Excessive Noise at ISO 400

I took my XSi and 70-200 f/2.8 MK I out in the snow yesterday, to capture some images of my daughter sledding. I was shooting at ISO 400, f/8, and roughly 1/1000 the whole time. When I got home and imported the prints to LR, I found that the pics were extremely noisy.

I've always had problems with noise at ISO 1600, and even a bit at 800, but I I've never seen it this bad at 400. A couple days earlier, I was shooting some studio stuff with a friend (a 5D shooter), and he was shocked at the noise present in my ISO 200 images. The noise in those pics was not noticeable to me naturally, but when he inverted the colors and started playing with the histogram (to ensure we got the background pure black), we could see there was quite a bit of noise, even at ISO 200.

Here's a sample from yesterday. These are the same image: the first SOOC, the second a roughly 100% crop. No processing except for whatever LR automatically performs based on the in-camera settings. They were shot in RAW. Any thoughts on the cause?

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

That is not noise IMO. That looks like processing artifacts to me. I don't know anything about LR but I have seen this stuff with other processors. There was one a long time ago with a basketball and I think it was Capture One that was causing the same look.

Interesting thought. I'll try it in DPP this afternoon, and see what happens.

I was just about to suggest that and you beat me to it.

I agree, you are seeing the grain of the image, not noise. Noise are random colors. If you look at your image, all the pixels are of the same color pallet but different hues.

It would be nice to have a RAW file to play with.

That's just awful, and simply shouldn't be happening with a properly exposed image at 400ISO. I hope you get this figured out. Makes me a little hesitant to start using LR.

People produce all types of good work with LR. Some part of PP or some setting is causing this. I'd be curious about the resizing method being used as well.

This one is mine. Made it up after 30 years in manufacturing. "The answer is always simple. Getting there is the hard part."

My favourite is Occam's Razor. "All things being equal the simplest explanation is usually the correct one". There are any variations to that and I have often found that it be true.

First off

Stop pixel peeping. No one is going to look at the shot at 100% except you

2nd

I agree with other,,not noise to me either. Go to your blue channel and that would be the tell tale sign

3rd

Not terribly uncommon. Ive had perfectly exposed images in the camera only too see stuff like this especially in a very blue no contrast sky. Happens and cleans up with a Gaussian blur or other noise reduction in Photoshop. Your seeing this all over the snow and areas that have no detail and or minimal contrast. Would be the same principal as far as I'm concerned so i really don't think there is that much of a problem. It does happen to the best of them.

4th

Stop pixel peeping. Once you processed this and made a print, it would never show

5th

very cute little girl. Go have some fun with her and your camera.

I'll see what it looks like in DPP this afternoon, and I'd be happy to share the RAW with you. You can PM me your email address, if you'd like, and I'll send it along this afternoon.

I applied no PP aside from the crop and resize, and whatever processing LR performs automatically. And it looked this grainy prior to resizing. Resizing was done using the Publishing to Flickr feature in the Library module.

I forget which processing software we were using on Saturday, when we were looking at the ISO200 shots that were also noisier than expected...it was either PS or Corel. As I said, they were not nearly as noticeable as the photos above, but my buddy was pretty shocked.

"Properly exposed" may be a stretch but I did not boost exposure in these prior to putting them up on flickr.

Looking forward to getting to the bottom of this. I love LR, and I'm hoping there isn't some sort of disconnect between my XSi's RAWs and LR. Then again, if I needed an excuse to upgrade to a 7D...

If you could upload a Raw file it would be good so we can check it out!

You can use a site like YouSendIt.com -- free, no membership required for uploading one at a time. Just enter your email address as the "Recipient", upload the file, they send you a notification with a link, which you post here and we can download it!

umphotography wrote in post #13719544
First off

Stop pixel peeping. No one is going to look at the shot at 100% except you

2nd

I agree with other,,not noise to me either. Go to your blue channel and that would be the tell tale sign

3rd

Not terribly uncommon. Ive had perfectly exposed images in the camera only too see stuff like this especially in a very blue no contrast sky. Happens and cleans up with a Gaussian blur or other noise reduction in Photoshop. Your seeing this all over the snow and areas that have no detail and or minimal contrast. Would be the same principal as far as I'm concerned so i really don't think there is that much of a problem. It does happen to the best of them.

4th

Stop pixel peeping. Once you processed this and made a print, it would never show

5th

very cute little girl. Go have some fun with her and your camera.

I first noticed it when cropping some of the photos, not simply pixel peeping. When it becomes that evident as displayed on the screen, and my intent is for screen display, it becomes an issue even if it would look fine in 4x6. And if it's so far from the ordinary, I'd like to get a handle on why it's happening.

Can you elaborate on "go to your blue channel and that would be a tell tale sign" for a newb?

I've been blessed with a very expressive and photogenic child. "Wrapped around her finger" doesn't begin to describe the situation. Sledding was a total blast this weekend.

Thanks for the help.

tonylong wrote in post #13719596
If you could upload a Raw file it would be good so we can check it out!

You can use a site like YouSendIt.com -- free, no membership required for uploading one at a time. Just enter your email address as the "Recipient", upload the file, they send you a notification with a link, which you post here and we can download it!

Thanks. I'll have it up in a few hours.

Not noise; looks like a combo of using the Clarity slider a little too aggressively and then a slightly over-sharpening as well. At least this is usually what tells me I need to go back and redo those.

Otherwise, the image looks fine.

Good suggestion about yousendit Tony. Several people can take a crack at it. I also agree with umphotogtraphy that you will not likely see it in print. This is curious for us pixel peepers I normally do NR at 100% so those patterns would make me wonder when eventually I got to doing some high ISO NR. Not that the posted image needs any NR. Nice capture by the way.