Oh dear, that was an oversight. I swear my location was filled, something must have happened when I was messing about with my portfolio a few days ago and uploading that cranky shot of mine with the K20 . Or was it not?
Thanks for bringing it to my attention Danny. Off I go to fill that one up.
Now let me think, where on the planet exactly am I? ha lol

Matt and Peter

I must say, what a fantastic explanation and breakdown of detailed information. I am absolutely stunned and overjoyed with what you two have just explained me. Its almost like a light bulb went on into my brain and suddenly grasped every single detail of things you have written.

Often people understimate others and instead of going straight using technical aspects to explain something they wander around and give the brief and short account of things, but you two didn't have qualms in going straight to the physics aspects of it, and I absolutely loved grasping it.

These are the sort of things that even if I had managed to start shooting the correct way by doing the modifications my curious mind would have wanted to search for the scientific aspects of whys and hows and I would have dug out info regarding this matter. But you just gave it to me in the plate.

What you two have just offered me here in terms of knowledge has just helped me go one notch up in skills and confidence to be behind the lens and feel absolutely wonderful . Knowledge acquired is definitely a beautiful sensation, and blessed are the ones who have the patience and skills to transmit them.

Thank you ever so much again for your help.
Now all I need is some more goldies to shoot.

Hello Park, welcome to the forum.
Where are you from? Filling the location is quite helpful so that we may know what part of the world you come from

People are very friendly and helpful here. A great place to lay your hat and sit for a virtual coffee, but the members are real, nothing virtual about us

There is something new that I want to try . But decidedly I am game . Let's have some more birdies and shoot with M setting

Matt, thank you so much for this. It definitely helps knowing that these are normal noise levels and I can just tweak and work things out.

Normally I wouldn't attempt a capture at that distance and under that light. But on this occasion I wanted to be on the safe side meaning wanting to make sure the noise levels were as expected, just like you mentioned Matt. Now from here it can only be better because I rarely shoot at 1600, if ever, and when I do its with slightly better lighting even and also slightly closer. So this added to a slight EV compensation I think I will be on the right track.

Thank you so much for all your kind help and input. Learnt something new today and I can start implementing

So let me see if I got this clear. Should I permanently leave my EV setting as +0.7 and shoot anything at that EV or only when I am forced to bump up the ISO?

Peter, I have indeed noticed that on occasion when I increased the exposure to +1 I remember seeing better results when the ISO was bumped high.

I will give it a try
thanks for the advice

Hmm now you are confusing me Peter

The links are for PEF files
and the image is a jpg obviously

Thanks Matt, appreciate your help and input on this.
I will try to open the ISO 1600 RAW file with silkypix.
My trouble with silkypix though is the settings. There are so many bits and pieces there that I get totally lost, its not like Ninja that I just load the profile.
Or is there something in the Silkypix that I can just load and keep it as standard for most images and then I can just tweak a little individually when I want to?
Seems like silkypix is more for people like you, professionals that know exactly what those bits and pieces and settings are. As for me I get headaches by just shuffling the menus

But sure wish I could understand a bit more of it so I could get some better results and not get such a phobia of bumping the ISO

Reloading the files again to server Mike. A glitch seems to have happened while uploading the first time. A couple of minutes and both links should be working
Thank you for your help

I often wonder still if the noise I am getting from my K20 shooting at anything higher than 400 is still acceptable. I have seen a few images here from our forum members at quite high iso settings that seem well below what I get. But being inexperienced and my first contact into the DSLR world I can't be sure.

Here is an image shot at 800 ISO this morning. Ran through Ninja, actually I ran it twice, first time used the brush to keep the subject isolated so that its not affected with the noise engine, but then ran again because the background looked still noisy to me.

Original image in RAW at ISO 800 is here

This is at ISO 1600 here

this is the final image I managed to get after Ninja twice




Any help in order for me to understand or put my mind to rest about the noise would be greatly appreciated.

Amin