K-R noise issues

Perhaps I'm being a bit stupid on this, studio wise I shoot at ISO 200 and usually F8-12 shutter speed 125-160 but I keep getting really frustrated with noise it's really getting me upset because it means I cant submit my work to anything or I'll just get laughed out.
here is a close up of the unedited photo to demonstrate
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b257/pinkbeene/IMGP5391noise.jpg[/IMG]

and here is the finished product- i end up just cloning the noise and using a solid colour fill layer on PS to try and lessen the noise
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b257/pinkbeene/IMGP5391Ejweb.jpg[/IMG]

but as you can imagine. after 5 hours of skin retouching it's not nice to have to fix noise so if I'm being daft and doing something wrong please tell me The problem is present when I'm using my soft box and my beauty dish.

Maybe it's me, but all I'm seeing are marks and blemishes on the model's skin.

Are you talking about in the shadow area's? If so, could simply be too great a range for the sensor to handle.

ISO seems 'high' and shutter speeds too low.

Try lighting changes to eliminate shadows?

Interesting shot by the way

Looks like shadow to me from a single strobe??

The skin can be smoothed out in post...

Me too. I can't see much noise, even in the shadows.

really? it's really pixelly, noisey and red spidery

It looks fine to me, nothing at all pixellated and noisy. Very strange.

It is noisy on the background just over the shoulder.
A noise reduction program such as Neat Image should
fix it. Lightroom should work as well.

Is it better at 100ISO?

Don't use any intermediate ISO values because they
are adjusted downwards from the next ISO up and you
get the higher noise level i.e. 250ISO would have
400ISO's noise.

I wouldn't have thought it mattered too much, scanned
film is usually a lot worse from grain.

Bird photography is one of the worst subjects to do
from a noise point of view, but even the K20D was
usable at 400ISO.

Sarah Moon was very noisy when she used to use
GAF 500 (ASA/ISO) film

LINKY

-

Neat Image removes it but causes some Jpeg artifacts.
You also seem to have sharpness set to Hard in the
camera..... try soft (not sure what the K-R has I
use a K-5)





Edit: There should be noise reduction in the camera
as well.

Model has a strap mark on the shoulder, make-up on her cheek, plus capillaries are showing through her skin.

You are also really zooming in on a relatively small image, so any imperfections will get magnified accordingly.

Assuming this will be printed, to what size?

I have viewed your photo and agree that the noise in the deep shadow area, is as you describe.
In my opinion, this noise is caused by very underexposed shadows. A change in your set-up, to include a reflector to reduce the shadows, should work.

I lightened the image in levels and tried separately both Topaz Denoise and Topaz Dejpeg. Both of these programs worked on reducing the noise and artifacts.

thank you
I know she has blemishes and strap marks- I'm not that derpy. it's from the unedited jpeg
I need the pictures to be magazine standard as I've been asked to submit loads of work (because people seem to like me)and I would dearly like to be published but it seems that I can't get my images print ready.

thanks about the hardness - i'll check it in camera

This maybe an obvious answer which you've already tried, but I always recommend using RAW, I tend to get those artifacts if the JPEG came from in-camera, but very rare if exported from Photoshop using a MAX JPEG setting.

Hope this helps!

This type of noise also seems to be effected by how well your
colour balance is set The PC I'm using now is better
balanced than the one I used last night and I can't see the
noise That explains why other people have reported that
they can't see it It seems to be in the purple fringe
part of the spectrum.

I wouldn't think it would show up on the high quality monitors
that magazines use and you might need to check the balance of
your monitor.

Don't forget that if your shot out of camera is two or three stops underexposed, then you will be effectively shooting at that ISO. e.g. if you shot at ISO 200, and the shot/shadows are three stops under, then you have shot at ISO 1600

Looking at the difference between the untouched and PP'd image, I'd say your setup was underexposed, big time.

That said, if you shot RAW then you will find you can pull much more detail out of the shadows without getting significant noise (or more importantly posterisation). JPG captures about 8 bits per colour per pixel, where as the RAW is 12-bits (or 14-bits on K-5). Four bits may not sound much, but it's 16 times the detail (or 64 for the 14-bit). It really is significant.

But, I'd say work hard at getting your in-camera shot closer to your PP'd requirement. That will save you a lot of work later

Matt