Noisy images with the D300 & D300s!!

I have a question about the CMOS sensors in these cameras and the supposed "Exceptionally Low Noise" results for the D300 & D300s.

Early this spring I rented a D300, and I just purchased a D300s. Both cameras at ISO 400 are FAR noisier than the images taken with my D70. This is while initially viewing them in Lightroom 2.1 & 2.5 and at any level of magnification, (not just while pixel peeping @ 100%)

Even at ISO 200 these cameras seem to result in much noisier images than my other digital camera.

I shot both cameras with the in camera menus set to Adobe RGB, 14bit, no compression. No noise reduction.

The images of the fox kits I took this spring with the D300, required a Lot, and I do mean A Lot, of work to remove excessive noise in the OOF, colors in the background. Some shots of a weasel I took with this same D300, at ISO 800, are pretty much unusable due to the excessive noise. I assumed at the time, that being a "rented" camera, the trouble may have been with it!! But,...

...Yesterday I took several hundred macro shots of a flower with the new D300s, and these are extremely noisy as well!!

I thought, and have read in all the various reviews that these cameras and their "New" sensors and processing engine give "superb" low noise response. So I'm wondering,.. what Gives?????

Am I missing something?? Does obtaining those "claimed" low noise results require always leaving the camera on one of its "low noise", or some other setting that I'm unaware of?

TIA for any help you can give!

Craig

Hey Craig,

Post some samples so we can get an idea. Is it possible you have an accidentally dialed-in underexposure?

The D300 is pretty good at iso400 -- on a per-pixel basis perhaps not terribly much cleaner than the D70 but with much higher detail retention.

Let's see what you got!

Craig,

I don't think there is enough information about what you are seeing to respond. Being able to make available RAW images from each camera (your older D70 and the D300/D300s) that illustrate you issue would be a start. (There are ways of emailing RAW files. I'll tell you how if you are interested.) If you are shooting jpegs, then there is a very good possibility that the "noise levels" are being reduced in the D70 at greater and probably uncontrollable levels than they are in the prosumer D300 and D300s.

The other question would be how are you viewing the image? I hope you are printing them at the same size since viewing on the monitor is generally not a good way to determine whether noise is an issue in the image. Using lightroom might also be a factor. I find that Adobe does a lot worse job with the sensor data than Capture NX when I'm being picky. Because I don't like using NX, I tend not to be picky very often.

Anthony Medici wrote: The other question would be how are you viewing the image? I hope you are printing them at the same size since viewing on the monitor is generally not a good way to determine whether noise is an issue in the image. Using lightroom might also be a factor. I find that Adobe does a lot worse job with the sensor data than Capture NX when I'm being picky. Because I don't like using NX, I tend not to be picky very often.

Tony,
Also don't some programs have a built in default when you bring up your image to view? i.e. add some sharpening, lighten, etc,etc. I know Adobe Camera RAW does this when I bring up a RAW file, it "tweaks" it to what ever default it has set or tweaks it to some standard. I mostly use NX and it shows the RAW file as is. Not sure if Lightroom does this or not.

For the record ISO 200-800 are pretty darn good on the D300s I have. On the other hand this is really not a "exceptionally low noise" camera like the D700 & D3. I do think the D300 & D300s should be better noisewise than the D70 though.

Thank you for the response,

Sorry about the lack of info. I'm never quite sure what all information I should include with these posts to allow for a proper response. No matter how much information I think I should include, it seems I always Leave out what's most relevant!!!

First, I am not a dues paying member yet, (...and with the D300s clogging up my plastic, it may be a while before I am!! ) So I can't "post" images here. I can e-mail a few if you don't mind having me bug you to do that!

I am shooting at the largest RAW file setting, 14 bit uncompressed, or equivalent on the D70, No in camera sharpening or any other in camera image adjustments. I do a simple drag & drop transfer from the card to the hard drive and then import folder into Lightroom. I had to DL lightroom 2.5 in order to get Camera RAW 5.5 so I could import the D300s images as 2.1 wouldn't handle them. The camera RAW settings in LR are at whatever the default settings are when the program loads. I have CS3, and RAW5.5 isn't compatible with it, so I can't open these images in PS and evaluate them there.

I haven't used Nikon Transfer or Nikon View as I find them to be "painfully slow" even on an intel iMac with 2.5gigs of RAM.

I haven't printed any of the images from the D300s yet, but the few fox images from the D300 look good after a lot of work on the OOF background. I have had some of those images printed off my cheap epson, and from files sent to Mpix and Adorama. (...again, after extensive masking and work to eliminate noise) Those prints look Really Good!!

I just thought that with the "new" CMOS sensor, all the "rave" reviews, and 6-7 years of tech. advancements since the D70, I was shocked to see "So" much noise in these images on screen!! I haven't tried making a straight print without doing any of the noise work on the file as I assumed "all" that noise would be apparent in the print!

As for "under exposure", that is certainly a possibility with the weasel images I mentioned. Using the rented D300, and the 200-400 f4 VR zoom. The light was very dim, She was coming and going very quick so even at 800 iso and f4, in order to keep my shutter speeds even close to a range where I could hope to freeze her motion, I was underexposed some. Maybe up to a stop, stop & 1/3 for some of them!! As I mentioned earlier, I don't think any of those images are even usable they are SO awfully noisy!! However, the flower images shot yesterday with the D300s are grainy and noisy even with plenty of exposure to the "right"!

I hope this gives a better explanation of my issue!!

Thanks again to every one for responding!

Craig

Craig,

Is it possible that either your in-camera or Lightroom default jpeg settings have sharpening cranked way up? This could result in what looks like excessive noise. And if so, you could reconvert with sharpening turned down or off and get usable files.

I'd want to see the RAW file from each. I usually send raw files with an email system called You Send It. A free account should be able to allow you to send images from all three cameras. (www.yousendit.com) It's been years since I looked at an image from a D70 so it should be interesting to see an image from that camera you consider acceptable and one from each of the others you do not. If possible, I'd also like to see this weasel image from the D300 at ISO 800 that you're having problems with too.

It may be a matter that you are not as tolerate of noise as others or it could be the cameras are producing more noise than is appropriate. Today on the D1scussion list, someone complained about a D700 with too much noise in the red channel at ISO 200. That's one camera I would not expect that comment about.

Anthony,

Thanks, I will find some of those images and send them. It will probably be later this afternoon, if that's OK?

Once I've signed up at "yousendit", How do I go about getting them to you. You can PM me if that's information you don't want publicly posted!

thanks again.
Craig

At ISO 800 and underexposing a stop and then bringing back up in post processing... yeah you will definitely get noise, plenty of it. The only camera that looks even remotely decent to my eye with that procedure is the D700/D3

E.J. Peiker wrote:At ISO 800 and underexposing a stop and then bringing back up in post processing... yeah you will definitely get noise, plenty of it.

Yeah, but that would be the case with most cameras. The comparison here was between the D70, D200 and D300. The D70 and D200 would even be worse in that process. I owned the D70, then the D200 and now the D300, and there is no comparison with regards to noise levels. The D300 wins hands down!

CraigT wrote:As for "under exposure", that is certainly a possibility with the weasel images I mentioned. Using the rented D300, and the 200-400 f4 VR zoom. The light was very dim, She was coming and going very quick so even at 800 iso and f4, in order to keep my shutter speeds even close to a range where I could hope to freeze her motion, I was underexposed some. Maybe up to a stop, stop & 1/3 for some of them!! As I mentioned earlier, I don't think any of those images are even usable they are SO awfully noisy!! However, the flower images shot yesterday with the D300s are grainy and noisy even with plenty of exposure to the "right"!

Craig : when viewing on screen at 100 % you are enlarging your pixels MORE when using your D300(s) than your D70: thus enlarging the noise as well.

(I expect-no image-) : the background of the weasel to be even MORE underexposed than the 1-1 1/3 of the main subject => noise !!!

No direct explanation on the flower (-no image - was it RED by any chance ?)

...Here's a link to some of the samples and an explanation as to how they were processed. I was able to post these at the other forum where I have posting privledges!

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums ... hp?t=46229

I will try to add more, but moderators may pull them as I think I might be breaking the rules for posting!

Let me know what you think!

Craig

Well, I would make a few comments based on seeing the two examples posted at BPN. First relates to expectations. If you take an underexposed shot at ISO 400 on any digital camera, it's going to show noise, that's just a fact. The noise shown may be relatively better or worse for camera A than for camera B, but you still have to put performance claims in perspective. All sensors have noise... it increases as you increase the ISO, and also increases as you under-shoot the exposure. If you want the minimum noise that a camera can produce, you have to shoot at its lowest ISO, and you have to expose to the right. A newer generation sensor is not a "get out of noise jail free" card.

Also, comparing a well-exposed shot (which appears to be the case for the D70 example, looking at its histogram) to an under-exposed shot (which appears to be the case for the D300s shot) quite likely will favor the well-exposed shot. This is generally true as long as the two cameras are not separated by too many generations or other technological leaps. I would say the D70 and D300s are close enough to each other in terms of tech generations and performance that exposure is going to be a dominant factor for evaluating noise. Since the exposure is clearly off in one of the samples, this will muddy the waters considerably for any direct comparison.

Here's another part of the perspective: understanding the effects of pixel density. As mentioned above, if you want to evaluate apples to apples, not only do you need to compare equivalent exposures but you also need to compare them at equivalent relative size -- which again these aren't, if they are both crops out of a 100% view of the respective images as you describe. As we have discussed elsewhere, there are a lot of factors that go into the noise performance of a sensor. But one of the dominant ones is the light-gathering efficiency of the sensor which is heavily related to the sensor size, not the pixel density... all other things being equal. Since the D70 and D300s have the same sized sensor, trying to evaluate relative noise performance between these 2 cameras by comparing 100% crops is "zooming into" one of them more than the other. This serves to magnify any defects present in the higher resolution image more than the ones in the lower resolution image. Since in this case the higher resolution image was also under-exposed by at least a stop, it gets a double whammy and is going to look much poorer in comparison.

If I wanted to do the kind of camera-to-camera comparison you're doing here, I'd start by doing this:

• Shoot the two cameras side by side, same subject, same field of view, same focal point, same aperture. This is to avoid exposure changes due to different light, different subjects or different framing, as well as to avoid confusion in apparent detail related to subject matter or DOF.
• Ensure that the exposure is the same on both cameras. Or, if I was concerned about comparing each camera's best possible exposure, I'd optimize the exposure for each camera individually. This is because one may have a better dynamic range than the other. Then I'd adjust the RAW files during conversion to baseline them to each other for direct comparison.
• Finally, after converting the RAW files to TIFF (not JPEG, to avoid compression artifacts) I would downsize the higher resolution image to the same pixel dimensions as the lower resolution image.
• Now I would compare the images side-by-side at 100% across the range of highlights, midtones and shadows to see how they stack up.

Royce,

Thank you for responding. I think I understand what your saying,.. (at least "most" of it anyways!)

Everything but this,... "Then I'd adjust the RAW files during conversion to baseline them to each other for direct comparison."

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "baselining" them? The rest of it "I" get! (...I think )

Thanks again!

Craig

I think what he meant is to use the RAW converter to make the two images look identical. Differences in cameras, meters, white balance systems etc between the two cameras will give them a slightly different appearance.

It also might just be the noise patterns that you don't like in the new cameras. Looking at both samples, they are all much better than my D1H was even at 200 ISO so all things are relative. I wonder what those images would look like printed. There is a very good chance that the noise patterns would be too small to see in a print at 360 dpi. That's a benefit of higher density images.

One last question about those images. Did you do a general sharpening to the whole image for display or to just the flower? I'd process the image without sharpening and then just sharpen the areas I want. Not sharpening the darker areas will keep the noise in check more.

Yes, E.J.'s right... that's what I meant about baselining the two images against each other during RAW conversion. If you optimize the shot for each camera to capture the best possible exposure each one is capable of, it may involve a different exposure value for each of them. One camera's dynamic range may vary from the other one, meaning the ideal "performance envelopes" are not identical. Exposing to the right on one camera may give you an ideal histogram at 1/200s @ f/4, for example. But the other camera might have more highlight headroom, and so its ideal histogram for the same scene might be pushed by 1/3 or 2/3 of a stop (slower) shutter speed, to capture more light... for example 1/250s or 1/320s @ f/4.

Since the two exposures would not be identical to each other now, it makes it a bit harder to compare them straight up. You might want to drop the exposure of the brighter one by 1/3 to 2/3 stops during RAW conversion to get it visually back down to the same exposure level as the other, to make it easier to look at them side by side...

I just wanted to thank everyone who took the time to post on this topic!!

I think I have a pretty good idea now of what to expect from this camera, why I'm seeing what I'm seeing, and hopefully, what to do to improve the next batch of images!!

Thanks again to everyone!!!

Craig

p.s. Here's a link to my first officially posted image for critique!

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums ... hp?t=46306

It was shot with this new camera! (It's on another site, but I hope you'll all look in and maybe comment on it!)

Thanks again everybody!!!!
C.

You are comparing apples to oranges.
In your post at BPN... you have shown 100% crops of both cams.
As indicated in earlier posts here, if you wish to compare you should "downsize" the D300 image to the pixel dimensions of the D70 (3008x2000)...then show the 1024 crops you posted at BPN.

Secondly, you are comparing an "underexposed" D300 image with a properly exposed D70 image.

To see what is really going on, I suggest you follow Royce's procedure...then compare to see if there are possibly some issues with your cam.

I migrated from the D70 to the D300....in my experience, the images from the D300 are cleaner.