to capture more light. One does that by increasing the exposure.

(visible zoomed in on lightroom web) even at iso 200?

im shooting with a cannon 200D and the meter on the cam looks to be properly exposed ...

The definition of "properly exposed" that you are using is not of much value for the problem you are having. By "properly exposed", you mean that the lightness of the photos is what you wanted it to be, and what you wanted it to be was similar to the lightness of the scene as you saw it.

Exposure is not the lightness of the image. It is the amount of light that hit the image sensor per unit area during the time the shutter was open. In your four sample images, the image lightness was about the same, but the exposure was different for each of them. In the first image the exposure was eight times what it was in the fourth image. How can exposures of the same scene that differ by three stops both be correct?

Since you are shooting RAW, image lightness is trivially easy to correct in development. Other visual aspects of the image are not so easy to correct in development: noisiness, DoF, motion blur, blown pixels... So what might be more useful to you is a definition of "correctly exposed" that takes those factors into account -

A correct exposure is the largest exposure that does not blow desired highlight detail, has adequate DOF and no more motion blur than is tolerable. When you are shooting static subjects from a tripod, you can probably omit the part about motion blur.

You should probably also throw out the notion that an image that is too light is necessarily overexposed. If you took a shot of that scene with the settings {1/6 f/1.8 ISO 100} the resulting photo would be too light. But its exposure would be exactly the same as the first sample photo. It isn't over-exposed. By the standards of the definition of "correct exposure" I'm suggesting you adopt, it is underexposed.

im attaching some samples at 100,200,400 and 800 ISO , these are just exports (no editing) using lightroom (web) ; like i said, you may need to zoom into the image and blow it up to see it.

How noisy an image looks depends primarily on how much light was captured in it. The more light you captured, the less noisy it will look. This has at least two implications: the obvious one is that a higher exposure will produce a less noisy image., The other is that since any subset of an image has captured less light than the whole image, when you look at a subset of an image it will look noisier than the whole image. When you zoom into a small part of an image. it will look noisier than when you examine the whole image at once.

...

Also, this is why I often use exposure bracketing in my shots because under exposure causes more noise (in my experience). With a new camera, or one that we are not familiar with, it is usually a good practice. After years, I can almost predict what my camera will return as a result!

benjilafouine wrote:

FingerPainter wrote:

BalanisUK wrote:

Hi all, long time lurker, first time poster.

to not make the story too long, i just wanted to have some insight as into if im being too nit picky or there is somethingfunky going on. i seem to be getting some noise on my shots

The only digital photographs that will have no noise at all are those where every pixel is blown (pure white), and possibly ones in which no light at all has been captured (pure black).

Noise in a photo is variation in pixel values. Most noise in a photo is due to naturally-occurring variation in the arrival rate and colour of photons that are captured by your camera's sensor. Since light is full of variation it follows that photographs have variation too.

The way to produce a photo in which the noise is not apparent is to capture so much light that all the variations seem to average out. It follows that if you find your photos too noisy. the only way to address that at capture time is to capture more light. One does that by increasing the exposure.

(visible zoomed in on lightroom web) even at iso 200?

im shooting with a cannon 200D and the meter on the cam looks to be properly exposed ...

The definition of "properly exposed" that you are using is not of much value for the problem you are having. By "properly exposed", you mean that the lightness of the photos is what you wanted it to be, and what you wanted it to be was similar to the lightness of the scene as you saw it.

Exposure is not the lightness of the image. It is the amount of light that hit the image sensor per unit area during the time the shutter was open. In your four sample images, the image lightness was about the same, but the exposure was different for each of them. In the first image the exposure was eight times what it was in the fourth image. How can exposures of the same scene that differ by three stops both be correct?

Since you are shooting RAW, image lightness is trivially easy to correct in development. Other visual aspects of the image are not so easy to correct in development: noisiness, DoF, motion blur, blown pixels... So what might be more useful to you is a definition of "correctly exposed" that takes those factors into account -

A correct exposure is the largest exposure that does not blow desired highlight detail, has adequate DOF and no more motion blur than is tolerable. When you are shooting static subjects from a tripod, you can probably omit the part about motion blur.

You should probably also throw out the notion that an image that is too light is necessarily overexposed. If you took a shot of that scene with the settings {1/6 f/1.8 ISO 100} the resulting photo would be too light. But its exposure would be exactly the same as the first sample photo. It isn't over-exposed. By the standards of the definition of "correct exposure" I'm suggesting you adopt, it is underexposed.

im attaching some samples at 100,200,400 and 800 ISO , these are just exports (no editing) using lightroom (web) ; like i said, you may need to zoom into the image and blow it up to see it.

How noisy an image looks depends primarily on how much light was captured in it. The more light you captured, the less noisy it will look. This has at least two implications: the obvious one is that a higher exposure will produce a less noisy image., The other is that since any subset of an image has captured less light than the whole image, when you look at a subset of an image it will look noisier than the whole image. When you zoom into a small part of an image. it will look noisier than when you examine the whole image at once.

...

Also, this is why I often use exposure bracketing in my shots because under exposure causes more noise (in my experience). With a new camera, or one that we are not familiar with, it is usually a good practice. After years, I can almost predict what my camera will return as a result!

If you want less noise, you can also shoot at the many shots at the same exposure and combine the shots in PP. This will greatly improve SNR.

My old 350D or Rebel XT was noisy @ 1600 and sometimes 800 when I missed the exposure, so your 200D seems about right or average.

Back then noise reduction software was a major part of post-processing and used a lot when exposing in low light.

Btw, the Rebel XT (350D) is and still is a great camera when used judiciously with good light as I assume and am sure your 200D is also.