D80 Too much noise?

[buruburu]

I've been really pushing my D80 in nightclub shots, but the more I use it, the more the amount of noise is bothering me. Does this shot at ISO 400 seem acceptable to you in terms of noise?

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/4575/dsc2021do7.th.jpg (http://img218.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc2021do7.jpg)

Here's the same shot post processed.

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/1236/dsc2021postdl5.th.jpg (http://img218.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc2021postdl5.jpg)

I had the camera set to underexpose by about 2 stops since I was trying to soak the ambient light in. Started experimenting, and ended up setting the camera to 1/15s, closed the aperature to about f/11, dropped the ISO, and slapped the flash into rear sync. Even more painful, when a good 1/3 of the ambient light you're trying to soak in is black light reflected off of those neon clothing.

Lighting bootcamp I tell ya. Second time doing these type of nightclub shots.

BTW... I know... I have hot pixels... *sigh... need to send the D80 in for a remapping, but can't deal with not having a camera ready. Guess I could drop back to my D50.

[Esoterra]

Personally, given the situation, the noise isnt that bad to me. What is your sharpen level set to in camera? Keep it at Normal because it adds noise when you boost the sharpness...at least it does on my D70s.

[buruburu]

Sharpness is set to normal.

[jcon]

The PP'd one does look a bit noisy for 400, even in those settings. I thik the original looks better.

Myself, I would try going with a larger Fstop like around F5, just to let in a little more light, that will also give you a little more to work with in PP. Did you try any without under-exposing?

BTW, what lens was used?

[wh0128]

yeah the post processed picture looks to me to be significanly worse than the original. I would also try opening up the lens a little bit more like jcon said. Also what image format did you shoot in RAW or Jpeg?? I'd think that if you shot in RAW you could have more flexibility with exposure than the Jpeg image, with a slightly higher resolution to crop and play around a bit more.

[buruburu]

Reprocessed it again. This time, I did a +.7 exposure compensation on the raw, did a level adjust to bring out more skin tone, punched the brightness and contrast up a tad, and then finished it off with a 10% unsharp mask.

Looks a little better, but the same noise is still there. The reason why the post process noise look so bad is probably because of the color boost that I'm doing with the levels.

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/1304/dsc2021oo5.th.jpg (http://img213.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc2021oo5.jpg)

Here's another shot that I took, the same night. Here's the original.

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/3835/dsc2025cf3.th.jpg (http://img213.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc2025cf3.jpg)

and here's the post processed

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/7470/dsc2025posttu4.th.jpg (http://img213.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc2025posttu4.jpg)

For the post processing, I used to different levels adjustment, 1 to intensify the darkness, and that was applied selectively to the clothes and background. Then I applied another levels adjustment to brighten up the skin tone. This was done selectively as well.

What bothered me about the original is that the skin doesn't look smooth. For example, take a look at the chin and lower jaw. It's not noise from high ISO, but it doesn't look... I suppose.... natrual...

[jcon]

What lens did you use? Are you using Capture NX for the editing? If so, did you try the D-Lighting feature? I have found that is a very smart little tool to use on dark photos.

[erichlund]

IIRC, doesn't underexposure significantly increase noise on ANY digital camera?

[buruburu]

Those were shot with the 50mm f/1.8 I believe. As for the post processing noise, that's understandable, since I am boosting the levels back up again. What I'm having issues with is the noise in the original.

Underexposing was set in camera while shot, so it simply adjusted the aperature and shutter speed, rather than doing the underexposing in the in camera processing.

And yes, Capture NX for post processes.

[Prospero]

[quote=buruburu;165611]Underexposing was set in camera while shot, so it simply adjusted the aperature and shutter speed, rather than doing the underexposing in the in camera processing.
quote]

That is the very reason why your shots are so noisy. Any digital camera is noisy when you underexpose your pictures. The best way to fight noise is to expose properly, which means that you should expose to the right (this has to do with the histogram, your result should not only cover the left hand side of the histogram). Aparmley, a member of this forum wrote an excellent article about that, you can read it here: http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showpost.php?p=161697&postcount=2. Results will be a lot better if you do not underexpose but make the picture somewhat darker in post processing. However, be carefull not to overexpose, this will irrecoverably ruin the highlights.