Noise Reduction Settings

ccf15

Senior Member
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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nikonpup

Senior Member
​​​​â​---shoot in manual---adjust iso, lower the better---unedited will be tough---suggest stationary subject---99.9% of my shots are edited, you will need to be very lucky to get a unedited shot---unedited to me means "no" adjustements.
 

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
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.
 

BF Hammer

Senior Member
I am just going to assume this contest for unedited photos means they want just a JPG straight from the camera with no alteration in Lightroom or Photoshop. Please correct us if that is not the case.

High ISO means more noise. The noise in a photo comes from amplifying the electrical signal of the camera sensor when it is weaker to begin with. The degree of noise at a certain ISO varies widely between different generations of camera bodies and between low-end and high-end gear. My D80 from 2007 gave unacceptable noise above ISO 400. My current D750 gives better photos at ISO 3200 than the D80 did at 400. This all factors in. I only started using auto-ISO settings in the past 3 years due to that D80 experience.

At long telephoto range, you want fast shutter speed. You can only go so low for f-stop, thus your auto-mode boosts the ISO beyond acceptable noise for your contest. Fred's advise about adjusting the maximum ISO setting is advisable, I personally have my D750 set at 3200 for maximum auto-ISO. I might guess you need to drop that to 1600 or maybe even 800 if you cannot run a noise-reduction filter in Lightroom. Personally I have shot eagles in flight in Shutter-Priority mode and tried to find the minimum shutter speed before motion blur ruins the photo. ISO 400 often is not enough to get those photos with a fast shutter speed. But try to put an upper limit on the auto-ISO for starters, fall back to a fixed ISO 200 or so and Shutter-Priority mode if more is required. Going full manual while chasing flying birds takes a lot of experience and confidence in your equipment and skill. Much easier to try that for birds sitting still on a branch.
 

ccf15

Senior Member
BF,

Thank you for your input. My subject is bald eagles.

I have been trying using shutter speed and ISO in priority with different shots. Eagles in flight can be tough.

Thanks,
CC


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