D300 very noisy in shadows

I have recently purchased a D300. After my first dive I noticed noise? grain? (not sure the difference in appearance) in my shadows.

My settings were: 400 =ISO, Picture control= Fuji Velvia Active D lighting = high. High ISO NR = Off. Results= bluck

After some googling on "D300 grain" I turned Picture control to D2X and turned Active D lighting Off. Results = better, I think.

What settings are other D300 owners using.

So far very disappointed with this camera. I know it must be fixable (settings?), too many people love this camera

Any help appreciated

Mary

Mary the first place I will look at was how well exposed my photos are if I was you.

The D300 is no D700/D3 but it sure should not suck at the ISO 400.

What is the conditions like where you dive and what was your f-stop and shutter speed.

Also try uploading a image or two so we can see what you r unhappy about.

It sounds like you are saving your pictures in jpg mode. It also sounds like you are shooting wide angle.

My inexprerienced best guess is to try shooting in raw, and tweak your pictures in lightroom or aperture. But then, I am guessing.

My D300 turns out very good results. I suspect you might be underexposing, severely.

Shoot in RAW, take a look at the the unadjusted photos in Photoshop, Lightroom, etc and then look for noise. You don't need to dive to see the results.

A good RAW photo will look a bit flat and low in colour but of normal brightness, thats fine. You make it good in Photoshop.

D lighting will attempt to correct a multitude of sins while trying to give you good results. Doesn't always happen.

I have recently purchased a D300. After my first dive I noticed noise? grain? (not sure the difference in appearance) in my shadows.

My settings were: 400 =ISO, Picture control= Fuji Velvia Active D lighting = high. High ISO NR = Off. Results= bluck

 

After some googling on "D300 grain" I turned Picture control to D2X and turned Active D lighting Off. Results = better, I think.

 

What settings are other D300 owners using.

 

So far very disappointed with this camera. I know it must be fixable (settings?), too many people love this camera

 

Any help appreciated

Mary

I agree with the other comments; sounds like your shots a severly underexposed. A suggestion: reset to default settings, set mode to A (apT. prty), ISO 200, f-stop 16 and target green grass in bright sun light. The sutter speed should should be about 1/200th. Look at the histograms of your shots. You do not want to clip the high lights of the shadows. Good luck.

Bob

Thanks everyone,

I concede that the images I am especially unhappy with are underexposed. They are silhouette divers against sunball, so part of the image is supposed to be under?

I am shooting wide angle and in RAW already and have since read the Picture Control settings I have been playing with only affect jpgs.

Roger, using Lightroom straight out of the box, does that deliver unajusted RAWs or are there some default adjustments I should be turning off?

Thanks

Mary

if you have a severely backlit senario, like anything against the sun, you will have significant underexposed bits. Active D-Lighting (set on high) will try really hard to pull any detail out of those shadows and in doing so will create a bunch of noise. I don't really like active d-lighting for UW shooting, though use it topside all the time. sometimes shadows just need to stay dark.

Also for any photos like that with plenty of light, no need to shoot at 400 iso, while its good, there is still some noise, 200 looks better.

and LR would not apply any auto settings to a raw file unless you told it to.

Roger, using Lightroom straight out of the box, does that deliver unajusted RAWs or are there some default adjustments I should be turning off?

Mary, in Lightroom or Photoshop or any image editor they should look close to correct without any adjustments. Otherwise I would guess you have your exposure off. Colour balance is another story. Flash photos should be close, other types of light will need some adjustment.

Thanks everyone,

 

I concede that the images I am especially unhappy with are underexposed. They are silhouette divers against sunball, so part of the image is supposed to be under?

Ideally none of the image should be under exposed. The shadows should be within the histogram borders, otherwise you will simply be recording baseline noise in the shadows without any actual photographic information.

Do the histograms of these images appear to be stacked up to the left of the scale? If so much of your shadow information will simply be non-existent and likely be very noisy. In the type of lighting you describe, the rays of light could worsen the appearance of noise particularly if there is any particulate matter in the water.

You may have to accept more blown highlights in the sunball in order to bring more of the shadow areas within the confines of the sensor's dynamic range. The next time you shoot this type of shot I would suggest experimenting with increasing exposure by one or two stops to allow for this.. Depending what type of light meter setting you are using the camera may be placing too much emphasis on the highlight areas, resulting in underexposure. Be conscious of this when shooting. If you are using matrix metering point the camera to an area where the sunball is not dominant, a 'middle-grey' area, and then lock the exposure when you reframe and shoot. If your housing does not allow you to lock exposure, at least record the difference in exposure reading when you point to an area without the sunball directly in the image, and compensate accordingly when you recompose with the sunball in the image.

It is also very important to shoot RAW in this situation (forget JPEG, camera settings like vivid and Active D etc), and when you import into Lightroom with default presets, you should be able to use the Recovery sliders to get back 1-2 stops in the highlights. You are much more likely to get an acceptable exposure this way, than trying to force all the highlights of the sunball into the initial histogram. It will probably also be helpful to have the sunball partially or completely concealed by the diver.

More great advice and info I didn't know. Thanks again everyone

Mary

Mary-

When shooting sunballs with a dark subject in the foreground the flash should light the foreground adaquately. I think you are too far back from your subject. Your F/stop and flash should control foreground exposure. Shoot in center or center weighted exposure to get the diver properly exposed, then increase the shutter speed to get the background (sunball).

I don't personally think you should use iso 400 because I see no reason for it. Essentially the exposure control in raw increases the gain on the sensor which is basically increasing the iso. At iso 400 you may find the fringes of the subject too blown out if you get the face/body correctly exposed.

Regards,