I was lucky enough to visit the Saltee Islands with the Dungarvan Camera Club in the middle of June. This is the best time of the year to visit the islands, due to the migrant nature of the bird life late May to early August visits ensure that there is a large population on the islands, giving you plenty to see as you trek around the coasts. Here are a few images from the day, and you will see that the weather couldnt have been better (apart from a freak thunderstorm around 2pm!)

Digital cameras are great for so many reasons, for ease of use, for being able to photograph a scene as many times as you need to to get the image right, for ease of presentation and for post shutter enhancement and modification and for so many more reasons. One of the limitations of digital photography however, that is critical to all amateur and professional photographers alike is noise.

Now we all know noise can be caused by any number of factors, but is mainly due to the fact that the higher the ISO the camera is operating at, the more it is amplifying the signal levels received by the sensor and obviously when you amplify a signal it boosts both the good and the bad, so any interferences which are found in any electrical system are boosted along with the correct signals. This is also the case with lower light conditions where we have longer exposures which allow more noise to creep into an image.

So what can you do to reduce the noise in your images?

Well there are a number things you can do, you can – shoot at a lower ISO setting; shoot using a DSLR instead of a compact camera (the bigger sensor on a DSLR allows for less noise at equivalent ISO / resolution settings); using in camera noise reduction technology and /or you can use some kind of noise reduction software.

So the first three items above are fine and there are different ways of achieving the  lower ISO and In-Camera noise reduction technology, both of which I will write a separate post about soon. The last item however is a broad subject that I find to be more complicated than what it first appears to be. I initially started off as all beginners do, in using no processing noise reduction. As I developed, I started using PhotoShop’s built in noise reduction filters and adjustments. What I had left out, up until lately was the use of the Camera vendor’s own image processing applications – which come bundled with the camera’s when you buy them.

I have a Sony Alpha 550 DSLR camera and with it came Sony’s own application which is called “Image Data Converter SR V3″ and is basically an application that allows you to view and edit RAW image files and then save them as either RAW or TIF files. Now you can call it an amateurs mistake for skipping the processing with the bundled software and jumping straight to PhotoShop for all image processing, but I found a big difference between the way PhotoShop handles noise correction and Sony’s own application does.

On the left is a noisy image (ISO 2000) with Light Room noise reduction, and on the right the image with noise reduction applied by Sony’s application:

As you can see there is a clearly noticeable difference between the images and Sony’s handling is a much neater version of the same process. A lot of this comes down to Sony understanding how their camera’s work at the most basic level and being able to create algorithms to match exactly what it needs to, as opposed to PhotoShop’s broad brush approach to the noise reduction. However it happens, there is a big difference and I know that any images that I take in the future that have any kind of noise in them, I will be pre-processing them through Sony’s application before getting them into PhotoShop for final tweaking!

So if you are looking for a good noise reduction application, maybe try out what came with your camera before you start buying all the plugins and third party applications around!

Other Third Party Noise Reduction Software:

• Noise Ninja
• Neat Image

Well its been about a month since my last post, and I have a quick post here with a few images from a visit to Fota Wildlife Park in Cork. They took part in the 2010 BioBlitz operation and as part of this, a number of photographers from my local camera club (Dungarvan Camera Club) took part in documenting various flora and fauna.

It was a great day to be out and about, although the sun was a bit harsh for our designated timeslot (13:00 – 15:00) and by the time we were on the scene most of the “blitzing” seemed to have taken place! So we ended up doing our own thing and exploring the less travelled areas of the wildlife park.

All though not a great day shooting – here are a few images from the day:

1. Take Picture (clearly the start of it all)
2. Get home and download all images from camera / memory card in “photo dump” folder for sorting
3. Run through all images and delete all images that arent worth keeping
4. Copy rest of images into an “originals” folder according to category of photo – people / landscape / flora / fauna / still life
5. Now the images are safe in their resting area I fire up my ACD Photo Manager and tag all the photos with keywords to make them easier to find later on
6. All further processing is then done using primarily Adobe Photoshop CS4
7. All new versions of the images are saved in a “processed” folder under the same – people / landscape / flora / fauna / still life folder structure
8. Currently to save space – only my “originals” folder is backed up

There are a number of different applications that you can purchase that help you to handle the flow automatically such as Aperture from Apple and Lightroom from Adobe and also the cheaper ACDSee Photo Manager that I currently use. I may end up upgrading to the Apple or Adobe applications, but for the meantime I will maintain my library in ACDSee Photo Manager.

Now the benefits of having a set work flow far out weigh the negatives of the extra work involved in doing this rather than just dropping everything into a folder called “images”. If you stick to a structured work flow, you will always have a copy of your original image that you can revert to if you have issues during processing. You also will be able to find your images quicker and easier and be able to locate similar photographs if you are searching for a specific subject. You can manage and lessen the amount of storage you need to back up, which is important to ensure that you are covered in case of data loss or even reduce your storage costs – although the cost of storage is dropping on a daily basis! See Moores law on this!

Anyway that is my bit on the overall work flow of image management, I will write a few more posts on my image processing work flow which will add more detail to each of the above broad steps.

* A few notes on the workflow :

• All my images are captured as RAW images (or ARW images – which is the Sony format)
• I back up my images automatically off-site but I will have another post on backing up

I have been working my way through a great book called Digital Photography Masterclass by Tom Ang. Its an interesting reference book that addresses the many aspects of digital photography – from the theory behind light and photography to post photo imaging primarily through the use of Adobe Photoshop.

Each chapter takes you through a different aspect of photography or processing and then shows a number of example photo’s by contributing photographers and then critiques them. Finally there is a task or challenge for each chapter to help you put into practice the concepts learnt in the chapter.

The only thing that I feel the book is lacking is a level of detail in some of the sections. The author could have spent some more time going through the more complex operations, but I guess at least they are introduced and whoever is reading it can take the subject away and and research it in greater detail elsewhere.

Overall I think it is worth reading or used for reference if you are looking for more information on the many facets of digital photography but more experienced photographers might be left looking for more information.

I made the decision in August 2008 to jump and buy the brand new (at the time) Sony Alpha 200 DSLR camera. This decision is definitely not one that I have lived to regret – the camera was well priced for its features and I have enjoyed using it over the past year and a half while basically starting from scratch in the DSLR world! It has been easy to use and I have enjoyed the results I have gotten from it so far, but it has come time to change to a bigger camera.

I have been looking at the bigger Sony’s and also at the Nikon’s to see if before I have made too much of an investment in lenses for the Sony, whether it would be worth me jumping brand. To help me make my decision I have some key requirements for the new camera:

• ISO Sensitivity : The Alpha 200 that I currently have is a great camera, but when it comes to ISO sensitivity, I don’t shoot beyond ISO 400 because the noise becomes too apparent and there are only so many photos that the “Noisy Grain” can be described as a feature!
• Continuous Shooting Speed :The Alpha 200 does not do much in the way of continuous shooting, and whilst this isn’t a big thing when I was starting out, I have found that in certain circumstances it would be useful to have a higher shooting speed.
• Higher resolution : As time goes by, resolution increases across camera technologies and although I dont currently need any more resolution that I currently have – this is just a upgrade benefit.

So after reading many, many reviews and going out and playing around with the camera’s (D90 borrowed & Alpha 550 at the store – cos they are so new), the following summarises my decision thought process:

Sony Plus Points:

• 14 mp vs 12 mp on the Nikon
• 5 fps and 7 fps (Aperture and Focus lock) vs 4.5 fps on the Nikon
• Tiltable LCD screen
• SteadyShots (built-in image stabilization) – this works for all lenses and is a BIG plus on the Sony Alpha cameras – EVERY LENSE is stabilised rather than paying a premium for stabilised lenses.
• ISO range up to 12800 vs 6400 on the Nikon
• More dedicated buttons
• Quick AF in live view, 4 fps continuous shooting speed
• Auto HDR (Although not a big feature for me – it could be fun to play around with)

Nikon additional features over the Sony:

• Top LCD screen (Nice to have – but how often would i use it?)
• Ability to record 720p movie
• Wireless flash commander
• Currently more lenses available than for Sony

Lastly when it comes to price – there is not a lot between them, but the Sony is a bit more reasonable and it is a newer camera – the D90 was launched in August 2008 while the Sony was launched in October 2009.

So with that been said I have just handed over the money and am waiting for delivery of my new Sony Alpha 550. Watch this space for pictures and comments as I get to use the new camera.