Shadow Noise

A Friend has been commenting that he sees a lot of noise in the shadows on my photos,
for example
This one, taken a ISO 100, f13 1/250

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

It's underexposed, that's why there's shadow noise; not enough data to properly render the image.

We need a 100% crop. In any case, that shot looks underexposed to me.

100% crop,

Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Are you and your friends monitors calibrated? Mine are and all I can see is the knife edge and faint( and I mean faint) outline of the tip of the knife. I had to bring up the levels in PS to even figure out what I was looking at.

PS. I like the idea of the shot alot. Just needs some fine tuning.

This is what I see on my screen, http://www.random-chaos.org.uk …-a-day-images/compare.jpg

The one on the left is the updated one, the one on the right is the original.

So i'm confused now.

I do not see any "noise" in the 100% crop. There is some detail in the metal work but that is not noise, I think...

crashthenet44 wrote in post #9435838
Are you and your friends monitors calibrated? Mine are and all I can see is the knife edge and faint( and I mean faint) outline of the tip of the knife. I had to bring up the levels in PS to even figure out what I was looking at.

you should just see the edge of the end and the backbone of the knife and the scalloped teeth, otherwise it should all be pretty much black.

I could have sworn it was calibrated recently, but now I think about it, i don't remember doing it since I installed snow leopard. but it should be very, very dark as a photo, i was aiming for just an outline.

It's shadow noise; if you push the left side of the tone curve margin too far right, you clip data causing it... and underexposure.
It's way underexposed.

Looking at the .JPG (I shoot RAW+JPG) the background has smudges of grey on it.

I still don't understand how I could expose correctly for it though. The exposure was driven purely by the flash creating the rimlight on the top and left of the blade with bounced light illuminating the teeth.

I guess I'll have to set it up again tomorrow and run through the range on the flash output to see it's affect, but I didn't want to illuminate the face of the blade.

The full size image should look ok... ummm that's a really small jpeg.
Use some noise reduction and in DPP preferences >General Settings>Jpeg image quality>enable "remove bock noise and mosquito noise"

On my calibrated monitor, the left photo is much better and meets the goal that you describe.

Maybe I don't fully understand, but since this photo is mainly about highlights against a dark/black background... there aren't really any shadows to see noise in. You've reduced the blackpoint to where any noise would be effectually hidden. The jpegs are indeed very small.

To adjust for proper exposure for this type of photo, you'll have to look at your histogram to ensure that there's no clipping and that the highlights are where you want to be. The camera's meter, regardless of which metering mode, is likely to be way off for whatever you're trying to achieve considering there is so much black in the scene. That in itself can result in noise if the exposure is not where you want it to be and you have to push it in post.

blackhawk wrote in post #9436394
The full size image should look ok... ummm that's a really small jpeg.
Use some noise reduction and in DPP preferences >General Settings>Jpeg image quality>enable "remove bock noise and mosquito noise"

Here's the full size original Jpeg before crop

http://www.random-chaos.org.uk …-01-20-_MG_8002%20(2).jpg

and here's the processed version,

http://www.random-chaos.org.uk …002%20-%20Version%202.jpg


At some angles on my monitor I can make out noise in the first one, but its pretty much gone in the second.

I can't find the orignal OOC JPEG, so I'll have to double check the camera, I may have gone back to just RAW

Nathan wrote in post #9438036
On my calibrated monitor, the left photo is much better and meets the goal that you describe.

Maybe I don't fully understand, but since this photo is mainly about highlights against a dark/black background... there aren't really any shadows to see noise in. You've reduced the blackpoint to where any noise would be effectually hidden. The jpegs are indeed very small.

They're done just for the web, but I'm glad that you're seeing what I'm seeing (I think), my friend appears to be having problems with his computer, if he loads the image up without photoshop running it looks o.k., but as soon as he fires up photoshop, the noise appears.

Nathan wrote in post #9438036
To adjust for proper exposure for this type of photo, you'll have to look at your histogram to ensure that there's no clipping and that the highlights are where you want to be. The camera's meter, regardless of which metering mode, is likely to be way off for whatever you're trying to achieve considering there is so much black in the scene. That in itself can result in noise if the exposure is not where you want it to be and you have to push it in post.

I will have to check this out this evening, and see if I can get it to not clip, (I 'm still struggling to understand how I can clip black, clip white - yes, black - no). More Reading required I think.


Thanks to everyone who's commented so far, it's been really helpful.

Colin Morey wrote in post #9438459
Here's the full size original Jpeg before crop

http://www.random-chaos.org.uk …-01-20-_MG_8002%20(2).jpg

and here's the processed version,

http://www.random-chaos.org.uk …002%20-%20Version%202.jpg

At some angles on my monitor I can make out noise in the first one, but its pretty much gone in the second.

Agreed. Quite clear to me in the first (on my NOT calibrated work monitor). Second looks fine though.

I love the idea. Would you mind sharing your setup?