Raw noise

[Craig]

I have just started taking pictures with Raw on my Canon D20. I have not had any problems until yesterday when I had to set the ISO at 400 and 800 w/flash.

The problem is there seemed to be an awful lot more noise than there would be if I was shooting with jpeg instead.

I had to use the noise filter twice to get the image in decent shape while if I shoot in jpeg, it is usually okay after one shot with the noise reduction.

What I was wondering is if shooting with Raw instead of jpeg w/a flash always introduces more noise or there was something I was missing.

Thanks for the assistance and if this topic has previously been discussed, please point me in that direction.

[Carbone]

I have a 10D and shooting at up to 800 ISO, with or without Flash, RAW doesn't introduce more noise than shooting in JPEG. At least, I've never noticed it. 800 ISO show more noise then 400, that's for sure. I only use 800, 1600 and 3200 only when absolutely necessary. I tend to shoot at 100 or 400.

There are several commercial solutions for removing noises, if you want to run a search on Google.

Ray

[drwatson]

Adobe Camera RAW does in fact show more color and luminance noise than JPG pictures or RAW pictures processed with the manufacturers supplied software. Canon and Nikon apply noise reduction techniques in the demosaic / interpolation process, ACR on the other hand shows you exactly what the senor has delivered prior to NR. The default setting of 25 for color noise reduction reduces chroma artifacts, while the luminance slider removes standard noise associated with high ISO pictures. Color noise is more apparent in shadow detail, while luminance noise is highly visible throughout the tonal range. ACR allows more control over the raw process by allowing the user to determine the level of noise reduction to apply. I for one leave color noise at 25, which does an excellent job of removing chroma noise, but choose to correct luminance noise using either neat image or the new noise reduction filter (which is rather excellant) included with elements 3.0.