High IS O and LONG EXPOSURE NOIS E REDUCTION

There are two types of noise reduction systems built into your Nikon: High ISO and Long Exposure. These two work in different ways to reduce the effects of noise. High ISO noise reduction uses a program to reduce the noise generated by using high ISO settings, such as ISO800 and above. You can apply and fine-tune the noise reduction for high ISO Raw shots when you process them.

Long Exposure Noise Reduction takes a second frame and merges the two to reduce the noise. This works on both JPEG and Raw images, but is inconvenient and time-consuming when shooting very long exposures.

Activating noise reduction

You’ll find the noise reduction options in the Shooting Menu options of your Nikon. Long Exposure Noise Reduction is a simple on/off choice. But High ISO Noise Reduction has Low, Normal, and High options. The Normal setting is the most useful for settings up to around ISO1600, but the High setting can help for higher ISOs.

Dark frames

If you are shooting several different images, but with the same settings, you can save yourself loads of time by avoiding in-camera Long Exposure Noise Reduction, and shooting a single dark frame. To produce your own dark frame you need to shoot an image using all of the same settings as your main images, but with the lens cap over the lens. This will produce a black image, but with the same noise and ‘dead’ pixels as your ‘proper’ images. This dark frame should be processed in exactly the same way as your main image, and then copied and pasted over it in Photoshop. Changing the blending mode to Difference will allow the dark frame to remove the noise and dead pixels in your long exposure image.