Images too Noisy?

http://www.flickr.com …y/sets/72157626​016948268/
I did a shoot of a meet last night and have been told by a couple people that my images are kind of noisy. How about to do I go fixing and preventing this exactly? Still new to digital, did 35mm B&W for 5 years and now making the cross over so Photoshop is still relatively new to me.

Daniel,

What can you tell us about how the shots were taken? This will help formulate ideas for improvements.

What camera and lens (if shooting with DSLR) were you using?
Did you use a tripod?
Did you use the on-board flash on your camera?
Did you use any other type of flash or strobes?
If you were shooting with a DLSR camera, did you have a UV filter on your lens?

I'll check back on this thread later to see if I can assist. There are some great automotive photographers on this site, so you should be able to get some good ideas.

Great looking Datsun Z!

Mike

For whatever reason, I really like #3.

Camera: Canon 20D
Lens: Sigma 28-300
Tripod: Able 300DX
Flash: None
Filter: UV
Light: Natural, well rather street lights

Im guessing u were using a high iso like 800? If so that might be your problem..

Daniel,

Thanks for the additional info. Here are a few thoughts:
1. When shooting at night around bright light sources, take the UV filter off your lens. This will help reduce lens flare (bright colored dots of light). Some lens flare is created when light bounces between your lens and the filter in front of it.

2. Watch how you set up each shot. Look for glare and try to find angles to reduce glare. Use your lens hood to keep some of the side and top lighting glare from entering the lens. Sometimes I have to shield the lens using my hand or a hat to keep out glare, but make sure you don't get into the image.

3. Since you have a tripod and can do long exposures, set your ISO to 100. This will help eliminate the noise in most images.

4. Set you camera up to take multiple bracketed exposures (I think the 20D can do this). I usuall set mine up to take three shots, and I set the exposure down a bit.

5. I don't know if you have access to Photoshop based on your comment. If you do, consider setting the camera to RAW. This will give you a nice digital file that contains more detail and information than a JPG file. I'm not much of a technical wiz bang expert on this subject, but I can tell you there is a huge difference. Use Photoshop (PS) to open your RAW image. The editor in PS has settings for exposure, white balance, shadows & highlight compensation, saturation, levels, etc. You can use these settings to make the black areas black, correct colors, etc. Once you've corrected the image too look better in RAW you can save it to TIF (good) or JPG (ok) for additional editing. Even though you changed the settings of the RAW image, the data for the photo is still in tact and can be changed back or re-adjusted without any loss of data. Each time you edit a JPG file you will loose a bit of the origial data.

6. Most of you images appear to have a green cast which is very typical when shooting under metal halide or mercury vapor lighting. This can be corrected by increasing the magenta color level, which I usually do in RAW. Most metal halide lighting will be around 3500K and takes around a +15 or so of magenta to balance out to white.

Ok, enough of my book here. Hope some of this helps!

Mike

I like the feel of 1, 2, & 3. I think the noise adds to those 3 pictures.

i quite like them with a bit of noise

i love the 3rd and last shots good job bro, keep it up and practice more

#2 works for me... the noise and the flares... kinda looks like the pic was taken in the 80s or something? I like it!

I like them, I'd say under the conditions you did just fine... But, as stated if you want less noise.. mount your tripod, do a long shutter and set your iso to 100.

I think somebody is blowing smoke. I looked at your original sized images on Flickr and the noise is pretty minimal. Shooting under streetlights gives you a funny color cast, but you can correct that in processing.

I appreciate the advice!
Thank you. I come from doing about 5 years of pretty much only 35mm B&W, mostly street photography and abstract, so digital is still something I'm learning. I have access to Photoshop CS4 on my laptop. My camera does indeed have bracketing of course, my 35mm camera (an Elan7NE) has it as well.

Shots were all does in 100 ISO

I really like 3 and the corolla looks wicked.
They are not that noisy, I think someone is being a bit picky.
Keep up the great work.

That's good to hear. I was worrying it might have been an issue with my lens even somehow!