Last weekend I shot a cheer competition that was indoors with no flash allowed. I used two lenses, a Canon 50mm f/1.4 and a Canon 85mm f/1.8. Even with the fast glass I had to bump up my ISO to get decent shutter speed. Although the 20D is a very good camera at reducing noise at high ISO's it still is somewhat noticeable, especially when you are charging people for it. So below is an example of a decent shot that was made more sell-able by using noise reduction software. I use Neat Image but I hear Noise Ninja does a good job too. In this example my settings were as follows: 85mm, 1/400 sec, f/2, Mode: Manual, Metering: Evaluative, ISO: 1600.
Here is the photo right out of the camera. Not horrible looking but on an 8x10 or larger the noise will be noticeable.
[attachment 11181 before_full.jpg]
Here is a 100% crop of the photo above.
[attachment 11182 before_crop.jpg]
Now I applied the Neat Image software and you can see how much it cleaned it up.
[attachment 11183 after_crop.jpg]
Here is the full image after using the Neat Image program.
[attachment 11184 after_full.jpg]
The noise reduction programs are no magic wand, you have to have a decent photo to start with. But for those borderline photos that it does work on it really helps me gain more photos that can be sold instead of just deleting them.
Here is the photo right out of the camera. Not horrible looking but on an 8x10 or larger the noise will be noticeable.
[attachment 11181 before_full.jpg]
Here is a 100% crop of the photo above.
[attachment 11182 before_crop.jpg]
Now I applied the Neat Image software and you can see how much it cleaned it up.
[attachment 11183 after_crop.jpg]
Here is the full image after using the Neat Image program.
[attachment 11184 after_full.jpg]
The noise reduction programs are no magic wand, you have to have a decent photo to start with. But for those borderline photos that it does work on it really helps me gain more photos that can be sold instead of just deleting them.