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DPChallenge Forums >> Current Challenge >> Genuine Grain or Added Grain
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03/14/2007 07:51:34 PM · #1
Going through the challenge there is a vast diversity of grain effects, and some the grain is so slight it is hard to see how the grain adds impact to the image, as stated in the details,and others just apopear to be a snap shot with grain added, what are your thoughts.
03/14/2007 07:53:27 PM · #2
well, to get technical, none of the shots have "grain" without it being added. They have noise. The two behave quite differently.

The slight grain problem could be one of a few things:
1) The people chickened out due to DPC's aversion to noise.
2) They tried to purely use in-camera noise but shot on a large JPG or RAW. The noise gets minimized on the resize.
03/14/2007 07:57:50 PM · #3
Originally posted by DrAchoo:

well, to get technical, none of the shots have "grain" without it being added. They have noise. The two behave quite differently.

The slight grain problem could be one of a few things:
1) The people chickened out due to DPC's aversion to noise.
2) They tried to purely use in-camera noise but shot on a large JPG or RAW. The noise gets minimized on the resize.


So you are saying if added noise has not been used the image DNMC.
is not grain added through add noise photoshop.

Details:Use grain/noise in your photo to add to its impact, it does not say add noise to add to it's impact.

Message edited by author 2007-03-14 20:12:28.
03/14/2007 07:59:08 PM · #4
Well, unless somebody made sure the grain is VERY visible, it might have a lot to do with the calibration of the monitor you are using as well...

Anyway, you are probably right. With the exception of a few notables which I believe will do well, it's very hard to make the grain "add" to the photo instead of just "be present" in the photo.
03/14/2007 08:06:18 PM · #5
If a photographer was to use a high ISO 800+ at a slow Shutter speed 100- this should add enough natural noise grain to be evident in the image and be processed to give impact.
03/14/2007 08:08:34 PM · #6
Originally posted by hywind:

If a photographer was to use a high ISO 800+ at a slow Shutter speed 100- this should add enough natural noise grain to be evident in the image and be processed to give impact.


Depends on the camera.

anyway, no I'm certainly not saying that "noise" is DNMC.
03/14/2007 08:10:08 PM · #7
And not all our cameras can go to 800 ISO :(
03/14/2007 08:11:18 PM · #8
Shooting in lower JPEG sizes wouldn't have made a difference, the picture is still resized from maximum resolution, albeit in-camera before being transferred to the card.
03/14/2007 08:11:29 PM · #9
Originally posted by DrAchoo:

well, to get technical, none of the shots have "grain" without it being added. They have noise. The two behave quite differently.

The slight grain problem could be one of a few things:
1) The people chickened out due to DPC's aversion to noise.
2) They tried to purely use in-camera noise but shot on a large JPG or RAW. The noise gets minimized on the resize.


I used the 2nd method..and it's true that when i resized the pic the noise became minimized so i added noise as to make it visible.
I don't mind to get average or low score for this Grain II challenge
since i'm happy that I could take the photo with the grainy shooting technique..and I have learnt allot on how to operate my manual mode :))

will keep trying.
03/14/2007 08:11:29 PM · #10
Originally posted by hywind:

If a photographer was to use a high ISO 800+ at a slow Shutter speed 100- this should add enough natural noise grain to be evident in the image and be processed to give impact.


I was surprised how much noise/ grain I was able to tease out of my D70 at 1600 ISO. My raw image conversion has almost no noise added - I think I went with about 1% Guassian just to 'smooth' it out a little. Believe, my entry has noise/ grain very evident...

Message edited by author 2007-03-14 20:15:31.
03/14/2007 08:13:15 PM · #11
Hi all,

Can someone tell me how to make or take a picture with "Natural noise"?

For this challenge I've boost my ISO to 3200 at 1/2 and f27... the picture has hardly "Natural noise"

Thanks

Cheers

Message edited by author 2007-03-14 20:17:07.
03/14/2007 08:15:20 PM · #12
indeed, in most of the photos where grain was VERY visible, it was apparently added in PP. And I personally did not like it, as in most cases it felt fake. Now, there are ways to add grain in PP so it would not have the fake feel, BUT they go beyong basic ruleset (you would need to overlay noise with the image, not add to it). In my photo, I chose to stay away from adding noise in PP, just amplified whatever I got in the original.
03/14/2007 08:16:13 PM · #13
I know this is playing with words, but leaves room for thought.

Details:Use grain/noise in your photo to add to its impact, it does not say add noise to add to it's impact
03/14/2007 08:16:51 PM · #14
Mine goes to HI 1.. what the...
Or you could say 1600
03/14/2007 08:24:33 PM · #15
Originally posted by Simpa:

Hi all,

Can someone tell me how to make or take a picture with "Natural noise"?

For this challenge I've boost my ISO to 3200 at 1/2 and f27... the picture has hardly "Natural noise"

Thanks

Cheers


With these figures your dof would not carry a lot of noise on a large format, f14-16 possibley, if taken in raw, color adjustment and tone curve will bring out the grain,before sending to PS,

If not taken in Raw as mentioned a smaller quality Jpeg format will work.

Message edited by author 2007-03-14 20:25:14.
03/14/2007 08:34:08 PM · #16
Originally posted by Simpa:

Hi all,

Can someone tell me how to make or take a picture with "Natural noise"?

For this challenge I've boost my ISO to 3200 at 1/2 and f27... the picture has hardly "Natural noise"

I guess it depends on what you call "natural". If you mean "out-of-camera", one way to get LOTS of noise is to severely underexpose (3-4 stops) and then bring the exposure back in RAW conversion. Those few lower bits have much more noise than high bits. It would not work with JPEG, only with RAW. I actually used this trick with ISO 100, and I have the same camera as you :). Had plenty of noise for my taste. If I combine this trick with high ISO I can get ridiculous amoounts of "Natural noise" out of d200, way too much for any reasonable use.
03/14/2007 08:46:40 PM · #17
Ya, the secret to getting in camera noise is to underexpose more than it is to use long shutter speeds. I think the shutter speeds that produce noise are like 10 seconds, not 1/2 second. But even if you shot at 1/500th and underexposed by 2 stops and then pushed it in PS, you'd see a ton of noise.
03/14/2007 08:51:41 PM · #18
Originally posted by hywind:

and others just apopear to be a snap shot with grain added, what are your thoughts.


my thougthts are that not all people just shoot for challenges so why would i shoot for grain, and you could argue that pretty much all my shots are "snapshots".

nick
03/14/2007 08:53:55 PM · #19
hmmm can't say much but iso1600 lots of noise 'ish grain ;)
03/14/2007 09:00:20 PM · #20
Originally posted by LevT:

indeed, in most of the photos where grain was VERY visible, it was apparently added in PP. And I personally did not like it, as in most cases it felt fake. Now, there are ways to add grain in PP so it would not have the fake feel, BUT they go beyong basic ruleset (you would need to overlay noise with the image, not add to it). In my photo, I chose to stay away from adding noise in PP, just amplified whatever I got in the original.

Not to sound like a heretic but there is no such thing as "genuine" grain captured with a digital camera. "Genuine" grain comes from silver iodide crystals in film emulsions. Digital cameras have electronic noise but that is a far cry from film grain and lacks most of its esthetic appeal.

Somewhere along the line some form of trickery is needed. That can come from artificially produced ISO noise in-camera, some type of physical filtering in front of the lens, 'faked' grain in the actual composition, added noise in post, added grain in post, oversharpening combined with gaussian blur or a combination of these effects.

Apparently, based on the entries, it isn't all that easy. ;)
03/14/2007 09:07:35 PM · #21
Originally posted by stdavidson:


Not to sound like a heretic but there is no such thing as "genuine" grain captured with a digital camera. "Genuine" grain comes from silver iodide crystals in film emulsions. Digital cameras have electronic noise but that is a far cry from film grain and lacks most of its esthetic appeal.

Somewhere along the line some form of trickery is needed. That can come from artificially produced ISO noise in-camera, some type of physical filtering in front of the lens, 'faked' grain in the actual composition, added noise in post, added grain in post, oversharpening combined with gaussian blur or a combination of these effects.

Apparently, based on the entries, it isn't all that easy. ;)


Agree completely. That's why people out there already scanned actual films and are using these hi-res files to produce very natural-looking "film" grain in digital photos. My point here was that adding lots of Photoshop noise in PP is the easiest but far not the best form of such trickery... :)

03/14/2007 09:21:50 PM · #22
And by adding noise in a color photo as allowed in Basic Editing, you end up with some pretty awful looking grain. I can't count how many images I saw in the Image Grain II challenge with greenish, pink grain... Really took away from some really nice photos.

Originally posted by LevT:

Originally posted by stdavidson:


Not to sound like a heretic but there is no such thing as "genuine" grain captured with a digital camera. "Genuine" grain comes from silver iodide crystals in film emulsions. Digital cameras have electronic noise but that is a far cry from film grain and lacks most of its esthetic appeal.

Somewhere along the line some form of trickery is needed. That can come from artificially produced ISO noise in-camera, some type of physical filtering in front of the lens, 'faked' grain in the actual composition, added noise in post, added grain in post, oversharpening combined with gaussian blur or a combination of these effects.

Apparently, based on the entries, it isn't all that easy. ;)


Agree completely. That's why people out there already scanned actual films and are using these hi-res files to produce very natural-looking "film" grain in digital photos. My point here was that adding lots of Photoshop noise in PP is the easiest but far not the best form of such trickery... :)


Message edited by author 2007-03-14 21:22:04.
03/14/2007 09:50:28 PM · #23
Funny - you have made some assumptions here - think. I didn't add anything in photoshop - merely shot at iso 1600 and cropped and converted to B/W. You did comment about seeing colour - not quite sure about that personally!
Originally posted by pccjrose:

And by adding noise in a color photo as allowed in Basic Editing, you end up with some pretty awful looking grain. I can't count how many images I saw in the Image Grain II challenge with greenish, pink grain... Really took away from some really nice photos.

Originally posted by LevT:

Originally posted by stdavidson:


Not to sound like a heretic but there is no such thing as "genuine" grain captured with a digital camera. "Genuine" grain comes from silver iodide crystals in film emulsions. Digital cameras have electronic noise but that is a far cry from film grain and lacks most of its esthetic appeal.

Somewhere along the line some form of trickery is needed. That can come from artificially produced ISO noise in-camera, some type of physical filtering in front of the lens, 'faked' grain in the actual composition, added noise in post, added grain in post, oversharpening combined with gaussian blur or a combination of these effects.

Apparently, based on the entries, it isn't all that easy. ;)


Agree completely. That's why people out there already scanned actual films and are using these hi-res files to produce very natural-looking "film" grain in digital photos. My point here was that adding lots of Photoshop noise in PP is the easiest but far not the best form of such trickery... :)
03/14/2007 10:22:31 PM · #24
By the way, to give you an idea of the amount of noise you can get by underexposing and boosting ISO to 1600 in d200, here is a 100% crop

It is most deninitely NOT the film grain, but it looks kinda interesting, no? Maybe someday we'll learn to like it as we learned to like film grain?
03/14/2007 10:39:26 PM · #25
Originally posted by LevT:

... ISO to 1600 in d200, here is a 100% crop

It is most definitely NOT the film grain, but it looks kinda interesting, no? Maybe someday we'll learn to like it as we learned to like film grain?

Not bad. If you compose your subject small in the frame then you can do a 100% crop for a submission and get "gainy" noise. :)

The benefit of generating "grain" in post processing and not in-camera is that you have tons more flexibility. Basically, you can do anything you want to prepare the image for output just like any other non-grain image prior to adding "grain" independantly at any appropriate time in your workflow. Then you can either include or not include grain at your own discretion. If "grain" is generated in-camera you don't have that flexibility.

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