Noise and sharpness

[Steve B]

Can there be any relationship between noise and sharpness? I have an FZ5 which is quite noisy in the out of focus part of the photo. However, the parts in focus are extremely sharp with great detail. Friends with digital SLR's are always very impressed with the quality of A4 prints (from a relatively cheap printer) from this camera.

[Razr]

Can there be any relationship between noise and sharpness? I have an FZ5 which is quite noisy in the out of focus part of the photo. However, the parts in focus are extremely sharp with great detail. Friends with digital SLR's are always very impressed with the quality of A4 prints (from a relatively cheap printer) from this camera.Your "out of focus" areas might in fact be "Bokeh" (Japanese for "out of focus") by your description.

If your prints were "noisy", so would the in focus portions be.

[Dave Dilks]

I'm not sure if this is the same thing that you are describing, but there is a relationship between noise and brightness, with certain types of noise being much more prominent in shadows. I see this a lot in my concert photos, where the performer(s) in the spotlight are very sharp but those off to the side are very noisy. If this is the problem you are seeing, and it isn't important for you to capture the detail in the shadows, you can get rid of the noise pretty easily using a Levels adjustment in Photoshop.

[debu_17]

I fuly agree with Razr and Dave.
the out of foucus areas must be equally affected as the sharp areas.
the reason for the noise in some areas of the pics is the diff. in light level.
in small CCD like in fz 7 or FZ 50 the SNR , or the signal to noise ratio is worst at the lower end of the dynamic response range, i.e. when the exposure is not enough.

this is improved when there is enough light, as the signal
level is much larger than the noise.

depending upon the sensor (ccd) there is also a relationship between
the temprature at which it operates and the noise.
keeping the ccd cool helps much, as the noise in some types of ccd may increase drastically with temp.

hence pics at asa 400 with flash are much bettr than
the obes with out it.!