I recently bought an R8 and have been trying my hand at photographing some sunsets. However, it seems that whatever I do, I get a lot of noise in the image. I've tried wide and small aperture (f/4.5 - f/11), auto ISO and setting ISO to 100 to force a shutter speed, tripod and not, and changing the exposure / metering settings. Example attached (this one is 24mm, f/4.5, 1/1600 shutter, ISO 200). The clouds / sky in the picture (and in all of them) has a grainy texture (noticeable on the full shot at normal zoom, and much more so when magnified).
I'm stumped on what might be causing it and how I can get this resolved. Any help would be appreciated.
Where precisely in the image are you most bothered by the noise?
If it is in the areas of shadow, that is perfectly normal because of the high level of contrast between the bright sky and the very, very dark shadowed cliffs. While we can perceive a vast range between extreme very bright and very dark, a camera sensor is much, much less capable of doing so.
In the image below the light changes from total white to total black in steps, each of which is a doubling or halving of the light intensity. These are called Exposure Values (EVs) or Stops and are the common currency for measuring exposure and the control of it through Aperture, Shutter and ISO controls on the camera. As you can see, we can perceive a lot more light variation than the most modern sensor.
Noise is normally a results of lack of light being captured from an area of an area of the Field of View (FoV) - i.e that view that the combination of sensor and lens captures. In the case of the image that you have posted, you have correctly exposed for the brighter areas of the FoV and it will naturally happen that the shadowed area fall to dark or black.
View this video on the subject:
If you want to get more detail from the cliff without noise, for example, I suggest checking out the Advanced User Guide, on P116, and considering the High Dynamic Range (HDR) function.
Here is a link to the guide: R8 Advanced User Guide
I hope this is of some assistance, and has not underestimated your skill level as we have no idea of that.
Very interesting video about shadows. I’ve been doing that for a few years I have been exposing to the [left], meaning i slightly under expose the image by -1/3 of a stop using exposure compensation.
Why did I start doing that? After owning a handful of Canon DSLRs I began to noice that they all seemed to slightly over expose JPGs, which would seem to yield more shadow details. I felt is was just raising the noise levels inthe shadows.
So, I experimented for a day or two with negative exposure compensation. I settled -1/3 in the camera giving me what I wanted in the RAW file. I could further tweak shadows and highlights in post.
Now I rarely have blown highlights. Most of the time I am not overly concerned with the shadows.
