Ahhh! Grainy photos due to high ISO

PhotoMom

New member
Hello. I’m really kicking myself. I just got back from a 2 month trip thru Asia with my nice D500. Unfortunately I came home and 80% of my photos are grainy. I was dumb and let my camera decide the ISO and didn’t remember to put a limit on it. It’s killing me. I had 3 boys with me and wanted to make it a tad easier to stay in manual. I was backing up photos but didn’t have a way to really inspect them while traveling.

So. I have worked with a few of them in PS and LR. I can get rid of most of the grain but it also takes away detail. Any suggestions???

Please help.
 

pforsell

Senior Member
Do you have any examples to share?

The ISO setting itself doesn't cause grain, it is the lack of light that creates noise. Lack of light might be caused by a low exposure or low ambient light level.

To create noisy images in broad daylight the shooter would need to set a very small aperture and a very fast shutter speed, for example f/16 and 1/8000s using manual exposure mode. Is this what happened? In this scenario the camera would choose ISO 8000 to make a "properly" exposed shot if auto ISO is enabled. It's noteworthy that if the camera had used any lower ISO there would be even more noise in the images.

About the noise, how will you use the photographs? I myself never do any noise reduction because it destroys details. When I do prints, the noise just disappears. Ink on paper behaves differently from on-screen pixels. Ditto for online images, when I reduce the image to web size the noise is strongly suppressed. I very much prefer the little remaining noise over smeared details. Your tastes may differ.

I suggest you verify that the noise actually is bothersome, before doing detail-destroying noise reduction. Do this by analyzing the end results, not highly zoomed images on screen.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
If you shot RAW it'll clean up better than JPEG, but just how much it cleans up will depend. I regularly have to deal with ISO 6400 on birds in flight with my D500 and it cleans up pretty well, but after that you're either going to have to live with a little noise or something that looks overly smooth. That said, Nik Dfine works really well, as does Lightroom's NR if you go gently. As said, examples would help.
 

Bikerbrent

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

And yes, some sample photos would be helpful.
 

PhotoMom

New member
Thanks for all of your help.

I do shoot in RAW but these are downside for the forum. I have not done anything to these photos yet.
I am now thinking I do not know my camera as well as I thought. It was new before the trip. I had practiced with it a lot but it was an upgrade from my D3300.

Amanda


Sample A.jpg
 

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PhotoMom

New member
Thanks for all of your help.

I do shoot in RAW but these are downsized for the forum. I have not done anything to these photos yet.
I am now thinking I do not know my camera as well as I thought. It was new before the trip. I had practiced with it a lot but it was an upgrade from my D3300. From what you are saying I should try to have a couple of these printed to see if it looks better than the screen.

Amanda
Sample A.jpg
Sample A
Sample A.jpg
Sample B

View attachment 294132
Sample C
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
Wow with those ISOs i think the D500 did great

ISO 51200 i think you have hit the nail on the head when you say you didnt know the camera well enough, looking at the results if you get the iso down you will be very happy with future results.
 

Catherder

Senior Member
Just a suggestion. Make a copy of one of the raw files and work on it, not the original. You can download DXO Photolab demo and click on prime noise reduction and export it as a jpeg. See if that can clean it up a bit.
I just went out in the drive way and shot at iso 51000 its not perfect but its better. Top is straight from camera, Bottom is after DXO Prime noise reduction applied.
750_3413_DxO-2.jpg
750_3413_DxO-1-2.jpg
 
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hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
Thanks for all of your help.

I do shoot in RAW but these are downsized for the forum. I have not done anything to these photos yet.
I am now thinking I do not know my camera as well as I thought. It was new before the trip. I had practiced with it a lot but it was an upgrade from my D3300. From what you are saying I should try to have a couple of these printed to see if it looks better than the screen.

Amanda
View attachment 294136
Sample A

Based on this image, I used Nik Dfine. The first one is with Dfine automatically applying its noise reduction. In the second, I went in and added a little noise back it so it isn't quite so smooth.

Sample A Nik Dfine auto settings.jpg


Sample A Nik Dfine manually reduced settings.jpg
 

Marcel

Happily retired
Staff member
Super Mod
I don't know which mode you were using, but just looking at the exif 1/8000 f22 for a landscape picture seems to me to be just the wrong setting. That is what got you to 40,000 iso. You can probably reduce the amount of noise but you might want to limit the size of the prints you will be able to make out of this.
But, as it was discussed a while back, the noise sometimes is reduced when you print. So just try a few sample prints and see how large you can and want to go. You might be surprised.

But I can probably assume this is a lesson you will never forget. It's sad that it happened, but now you know.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
As Marcel said, one of the things that drove the ISO up are shutter speeds and apertures that are way faster and much smaller than you need for most of what we're looking at. So when you get done going thru these you'll want to take a hard look at how you'll want to set each of those based on the focal length of the lens you're using, the depth of field you need (i.e. how deep of an area do you want/need in focus), and whether or not you're shooting a stationary target. With stationary subjects setting your shutter speed to 1/(2 x focal length) will almost always prevent movement, so your shot at 1/8000s could have been taken at 1/60s and probably would have reduced the ISO to almost native. After that, learning about hyperfocal distance means that you'd realize that a 17mm lens on a DX body could have been shot f3.5 and you'd have everything from 3 meters to Infinity in focus. Once you've set your Auto ISO settings properly I would highly recommend always using Aperture Priority any time you are shooting anything other than moving objects (i.e. pretty much everything here). My recommended settings for the D500 would be...

ISO Sensitivity Setting

Auto ISO Control - ON
Maximum Sensitivity - 6400 (sports, birds in flight), 3200 (everything else)

Shutter Speed - +1 or +2 towards Faster
 
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