Reply To: Why is everyone hung up on NOISE!?!

[ebi]

25 years ago, no one talked about noise because it was called grain. Noise isn’t the equivalent of grain. It’s a completely different animal. I print 11 x 14 prints for my book all the time.  If the image is noisy, it doesn’t look great. Especially if you compare it side by side to a print made from 800 ISO film. The grain and texture is beautiful and natural. And trying to remove that noise just degrades the detail of the photograph.

Start printing your work and you will start caring about noise. It’s probably fine for event type stuff where your client doesn’t know any better and just wants images to post to their fb fan page, but in my world image quality is incredibly important. Not that it has to be fussy. Just shoot with a good camera at an ISO that you know will produce the best results for the situation you are in. I shoot canon 5D M3 for a lot of stuff. I won’t push above 320. On MeFo I wont go above 800.

-ebi