Help! New D610 - ISO noise - is it that Bad?? or it's OK??

D610

Senior Member
HI Friends :) I am New in this forum - hope you can Help with a small Question.
I just bought new Nikon D610 after deep review that it as a great ISO performance.
(I'm using the Nikon 18-120 F4 VR)

after some family shooting i noticed in Lightroom a very high noise at ISO 720 and UP...
i read also here that D610 as a great ISO.
So can someone here view my Test Shots and please tell me if they are OK - Noise wise :)
Please Zoom in 100% see my <Google Drive> (where it say manual it's shot with constant Shutter and F stop - the other pictures are at Aperture mode)
Because if not OK, i would like to return and replace it.
I will Really appropriate any suggestion or Comment!!
Many Thanks!!!
 
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Bikerbrent

Senior Member
Welcome aboard. Enjoy the ride.
We look forward to seeing more posts and samples of your work.

I have looked at your photos as large as I can and I must be missing something as I do not see anything that I would consider very high noise even at ISO 6400. Yes, there is some noise, yes, but that I would expect at this ISO.
 

D610

Senior Member
Thank you Brent Harritt,
Regardless, first and above all- i see you are from the US - so i want to express my condolences for the people hurt in the Vegas attack (we, in Israel are all shocked from this crazy act - sadly we also live in a place that knows the pain involved )
We hope you will never experience this ever again!

after saying that,
did you see all my pictures? also the iso 800, 1600 etc. - i though in the D610 i will not have those issues so much.
i told my friend to take some test shot with is new Canon 6D II - and i must tell you i didnt almost see the differences between the 800 and the 3200 pictures he showed me- i didn't see any noise with is pictures they were very smooth...

i have another important question regarding... in low light to avoid noise (or decrease the chance of noise) - is there relevance to choose aperture or shutter effecting it more than the other? i mean, should I first choose or consider one over the other? (to first lower the aperture or try to compensate first with the shutter) or it doesn't matter
Many Thanks!!!
 
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Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
HI Friends :) I am New in this forum - hope you can Help with a small Question.
I just bought new Nikon D610 after deep review that it as a great ISO performance.
(I'm using the Nikon 18-120 F4 VR)

after some family shooting i noticed in Lightroom a very high noise at ISO 720 and UP...
i read also here that D610 as a great ISO.
So can someone here view my Test Shots and please tell me if they are OK - Noise wise :)
Please Zoom in 100% see my <Google Drive> (where it say manual it's shot with constant Shutter and F stop - the other pictures are at Aperture mode)
Because if not OK, i would like to return and replace it.
I will Really appropriate any suggestion or Comment!!
Many Thanks!!!
In looking at your photos I'm not seeing too much noise either, about what I would expect from a D610 at 6400ISO. Bear in mind as well the D610 is a four-year old camera, the 6D Mark II came out earlier this year.

That being said, what noise there is at 6400ISO cleans up easily. The screenshot below shows what can be done with a few clicks of the mouse:
.....
Screen Shot.jpg
 
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D610

Senior Member
Thank you Paul!!
can you please answer my other question?
in low light to avoid noise (or decrease the chance of noise) - is there relevance to choose aperture or shutter effecting it more than the other? i mean, should I first choose or consider one over the other? (e.g. to first lower the aperture or try to compensate first with the shutter) or it doesn't matter?
Tanks again


Read more: https://nikonites.com/d600-d610/40288-help-new-d610-iso-noise-bad-its-ok.html#ixzz4uUuqgNnu
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
Thank you Paul!!
can you please answer my other question?
in low light to avoid noise (or decrease the chance of noise) - is there relevance to choose aperture or shutter effecting it more than the other? i mean, should I first choose or consider one over the other? (e.g. to first lower the aperture or try to compensate first with the shutter) or it doesn't matter?
Tanks again

The exposure triangle consists of the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Of these three, ISO is the one that contributes to noise. BUT...you always want to get your exposure correct in camera. When you raise the exposure or shadows of a low light image in post, it will add noise.

Changing your aperture will control your depth of field but won't add noise. Changing your shutter will affect any movement that might be going on in your image but won't add noise. Keeping your ISO as low as possible WHILE having your aperture set for DOF and your shutter set to either keep movement from showing up or allowing movement to blur within the image is how you control noise in the camera. There are also a couple of camera settings for noise. If you are shooting RAW, most likely you will see more noise straight out of camera than if you are shooting jpeg.

In addition to noise reduction during post processing, make sure you check on color noise reduction. Not everyone uses the color noise reduction adjustment, but it can help a great deal depending upon the image.

If you crop an image, the speckles of noise will appear to be larger than they are in an uncropped image.
 

D610

Senior Member
The exposure triangle consists of the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Of these three, ISO is the one that contributes to noise. BUT...you always want to get your exposure correct in camera. When you raise the exposure or shadows of a low light image in post, it will add noise.

Changing your aperture will control your depth of field but won't add noise. Changing your shutter will affect any movement that might be going on in your image but won't add noise. Keeping your ISO as low as possible WHILE having your aperture set for DOF and your shutter set to either keep movement from showing up or allowing movement to blur within the image is how you control noise in the camera. There are also a couple of camera settings for noise. If you are shooting RAW, most likely you will see more noise straight out of camera than if you are shooting jpeg.

In addition to noise reduction during post processing, make sure you check on color noise reduction. Not everyone uses the color noise reduction adjustment, but it can help a great deal depending upon the image.

If you crop an image, the speckles of noise will appear to be larger than they are in an uncropped image.


Thank you so much you all for the Help and time you put in my questions and viewing my pictures :)

I understand your answer and I know about the 'exposure triangle'

i asked this because i see in 'Imaging Resource' site. it have the few sample images with same ISO but different shutter - so i want to understand if there is a relationship to sharpness or noise or why they sample with different setting? as they all seems correctly exposed.
Thanks!
 
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spb_stan

Senior Member
Why are you pixel peeping and underexposing 2 stops and expecting low pixel level noise? Maybe I am missing something but is does not make sense to me. A D610 will have wider DR than your friend's Canon. But you need to use it correctly for best signal to noise ratio. What was the reason for under exposing? That added 2 stops of noise.


Expose to the right on the histogram and see just how good your camera is. I boosted the lower ISO images in Photoshop which should have boosted noise also and they are rather clean. View at normal distance and size they are spotless.
How to get low noise in low light? Noise in low light is natural, our eyes certainly suffer with detail loss and color noise/loss, when viewing dim scenes. The reason is noise is random and light at low levels isn't because the constant noise it not as far below a low light level. More light in the presence of steady noise means the mid level light is far above the noise level. Cameras can't invent signal to noise ratio increases of low light scenes. The best the camera can do is contribute less noise to the ambient noise. It can also trade detail for noise reduction using computer processing. So as good as the D610 is, it can't create more light. You have to feed it more light. Feeding it more light at low ISO means wider apertures and longer time. No problem with static scenes, just be sure to use a steady tripod and mirror up and that scene would appear noiseless..
What if there is action you need to freeze? Shutter speed has to be increased, each stop increase in speed can be compensated by 1 stop opening of aperture from your f/4 to f/2.8, you could double the shutter speed for the same noise. That is why fast wide aperture lenses are preferred by experienced shooters despite their higher cost and weight. If action is still too fast, adding light, and why photographers often have additional light sources, like strobes, speedlights, reflectors, etc.
I would suggest learning in more detail about exposure. A classic, easy to read book that has been around since the 70s but updated for digital is
https://www.amazon.com/Understandin...03//ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&x=0&tag=slrlounge01-20

By the way, the D610 tops the Canon a full 3.5 stops in DR at low ISO.


6dIIvsD610.png
Good luck and good shooting with your very good camera
 

D610

Senior Member
Thank you so much Stan for your educational answer!
I will try to use the ETTR method and maybe upload a picture to share :)
The reason i was pixel picking because of few family pictures and one specially were i took a shot with iso 720 F5.6 1/30 sec. with flash !(so this should cover the light issue :) ) and the pictures looked terrible once zoomed 100% .and bcz its a new camera and i saw in you YouTube many reviews and also read many articles on this camera i thought something is wrong with my camera sensor as its only iso 720!
then i viewed some more pictures i took with\out flash and again i see the noise although there is flash light or ambient :) i usally use 1/4 or 1/8 of flash power (it was manual flash so i may used it wrong?) but nevertheless there are noise also with the flash on... I am working on manual mode or aperture. I will post add this picture to my google drive if you want to take a look :)
Regardless i did learned from your answer among the others that comment here.

Thanks again!

Sent from my Redmi Note 4X using Tapatalk
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Thank you so much Stan for your educational answer!
I will try to use the ETTR method and maybe upload a picture to share :)
The reason i was pixel picking because of few family pictures and one specially were i took a shot with iso 720 F5.6 1/30 sec. with flash !(so this should cover the light issue :) ) and the pictures looked terrible once zoomed 100% .and bcz its a new camera and i saw in you YouTube many reviews and also read many articles on this camera i thought something is wrong with my camera sensor as its only iso 720!
then i viewed some more pictures i took with\out flash and again i see the noise although there is flash light or ambient :) i usally use 1/4 or 1/8 of flash power (it was manual flash so i may used it wrong?) but nevertheless there are noise also with the flash on... I am working on manual mode or aperture. I will post add this picture to my google drive if you want to take a look :)
Regardless i did learned from your answer among the others that comment here.

Thanks again!
Unfortunately this issue can get very complicated and technical... The most basic way I can sum up keeping noise to a minimum is to say this: Maximize exposure.

Now, that being said let me say three things further:

1. Exposure is determined by the aperture and shutter speed.
2. Exposure determines how MUCH light gets to the sensor.
3. Increasing ISO amplifies the light hitting the sensor, however much that is, as determined by the exposure.

Now that you understand the difference between increasing exposure and increasing ISO, the best single thing you can do to avoid digital noise in your shots is to get proper EXPOSURE in your shots, right from the start. And with that, I'm going to stop, lest we get into a discussion of things like Signal-to-Noise Ratio, ISO Invariance and so forth which I'm simply not prepared to deal with at this hour of the morning.
 

D610

Senior Member
Unfortunately this issue can get very complicated and technical... The most basic way I can sum up keeping noise to a minimum is to say this: Maximize exposure.

Now, that being said let me say three things further:

1. Exposure is determined by the aperture and shutter speed.
2. Exposure determines how MUCH light gets to the sensor.
3. Increasing ISO amplifies the light hitting the sensor, however much that is, as determined by the exposure.

Now that you understand the difference between increasing exposure and increasing ISO, the best single thing you can do to avoid digital noise in your shots is to get proper EXPOSURE in your shots, right from the start. And with that, I'm going to stop, lest we get into a discussion of things like Signal-to-Noise Ratio, ISO Invariance and so forth which I'm simply not prepared to deal with at this hour of the morning.

Thank you so much for your reply! You all teached me allot! I never shot in low light before as usually I shot studio with flashes and iso 100 . until I went and shot 3 days outside family event with my new D610 lerning it. which was challenging and most pictures were great only the once at higher iso were less good as I thought. But now I started to learn about the ETTR and i understand now more than i knew 24h ago because of you members(about the relationship of the exposure and noise) so... Thanks!
 

D610

Senior Member
Unfortunately this issue can get very complicated and technical... The most basic way I can sum up keeping noise to a minimum is to say this: Maximize exposure.

Now, that being said let me say three things further:

1. Exposure is determined by the aperture and shutter speed.
2. Exposure determines how MUCH light gets to the sensor.
3. Increasing ISO amplifies the light hitting the sensor, however much that is, as determined by the exposure.

Now that you understand the difference between increasing exposure and increasing ISO, the best single thing you can do to avoid digital noise in your shots is to get proper EXPOSURE in your shots, right from the start. And with that, I'm going to stop, lest we get into a discussion of things like Signal-to-Noise Ratio, ISO Invariance and so forth which I'm simply not prepared to deal with at this hour of the morning.
Thank you so much for your reply! You all teached me allot! I never shot in low light before as usually I shot studio with flashes and iso 100 . until I went and shot 3 days outside family event with my new D610 lerning it. which was challenging and most pictures were great only the once at higher iso were less good. But now I started to learn about the ETTR and i understand now more than i knew 24h ago because of you members (about the relationship of the exposure and noise) so... Thanks!


Sent from my Redmi Note 4X using Tapatalk
 

spb_stan

Senior Member
You can learn a lot by allowing the camera in fully auto mode select its own settings and note what they were and how they look compared to your manual settings. See the differences and figure out why the camera exposed differently than you did. Use the internal flash which is effective at shorter distances, up to about 20 feet, and all these will be adjusted automatically by the camera for a good exposure. Then when you use manual modes, you will have a good idea of the range of various settings and anything you want to change for artistic reasons, compensate by changing another parameter to maintain the same exposure. For example if you take a photo of a person indoors of a person 10 feet away, depending on the ambient light levels, in fully Auto mode the flash will pop up and the shutter, aperture and ISO will all be auto adjusted to arrive at a good exposure. Artistically you might have other ideas of how it should look but note the settings the camera selected. These are a good starting point for your next, manual exposure. But if you wanted to get shallower depth of field of the person to blur the background a little, open the aperture 1 stop, and decrease the speed 1 stop...same exposure but with shallower depth of field, Say you have a fast lens and want more blur, open up the aperture another stop and slow the shutter by 1 stop..again same exposure but a lot less detail in the background. The flash is so fast that it freezes the subject so motion blur is not much of an issue until you get down to very slow shutter speeds, much slower than you could normally hand hold a photo without flash.
Now you have a base range of settings that work. If you keep the same settings and scene, add your manual flash after closing the popup flash. Set it to 1/4 power and take the same shot. Is it under or over exposed? If either, change the power to compensate. Now you know a good base combination for that shot. Do the same without the flash outdoors to get familiar with what ranges to expect for different conditions. Take a test shot fully auto and seen what settings it chooses in full auto. After doing this for a few days you will understand what values are good starting points for different conditions for manual settings. If there is decent light, keep ISO low in any of these tests. At ISO 400 or less, not noise should be seen in a well exposed image. In good light, even ISO 12,000 makes good low noise prints but when light is poor, it is a struggle for low noise when pixel peeping, on any camera ever made.
Photography is not about specs of cameras, it is light, and lack of it that controls the whole process. The biggest mistake beginners make is assuming that cameras should see as good or better in low than our eyes. They often do if the print is the same size and distance but you are seeing the details close up on a monitor you would never see in the same scene with your eyes. Noise in prints is seldom a problem because prints are seen at a normal intended viewing distance. A lower resolution camera often appears to have less noise when pixel peeped at 100%. It is not noisier and in fact is surely a lot better but 100% on a 6mpx camera is much less of an magnification factor than 100% on a D610 or D850. At 100% you are blowing up the high resolution image much larger so you are seeing a small smaller area of the image filling your monitor. So expect to see more noise even in noiseless images with high res images. All images have an intended viewing distance and size. The size of the image and distance are related. For art work and photos that distance is what the creator of the work intended, and in almost all cases the artist or photographer intended the viewer to be far enough away to see the entire frame without scanning back and forth with the eyes. The whole image taken in at once is the intended viewing size. A billboard looks terrible at 1 foot away and what is displayed might not even be recognizable because whatever you are seeing in color blobs are out of context to the actual scene. Get 50 feet away or more so you can see the entire image of the 20 foot billboard and it can look razor sharp. Same with art in an art gallery, large full wall paintings make little sense 4 feet away, but 20 feet away and the message is clear. Filling the screen with your photos shown in its entirety is how you intended people to see your work. Up close might not makes as much sense because they can only see parts of it. Your image is a whole and should be seen that way. That is why prints often get better response than monitors....because people zoom in and ruin the message. Pixel peeping is a bad habit to get into. If it looks noise free at normal viewing distance and size, what possible benefit would be found by seeing 20 times magnification revealed color blotches? The color blotches contribute to its message at 4 feet away on a 30 in monitor. The message is only conveyed at the intended viewing distance and size. That is a ratio so getting further back means the message is best seen as a larger display.
Good luck, you have a GREAT camera that pros 15 years ago would have killed for its capability in image quality. They would have gladly paid $50,000 for such a camera.
 

D610

Senior Member
WOW! Thank you for your time to help me! The only reason for pixel peeping is that in Lightroom I want to sharpen and do noise reduction.
I understand what you saying it all makes sense!
Question: If my laptop monitor is 1366x768 and viewing high res pictures out of the d610 camera (which are much higher res than my monitor) at 100% can result this "what I see noise"? But in fact it's not? Bcz of the pixel density differences not match?

Sent from my Redmi Note 4X using Tapatalk
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
WOW! Thank you for your time to help me! The only reason for pixel peeping is that in Lightroom I want to sharpen and do noise reduction.
I understand what you saying it all makes sense!
Question: If my laptop monitor is 1366x768 and viewing high res pictures out of the d610 camera (which are much higher res than my monitor) at 100% can result this "what I see noise"? But in fact it's not? Bcz of the pixel density differences not match?

Sent from my Redmi Note 4X using Tapatalk
In short, no.

Digital noise is a visual manifestation of a lower signal-to-noise ratio. How much noise you see in a particular photo is determined by several factors such as the size of the sensor, pixel density of the sensor, exposure time and ISO. The resolution of your monitor has nothing to do with how much noise your photo has.

Liightroom has some very good noise reduction tools, but you'll need to read up on how to apply those tools to get the most effective noise reduction out of them.
 

D610

Senior Member
Thanks! regarding your quote "The resolution of your monitor has nothing to do with how much noise your photo has"
I of course understand that photos has X noise on it regardless to the monitor used. But Im asking, if what I see on the monitor is not caused by low res screen and mislead me/us while editing. (Example: the noise is magnified because of low res screen.) And therefore I fix something that might not be there or it's there but not in same amount if I used higher resolution screen. I hope I'm clearer more now.

I know Lightroom... :) all this discussion came just because I bought new D610 and because I used Lightroom and I saw the noise in high iso were I tought will be much low and tought it's not good...(you can see small portion of what I mean in my Google drive I added it) but I understand now what should be done while using high iso
thanks to you all.

Anyhow, thanks allot!


Sent from my Redmi Note 4X using Tapatalk
 
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Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Thanks! regarding your quote "The resolution of your monitor has nothing to do with how much noise your photo has"
I of course understand that photos has X noise on it regardless to the monitor used. But Im asking, if what I see on the monitor is not coused by low res screen and misslead me/us while editing. (Example: the noise is magnified because of low res screen.) And therefore I fix something that might not be there or it's there but not in same amount if I used higher resolution screen. I hope I'm clearer more now.

I know Lightroom... :) all this discussion came just because I bought new D610 and because I used Lightroom and I saw the noise in high iso were I tought will be much low and tought it's not good...(you can see small portion of what I mean in my Google drive I added it) but I understand now what should be done while using high iso
thanks to you all.

Anyhow, thanks allot!


Sent from my Redmi Note 4X using Tapatalk
I understand what you are asking and I still believe the answer is... No.
 

Texas

Senior Member
I've learned the hard way not to do final photo edits on my laptop. A decent external monitor is the way to go.
 

Fortkentdad

Senior Member
Welcome

I shoot with a D610 and try to max out my ISO at 2200 rarely going to 3200. It will shoot higher but I like to keep to those "lower" ISO's.

And as has been said when it is necessary to bump up the ISO to higher levels much can be done in post with software. That is an option.

The other approach is to use speedlights (flashes). They offer so much, but do get the flash off the camera. But that is a whole other story.
 
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