High ISO and Noise Reduction question

[tinman0]

Just reading about the 500D at the moment, and the DPreview talks about noise reduction on high iso.

Surely you want noise reduction at high iso speeds as normal, but it seems to be an option, so what's the score? Doesn't make sense to make remove noise an option, when you want that as a default.

Probably haven't explained myself very well.

[SamHH]

Noise reduction doesn't come for free: it leads to loss of detail. I believe the thinking is that it's better to leave the noise reduction off and do it on your computer, where you have more control over individual images and can use more complicated, powerful software than is built into the camera. As with lots of things, it depends on how much time you have and how important fine control over the details of your images is to you.

[Andy M]

If you're shooting extremely long exposures (15 mins+) and have noise reduction turned on, the camera can take forever before another shot is possible.

I never have it turned on in my camera. Recent dSLR's obviously cope a lot better with noise, and I've never seen the need.

[beano500]

Wot 'e sez ^^^


Plus, NR will slow you down, so a missed shot while you're waiting for it to finish might be a bigger loss than your noisy shadows......


Edit: Whoops - beaten to it!!!!!

Edited by beano500 on Wednesday 25th March 22:04

[VxDuncan]

Your talking at crossed purposes here. NR comes in two forms typically - High ISO noise reduction and long exposure noise reduction.

High ISO - in simple terms smooths the image to get rid of the high ISO (random) noise, whilst preserving as much detail as possible.

Long Exp. Noise Reduction - rather than smooth the image as above, this takes a duplicate exposure without opening the shutter open (a dark frame) and subtracts that from light image, getting rid of any fixed noise (dead/hot pixels etc.). Long exp. NR actually adds to the random noise (by a factor of two) as the shutters open for twice as long. It just assumes the hot pixels etc are more important than the random noise. Of course at high isos you could use high iso NR too.

But to answer the OPs question - I far prefer having it turned off and using the better and more controllable NR in photoshop (Noise Ninja in my case).