K5 image quality concerns - thoughts please

Hi all

was in an old disused building and took some shots of a friend. Lighting was low but for the sensor in the K5 should be a piece of cake 0 renowned for low light and high iso performance yes ?

I am appalled by the level of noise in the images ... really, really poor.

Just wondering what could be going on here. I wondered if there was an issue with the camera - but have taken people shots at whitby umpteen times, of course not in a building with low light, and image quality has been fine.

so could folk, especially K5 (whatever flavour) take a look and offer thoughts on why these are so poor.

Look especially trailing arm, jumper, face, upper breast areas

OK number one:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/84462488@N00/8994506077/sizes/h/in/set-72157634023641480/

shot at ISO 3200 - OK bit highish but as said with the rep of the K5's sensor I would expect A LOT better than this.

exif info : F5.0, 1/100sec, 32mm, -0.3 ev

usual minimal tweaking in lightroom 3

I then saw I had one at 80 ISO and thought aha this should be somewhat better:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/84462488@N00/8994492853/sizes/o/in/set-72157634023641480/

actually just seen this one was 1.6 secs so hence camera shake.. so maybe not a good one to judge from

still rather disappointed with forst one.

thoughts ?

mayne next time take my f1.8 50mm - OK smidge on short side for portrait but lots of light gathering and move back a little to get same field of coverage as the 32mm above

I've used both the K-5 and K-5iis a lot in low light and both have performed superbly, except for some focussing issues with the K-5, now mostly sorted out now it's calibrated correctly.

See example image at ISO 1600, there hasn't been any noise reduction applied in post processing to this one:




There are numerous others at ISO 3200 that are also pretty noise-free.

Regards
David

any thoughts on why my shots are so noisy at all ?

also have you got a linker to larger size ?

Hi Mike, I don't have a link to a larger size as this image is only posted on the PU Gallery. I'm not sure of the reason for the noise in your shots, maybe the light levels were really low in comparison to what I was working with?

Did you shoot in RAW or JPEG? Mine was shot in JPEG as it was a wedding and speed of processing is important, so the camera will have been applying a small amount of NR as the shots were taken.

Other than that, I'm not sure but someone else on here will probably have some suggestions.

Regards
David

thanks David. was shot in RAW for anyone else who can offer any thoughts

Because you have shot in RAW you may need to apply noise reduction in software. When you shoot JPEG the camera will sort out the noise reduction. Hence JPEGs will look less noisy out of the camera than RAW shots will.

If this is what has happened, then the shots may need to be put through a RAW converter and noise reduction applied.

Which lens in use? And are these Jpegs from camera or RAWs converted to Jpegs?

Upgrade to LR4.4, or download a trial for 30days, noise handling in that is a different game altogether from LR3.

I have presets set in LR3 which I have not thought about since setting up and auto apply when converting so will need to see what level of NR, if any, is being applied. Thanks John will take alook tomorrow - need my bed now

thanks again

RAW and the sigma 18-125

The noise reduction in LR4 is much better

Looking at the original size on flickr that looks like it's had far too much noise reduction applied to it. That old copy of a copy of a copy VHS tape effect, i.e it's smeared.

If you want to mail me an unedited HQ JPG copy of the RAW ( or the RAW itself if it's under 20Mb or you can RAR it into multiple bits, or a dropbox transfer) I'll run it through LR4 for ya. PM for email address

That's what I thought too - all the detail has gone. Did you really need to use that much noise reduction ?

The 'original' on Flickr is also a bit overcompressed. Hence a lot of compression artefacts, if you look closely, and a tiny file size.

Any underexposure, especially in high ISO will bring noise, especially in shadows, so make sure you don't underexpose.

I think under exposure is the problem too