ESFotoClix Blog

Not only do we beat ourselves over sharpness, as we discussed a couple of days ago, but we also torture ourselves over noise in our images, with boundless efforts to generate the cleanest, most spotless images we can muster. We shoot with as low an ISO as we can manage, make sure the shadows get enough exposure to avoid pulling out more noise in post-processing, and we even hire Ninjas to come and make the noise disappear.

Yet, following the reasoning we used when looking at how much sharpening is needed in an image, we didn’t seem to mind grain so much back in our film days. In fact, sometimes we even felt as if grain added character and grit to an image. As an example, see the Marlboro man photo (or this one). Take the grain away from that image, and it loses something. You decide what that something is.

We can’t go on in this discussion without touching on the difference between Luminance vs. Chrominance noise in digital photography. Luminance noise resembles film grain (see link), whereas Chrominance is that magenta/green firework-like mess that makes us cringe. If we’ve used a compact P&S camera at high ISO (say, 400!), we’ve seen Chrominance noise. Yes, this is noise we should seek to avoid, and perhaps this is the noise that drives our noise phobia.

Fortunately, today’s DSLRs do a pretty good job of minimizing Chrominance noise. Many tools exist for removing noise, whichever type it may be, but usually noise reduction comes at a price, namely loss of detail. In light of this, we should ask ourselves whether we can live with the film-like grain due to Luminance noise that we get at higher ISO’s (or in under-exposed shadow areas). Here’s a favorite image of mine, taken at ISO 400 with my Nikon D80, for which I received some alarming comments regarding the noise in the green background.

Click for larger image

I’ll let you be the judge about whether the noise in this image is acceptable, but I have to wonder how much more grain I would have gotten with 400 ASA film. In fact, I’ve grown weary of my obsession with reducing noise to a bare minimum. I much rather have good detail and some noise than no noise and poor detail. Yes, I should not get sloppy, and I should keep in mind the image needs. Ultimately, that’s what it’s all about. What the image calls for, and how I should try to maximize its potential. That said, in the end it’s about whether the image is compelling, not about how much noise it shows.

Why all the noise about noise, then? Maybe it comes in handy to justify our next camera purchase, or as a distraction from what actually makes a good photograph. Whatever it is, I think I’m going to relax about the whole thing and go out to capture some good photographs.

Much to my chagrin, even with its internal sensor-cleaning, it came time for my first Nikon D90 sensor cleaning. No, the in-camera sensor cleaning wasn’t doing a thing with these dust bunnies. If you want to check how much dust your sensor has, do as I did, and take a shot of the blue sky at an aperture of f/16 or f/22.

Trying to save some time and inspired by the advice I’ve read about a “good blow” with a Giotto rocket blower being all that’s usually needed, I decided to go that route this time. After all, I only had a couple of specks to remove.

Suspecting that I had in fact moved dust lodged elsewhere inside the camera, I decided to give blowing another try, and this is what I got.

This confirmed my dad’s admonition that the lazy person always ends up working twice as hard. Shaking my head, I got out my wet cleaning kit (I use the one provided by Copper Hill images), and went about the cleaning as I have been doing for a while with my Nikon D80. A couple of swabs later, I tested my work with another blue sky shot at f/22, and voila!

Moral of the story? As uncomforable as sticking something into your camera and swabbing across the sensor’s protector may feel, once you get over the shakes, the satisfaction of a clean sensor and spotless images will be well worth it.

I have a confession to make: I have been sucked into the tack-sharp school of photography. I’ve bought into the prevailing theory that photos needing “pop,” and that this extra umph comes from sharpness (okay, and saturated colors and loads of contrast, but we’ll leave those for another day).

Then I came face to face with my compulsion to Unsharp-mask (USM) all my photos until they turn into scalpels fit for brain surgery. It happened when I started reviewing the photography of the masters, noticing all those soft edges and little of the freckle-counting or hair-enumerating sharpness I try to achieve in my photos. Those images worked. They still work, and powerfully, sans the USM or the use of super-sharp lenses, apparently. If you want to see for yourself, check out this gallery or this one, or Google some on your own. Yes, some images are sharp, but not all, and they are still worthy of admiration.

Why all the fascination with sharpness, then? I don’t know the answer, really. Maybe it’s all the HDTV or computer monitor viewing we do. Maybe now we examine photos on screen, from 6 inches away as opposed to in a magazine or in a gallery, where the reproduction mediums and viewing distances render “pixel-sharpness” even more nonsensical than it already is. Or maybe we’re trying to make our mediocre images pop with digital trickery. I don’t know.

I do know this. I need to get out of the super-USM mindset and put more thought into what truly makes a great image.