Odd question about noise?

[Medic1]

Would a SLR...20D for example, be prone to produce more noise with a moving subject as opposed to a still one? I shoot mainly aviation, but some nature as well......

With most of my aviation shots, there is noise, subtle, but its there. Even at ISO 100, broad daylight with a shutter speed of 1/3200......same conditions, with a still subject and the images is crisp and clear. Up the ISO to 400 or higher and the images are so noisy, that even neat image doesn't produce a crisp shot. I have posted about this before, as I was under the impression the 20D was superb at higher ISO's.......from what I am seeing, I think my Drebel was better at 200 and even 400.

I'm still a relative newbie to DSLR (less than a year), but I don't remember having this problem when I first bought the 20D. Now, I am using NeatImage for almost every aviation shot.....

A little help!

[dmstraton]

That doesn't sound normal. The only thing that seems to affect noise for me is when it is very hot out, say over 90F...then a little noise starts to creep into the shots. I checked the manual and it does say that if the ambient temperature is hot, then noise will increase, no matter what the ISO.

I can't imagine that happens much up in Canada though (the temp that is).

[tim]

If you pixel peep you can see a little noise at ISO100, but it's usually trivial. At ISO 400 I sometimes use noise reduction, but not often. Even at 1600 I don't always use noise reduction. Sounds like either your expectations need to be checked, or your camera sent for service.

Can you put a full size unprocessed JPG onto a web site for us to download and have a look at?

[badrotation]

Here is a shot I took with my 20D a couple weeks back in 95 degree weather.

It was taken at ISO 400 with very little post processing (basically take the saturation/contrast up a bit while processing the RAW file) there was absolutely no noise reduction done.

As you can see, there is VERY little noise.


Be warned, it is a big picture (full size)

http://home.comcast.net/~jason8883/Hucklarge.jpg



One thing I have noticed however, is that the JPEGS seem to have more noise than a RAW file. I have no idea why, but I am guessing it is due to the JPEG compression.

[Medic1]

Maybe it is just the temperature.....it had been very hot (95-100F most days for about 3 weeks)although its been a little cooler here lately (around 85F) and this is when I have noticed it more.

There has been alot of heat haze coming off the runways and tarmacs lately...so I am assuming the ambient temp out on the field is higher than the surrounding air.

I don't have any decent pics with the amount of noise I am talking about.....as I deleted them all already. I will take some and post them shortly.

Thanks everyone for your help.....anyone else feel free to chime in.

BTW: this is my second 20D...the first one had so much factory dust I had to have it replaced......10+ spots visible at f4.0 without contrast changes. Hopefully this isn't another camera problem

badrotation: nice picture....I think my ISO400 pics are noisier than that.....I will have to do a couple tests to see. I think what is bothering me most is that when me and friends who also do aviation photography (the Drebel XT and D70) are shooting the same aircraft/same day/same temp/same angles...their images seem less noisy, without post processing of any type....I don't pixel peep per se....until I started comparing noise levels between the three.....then it is obvious that my images are much noisier. Now that you mention the RAW conversion to JPEG, now that I think about it....could this issue be something different since I switched to Photoshop CS2...I can't speak to it for sure, but it may have began around the same time I switched over.

[Jon]

There was a thread here, back around December, IIRC, where someone was complaining about noisy RAW, and I could never get him to try using a different conversion program to see if that made a difference. I would definitely try converting your pictures using DPP, CS2, and anything else you may have available to see if trhat is the problem. Also try shooting RAW+Large and compare the RAW with the JPEG.

[Medic1]

I have Raw Shooter Essentials.....maybe I'll give that a shot and see if it makes a difference

[badrotation]

I use captureONE and it seems to work great.

[Medic1]

I tried some images with Raw Shooter and they are way less noisy than PS CS2.....could it be the Raw Converter causing the increased noise in my images?

After thinking about it for a while....I could not remember having this issue when I was using CS....just with CS2

[Sathi]

I tried some images with Raw Shooter and they are way less noisy than PS CS2.....could it be the Raw Converter causing the increased noise in my images?

After thinking about it for a while....I could not remember having this issue when I was using CS....just with CS2

I found the raw converter with CS2 to be way more noisy than the other converters I tried. It is my converter of choice though because I find the colors to be consistant. I just drop the noise reduction to zero and then use noise ninja to clean it up. I have read of a few people mentioning that the other converters are very aggressive about reducing noise and wash out more detail than ACR. I'm not sure about that though, can anyone comment on this?