[rawr]

Hey rawr, no noise reduction applied... pretty much straight off the camera. The image went through my normal sharpening routine,

Thanks for the explanation, and sorry if it sounded nosey of me. I only ask about masking because I could see the sharpening was picking up bits of the background and making them stand out, instead of just working only on the defined edges of the birds and branches. I only discovered masking quite recently myself in Lightroom (especially using the ALT key). I never used it much before, relying on manually applying differential sharpening and NR to a scene if it needed it by using the adjustment brush. Masking can make life easier. I'm surprised Aperture doesn't offer anything similar.

[Adam]

Today was very overcast and went to test my new K-3 at our local wildlife refuge. The attached photo was a RAW DNG taken at 1/1000, f8, iso1600 by a Tamron Adaptall 500mm f/8 SP Mirror (55B). No post processing except cropping including setting sharpening and noise reduction to zero in Lightroom 5. There appears to be excessive noise. I was expecting better from all the samples I've viewed in the reviews.

1. Does my photo exhibit higher than normal noise or are the samples in the reviews post-processed?
2. Can an individual camera be defective in this regard?

What do you think?

Color noise is really easy to reduce in your raw files. Just pull the color noise slider a bit higher than normal and it will vanish.

[JohnBee]

Looking at my DA* 60-250 images, I have no idea what's going on there.

Working today with the DA*60-250… some serious cropping going on here.
1600 ISO, grainy but bearable, F4, Shutters from 1/40 - 1/60, too slow for these birds. But I got a few.
There is no noise reduction on these first four images.

And the last one with selective noise reduction applied.

From this thread
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/172-pentax-k-3/241198-k3-sample-shots-pos...ml#post2587056

Without pixel peeping, it looks as though these images have chroma NR applied to them. ie, the K-3 usually shows visual chroma at ISO1600.

Which leads me to my next question.
Were these JPG or RAW images?

ie. Adobe Camera Raw adds chroma NR by default to most, if not all, processed images.

[bossa]

Today was very overcast and went to test my new K-3 at our local wildlife refuge. The attached photo was a RAW DNG taken at 1/1000, f8, iso1600 by a Tamron Adaptall 500mm f/8 SP Mirror (55B). No post processing except cropping including setting sharpening and noise reduction to zero in Lightroom 5. There appears to be excessive noise. I was expecting better from all the samples I've viewed in the reviews.

1. Does my photo exhibit higher than normal noise or are the samples in the reviews post-processed?
2. Can an individual camera be defective in this regard?

What do you think?

You can't set NR to zero and expect things to look right. All that chroma noise in the image is what you'll see in ANY camera output where NR is at zero.

My advice: Just leave LR at the default settings to start with and increase NR until you see something that looks "right".

Why would you want to make the image look like garbage unless you were looking for an excuse to sell?

[bossa]

Looking at my DA* 60-250 images, I have no idea what's going on there.

Working today with the DA*60-250… some serious cropping going on here.
1600 ISO, grainy but bearable, F4, Shutters from 1/40 - 1/60, too slow for these birds. But I got a few.
There is no noise reduction on these first four images.









And the last one with selective noise reduction applied.


From this thread
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/172-pentax-k-3/241198-k3-sample-shots-pos...ml#post2587056

Surely you aren't putting those shots up as examples to follow as the noise in those shots is totally unacceptable IMO? You may as well use a P&S if you are.

IMO:
That isn't "grain" it's luma noise (Film grain is soft whereas that is harsh from oversharpening).
Too much sharpening (to start with try 50/50 with a pixel size of 0.5 in LR)
Not enough Luma NR (try no more than 25 @ high ISO without masking in LR)
Not enough NR MASK (try #30)

When the soft bokeh in the BG is showing nasty pixels popping out at you you know you're pushing it too far.

[Rondec]

I really don't see that much noise at high iso. I develop in Lightroom and am pretty careful not to sharpen images too much that are up there in iso, as that can make things worse.

This is a snap of my son at iso 3200 and honestly, it looks pretty clean to me, even at 100 percent. The shadow areas definitely have noise, which if I worried about it, I could clean up pretty easily, but this is without any noise reduction.

[JohnBee]

...This is a snap of my son at iso 3200 and honestly, it looks pretty clean to me, even at 100 percent. The shadow areas definitely have noise, which if I worried about it, I could clean up pretty easily, but this is without any noise reduction.

Are you sure this is without any noise reduction?
Because it certainly looks like there's noise reduction going on in that image(3200), even at this very reduced size.

I'm starting to think that ACR and LR is leaving alot of people fooled by it's default NR settings.

[Barry Pearson]

Thanks for the explanation, and sorry if it sounded nosey of me. I only ask about masking because I could see the sharpening was picking up bits of the background and making them stand out, instead of just working only on the defined edges of the birds and branches. I only discovered masking quite recently myself in Lightroom (especially using the ALT key). I never used it much before, relying on manually applying differential sharpening and NR to a scene if it needed it by using the adjustment brush. Masking can make life easier. I'm surprised Aperture doesn't offer anything similar.

Yes. I nearly always use Masking in the Lightroom Sharpening panel, to avoid sharpening noise in broad areas where noise would be most noticeable. And, as you say, using the ALT key to judge exactly what is being sharpened and what isn't.

Combining this with a small (less than 1) Radius means that a higher Amount can be used without significant side-effects.

[normhead]

I'm sure when I get the Apple profile for the K-3 it will do the same thing....right now I'm using Adobe DNG converter, which doesn't seem to do any noise reduction.

Surely you aren't putting those shots up as examples to follow as the noise in those shots is totally unacceptable IMO? You may as well use a P&S if you are.

I'm putting them up as examples of what I'm getting from the RAW files at 1600 ISO, and noting it's about equivalent to a K-5 at 3200. I may see some improvement when Apple releases the profile for the K-3, but right now, these are a pretty consistent result. I can produce better results by changing my presets.... but, this is what I'm getting with my K-5 presets, for people coming from a K-5, it's a different sensor completely, and will require it's own custom presets as far as I can tell.

[Rondec]

Are you sure this is without any noise reduction?
Because it certainly looks like there's noise reduction going on in that image(3200), even at this very reduced size.

I'm starting to think that ACR and LR is leaving alot of people fooled by it's default NR settings.

Well, I shoot in RAW and then didn't do any adjustment at all in ACR, but I can't really tell what is going on "beneath the hood," John. It is possible that LR has some kind of default noise reduction that I don't really understand. I am certainly not a noise reduction expert. When I do it, I usually run my files through Nik Define and that seems to do a decent job, but even then I use the default settings.

[theperception2008]

Norm, a couple questions: what's the crop level to those images? How do you do your NR? And do you do apply any masking to your sharpening? If not, it's something to perhaps look into.

BTW, DPReview has the K-3 in it's image test scene now. Here's what the K-3 RAW looks like against the D7100/D610/K500 at ISO 6400. Noise seems well controlled and detail remains high.

So I'm still puzzled by all the noise talk. Maybe we need to wait for all the RAW processors to properly manage K-3 RAW's before we close the book on K-3 noise levels in JPG.

I too was messing around with DPReview's image comparison. Below is a screen of what I saw...

I think noise control is pretty close to that of the A7/R. Chroma noise seems a bit higher on the K-3 while Fuji's X-trans sensor has low noise and no chroma noise that I can see.

[JohnBee]

Well, I shoot in RAW and then didn't do any adjustment at all in ACR, but I can't really tell what is going on "beneath the hood," John. It is possible that LR has some kind of default noise reduction that I don't really understand. I am certainly not a noise reduction expert. When I do it, I usually run my files through Nik Define and that seems to do a decent job, but even then I use the default settings.

Yes, you hit it right on the nail actually.
Both Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom make use of dynamic(evaluative) chroma(color noise) noise reduction in their default profiles. That is to say that whenever you load a RAW image into either one of these apps, that it will most likely receive color noise reduction so as to help mitigate the effects of noise in your images.

However... I'd also add that neither one of these developers does this under the hood(so to speak) in the sense that these are part of the forward panel settings that are available to you the user in the interface. ie, you'll find the color noise sliders under the Detail tabs in both; Lightroom and Camera Raw, at which point, you'll also find the standing adjustment settings applied to each image in question.

Having said all that, I also think Adobe's decision to apply chroma NR to their default template can cause more harm than good. ie, I can't count the number of times I've found default NR muting the colors of an otherwise low ISO image. At which point, it would have been far better to dial-in a little less automation and a little more user input in cases such as these(low ISO shots etc).

Anyways, I didn't mean to pick on you, though I couldn't help but notice that there were quite a few people who were under the impression that their RAW images were NR free when using these particular packages.

Hope this helps.

[Rondec]

Yes, you hit it right on the nail actually.
Both Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom make use of dynamic(evaluative) chroma(color noise) noise reduction in their default profiles. That is to say that whenever you load a RAW image into either one of these apps, that it will most likely receive color noise reduction so as to help mitigate the effects of noise in your images.

However... I'd also add that neither one of these developers does this under the hood(so to speak) in the sense that these are part of the forward panel settings that are available to you the user in the interface. ie, you'll find the color noise sliders under the Detail tabs in both; Lightroom and Camera Raw, at which point, you'll also find the standing adjustment settings applied to each image in question.

Having said all that, I also think Adobe's decision to apply chroma NR to their default template can cause more harm than good. ie, I can't count the number of times I've found default NR muting the colors of an otherwise low ISO image. At which point, it would have been far better to dial-in a little less automation and a little more user input in cases such as these(low ISO shots etc).

Anyways, I didn't mean to pick on you, though I couldn't help but notice that there were quite a few people who were under the impression that their RAW images were NR free when using these particular packages.

Hope this helps.

Sure. No offense taken. There isn't really any K3 support in ACR yet. White balance usually is really weird and has to be corrected. Hopefully it comes soon and editing becomes a little easier.

[derekkite]

You have a slow f8 lens a fast shutter speed. Noise is a signal to noise issue, shutter speed and aperture are signal. Iso is how sensitive the sensor is to the signal, and at a certain level how much amplification is applied to the signal.

In other words I've had terribly noisy photos at 800 iso and nice ones st 3200, dependent on the amount of signal that the sensor got.

The high iso limit will be determined by your lens, or how much you typically stop down. Unless you have brilliant sunshine, try around 1/500.

I'm comparing my high iso shots from last november to january and am finding the k3 marginally better. If I compare the high iso shots I took last week to the high iso shots I took in the summer, they are worse.

[regor]

Today was very overcast and went to test my new K-3 at our local wildlife refuge. The attached photo was a RAW DNG taken at 1/1000, f8, iso1600 by a Tamron Adaptall 500mm f/8 SP Mirror (55B). No post processing except cropping including setting sharpening and noise reduction to zero in Lightroom 5. There appears to be excessive noise. I was expecting better from all the samples I've viewed in the reviews.

1. Does my photo exhibit higher than normal noise or are the samples in the reviews post-processed?
2. Can an individual camera be defective in this regard?

What do you think?

You are kidding right?