Noise As a Historical Artifact
In my spring release from O’Reilly Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers, I show that image noise can be used creatively. This material is in the ISO and Noise chapter. For example, the noise in this close-up capture of a tiny Lobelia flower is what makes the photo interesting.
View large size. Photoshop Nyet: see my blog entry for backstory information featuring this photo.
However, since I’ve begun playing with my new Nikon D300, my thinking about noise has shifted. It takes a fair amount of effort to get an extremely noise-filled image out of the D300, even at relatively high ISOs. Very long exposures do still create noise in the darker areas. But still, the direction of things is as clear as a noiseless image.
Within the next few years, five or ten at the outside, noise generated by digital sensors will be a thing of the past. If you want noise, you’ll have to Photoshop it in. This will mean that noise will become a visual and historical artifact, like film grain. Perhaps people will even collect digital cameras vintage circa 2006 and 2007 for the ability of their sensors to add “pleasing” levels of sensor noise!
January 21st, 2008 at 9:54 pm
[...] So, whether full-frame D3, or somewhat smaller frame D300, some digital lenses don’t use the entire sensor area in any case. The optical impact of sensor size is a mixed bag, but the impact of sensor size on noise is clear: it’s a “true fact” that the smaller the sensor size the more noise. But noise processing is getting so much better that noise is becoming less of an issue. (For a related story, see Noise as a Historical Artifact.) [...]
January 29th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
[...] noting: the not unattractive noise in the lower left of the image results from lightening up the extremely dark RAW [...]
February 15th, 2008 at 10:32 am
[...] partly on the grounds that my Nikon D300 is remarkably low noise, and partly on the grounds that noise can be used as part of the aeshetic of an image. My photos of the jellyfish in the aquarium tanks at Monterey are examples of this kind of high ISO [...]