One of the aspects that has seemed to significantly lag in the SONY DSLR is how noise is being dealt with. Oh, I suppose it has been tolerable for most camera shooters, but for those looking to get significant results in less than optimal conditions, well ... :rolleyes: it's a bit more than troubling.
I have posted settings to try and mitigate the impact of noise in low light conditions, but I am anxious hear if anyone else is "bothered" by this. The introduction of the A900 has, once again, revealed that sensor or "digital noise" continues to plague shots higher than ISO-400.
I strongly suggest that if the camera cannot deal with it directly (RAW or otherwise), that the manufacturer's release some kind of specific "freeware" that can be utilized in the PC & Apple computer for dealing with this issue in an "authorized" and mutually acceptable way for the SONY-style (pun intended ;) ) cameras.
Okay ... let's hear some NOISE of support! I would like to submit this thread to SONY for consideration. Ignoring the issue will do nothing to erradicate it.
SONY must stop the noise!
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12-12-2008, 11:15 AMDonSchapSONY must stop the noise!
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12-12-2008, 11:23 AMRooz
its certianly sony's achilles heel right now.
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12-12-2008, 11:56 AMlaydrosAbsolutely right. I feel like we have sorta pretended this wasn't true in this forum. I LOVE my camera, but a couple of days after getting it I tried to do some low light shooting and realized just how unusable the photos are past ISO 400.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rooz
And while I'm at it, THE KIT LENS STINKS!
What noise reduction software have you guys tried and had the best luck with. It's good to complain some to encourage Sony to improve things, but I'm interested in any tips.
I'll also add that of the SLR making companies, most are optics companies, but Sony is an electronics company. We should have the BEST noise outcomes, not the worst. -
12-12-2008, 12:00 PMRooz
i dont use any NR but i hear Noise Ninja is pretty good.
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12-12-2008, 12:14 PMPanda BearCoupled with the soft image problem,
especially, this is certainly one of the biggest problems. Getting good shots in poor light should be a camera company's objective, not an accepted drawback.
Good luck with getting a resolution, but it won't fix itself, so thanks for running this ball into the line for all of us. -
12-12-2008, 12:15 PMlaydrosWere you waving your D300 around at me when you typed that? :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Rooz
If money were not an issue, I would have a hard time choosing between the A900 and D700. Both seem like really incredible cameras. I hate to hear that the A900 is seeing similar noise issues. Hopefully the bigger sensor (and good glass) mean most A900 users don't need the high ISO very often. -
12-12-2008, 01:39 PMdr4gonYou mean a900 and d3x?Quote:
Originally Posted by laydros
I've been saying this for a while, Sony lags behind in noise....
On the good news, sales are good. A record 12.4 percent market share! Wohoo!
Some interesting noise observations and discussions regarding "skewed ISO performance"
Sony's done quite well. They need a new A750 or A800 or whatever that has the movie mode (would like it ;)) and has best in class high ISO, low noise performance, much like the much talked about D400
And more glass! -
12-12-2008, 01:51 PMRoozthis is good news but should also be tempered by the fact that sony have 4 bodies now, and 3 of them are pitched just right price-wise at the entry level. in the previous year they only had 1 body, (which wasn't very good either), so you'd expect sales to have dramatically increased.Quote:
Originally Posted by dr4gon
sony have really done a number on pentax though. wow. thats some troubling figures for pentaxs users. one things for sure, sony can only grow from here. -
12-12-2008, 02:27 PMdr4gonTrue, which is why I am here with Sony. Found my A300 at a steal. I hope in the coming year that Sony will start to differentiate their lineup. As far as I am concerned, the A200, A300, and A350 are all the same camera. The A300 has LV, not that special in terms of picture quality, and the A350 has a 14.2MP sensor but pictures come out nearly identical to that of the 200 and 300, same level of noise, detail, etc....Quote:
Originally Posted by Rooz
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12-12-2008, 02:29 PMe_dawg
I use 4/3 cameras (with their slightly smaller sensors) a lot, so I know all about noise at high ISO. It's not so much the level of noise present, but rather, the inability to retain detail at high ISO which irritates me. IMO, this is mostly due to how advanced the noise reduction algorithms and techniques are. The best NR systems reduce the noise AND retain detail. I was never truly satisfied with the Olympus E-510 due to its mediocre in-camera NR processing, but it is pretty good in the E-520 and E-3. I don't find it to be a problem anymore. And we're talking smaller / higher density sensors here. If Olympus can do it with their 4/3 sensors, surely Sony can do it with the (slightly) larger APS-C sensors.
IMO, Sony's A100 to A700 models are plagued by an inferior NR system. Like the E-510, it's a generation behind, and cannot properly optimize the noise reduction vs detail retention trade-off. I bought the A700 a couple months ago to use as (more or less) a 1.5x tele-converted version of the A900 after hearing that Sony came out with a new v4 firmware that supposedly improved the IQ at high ISO and allowed us to turn off the NR for RAW files.
While the NR Off RAW files were decent, the high ISO JPEG shots still didn't look very good, and even the RAW files were still somehow inferior to the D300 RAW files even with the NR switched off (i.e., they had slightly less detail and a bit more noise). The JPEGs I can understand, but how can the RAW files be inferior? It's the same basic sensor in both cameras.
But let's not brush off the JPEGs so quickly. I have taken to using JPEGs more and doing less PP since I have started using LR2. The D300's JPEGs are usable without excessive adjustment, and so are the Olympus JPEGs. But the A700's JPEGs... not so much. I found myself thinking "oh man, this is going to require a lot of work" far too often (that's also how I felt when I used the E-510). Could I have shot RAW and built my workflow to accomodate NR via Noise Ninja, Neat Image, or Noiseware Pro? Sure, but besides the noise/detail issue, the colour response needed to be adjusted a fair bit too. I have other cameras that don't require that level of PP work, so I was reluctant to accomodate the A700.
Instead of optimizing the NR algorithms where you remove as much noise as possible while still maintaining the maximum detail possible, it's like Sony has no clue of how to do that. At the same ISO setting and lighting condition, NR at high, low, or off, and the A700 files always came out worse than the D300's whether in JPEG or RAW. Coupled with the orange-shift colour balance of the A700 files, it wasn't going to work for me, so it was sent back to the store for refund.
Now, enough of the doom and gloom here. The A900 gives hope that Sony is on the right path. The overall JPEG quality improved somewhat, the NR noise vs detail trade-off improved a bit, and the colour response / colour balance is noticeably improved. I'm still not a huge fan of the NR processing in the JPEGs, and will continue to shoot RAW, but it is good enough that I am keeping the A900. Moreover, I am keenly interested in how much improvement we will see in the in-camera processing and sensor output in future A-series bodies from Sony. If the A800 (or whatever the next one is called) has the kind of optimized output we see from the other majors, I will buy it in a heartbeat.
Nikon figured out how to optimize their in-camera processing with the D300, Canon did it a long time ago with their 20D, and Olympus did it with the E-3. There's no reason in the world why Sony can't do it with their next A-series body. I mean, poach a engineer or two from the other guys if you can't figure it out, for pete's sake :rolleyes: