# Help - D80 - ridiculous ISO noise



## kric2schaam626 (Oct 15, 2011)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my ISO was at 400 in this shot and I would like to think that my camera should not be giving me this much noise as such a low level. We shot this in their wooded area and it was a little dark when we stepped away from the sunniest part. Not a very good pic overall, but I can't get over the noise in this! Help me please!


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## Overread (Oct 15, 2011)

Two key questions:
1) Is this a crop from an original photo or the whole photo itself (resized of course)

2) Did you add any brightness to the shot in editing (or have any brightness settings in your cameras auto editing menu ramped up very high?).


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## kric2schaam626 (Oct 15, 2011)

Overread said:


> Two key questions:
> 1) Is this a crop from an original photo or the whole photo itself (resized of course)
> 
> 2) Did you add any brightness to the shot in editing (or have any brightness settings in your cameras auto editing menu ramped up very high?).



1. Nope, this is the original whole photo. 

2. I added maybe +10-12 on brightness in PP.


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## Overread (Oct 15, 2011)

Hmm could you show the shot without the added brightness ?


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## kric2schaam626 (Oct 15, 2011)

Overread said:


> Hmm could you show the shot without the added brightness ?


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## Overread (Oct 15, 2011)

Well the added noise you are seeing is coming directly from adding light to the darker areas of the photo; noise shows up the most in darker areas and when you add brightness to those areas in editing you expose that noise to be more clearly seen. It is true that if you take a shot at a higher ISO, but correctly exposed and compare it to a lower ISO, but with having to add light to the key areas you'll see less noise in the higher ISO shot. 


However there isn't just noise, but a considerable amount of softness to the shot overall and for the amount of underexposure and light added it seems to be more than what I'd expect from simple ISO generated noise. What was your aperture and shutter speed for the shot and how were you shooting (tripod/handheld - with/without flash)


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## kric2schaam626 (Oct 15, 2011)

Overread said:


> Well the added noise you are seeing is coming directly from adding light to the darker areas of the photo; noise shows up the most in darker areas and when you add brightness to those areas in editing you expose that noise to be more clearly seen. It is true that if you take a shot at a higher ISO, but correctly exposed and compare it to a lower ISO, but with having to add light to the key areas you'll see less noise in the higher ISO shot.
> 
> 
> However there isn't just noise, but a considerable amount of softness to the shot overall and for the amount of underexposure and light added it seems to be more than what I'd expect from simple ISO generated noise. What was your aperture and shutter speed for the shot and how were you shooting (tripod/handheld - with/without flash)



Handheld 1/125 and f/stop at 3.2 with out any flash. I know I could have used a fill flash but I am still trying to master that and wasn't up for them being my guinea pigs at the time. Maybe next time . . .


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## Destin (Oct 15, 2011)

Hate to break it to you, but yes, the D80 is that bad at high iso's. Above 800 becomes simply unusable, 400 is the ceiling for *good* quality. 

You may find better results by shooting in RAW and then processing the photo through a program like noise ninja. 

I really don't mind my D80, I've had it for a year and it's a decent camera... just not at high iso values. This is the exact reason I'm upgrading to a D7000 as soon as I have the cash in 2 or 3 weeks.


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## kric2schaam626 (Oct 15, 2011)

Destin said:


> Hate to break it to you, but yes, the D80 is that bad at high iso's. Above 800 becomes simply unusable, 400 is the ceiling for *good* quality.
> 
> You may find better results by shooting in RAW and then processing the photo through a program like noise ninja.
> 
> I really don't mind my D80, I've had it for a year and it's a decent camera... just not at high iso values. This is the exact reason I'm upgrading to a D7000 as soon as I have the cash in 2 or 3 weeks.



I shoot in all RAW now because I don't like how the JPEGs turn out. I don't even dare go to ISO 800. Can't wait to upgrade but thinking about it is torture.


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## KmH (Oct 15, 2011)

Every digital photograph has some amount of image noise in it.

The people in the shot are badly under exposed.

Increasing the exposure post process is making what image noise there is more visible. I would not have adjusted the Brightness slider myself, I would have used a combination of the Exposure slider, and Fill slider
Which version of ACR do you have available?.

The EXIF indicates you didn't use Spot metering, and the exposure of the background leads me to believe you used Matrix metering.

If you had spot metered the couple and let the background blow out, you would not have a noise issue.

It is virtually impossible to properly expose back lit subjects, and a bright background with out using strobed light. 

The easiest way to do fill lighting is to put the flash unit in manual mode, not a TTL mode.

At that point you ignore the in-camera meter.  Set the shutter speed to the camera x-sync speed (1/200 for the D80) and adjust the flash exposure in one of 3 ways:
1. Lower the flash power setting. 
2. Stop the lens down
3. A combination of 1 and 2.

The sooner you get comfortable with using strobed light, the sooner your photos will start looking 'pro'.

Note: The very short duration of the flash will stop motion, so the shutter speed no longer has to do that. You use the  shutter speed to control the ambient light exposure. Shutter speeds slower than 1/200 let in more ambient light and make the ambient light exposre brighter.
I also recommend you set your camera to rear curtain flash sync. Front curtain sync is the default setting.


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## KmH (Oct 15, 2011)

kric2schaam626 said:


> Overread said:
> 
> 
> > Hmm could you show the shot without the added brightness ?



A quick edit in ACR. I used the Exposure, Recovery, Fill light, Temperature, and Tint sliders. The white balance also had issues.


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## Overread (Oct 15, 2011)

I can't help but feel that I somewhat prefer the warmer lighting tone of the original over the colder, more clinical lighting of your edit KmH - though I suspect the better result is somewhere sitting between the two extremities. 


As for lighting aye she could have spot-metered on the couple, but then the background would have blown out considerably and thus provided just as bad a distraction (if not worse than the noise as noise reduction software can be used to lessen its impact - whist blowout can't be repaired). I fully agree that its a situation which calls for additional forward lighting however I'd add the points:

1) They appear to be squinting a little or at least have a lot of light from above them shadowing their eyes. A reflector at a low height and aimed up at them would at least allow a little lift of the lighting under the eyes (flash also works, but reflectors are dirt cheap so no excuses not to use them ). Another option is to find more shade or to even have a supported shade to block out some of the sunlight from their eyes.

2) The light over the right side of the photo where it crosses her hair and his arm is far too strong for the shot and is blowing out (something you can easily see by watching the blinking parts on a histogram/photo review on the camera LCD); it says to move the couple more into the shade and lose that far too powerful light. Another option would be to push out enough light from a flash setup to counter the sun (ie expose the shot for that bright highlight and then use flash lighting to boost local lighting up to the same level).


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## KmH (Oct 15, 2011)

Ya, the white balance was kind of odd and editing just the little JPEG made it virtually impossible to get the entire photo close to right, so I opted to get the skin tones right.

The main thing I was trying to illustrate was better exposure of the couple, and how the Brightness slider wasn't the only option.

There are many portions of the original that are already blown out, and good exposure of the couple is more important than the background, IMO.

The bottom line is the original is so poorly done it makes more sense to re-shoot it.


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## kric2schaam626 (Oct 15, 2011)

KmH said:


> Ya, the white balance was kind of odd and editing just the little JPEG made it virtually impossible to get the entire photo close to right, so I opted to get the skin tones right.
> 
> The main thing I was trying to illustrate was better exposure of the couple, and how the Brightness slider wasn't the only option.
> 
> ...




Thank you both for your help. I am still learning a lot about trying to keep this all in balance while shooting subjects! This shot here was merely walking through the woods and they asked me to shoot one of them, thankfully the rest turned out much better.


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## djacobox372 (Oct 17, 2011)

This is what happens when you underexpose.


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