noise?

This is a screen shot of a 2x crop, image was taken using a DS3 and a 300mm 2.8 lens, a combination which generally coughs out some nice stuff but...of late I'm getting excessive nose. Sharpened to 100, normal workflow. Any idea why this might be the case?

IMAGE LINK: http://s329.photobucke​t.com …43/media/noise-1.jpg.html

What sharpening / NR settings?

Sharpening 100, NR 0. Shouldn't need NR at ISO 200.

What's your exposure like? If you are boosting it at all then you will be introducing noise, even at ISO 100. I do not have anything as modern as a 1DS3 but even on my old 20D I find upping the ISO (except the extended values) in camera and then exposing to the right is better than under exposing at all.

I was shooting at a museum recently at ISO 1600 and using LR4 I only needed the default Colour NR and zero Luminance. In the past I have had images shot at ISO 100 with as little as +1 EV boost in LR that have needed the Luminance NR way up, maybe 50, but it really needs a couple of stops boost to need to take it to 100.

Not that I can see the picture you posted as I'm sitting on the prom while the kids are swimming in the sea, it being the hottest day of the year so far here in the UK. It's too bright to see anything other than text at the moment.

Alan

To me it appears to be sharpening artifacts (rather than noise) caused by an excessive amount of sharpening. At high levels of sharpening like 100 you must use the suppression controls - the Details and Masking sliders - to avoid getting that "orange peel" effect.

My exposure is shown in the screen-shot.

I did not realize that a sharpening of 100 was considered "high".

yeah, that isn't noise; that's artifacts from over-sharpening. Try backing that down to around 65-70, with the radius set to around 1.4.

A Sharpening Amount of 100 is extremely high especially if the Details and Masking Sliders aren't used to limit the sharpening effect to the edges of the image only. I can't find the reference right now but I recall Martin Evening saying that he rarely goes above 40 on the Amount slider.

The Sharpening module in Lightroom is intended to restore edge sharpness and counteracting the effect of the camera's antialiasing filter. And to apply sharpness only to edges you MUST also use the Masking slider. If you just apply a whole Amount you will certainly see the "orange peel" effect shown in your screen capture.