Making the best of high ISO

Can someone help me understand how to avoid noise when shooting high ISO.

Is it a matter of cleaning it up in post or is it possible straight out of the camera?

I understand that you meed to pay attention to exposure but I can never get low noise in high iso pics.

What are some general rules when doing this??

PJmak wrote in post #18352782
Can someone help me understand how to avoid noise when shooting high ISO.

Is it a matter of cleaning it up in post or is it possible straight out of the camera?

I understand that you meed to pay attention to exposure but I can never get low noise in high iso pics.

What are some general rules when doing this??

ETTR

As John eludes to, there is a technique that has a couple of different acronyms; Expose To The Right (ETTR) or Histogram And Meter Settings To The Right (HAMSTTR). Either way, the basics are to set your exposure as far to the + side of your meter as you can, without blowing out your critical highlights. Once you have the image(s) captured, you'll need to go into your post processing software, and draw the exposure back down to a 'proper' exposure, to recover you darks/blacks and contrast. This will have the effect of minimizing the visibility of noise in your dark/shadow areas. Additionally, there are different 'types' of noise that you will find you're wanting/needing to deal with; the main one that tends to be objectionable to folks in high ISO shots is your 'color' or 'chroma' noise. This is the orange/red/yellow speckling that shows up there; this is the main source of noise angst and is very easy to remove in most PP software now.

Finally, be sure to do all of your noise processing, etc *before* you perform your sharpening actions, in order to avoid sharpening the noise and adding artifacts to your images.

Non-Cliff's Notes versions of this stuff can be found:
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=66836
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=744235

PJmak wrote in post #18352782
Can someone help me understand how to avoid noise when shooting high ISO.

Is it a matter of cleaning it up in post or is it possible straight out of the camera?

Both. use ETTR to get the best exposure possible, then use appropriate post-processing for the expected final usage of the image.

Your post-processing for a huge canvas print might be different than post-processing for a screen-sized digital display.

Here's a pretty good discussion I had a few years ago on a ISO12800 image:

https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1360713

Noise is inherent to high ISO, but there are things you do which can hurt it unnecessarily...and underexposure with 'pushing' during post processing definitely hurts the issue of trying to achieve low noise in high ISO shooting!

I honestly think that the average digital photographer today is overly sensitized to 'noise' (commonly mistakenly called 'grain'). Just as film resulted in increase of grain size at higher ISO, digital noise increases with higher ISO. And the byproduct is not only more 'grain' but a loss of DR. Yes, it is OK to want less of the undesirable, but it is also somewhat unrealistic to expect 'no noise' in our images when high ISO is used. It simply comes with the territory!


I have an area in my house in which I can fairly well recreate EV-1 lighting at will, so I set up a shot of a gray target and a Colorchecker. Here is a crop taken from the high ISO shot, using noise reduction within Lightroom...I think it is really low noise

The raw processor you use will have an impact on your final JPG as well. If using 3rd party, you will want to make sure it is up to date covering the period of the model of camera you are using. If DPP, it will honor your in-camera settings, but you can change them accordingly then output the JPG. Finally when you are all done with this and making sure you are ETTR'ing, then post processing tools and techniques are your final steps for getting the most of high ISO.

Simply put, don't underexpose. When you are shooting at high is you are probably already challenged in term of quality and quantity of light. Don't compound it by underexposing which adds noise and any manipulation to fix noise degrades the image more.

As others have suggested, overexpose as much as you possibly can without blowing the highlights (use the blinkies in the LCD review). The photo may look overexposed but you can pull it down in post processing to the right value. In fact, I am usually not afraid to blow highlights if they are in regions that I don't care about, like the background sky when I am shooting a bird, for example. Think of the pixels in your sensor as little buckets, each of which has a fixed amount of noise. If your bucket is half full (underexposure), then the ratio of signal to noise is the lowest. You maximize signal to noise ratio by filling the bucket to the brim. That's what you should try to do when you take the shot.

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Scrumhalf wrote in post #18353030
As others have suggested, overexpose as much as you possibly can without blowing the highlights (use the blinkies in the LCD review). The photo may look overexposed but you can pull it down in post processing to the right value. In fact, I am usually not afraid to blow highlights if they are in regions that I don't care about, like the background sky when I am shooting a bird, for example.

This is the best advice yet, in the easiest to understand wording.

Light is the enemy of noise, so the more light you give to your exposure, the less noise grain it will have, all else being equal.

.

When you are shooting at high ISO, it implies you are light-stressed. The root problem is there isn't enough light.

You might be shooting wide open at 1/60 second at ISO 3200. Then somebody says, ETTR for reduced noise! Sure, no problem, go down to 1/30 sec! OK, 1/60 was already risky, and 1/30 is just too slow a shutter speed.

The answer is to go to a STILL higher ISO, the very territory we were trying to avoid. Higher ISO will reduce noise.

Lots of useful information but Im not finding much on actual workflow in post. What is normally required to correct an overexposed image and eliminate noise?

If Im working with RAW.....Is it just a matter of adjusting exposure or do you have play with all kinds of settings like fill light, blacks, contrast, saturation.....?

In other words, is it a matter of experimenting or just a quick thing normally?

I never shot my pictures this way because I never used high ISO before. Its something I always stayed away from but I knew that eventually id have to learn it because its beneficial.

Snydremark wrote in post #18352846
As John eludes to, there is a technique that has a couple of different acronyms; Expose To The Right (ETTR) or Histogram And Meter Settings To The Right (HAMSTTR). Either way, the basics are to set your exposure as far to the + side of your meter as you can, without blowing out your critical highlights. Once you have the image(s) captured, you'll need to go into your post processing software, and draw the exposure back down to a 'proper' exposure, to recover you darks/blacks and contrast. This will have the effect of minimizing the visibility of noise in your dark/shadow areas. Additionally, there are different 'types' of noise that you will find you're wanting/needing to deal with; the main one that tends to be objectionable to folks in high ISO shots is your 'color' or 'chroma' noise. This is the orange/red/yellow speckling that shows up there; this is the main source of noise angst and is very easy to remove in most PP software now.

Finally, be sure to do all of your noise processing, etc *before* you perform your sharpening actions, in order to avoid sharpening the noise and adding artifacts to your images.

Non-Cliff's Notes versions of this stuff can be found:
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=66836
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=744235

The second link had some great examples, thanks

Wilt wrote in post #18352958
Noise is inherent to high ISO, but there are things you do which can hurt it unnecessarily...and underexposure with 'pushing' during post processing definitely hurts the issue of trying to achieve low noise in high ISO shooting!

I honestly think that the average digital photographer today is overly sensitized to 'noise' (commonly mistakenly called 'grain'). Just as film resulted in increase of grain size at higher ISO, digital noise increases with higher ISO. And the byproduct is not only more 'grain' but a loss of DR. Yes, it is OK to want less of the undesirable, but it is also somewhat unrealistic to expect 'no noise' in our images when high ISO is used. It simply comes with the territory!


I have an area in my house in which I can fairly well recreate EV-1 lighting at will, so I set up a shot of a gray target and a Colorchecker. Here is a crop taken from the high ISO shot, using noise reduction within Lightroom...I think it is really low noise

Then it dawned on me one day, that when I look at a lot of high ISO shots that are posted in the high-ISO picture examples threads, one thing that often strikes me is that the photos are 'unnaturallistically bright'...the original scene did NOT LOOK THAT WAY...nightime scenes look more like daylight!
So maybe the right way do shoot the picture is indeed to give it plenty of exposure to increase the signal:noise yet then reduce the brightness in postprocessing to mimic WHAT YOU SAW with your eyes, and not make it look like daylight! When illumination levels get really dim, cones stop working as well and color saturation drops, and more of our rods, the brightness receptors, in the eyes take over...so a photo with those characteristics more closely mimics our vision (and not the electronic sensors's version of reality).

On the left is as-shot by a Canon 7D, and you can see that I had to use 1/10 f/2.8 and ISO 12800 to get this shot.
Oon the right is a virtual copy in Lightroom, with the image made to mimic what I could really see of the targets with my own eyes in that dim light.


What I had to do in Lightroom settings was to reduce Exposure by -3EV, cut color Saturation, and boost Blacks and Shadows...as light dims, the cones in our eyes do not work as well in detecting colors, and the rods come more into play to simply detect shapes and motion.

So just maybe our attempts to get low light shots to be bright is UNNATURAL and not like our eyes see and as our brains remember the scene. So if we up exposure in camera AND drop it in postprocessing, we can reduce digital noise yet increase the reality of the rendered capture! Just a thought for folks to chew on.

Thanks for providing examples, very helpful

PJmak wrote in post #18353041
Lots of useful information but Im not finding much on actual workflow in post. What is normally required to correct an overexposed image and eliminate noise?

If Im working with RAW.....Is it just a matter of adjusting exposure or do you have play with all kinds of settings like fill light, blacks, contrast, saturation.....?

In other words, is it a matter of experimenting or just a quick thing normally?

I never shot my pictures this way because I never used high ISO before. Its something I always stayed away from but I knew that eventually id have to learn it because its beneficial.

Just decrease what is usually called "exposure" but is actually brightness.

PJmak wrote in post #18353041
Lots of useful information but Im not finding much on actual workflow in post. What is normally required to correct an overexposed image and eliminate noise?

If Im working with RAW.....Is it just a matter of adjusting exposure or do you have play with all kinds of settings like fill light, blacks, contrast, saturation.....?

In other words, is it a matter of experimenting or just a quick thing normally?

I never shot my pictures this way because I never used high ISO before. Its something I always stayed away from but I knew that eventually id have to learn it because its beneficial.

What software are you using? The controls that you mention are for what is now a rather old version of Adobe Camera Raw/Lightroom using process version 2010 or earlier. Adobe introduced a new Process Version, PV2012 with the release of LR4 and then in IIRC ACR V7, which shipped with PS CS6. PV 2012 is much improved in it's abilities to handle highlight details, which is really useful if you are going to ETTR. It has some new sliders, Highlights and Shadows, to replace the recovery slider, along with Whites and Blacks and of course the Exposure slider.

I tend to use both the highlights and shadows sliders to control those regions of the image, and the exposure slider to control the midtones. So I will often bring the highlights right down to -100, which usually brings out lots of detail in the sky etc, and then bring down the mids with the exposure, but not by as much as I might have used positive EC for the exposure. I often have back lit subjects where I want to bring you the shadow detail, rather than it being a big dark blob. Very useful if you need to tone map the image to bring out hidden details in the shadows.

It is very much easier to do this with PV2012 than older versions.

Alan