Need help with noise

I am new to posting pics so I hope that I dont break etiquette here. I am shooting with a 5dii and I am noticing what seems to me to be a high level of noise the vast majority of the time. This shot was taken on a slightly overcast day with a 5dii, 70-200 3.8 IS. these were test shots as I bought this lens yesterday but this situation is happening with all my lenses and I'm wondering if its my camera or am I missing something. 800 ISO, 120mm, f8, 1/200. I feel like everything I know tells me that this shot should be very crisp and well exposed.

The first shot is the full frame and doesn't look all that bad at this resolution but the second is the 100% crop just left of center and as you can see there is considerable noise.

Sorry, but I'm having problems getting Flickr to embed the images at the resolution I want...any help on this?

I'll jump in here
pardon, but it doesn't look bad to me ??
are you concerned because you'll have to crop the photo drastically?

Noise seems quite acceptable for ISO 800. Your crop is past the point of focus, which looks to be on the two bright blooms beneath it it. At this range, even at ƒ8, your depth of field is going to be fairly narrow. I think you're ok.

Try f4 iso 400.
Make sure you take a nice bright exposure so you don't need to increase exposure in post...that adds a lot of noise.

If you can't see the noise as a problem when viewing normally, then what does it matter if you can see it viewed at 100%.

Assuming a monitor resolution of around 100 ppi (a pretty safe bet) that 100% crop is a section from a 37x56 inch image. At what distance would you view a print that size?

You're worried that you see noise at ISO800 at 100% crop?

Doesn't look bad to me either.
More than likely no one will care (other than you) that there's noise on the grey leaf. Even more people won't even notice.

Looks normal to me as well.

Looks fine.

Print it as large as you want and I dare you to find the noise. I've printed cropped (half or less in some cases) ISO6400 images at 30x40 without feeling like noise was an issue.

Are you shooting Raw or Jpeg?

The noise is predominantly in the shadows on the left side of the crop image. This is always where the worst noise will be found, because the local light capture per pixel in the shadows is lowest, so the signal to noise ratio is worst. One way to compensate for this in photoshop CS5 is to use smart sharpen only on the mid-tones and highlights, and perhaps even blur the shadows a little bit. However, at a reasonably large normal print size like 12"x18" this noise will certainly be invisible.

I dont need to crop the image badly at all. This was just a test shot but I see this noise often. I guess I look on the internet and see portraits that are so crisp I cant believe it; I even see this sharpness in things like candid wedding shots by others. Even zoomed way in they look amazing and I'm wondering how to make my shots look like that. I guess it comes down to technique... which I am still working on. Thanks everyone for the input.

jkobel wrote in post #12311914
I guess it comes down to technique...

And probably a little post process noise reduction too.

Go shoot; stop worrying That's is perfectly normal and acceptable at that ISO...it's actually better than a lot of results you might see at that ISO

Looks good to me - it's crisp and I'd wager the noise isn't visible at all at print resolution. 100% view means you're viewing an image several feet across (5ft by 3ft at 100ppi)

A photograph is only as good as the light at the time of the shot, so if you don't like the noise either choose a smaller aperture or shoot when the light's better.