SOURCES OF NOISE

Bumping up the ISO and shooting long exposures are the chief problem-makers.

Noise can ruin the quality of your pictures. While there’s a lot you can do about it post-shoot, as always, it pays to get things as close to perfect in-camera to cut down on your editing time. High ISOs and long exposures are the main causes of noise, as you’ll see below. The noise they generate may only be obvious when you’re scrutinising a picture close-up, and may not be that obvious when the image is seen at normal size. Besides, it’s better to have a sharp noisy picture than no picture.

WEAK SIGNAL If the intensity of light is low, one option is to push the ISO higher to form a picture. SENSITIVITY AMPLIFIED The ISO setting determines how much the feed from the sensor is amplified. As the ‘volume’ is essentially turned up, noise is amplified alongside the image detail.