Iso problems

Hello. I took several pictures using a digital compact camera indoor using the ISO funtion. The pictures in the camera screen look fine, but in the larger screen or paper look very bad, with a lot of noise. It is posible to correct this? Thank you

Hi,

That is sensor/digital (chroma and color) noise, which appears on your image. Digital compact cameras often utilize a very small image sensor resulting in very small pixels, which usually generates much more noise than DSLRs, especially at higher ISO settings. You know, smaller pixels can capture less photons than larger pixels.
As the image is resized to fit on the camera screen, the noise is not clearly visible when viewing on the camera screen. Just zoom in and you will see the noise.
You can also simulate this effect by significantly down-sizing the image on a larger screen. You would also not notice the noise there either.

To certain degrees, noise can be minimized by using software solutions. If you are taking your images as JPEGs, you can use the ' Effects - Noise reductions' options within PhotoPerfect to reduce noise. There are also some other specialized software/plugins that can offer advance noise reductions as well. However reducing noise is always involved a trade up between (less) noise and also (less) image details, so please don't expect a miracle here. Excessive noise reduction can result in a noise-free image, however completely smeared = without any image detail.
If your camera is capable to capture images as RAW files, you can mostly achieve better results when apply noise reduction when converting the RAW files. This can either be handled by PhotoPerfect's RAW converter or any other RAW converters and noise reduction programs.

Modern DSLRs can go up to ISO 6400 without generating disturbing noise. This limit is much lower for digital compacts. In my experience, ISO 400 is already the acceptable limit for most of them. Thus personally I would try to minimize noise by keeping the ISO as low as possible - e.g. using a larger aperture of your lens/camera and dial down the ISO settings, using an external light source like flash etc... or just use a tripod ...


Best regards

Hoang-Tran