Digital Noise

Noise – You CAN See It…

Digital Noise – What it is and How to Correct it

In photography, the term digital noise refers to visual distortion. Noise can distort the visual detail of your photo and can give it a grainy appearance. Noise looks like tiny colored pixels or specks in your photograph.

3 Things that can affect digital noise – higher ISO settings, sensor size and long exposures. Once you can pinpoint where the noise is coming from, you can take steps to avoid it. But, there are times when  may not be a bad thing, it can give an image an artistic appearance

These are a few ways you can prevent large amounts of noise:

Lower the ISO: Higher ISOs produce more noise, so it helps to shoot with the lowest ISO that you can while still maintaining proper exposure. Most of the newer DSLR cameras can shoot at higher ISOs without producing noise.

Try opening up the aperture first and slowing down the shutter speed down to the minimum acceptable speed for the subject you are photographing before increasing ISO.

Larger Sensor: The size of a camera’s sensor plays a large role in the final image quality, including the level of noise in a photograph. Your camera’s sensor contains millions of “photosites,” or light-sensitive spots used to gather and record the information brought in through your camera’s lens. Larger sensors have the ability to gather more information. Crop-sensor cameras produce more noise in images at increased ISOs than full-frame cameras. Therefore, the larger your camera’s sensor, the better the image quality and less noise.

Expose Properly: When a photo is exposed properly, there is less introduction of noise into the image. By getting your exposure right in camera, you can avoid unnecessary noise.  Exposing your images properly in camera goes a long way to preventing undesirable noise.

Correcting Noise

Some cameras have built in noise reduction, which could be helpful. There are times when high ISOs are necessary and noise can be easily corrected in post-processing. In Lightroom’s Develop Module, you can reduce the appearance of noise in your images by using the Luminance slider in the Details panel. Simply move the slider to the right to reduce noise, using caution to not take it too far. Too much noise reduction can result in loss of detail in your images, giving them a “plastic” look.

There are many downloadable apps available that will calculate depth of field, exposure and light meter apps; lots of them are FREE. These can help calculate proper settings and thereby reducing noise in your images.

Be Blessed and be a blessing!

All Photographs in this post/blog © Cheryl Howard