One summer night friends hosted a dinner party at Paula at Rigoletto in Weehawken, New Jersey. My friends' daughter and her friend were outside entertaining themselves waiting for their parents to finish dinner. I went out and photographed them with my Canon G10. While the G10 performs amazingly well during the day it doesn't do that well in low light. To get any sort of image I had to increase the ISO and use a slow shutter speed. I came away with some good images but as I worked with them in Lightroom and Photoshop I realized I had to do something to reduce the digital noise.
Digital noise, the modern equivalent of grainy film, is an artifact produced by using a high ISO to shoot in low light with a small digital camera which can have a very tiny sensor. Small digital cameras address this by automatically firing the camera's built in flash if the camera is set to automatic. I usually don't shoot with the camera set on automatic. So I can get some interesting results and problems to solve.
I came across Imagenomic Noiseware a software plug-ins which only job is to reduce digital noise. It did a pretty good job of eliminating a lot of the noise. One comment about Noiseware was that it can make a person's skin look like plastic. I discovered that this is less likely to happen if the entire image is blurry. Since I was shooting at a slow shutter speed all of the images were blurry. The above image doesn't seem to show signs of the skin being overly modeled. This might have to do with the flat light, the color of the light and the overall softness of the image.
I also took some photos of the restaurant's chef and owner Paula Frazier who is a wonderful cook. Paula had finished cooking when I asked if I could take a few photos of her. As tired as she must have been she graciously said yes and then quickly posed herself in the kitchen. The kitchen had low light from mixed sources. The image on the left shows noise. The image on the right had the noise filtered out. Click image for a larger version. The skin does start to look soft but not plastic. Seeing these results got me thinking about other applications for this filter.
Why not use the built in camera flash? Because I don't like built in flash and up till now would rather take my changes hand holding the camera at a high ISO and slow shutter speed because you can get some interesting results.
Photographing on this summer night with the G10 made me realize that I'll never travel light again. Camera light that is. I'll be taking my Canon 50D (with its large sensor which works amazingly well under low light conditions), a small flash (use it off camera with a long cord) and my G10 because I really like the G10 and there's always Noiseware.
Comments