Hi Everyone.
I am using this Fujifilm Sl100 bridge camera, which is nice in a lot of ways, but the noise it produces is something interesting- if I may put it that way. According to the manufacturer's website it has a "1/2.3-inch CMOS with primary color filter" sensor.
Here are the tech specs if you are interested. http://www.fujifilm.com/products/dig...pecifications/
Usually it is preferable to process images from RAW, and in theory, you should be able to get the same out of the RAW image as the camera does, but between trying to apply needed sharpening, and needed noise reduction, it is a difficult enough situation that sometimes I find it easier to achieve a decent result starting with a Jpeg,
Today I was shooting some muskrats, long- awaited type shots too but here is an example of a RAW image, imported to Lightroom, the automatic sharpening turned off, (so as not to enhance the noise) and exported to Jpeg. This is a crop from 100%. View at full size
I think I had exposed this image fairly correctly, with ISO of only 1600. Where is all this grain coming from? It appears nearly uniform over light and dark areas of the image, which causes me to wonder if it is just ordinary noise. Sometimes I wonder how the in-camera processor even discerns as much from the RAW data when creating the Jpeg as it does. This is a crop of the Jpeg of the same image, imported and exported from lightroom with the automatic sharpening turned down to zero, with no other adjustments. The Jpeg quality was recorded at : fine, 8 out of the original 16 MP.
As I mentioned, in theory you should be able to achieve at least as good results from the RAW image in software as the camera does from its in- camera processing, and I can usually make improvements to the tones, colors, etc. over what the camera would do, but the noise stumps me. When you start to sharpen the image this is what starts happening- because the noise is almost the only detail in the picture:
I know you can try to balance sharpening and NR, but it is hard to get a decent result with this much noise. This image was just as an illustration of what happens.
Now it was sprinkling when this image was taken, but I don't think the grainy pattern was really just rain drops. It occurs when not so rainy too, as in this image.
Sorry for the long boring post It's not just meant to be a complaint against the camera, but I would like to know how to recover some of my images as best as I can, and I was wondering what you all thought of the noise problem from a technical perspective.
Thanks in advance for any input!
Nick