D7000, noise reduction, post-process and Capture NX2

freecom2

freecom2

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Sorry for the long title!

After more than 1,000 shots, I've decided to read the D7000 manual! :thumbs: but in all seriousness, I'm wanting to ensure that I'm genuinely doing the best that I can to optimise photos, and now it's time to focus on high ISO photos. The high ISO performance is pretty decent, but I find the noise unacceptable and want to try and dampen it down.

Workflow is RAW, process to TIFF in Capture NX2 (I like to keep the vivid setting, which only Capture NX2 does properly) and then edited in CS5.

Currently noise reduction is turned off. I've just done some sample photos at 1600, 3200 and 6400 at low, normal and high noise reduction and it seems that depending on the scene the amount of noise reduction (even at the same ISO and same NR setting) is different - Capture NX2 reports differences in noise reduction intensity and sharpness for different scenes - in other words, the noise reduction is not uniform, it's adaptive.

So, the long and short of it - I'm not a big fan of post-processing too much, so should I set NR to say normal, and only tweak it to off in Capture NX2 on photos that I'm likely to spend a while editing and want the full raw data on? What do you do?
 
Hmm, spending more time on Capture NX2 (as you do), 'normal' takes out too much detail for my liking and 'low' changes so little that it's barely perceptible.
 
I find that 'Noiseware" works well on Nikon files, I have it as a plug in on PS Elements, but it is available as a free standalone on Windows systems.

The bottom one, community edition LINK

I had to buy the plug in as I run a Mac, but I had used the free version when I was running Windows.
 
freecom2 said:
I find the noise unacceptable and want to try and dampen it down.
Click to expand...

Go borrow a 35mm film camera, get hold of a roll of whatever the standard Kodak ISO400 film was in the 90's, shoot process and develop, and then come back with your view of 'unacceptable noise' :lol:

Seriously, you don't get something for nothing and the cost of being able to shoot at higher speeds is loss of detail and noise. Noise reduction techniques can work, but again you'll never get something for nothing.

Do you need to manage your expectations down a little, or is there a very specific reason why you need such detailed, noise free images at high ISOs?
 
I wanted to try and convey that I do accept the limitations of what can be done; seems like I didn't do that as well as I could've. I just basically want to see how best I could mitigate noise along my workflow - whether at camera level, software level or other really.
 
I have a D7000, shoot in RAW and do everything in Aperture 3. Personally I am not sure the D7000 high iso performance when using RAW is as good as is claimed....I've read someone post in here previously that they think it is noticeably better when shooting jpeg even if there is no in camera processing. Anyway the best noise reduction software I found was Nik's Dfine 2.0 which you can try on a 30 day free trial. Give it a go and see what you think.
 
D300 at ISO 3200 (300 f4 + 1.7TC @ f7.1)

Just as an idea of what it can do, this was at default settings with Noiseware


Without Noiseware

161_120a.jpg


With Noiseware

161_120.jpg
 
Thanks for all the suggestions, and wow, that's a seriously impressive result.
 
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