[Larrymc]

Noise depend mostly of light level. If there less light that hit the sensor you get more noise. If these less constrast in the scene, it is more visible too.

Here you get low constrast for several reasons:
- the apperture f/14 is likely not the best of your lense... The lense is more likely to washout details at f/14 than say f/8. This is called diffraction and reduce the contrast and level of details your lense will provide.
- the lighting condition force you to get low constrast in some areas (like the forest in background).

Also you used iso400
You used iso 400 on a with very low constrast in some area (like the trees) so that's to be expected.

Your parameter where f/14, iso 400, 1/100s... I really think that you would have gotten better results from f/8 or f/7.1 iso100.

Also post processing can increase noise if you pushed shadows, increased constrast/micro constrast on the picture, all of this basically stretch the photo and increase resulting noise. But post processing can also allow to reduced noise. If you enabled prime noise reduction on DxO prime starting from the RAW, the noise would have entirely disapeared in your situation.

Thanks Nicholas,

I realize the errors in my technique that's what I get for not paying attention to my settings. I was in manual mode and "chased the meter" to center it. Lesson learned. its obvious in the second photo I posted where the ISO was 200 and the Aperture value was f9 which is pretty close to what I should have used for the first shot.

[Nicolas06]

Thanks Nicholas,

I realize the errors in my technique that's what I get for not paying attention to my settings. I was in manual mode and "chased the meter" to center it. Lesson learned. its obvious in the second photo I posted where the ISO was 200 and the Aperture value was f9 which is pretty close to what I should have used for the first shot.

M mode in great in complex conditions and for learning... but to me if the initial picture was not a pure test image, what you really need to concentrate on is framing and composition first. Let the camera care of the detail like exposure and at worst force the parameter that you know is key. For example here you wanted deph of field so f/8 was a good choice of apperture and Av would have done the job.

To me it is only if people already find the picture quite interresting that secondary aspect like the level of noise can come into play...

Look at this one... The focus isn't that perfect. Also I added some grain on purpose in post processing. Still this is the picture that they prefered and we were many taking photo at the wedding and the picture won the price of the best photo. People judged the picture on other aspects and this picture won against much sharper and picture without a bit of grain in them !