Noise and Grain

Dear Forum: when I used to shoot a lot of Tri-X I shot it mostly at 400 ISO so I'd have a wider range of luminance for street shooting. Yes, there was grain, but not much.

With digital photography, I sense a near obsession with noise. I guess my question is, if we could tolerate grain with film, why shouldn't we be able to tolerate noise with digital?

There's something almost theatrical about grain. It says, "This is a photograph. So what?"

How do the rest of you feel about this?

Anticipating terrific responses.

Doug

doug anderson said:

Dear Forum: when I used to shoot a lot of Tri-X I shot it mostly at 400 ISO so I'd have a wider range of luminance for street shooting. Yes, there was grain, but not much.

With digital photography, I sense a near obsession with noise. I guess my question is, if we could tolerate grain with film, why shouldn't we be able to tolerate noise with digital?

There's something almost theatrical about grain. It says, "This is a photograph. So what?"

How do the rest of you feel about this?

Anticipating terrific responses.

Doug

Click to expand...

Yes Doug, I am quite terrified! How can you suggest that we shoot at anything higher than ISO 50? That would mean that we'd get noise in our precious pictures, noise! Can you imagine that? That would be a huge disaster, shooting less then technically flawless pictures. I am truly appalled.

PS: does the sarcasm show?

Cheers,

In my eyes, there is a big aesthetic difference between film grain, and digital noise. To me most film gain can be very nice looking, my film of choice is Tri-x 320, not much grain in 4x5 and 8x10, but it's still there, and looks good.

Digital noise however, to me does not look near as appealing. I always shoot the lowest ISO possible, the digital noise just doesn't look good like film grain does. Infact, sometimes I add scanned film-grain to noisy digital shots to try and mask the digital noise if it's a high ISO shot

Cem_Usakligil said:

Yes Doug, I am quite terrified! How can you suggest that we shoot at anything higher than ISO 50? That would mean that we'd get noise in our precious pictures, noise! Can you imagine that? That would be a huge disaster, shooting less then technically flawless pictures. I am truly appalled.

PS: does the sarcasm show?

Cheers,

Click to expand...

Ha ha

Great!

Depends on the subject?

This is the first image I've chosen to crank the ISO up because I felt the grain would enhance the image - I was happy with the result. I think the grain does add something to the image, although I haven't determined if it adds in one particular way or if there are several ways it is enhancing the image...

1/640, f/5.6, ISO 3200, Nikon D300, 60mm macro

doug anderson said:

Dear Forum: when I used to shoot a lot of Tri-X I shot it mostly at 400 ISO so I'd have a wider range of luminance for street shooting. Yes, there was grain, but not much.

With digital photography, I sense a near obsession with noise. I guess my question is, if we could tolerate grain with film, why shouldn't we be able to tolerate noise with digital?

There's something almost theatrical about grain. It says, "This is a photograph. So what?"

How do the rest of you feel about this?

Anticipating terrific responses.

Click to expand...

The main problem with digital noise, IME, is that it has components which are only random in one dimension, so we get streaks or lines, which happen to be visible even at small printed sizes and downsamples. Even when it is 2-D random, it is gridded, which has a simple pattern. Digital noises are simply more patterned than film grain, and that is why they are so ugly. Film grain is independent of a grid, has various sizes, etc, so it is more pleasing, aesthetically. Until we have finer display devices and higher MP cameras, this simplicity will stick out.

Another aspect is that digital noise is partly read noise, added to the signal, and it certainly looks that way. Read noise looks like a blanket clouding the darker areas (or all areas at very high ISOs, but always moreso in the shadows), whereas pure photon shot noise, or film grain, look more like an aspect of the very building blocks of the image.

doug anderson said:

Dear Forum: when I used to shoot a lot of Tri-X I shot it mostly at 400 ISO so I'd have a wider range of luminance for street shooting. Yes, there was grain, but not much.

With digital photography, I sense a near obsession with noise. I guess my question is, if we could tolerate grain with film, why shouldn't we be able to tolerate noise with digital?

There's something almost theatrical about grain. It says, "This is a photograph. So what?"

How do the rest of you feel about this?

Anticipating terrific responses.

Doug

Click to expand...

The whole digital noise vs. film grain has been, and will continue to be, a dust storm. Offhand I can only offer two thoughts.

1. Digital noise, at conspicuous levels, generally seems to be more disruptive than film grain, particularly in color photographs.

2. Noise, among digital photo enthusiasts, is associated with a cheap camera and/or poor technique. Grainy film images are often seen as "artsy".

Thanks Folks: My concern about grain is really about investing in a Canon G10 compact rangefinder. I don't want to waste the money on something that will disappoint me. Some of the G10 test shots I've seen on Flickr are pretty good, although few of them are low light, high ISO. Especially since I have a Nikon D300.

I guess I'm trying to rationalize "noise" and "grain" when they are not really the same thing.

Thanks for the input.

Doug

Personally I don't like digi-grain, but never had problems with the analog one; maybe thats due to > 20 years of 4/5'??

Even worse: sometimes, if the digifiles look to clean to me, I'm adding just a thin layer of analog grain from a scanned 5/7'-sheet, to give a bit of °body to the vine°