I have a D3400 with Sigma Contemporary 150-600 lens for shooting raptors, mainly in Auto. There is a photography contest with unedited shots. I applied last year, but they said my shots had a lot of noise.
What would be a good technique to reduce the noise in the unedited shots. I have Lightroom for editing.
Thanks,
CC
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You're shooting in Auto. STOP! Auto will always increase ISO (which increases Noise) Turn OFF auto-iso, and set it to your camera's base ISO... that would be the lowest ISO number, which on your D3400 is 100. Adjust your shutter speed and aperture...
If you're going to edit, or process the image, almost every photo editing program has some form of noise reduction feature... there are several/many stand-alone programs to edit noise in photos.
LR's Noise reduction is in the Detail panel under the Develop module. You should understand that almost all Noise Reduction editing, softens the image to some degree.
Here's a process you should test with for any/every camera you own... Setup your camera on all manual mode on a tripop.. Take an image at 100 ISO. Then take a series of the same exact image/exposure settings, without changing any settings except the ISO... increase the ISO 1-stop for each image. Load the images into LR... In LR increase the screen resolution to 400% and examine each image in order beginning with the 100 ISO image. Note the ISO when excessive noise begins to become apparent.
Now in your camera, Goto your Shooting Menu/ISO Sensitivity Settings/Maximum Sensitivity setting and set it to the ISO setting 1-stop below the ISO setting you determined above was excessive.
Now when you use Auto-ISO, it won't select an ISO that's excessive for your camera.