Why are the photos on my Nikon D70 so noisy?
As I've become a little better photographer and I've gotten to know some of the photographic terms, I've noticed that the pictures I take on my Nikon D70 are very unsharp and extremely noisy. From first glance, they look fine and very sharp, but upon zooming in, you can tell there's a lot of unwanted noise. (Examples on my Flickr @ flickr.com/carrickwebb.) Is there any way I can improve upon this and take better photos with this camera, or is this the quality I'm going to be getting with it no matter what?
What is your ISO setting? The higher the setting the noisier the image.
The D70 is knocking on a bit now. I have one, although now use a full frame. It has a dx sensor producing a crop factor of 1.5. It produces good photos but you notice things when blowing up an image, like noise, resolution etc. And that's down to the limitations in the dynamic range and sensitivity of the sensor. A high quality bright lens can improve things but the limiting factor is the sensor. It's a camera that's now 14 years old and sensor design has moved on considerably.
Post production, if you know what you are doing can also improve matters buy choosing good noise reduction plugin software. Your standard photo imaging app may be adequate but it's worth researching if you can improve your photos by choosing better image processing software.
Your photos are wonderful but just like any digital photo, if you magnify it far enough, you'll see the individual pixels. That's normal. Stop pixel peeping.
To get the lowest noise from your digital camera you would use your camera's native sensor speed, which is iso200 on the D70. More recent cameras have better noise reduction algorithms. Adding amplification (ISO) increases noise in the image. Your images look great to me, you have an eye for composition, keep up the good work.
Your images look technically fine. You need to show an example of what you think is a noise issue as our definitions may not agree (show a cropped section of a noisy area). Are you magnifying the image beyond 100%? If so, what you see are individual pixels and any camera will look ugly when the image is displayed beyond 100%. Are you looking at JPEG compression artifacts? If so, try shooting in raw or make sure your compression setting is set to fine. Nikon's ViewNX program will process raw images. Or, use Lightroom. If you're looking at noise in solid colors like the sky, that is normal performance for the D70, D50, & D40 (all use the same sensor).
The difference between a D70 sensor and what's used in modern (D7000 and newer) cameras is quite noticeable in solid colors and gradients. The sensor quality has greatly improved over the past decade and the signal processing in the camera has also improved.
Reviewing your flickr page (thanks for the link), I see what you mean. There's noticeable noise especially in areas of little to no detail such a blue sky. You're shooting at ISO 200, which is the lowest ISO setting for your camera. By today's standards, ISO 200 is a rather high base ISO with every DSLR shooting at least ISO 100 and with a few such as Nikon's D5 shooting at a considerably lower ISO 50.
You have two options to solve your problem:
1) Upgrade your camera body. At ISO 200, your D70 simply produces too much noise based on the capabilities of a modern DSLR. You can compare ISO performance here: Keep in mind that this tool can't be used to determine sharpness of a DSLR since each test was not done with the same lens.
2) Invest in noise reduction software. There are plenty of reviews on YouTube as to which removes noise while retaining sharpness. In your case, I would suggest that this be your first choice. Most noise reduction software whether it be part of Photoshop or Lightroom, or as an add on such as solutions from OnOne, have the ability to create a mask. This mask allows you to precisely choose which area to apply some amount of noise reduction. What you absolutely don't want to do is apply noise reduction globally to the entire image. This will reduce the sharpness of the image, so you want to create a mask (e.g. Just the sky) and apply an appropriate amount. The reason is that noise is not noticeable at the same amount on all areas. Areas like blue sky where there's little to no detail will show more noise than say an area filled with brush and trees. This is why you never should use the in-camera noise reduction.
And, of course, noise reduction software will allow you to fix all of your shots in your current library. You can easily test software yourself. Just go adobe.com or on1.com and download free trials.
Make sure your ISO is set to it's lowest setting.
It goes a lot
Google how to shoot manual on a camera and practice practice practice until you can. At that point, you will know that you want your ISO as low as possible, preferrably between 200-800 at the highest. The higher the ISO number, the more noise you will see in your photos. Also take into account that your images will not be viewed at 100%, but instead at 1200 px wide at the most unless you are making prints larger than 15". If noise is not detectable at that size, you're good to go. However, always try to keep your iso as low as possible, and your shutter high enough that you don't get blur and "unsharp" images.