Shooting RAW .NEF Nikon D80 noise issues?

J_Cam

J_Cam

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Name
Jack
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Hello,
I am relatively new to photography and I have recently had to switch to shooting raw due to the amount of stuck pixels that can only be fixed with software if the photos are shot as .NEF files. Now I realise that RAW files are basically unprocessed images, and I am having some trouble with my photos where they look too noisy (especially in out of focus parts of an image). The colours also seem quite dull and soft, compared to when I was shooting .JPG. Below I have attached some examples. Please feel free to edit them and repost them on here as I would love to see what can be done with raw images to get them looking great . Now here are some photos of when I was shooting .JPG only and .NEF files so you can see for your self:

Original old .JPG images only (not noisy at all)
Full size image: http://www.jak01.com/pics123/photog/honey.JPG
100% crop:
jpgcrop.jpg


New .NEF 100% crop (noisy images)
distortedcrop.jpg


Fullsize .NEF's and converted .JPG (noisy images)
.NEF File: http://www.jak01.com/pics123/photog/DSC_0705.NEF
.JPG File: http://www.jak01.com/pics123/photog/DSC_0705.jpg

Fullsize .NEF's and converted .JPG (noisy images)
.NEF File: http://www.jak01.com/pics123/photog/DSC_0735.NEF
.JPG File: http://www.jak01.com/pics123/photog/DSC_0735.jpg


If any one knows if Im shooting the photos on the wrong setting or something like that or knows of any software (I have photo shop and Light room 3, not much knowledge on how to use them though) or settings that can batch file RAW images to take them back to sharp non-noisy images what I was originally shooting I would be very happy :D

Thank you
Jack
 
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Yeah just checked my D80 the switch next to the lens was accidentally on AF, but I was shooting with an old manual focus 50mm F1.8 (as thats all that ive got at the moment). If any one else has any tips to sort this, as I have some what-would-be very good images in this set I did if they had no noise :(

Thank you
Jack
 
With the 100% crops you posted, the RAW file is at ISO 800 and the jpg is at ISO 200.
You can hardly expect ISO 800 to be as clean as 200
 
Ok, I understand so at lower ISO's the noise will be reduced? (Ive not being doing photography for long so sorry if I sound like a newbie :P )

Thank you
Jack
 
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The JPG will have some pretty intense noise reduction added in camera. You need to add it yourself if shooting RAW. In Lightroom just play around with the noise reduction slider and the sharpening slider. Use the ALT key and add masking on the sharpening. It'll go white and as you move the slider it will go black. The white areas will be sharpened. You dont want to sharpen shadows where noise lurks as it just makes it worse, so only sharpen the areas of the image that need it.
 
J_Cam said:
Ok, I understand so at lower ISO's the noise will be reduced? (Ive not being doing photography for long so sorry if I sound like a newbie :P )

Thank you
Jack
Click to expand...

Yes, high ISO levels create noise (for your average camera iso 800 and above would be classed as high), the higher ISO, the more noise it creates. Unless you need fast shutter speeds or shooting in low light, best to keep iso as low as possible.

Also, I dont think the Nikon D80 is supposed to handle noise particularly well at high iso. Some cameras as much better at handling high iso noise levels than others.

Use manual priority modes as this will give you more control over what the camera is doing.
 
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Drop to iso 200 (or one of the l1,l2,l3 ?)
Change to A mode, unless your lens fools the sensor :D

In camera on the d300 there are options for noise reduction etc, see whether yours has the same and what settings they are atm. I ended up turning them off, but low level might suit you.

Use some other software during post processing, noise ninja? or something else. But the higher the settings the more soft the picture becomes... May be use two layers - one noise reduced over the normal and an opacity to let details through?

Depends what you are using to post process with.
 
I also have a D80 and have started processing in RAW. I've not compared the jpegs directly to RAW files yet (I intend to do this sometime soon).

I can confirm that the D80 is really quite noisy at high ISO ratings and this is with the camera's noise reduction set to 'on' (which is default). I very rarely go above ISO 100 or 200 though.

The original post mentioned the colours looking soft. You will need to set the colour palette (or matrix, I forget the name) in Lightroom yourself. I recommend using either Adobe RGB or sRGB (I use the latter because I end up exporting to jpegs which only understand sRGB). If you're anything like me, you'll next want to fix the exposure, shadow exposure and black levels (I hope I'm using terminology that makes sense - I don't use Lightroom).

Learning how to process RAWs is quite a difficult skill (but worth it IMO). I'd recommend looking up some tutorials or reading previous posts on this forum.
 
To echo the above, to the op, get down to a decent newsagent and buy Digital Photo magazine. They have supurb video tutorials which teach you a wrath of raw processing techniques which I've found invaluable in the past.

They are easy step by step instructions too.
 
If you want specific lightroom videos, Ive got several on my Photoix website. I'll also make any if there is something in particiuar you want.
 
squishy said:
With the 100% crops you posted, the RAW file is at ISO 800 and the jpg is at ISO 200.
You can hardly expect ISO 800 to be as clean as 200
Click to expand...
especially as the D80 uses a CCD sensor.
imo better than CMOS at low ISO but gets noisier faster at high ISO.
 
Thanks to everyone for the reply's so far. Well I have been looking more into this and have done some tests and have found out that most of the noise is made by Lightroom 3 itself! As when you import the raw .nef files it 'auto tones' the image, which is great because it gets rid of the hot/dead pixels my D80 has but it seems to add alot of noise when it does this process (I am shooting at iso 200, which works well until I edit a raw file). Does anyone have any suggestions?, as whenever I go to edit a .NEF file it just adds more and more noise (for example some images are dark so I have to edit the contrast/exposure). I also see that the Luminance slider on light room 3 works well but as said in some of the above posts, this makes the detailing very soft/smudged after I got rid of most of the noise.

Thank you
Jack
 
Sorry, but what noise? I can't see anything in that crop, or the links, to be remotely bothered about. :)

Pixel peeping is bad, don't do it, it WILL cost you a fortune ;)
 
@dod
Yeah I know, It just seems that whenever I go to edit them in Light room 3 the noise appears :| Its just annoying to know that when I shot .JPG you could edit them and the noise wouldn't be as bad.

Thanks
Jack :D
 
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