Grain | 52 Week Project {6 of 52}
Okay…initially when I saw this I thought “Oh! I know what I am going to go shoot! Sea oats!” LOL…Grain…get it. My husband wasn’t far behind me though, saying I should go for a “grain” of sand…at least I was in good company. {That might have been a great chance for me to point out that Valentine’s is just around the corner and a macro lens takes REALLY great images of a grains of sand 
I was good though and didn’t and he never reads my blog lol} I digress. [UPDATE: Funny thing is I wrote this part earlier in the week and didn't reread it when I published it then my hubby DID end up reading it! I love you DH and it wasn't a plant, I SWEAR! LOL!]
1/1000 sec, f5.0, ISO 200, 50mm (EF50mm f1.4 USM)
But alas I think the real point of this week’s 52 Week theme is to look at grain similar to that seen when we used to shoot film…not like my “grain” above.
Talking to my dear friend Miss Jane (Check her out at Jane Brown & Co. Photography) the other night she convinced me to step out of my comfort zone and “embrace the grain” that my camera creates on its own. Well to me, when my camera creates this “grain” it is “noise” and I run shrieking from it. So I thought I would quickly look at the difference between film quality “grain” and what our fancy digital camera sensors create that we have negatively named “noise”. Are they the same? {Bet you didn’t think you would get a lesson on just a 52 week Challenge post, did you? Well, when I learn, you learn. You’re welcome. }
They are not the same thing. Film grain that used to be indicative of higher film speeds varied in size based on the film sensitivity. For example, you would have larger grain in film rated at 800 versus a 200 speed film. With digital noise, no matter the ISO setting you have, the size of the “grain” is always the size of a pixel. So with digital noise you will see it even more as you increase the size of those pixels by printing or viewing at larger size. Another difference is the color of the noise versus film grain. Digital noise is most notable in the blue color channel. What does this mean for your image? It means that you are going to notice it a lot more in the shadows, especially if you try to bring up the exposure in them during post production. This would explain why an image that has a lot of noise may be a lot more aesthetically pleasing when it is converted to a black and white photograph. I know I really prefer to turn my “noisy” images to black and white and this now explains why. {I love learning don’t you!}
The final difference in digital noise versus film grain, that I learned this week, is all in how our brains see it. Digital noise in older model cameras (like mine) has a pattern to it, called banding. There is enough of a pattern there that our brain picks it out of the image. With film grain (and some of the nicer, newer digital sensors) it is more even through out the image. It is seen as “pure noise” and our brains tend to let it go with out much notice. Our brains are pretty spectacular pieces of equipment, aren’t they?
Well, what do you do with that “noise” then? In the past I would try to avoid shooting too high of ISOs (on my 40D that does not give me much wiggle room for increasing my shutter speed). But with the subjects that I am usually shooting, I need all the shutter speed I can get for the exposure so I HAVE to go up on my ISO. I would then usually try to combat it in postproduction by either turning the image to a black and white (as mentioned earlier) or use Lightroom 4′s pretty capably noise reduction. However, as with any noise reduction tool in editing, I would lose some of the fine detail and sharpness in an image as the noise reduction algorithms could not separate noise from those small details and try to smooth them out too. The other option, and one which I played around with this week, is to add that nice and even “pure noise” or grain into the image during post production. My brain and I have agreed that we like the look of the added “grain” a lot better then plain ‘ole digital “noise”. I now have a new editing tool in my fight against “noise”.
So what do you think? Do you like noise? What about film grain? Can you tell a difference do you think?
As my dear friend told me, go out and “embrace the grain”. Here are my images for this week’s theme of GRAIN.
1/1600 sec, f1.4, ISO 800, 50mm (EF50mm f1.4 USM)
I shoot with my trusty Canon 40D. Don’t get me wrong, it has been a great camera and I am very grateful to have it. However, in the last 5 years I have learned more about what I want out of a camera based on my shooting style and situations. For me, the style is bright, sharp, clear images shot usually in situations requiring a higher shutter speed. To get all that, I would like the ability to go to a higher ISO with no reservations.
Noise is a limiting factor of the Canon 40D, in my opinion. The ISO limit on my camera is 1600. Sure you can expand it to 3200 but I never ever have (remember noise and I are not close). To contrast that, look at the Mark III’s (just because I have my sights set on that as my future camera) ISO range of 100 to 25600 (expandable out to 102400)! Wow. To think what you could do with that!
The images of my little guy here were shot at ISO 800 (above image) and ISO 400 (below image). Now on my 40D that will produce some pretty good (bad) noise–more then I prefer in my client work. For the sake of this week’s theme I decided that I would go ahead and (still remove the noise) but add grain to the images in post production (Lightroom 4) for a classic film feel. I actually really love how they turned out…he just may need to come up with a new pose, lol. So yes, I like the film grain but still am having to work on not letting noise scare me from venturing above my “safe” ISOs on my camera.
1/320 sec, f1.4, ISO 400, 50mm (50mm f1.4 USM)
Now please head over to Miss Katrina’s blog and see how she chose to represent this week’s theme of “Grain”. So glad she is doing okay during this crazy weather! Please also keep all our friends and family that are in the midst of Snowmageddon in your prayers!
Cheers,
K
I love any DIY blog or show. That is one of the reasons why I do not have cable for now…I would spend a lot of time in front of the DIY network and shows on TLC about junking and storage unit sales. Time that I really should be doing things for the kids, for the house or for my work. I have done a bit of my own thrifting lately and have now been banned by my husband from buying any more furniture before we move. Darn it.
