My first experience...

[Johnnynf]

After what seemed to be like a very lengthy wait (lots of games postponed due to snow), I finally got to take my DRebel to a high school basketall game and take some shots. After reading bunches of posts on here and doing a few test shots in the gym the afternoon before the game, I used the following settings on the camera: Camera in Tv mode set at 1/160, Auto White Balance, ISO 800, RAW. Throughout the shoot I used three different lenses depending on which end of the floor the home team was shooting at. The lens I used most often was actually the kit lens from my Rebel Ti. It provided a little bit more zoom than the DRebel kit lens and was VERY useful to me. It bridged the gap between the DRebel kit lens and my 75-300 zoom lens. As I said, I shot entirely in RAW. Most of the pictures came out pretty dark (some worse than others), so I used exposure compensation of +.5-+1.5 in FVU depending on the severity. I also changed the white balance to "tungsten" in FVU. Then I saved as 16bit TIFF and did a bit of contrast and saturation adjustments in PS Elements. Overall, I was pretty pleased with the results. Some of the shots were out of focus, but that is my fault, not the cameras. I forgot to set the camera to only focus on the center point, so some of the shots were focused on the back wall, not the action right in front of me.

The only other problems I had were with noise. I expected a certain amount of noise (which is why I used ISO 800 instead of 1600), but some had A LOT of noise in my opinion. I would post some examples, but I don't have any webspace to do so. My question then is what types of things can you do in PS Elements to try to get rid of some of this noise? I already applied a "despecle" filter, but that didn't do too much, and other than that, I am clueless. When I get a chance, I am probably going to buy either NoiseNinja or NeatImage...but can't do that for awhile. So, until then, what can I do? Also, which of those two programs is better? Could someone give me a comparison of the two. I apologize if this has been discussed before...please do not flame me. Thank you so very much.

[Rowla]

... I am probably going to buy either NoiseNinja or NeatImage...but can't do that for awhile. So, until then, what can I do?....

Neat Image is available as a free download as a trial version. Some features are disabled but it's certainly usable. I've been using it for nearly a year that way.

I have no experience with NoiseNinja so I'm no help there.

As for your noise problem, try lowering your ISO.

[maderito]

I'm still experimenting with shooting basketball. I'm at the courtside, shooting ISO 800 to 1600 with an 85/1.8 lens usually set for about f2.5 and 1/250. I need the high ISO and fast shutter speed to stop the action. The penalty is a lot of noise.

It is quite challenging to fill the frame with more action than noise! :)

Neat Image and Noise Ninja will both cleanup the noise nicely. But they're slow on my aging computer. Quick & dirty noise cleanup can be achieved by fiddling with smart blur (say radius ~9, threshold ~6). There is a Photoshop action for the 10D called ISORpro from Fred Miranda ( http://www.fredmiranda.com/shopping/10DISORpro ) that uses smart blur and masking techniques with a lot more sophisticaiton to achieve fairly decent noise reduction. Pekka also had one - maybe still does.

Good luck.

[Johnnynf]

Thanks for the info guys. I heard that Neat Image offers the free download. Is it true that with this download you can only do 8 bit and not 16? What does this mean? Will the pictures be lower quality in 8 bit that 16? In all actuality, I have no idea what the difference is...I just always saved my RAW files as 16 bit because 16 is a higher number than 8. I know, my logic is kind of flawed...but I don't know any better.

[Johnnynf]

Nobody has any thoughts on this? Is this a hard question? What is the difference between 8 bit and 16 bit? Please help a beginner.

[Jesper]

Johnny, give it some time, don't expect an answer immediately after you push the Submit button.... 8)

Have a look at this article, which explains histograms in detail. On page 3 it also explains the difference between 16 bit and 8 bit colour: A Practical Guide to Interpreting Histograms (http://www.sphoto.com/techinfo/histograms/histograms.htm) by Steve Hoffman.

Note that working in 16 bit mode only makes sense if your original image also has more than 8 bits per color channel per pixel. If you shoot in JPEG, which is 8 bit, 16 bit editing is not very useful. Shoot RAW. Most cameras, certainly all Canon cameras, actually record 12 bits per pixel per color channel in RAW mode.

[maderito]

Nobody has any thoughts on this? Is this a hard question? What is the difference between 8 bit and 16 bit? Please help a beginner.
It's not a hard question. A full answer would not be short - but this will be.

Bits are the units of computer data - they have a value of 0 or 1 and thus can represent binary numbers.

8 bits allows encoding of numbers from 0 to 255 (0000000 to 11111111)
12 bits from 0 to 4096
16 bits from 0 to 65535

Computers work chunks of bits called bytes. One byte equals 8 bits. Thus 1 byte for 8 bits, 2 bytes for 16 bits.

The 10D captures images with 12 bits of image data per channel. That's 4096 levels of image intensity for Red, Green, and Blue. You can store 12 bits in 2 bytes (with bits to spare).

To store 12 bits into one byte (8 bits), you must sacrifice information. You're compressing 4096 discrete values into 256. Think of it as chopping off the final 4 bits of data, thus reducing 12 to 8 bits.

RAW files have 12 bit image data, JPEG files 8 bit.

Standard imaging processing software works on image data in one of two modes: 8 bit (1 byte) or 16 bit (2 byte). The 16 bit mode can accommodate the 12 bit 10D image Data. In 8 bit mode, you lose some (actually a lot) of image data.

Re: noise removal.
Since you usually remove noise early in image processing, it would be best to do this on 12 bit images (in 16 bit mode) since you may want to do further processing (levels, contrast, brightness, etc) that give better results when used on 12 bit data.

If you convert from 16 bit to 8 bit mode, you can't convert back to 16 bit mode and recover the lost data (remember, you've chopped off and thrown away those bits).

Many get along just fine working entirely in 8 bit mode. Neat Image and Noise Ninja can work in 8 bit or 16 bit mode - but, as you’ve pointed out, you must pay for that extra flexibility.

Hopefully, these points all hang together. :)

[Rowla]

I heard that Neat Image offers the free download. Is it true that with this download you can only do 8 bit and not 16?

The free download will only allow you to save the filtered images as jpg files and not TIFF so ... it's moot. If you want the flexibility of saving in 16-bit TIFF you have to pay for the upgrade.

Sorry :(

I will add that I do all - well, most - of my processing prior to running it through Neat Image (RAW to TIFF, then through NI) so it's the last thing I do. That way I can still edit the photos as 16-bit TIFFS while using the free NI download.