Got Noise?

Got Noise?
by Jared Lloyd Photography
Copyright © 2021

All rights reserved. This book, and all of the photographs and
written text contained therein, are the intellectual property of the
author and are protected by U.S. and international copyright laws.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form without the prior written permission of the author.
 Here is a question for you. Have you ever taken the time to However, none of this actually has anything to do with the
look at the actual file size of your images? amount of available light when you photographed. The fact
that the sky was overcast, or sunny, or it was dawn, or noon,
I am not talking about the pixel dimensions, but the or an hour after sunset, is completely irrelevant to all of this.
megabytes (MB). If not, do it. You might be surprised that the Instead, it’s about the amount of light you ALLOWED your
numbers are all over the place. It doesn’t matter that you’re camera to capture.
shooting with the same camera, or that the images are all
from the same day or even the same shoot. Chances are, you You see, all of this is a choice — whether you realize it or not
will find quite a bit of variability in the amount of information at first. You make a choice every time you trip your camera’s
contained inside each individual photograph. shutter as to how much information you are going to record
and therefore how big and clean your files are. By the way,
One image might be 100MB. The next, 81MB. The following, bigger file sizes are better!
20MB. The maximum file size that you can capture with your
images is, of course, dictated by the resolution of your This choice comes in the form of your exposure. How large
camera. Naturally a 50-megapixel camera will have larger files or small is your aperture? How high is your ISO? What about
than a 16-megapixel camera. But sometimes it doesn’t. your shutter speed? All these things come together to dictate
how much light your camera’s sensor will record. Technically,
So why, if you are shooting with a 50-megapixel sensor aperture and shutter dictate how much light comes into the
in your camera, are you bringing home images that are camera, whereas your ISO setting dictates how sensitive to
sometimes the same size or smaller than those from your old light your sensor is.
16 megapixel? The answer to this lies in the thing that your
camera’s sensor was designed to capture: light. So, if we can agree that more information is better, why would
you make the conscious decision NOT to capture the biggest
In digital photography, light is information. Your camera is and most information-packed files possible? Why would you
not capturing the life force of an animal; it is capturing light consciously degrade your photographs in the field?
reflecting off it.
Let’s take this a step further. You see, whereas light equals
This is all our camera sensors do: They record light. The more information, the lack of information equals noise in our
light you have, the more information you have, and the larger photographs. That’s all noise is: a lack of information. It can
the file size you have to work with. Likewise, the less light you look like graininess in the image. It can look like a neon-
have, the less information you have, so your file sizes end up colored Jackson Pollock painting with splatters of green and
being smaller. magenta in the shadows. Photographers lose sleep over the
noise in their photographs. They spend extra money on

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 4

 specialized plug-ins to For those of you who have joined me in the field on a
help them remove noise workshop, there’s a pretty good chance you have heard me
when they process their say that I firmly believe the addition of the histogram is the
photos. They talk about most important thing to come out of the digital revolution
it at dinner tables and in photography. It’s not the fact that we can see a photo on
complain about it in the the back of our cameras. It’s not that we can format memory
field, and many assume cards and start all over again (although this is really nice).
that they can NEVER It’s the histogram. It’s our ability to read exactly how much
Blacks Shadows Midtones Whites Highlights use their camera above information is being recorded across 255 different tones of
some magical ISO limit light and adjust our exposure accordingly to guarantee that we
Ever wonder what those five because the noise have captured a photograph with a perfect exposure every time.
different columns represent on becomes unbearable
your histogram? This is what the to them. But what exactly is a perfect exposure? Believe it or not, the
“luminance” histogram looks like
definition has shifted with the technology in our hands. Back
on the back of your camera, and
this is what each of those columns I’m going to be in the days of color film and slides, a perfect exposure was
technically represent. purposefully redundant between one-third and two-thirds of a stop underexposed for
about this point because our midtones. Why? It was about color richness. Underexposing
it is that important. in camera helped to saturate colors. In fact, Nikon purposefully
Understand that noise is simply the consequence of a lack built their metering systems to always underexpose slightly in
of information. So, this makes me wonder, if we wildlife order to create richer colors.
photographers feel like we are constantly fighting to create
images with as little noise as possible, why would we choose That was then. This is now.
to set up our cameras to create images that are full of noise?
Especially when we could take the same photograph, in the And now, EVERYTHING is different.
same available light, with significantly less noise?
In the digital world, the popular misconception is that a good
Small file sizes and excess noise are the consequences of not exposure is one that does not “blow out the highlights.” To be
recording enough light in our photographs. This is completely fair, there is a whole lot of truth in this. But the problem with
avoidable. It is completely unnecessary. And all of our cameras this definition is that it opens up a wide range of exposures
come with a built-in tool that, when used correctly, will that, as long as they are not “clipping highlights,” are assumed
dramatically increase the size and quality of our photographs to be acceptable even though they absolutely are not.
and lessen the noise therein. This tool is the histogram.

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 8

 The Nikon D850, which I used
to photograph these two brown
bear cubs, is a 45.7MP camera.
Cameras with large numbers of
megapixels like this are notorious
for not being able to handle noise
at even modest ISO settings.

Looking at the details of this

photograph, however, you can
see that despite using ISO 2500,
there is zero noise to be found
in the background — which is
where we tend to find noise in our
photographs first.

I was able to accomplish this

because my exposure pushed my
histogram far to the right. Though
the image may appear to be
washed out, the histogram shows
us that I did not blow out my
highlights. This means that all I
have to do is reduce my exposure
and tie in my Blacks slider in the
Develop Module of Lightroom
to bring back a natural-looking
dynamic range while keeping the
background creamy smooth and
noise free.

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 6

 Photography is a form of visual art. And with art, it is damn most photographers I see on workshops do not actually
near impossible for anyone to tell you there is a right and understand what this really means and how crucially
wrong way of doing something. But, when it comes to important it all is.
exposure, with digital technology, there absolutely is a right
way to do it. All the creative vision, the artistry, the subjective If you were to try and judge your exposure based upon 255
opinions, and artistic interpretation with EXPOSURE is then individual tones of light, your brain would probably melt from
done in Lightroom or Photoshop by decreasing or increasing trying to make sense of it all. Camera manufacturers know
that exposure. this, so they simplified things down a bit by dividing your
histogram into fifths. Take a look at your camera’s histogram
When it comes to capturing the biggest, cleanest, sexiest and you will find that it is divided up into five separate
file you possible can, one that will hold up to ruthless editing columns, with each column basically representing one full stop
in Lightroom and Photoshop and come out smelling like a of light in your exposure.
rose on the other side, you have to understand one incredibly
important thing about how our cameras record information. Stops of light are measured logarithmically. This means that
Of all the 255 different tones of light that your camera’s when you increase your exposure by a full stop of light, you
sensor is capable of seeing and capturing, it does not record are actually doubling the amount of light that you recorded.
information evenly or equally across these different tones. Likewise, if you reduce your exposure by a full stop of light,
you are halving the amount that comes in.
If light equals information, then the lack of light equals a lack
of information. We have established this already. But, what
this means is that brighter tones of light contain more

WARNING!
information for your camera to work with than darker tones.
Darker tones, on the other hand, are places with a lack of
light, and this is why we tend to see noise in shadows first.
90 percent of the
In other words, the brighter the photograph, the more information I see on the
information that is captured with the image. Conversely, the web about histograms is
darker the photograph, or maybe we should say, the more
underexposed that it is, the less information that is recorded.
completely WRONG!
This is where sayings like “expose to the right” come from. It’s
something of a mantra that we all repeat to ourselves in our
heads. Most photographers have heard this, and they even
know that it is something they are supposed to do. However,

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 12

 Blacks Shadows Midtones Whites Highlights

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 10

 Let’s say your shutter speed is 1/30th of a second. If you were that our camera is recording. Because of this doubling effect,
to speed up your shutter to 1/60th of a second, reducing the this logarithmic nature of light and exposure, a full 50 percent
exposure by one full stop of light, you would effectively halve of the information that your camera is capable of recording
the amount of light that is coming into your camera because can only be captured in that last column to the far right on
the shutter is open for exactly half the amount of time. The your histogram.
same goes for your ISO. An ISO setting of 100 is a full stop
different from ISO 200, which is a full stop different from This means that if we take a hypothetical exposure where
ISO 400. the histogram stops right at the line where that last column
begins, we are only recording 50 percent or less of the
When it comes to your f-stop, however, the numbering information that our cameras are capable of recording. If
system is a little different because of the way in which an your histogram is underexposed to the point in which the
f-stop is measured. You would think that f/8 is one stop information stops at the second-to-last column, then you are
different from f/4, but it’s not. Instead, f/5.6 is actually one only recording 25 percent of the information you can. Let this
stop less light than f/4. The reason for this difference is the sink in for a moment.
fact that f-stops are based on the inverse square law.
Every photographer on the planet has at some point in time
I can only imagine the glazed looks I am getting at this very created photographs where the histogram stopped one or
moment, so I will make this fast and simple. A full stop of light even two columns short of being all the way to the right side
change in f-stop is its based upon multiplying or dividing the of the graph. They looked at the photo on the LCD, thought it
number by the square root of 2, which is 1.41. So, going from looked good, and kept on shooting. Everyone has done this —
f/4 to f/5.6 is a decrease in one full stop because 4 x 1.41 = 5.6. pros and amateurs alike. And with each of those photographs,
they came home with only half the amount of information (or
Did you survive? Good. Let’s get back to histograms. less) than they could have otherwise, unnecessarily degrading
the quality of their images, and created excess noise that they
Now that we understand that changing our exposure by a full then have to deal with later.
stop of light is really about doubling or halving the amount of
light that is being recorded, we can begin to understand how If you want to know where all that noise is coming from in
our cameras record information logarithmically across the your photographs, look no further than your histogram.
various tones of light.
And the higher the ISO you are shooting, the more noise
If light equals information, and we open up our exposure by you will introduce into your photographs as a result of sloppy
one full stop, which effectively doubles the amount of light, digital exposures.
then we are also DOUBLING the amount of information

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 14

 If the information on your
histogram is falling short of
that last fifth, then you are only
recording 50 percent or less of
the information your camera
is capable of recording. And if
your histogram is falling short of
the column before that (the one
labeled 25%), then you are only
recording 25 percent or less of
the information your camera
3.125% 6.25% 12.5% 25% 50% can capture!

So, if you want to know why you

are getting so much noise, start
by looking at your exposure!

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 16

 All cameras have a point in which the ISO of the exposure This means that it does not contain all of the nuances of
begins to make their photographs noisy or grainy. We all know light that will be in the final image, nor does it have the ability
this, and unfortunately, many photographers use this as a to depict all the tones of light you captured. Secondly, how
crutch by blaming noise on the ISO or hold themselves back you perceive that image on your LCD is directly related to
by assuming they cannot use higher ISOs. the light in which you are viewing it. If you are looking at the
LCD without a Hoodman loupe on a bright day, your image
In all fairness, we find a wide range of ability in cameras to will look dark. However, if you go home and look at it in a dark
handle high ISOs and low light. The age of the camera plays a room, suddenly it will become significantly brighter. How
role in this, as does the number of megapixels in that camera. we perceive color and tones of light is directly related to the
However, if you are using a modern camera, chances are it will ambient light in which we view them.
at least handle up to 6400 ISO. It’s just that you have to be
absolutely obsessive about pushing your exposure as far to the
right as you possibly can. In fact, you should probably push it
so far to the right that you actually begin to blow out or clip
your highlights, and then bring it back one-third of a stop.

One of the challenges in teaching photography is that

oftentimes, photographers come to the table with their
proverbial cup already full. It’s full of assumptions. It’s full of
bad habits and misunderstandings. And worst of all, it’s full of
bad information gathered over time from other photographers
— especially those at the local camera club.

The two biggest obstacles you need to overcome before

you can accept this cold, hard fact about light and how our
cameras record it are 1) accepting that the photo on the back If you have trouble seeing the
of the camera is not, and will never be, a reliable guide by nuances of your histogram when in
which to judge your exposure, and 2) that there is no such
the field, do yourself a favor and buy
thing as a proper SHAPE to a histogram.
a Hoodman loupe and hang it around
Let’s start with the image on the back of your camera. First, your neck with the provided lanyard.
understand that this is nothing more than a low-res
jpeg image you are viewing.

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 18

 This photograph of a red
fox, which is enlarged
100 percent, was created
on the same day with the
same D850 camera as
the image of the bears on
page 5. In looking at the
background, however,
you can see there is
considerably more noise
even though I shot at a
lower ISO rating than
with the bears.
However, if you look
at my histogram, this
all makes since. I
only recorded about
35 percent of the
information my camera
was capable of. And
the result was noise
in the shadows and
background. Now
imagine how bad this
would have been if I had
shot it at ISO 6400!

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 20

 So, what good is the image on the back of your camera if not the 255 different tones of light that the camera can record
for looking at your exposure? It serves two purposes. It lets information across. A spike in the histogram simply means
you study your composition, and it allows you to zoom in and that the camera is recording a lot of information in that
check your focusing. THAT’S IT! particular tone of light. Maybe that’s in the middle (midtone).
Maybe it’s near the left (shadows). It doesn’t matter. Spikes
The second obstacle, the whole shape of the histogram in the histogram only mean that lots of information is being
thing, tends to be one of those awful myths that we just can’t recorded in that particular tone of light.
shake. Most people learn this from other photographers. Or,
worse yet, from their local camera club. Or, even worse, If we were to capture a perfect bell curve on the histogram,
a camera store! this would mean that we captured MOST of the information
along the midtones and little to none in the highlights and
The assumption here is that a perfect histogram should be in shadows. This doesn’t happen very often. You can at times
the shape of a bell curve with the peak in the middle slowly find it in flat overcast light if, for instance, you point your
tapering off to black and white. Heard this one before? Are camera straight down at the grass when there are no shadows
you a bell-curve kind of person? If so, get over it. It is flat or highlights AND you set your camera’s exposure to 0 on
wrong and one of the stupidest bits of misinformation to make the light meter. This will give you a bell curve. But this is not
its way into the collective conscious of photographers. 99.999 percent of the lighting situations we encounter and
therefore it is also never going to create 99.999 percent of
The shape of the histogram is completely, 100 percent, the histograms we see either. If you see a bell curve in your
dependent upon the light reflecting off all the stuff in your histogram, rest assured that you have the world’s flattest and
composition. If you are shooting a silhouette, for instance, most boring light.
where you have a black subject (silhouette, duh) with
beautiful colored light all around it, you are going to have a Now that we know there is, first and foremost, no such thing
histogram that looks like a football goal post instead of a bell as a proper shape to a histogram, and that a perfect exposure
curve. Why? You will be recording lots of information in your IN DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY is one in which the histogram
shadows (the spike to the left) and lots of information in your is as far as possible to the right without actually touching
highlights (the spike to the right) and very little information the side (read: blowing out highlights), we can now wield the
across your mid-tones (the stuff in across the middle). most important tool at our disposal. By merely glancing at the
histogram, we can know so many things. We can judge what
Part of the problem here comes from folks misunderstanding our exposure is and if we are overexposed and blowing out our
what spikes in their histograms actually mean. You see, there whites/brights/highlights. We can make calculated decisions
is nothing wrong with a spike. Or two spikes. Or 20 spikes for to decrease the noise in our photographs and increase the
that matter. Recall that a histogram is ultimately a reading of resolution and information captured in each photograph.

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 22

 Think you can really
trust your eyes to judge
exposure?

Which of these two

blocks is the darkest?

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 24

 And, we can tell in an instant exactly what we need to do to correct
the exposure.

The first bit of the above paragraph should, by now, all make sense.
The last part may not be so obvious. However, if you remember
that each column on the histogram equates to roughly one full stop
of light, then you can always make a quick and dirty judgment call
as to how much more light you need to add to the exposure.

Our cameras are set to adjust exposure variables (shutter speed/

ISO/aperture) in one-third increments. So, all you have to do is
visualize each one of those columns on the histogram as being
broken up into thirds. Knowing that each column is one full stop,
you can make a judgment call as to whether or not you need to
adjust the exposure by one and one-third stops or just one-third of
a stop to push your exposure as far to the right as possible.

All of this seems simple enough, right? Push the exposure as far
the right on your histogram as possible in order to reduce noise and As you can see from the picture above,
give you the biggest files possible to work with. Cut and dry. Well, the two blocks are exactly the same
almost. There is a catch. When we expose to the right, and I mean
really expose to the right, our images are going to look washed out. shade of gray. You perceive one to
Colors will be awful. Shadows will be awful. be darker than the other, however,
because of the highlights, shading, and
Expletives will tumble from your mouth followed by my name. It’s background colors. Light and color are
OK. I’m used to it. straightforward physics, but our brains
But, as long as you have not overexposed in the literal sense of
are a swirling vortex of mysteries full of
the phrase by blowing out your highlights or whites, then all of the biases, assumptions, and perception.
information you need for the photograph is there. The key here is
to understand that in digital photography, processing your images is CHECK YOUR HISTOGRAM!!!!
now 50 percent of the game.

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 26

 I created this photograph
while in the North Dakota
Badlands for the express
purpose of explaining the
need for pushing your
exposure as far to the right
on the histogram as possible
to protect against noise. ISO
5000 is something many
photographers believe they
cannot shoot at. And yet,
because the information on
the histogram is stacked as
far to the right as possible
(without touching the right
side and blowing out the
highlights), I was able to
dramatically minimize the
noise that was captured
here. And if you look closely,
the only place you will find
noise is in the shadow of the
rabbit’s cave. Notice how I
accidentally front-focused on
the rubble pile. Don’t do that!
Bad Jared.

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 28

 Ansel Adams famously explained that his photographs were film days. However, it is the right way to do things with digital
created in the darkroom. He likened what was captured in photography. Understanding the nuances of the technology
camera to a set of ingredients that he could then work with in your hands allows you to step up your photography game.
later. Today, so many decades later, with such incredible leaps It allows you to take control of noise in your photographs and
forward in technology, nothing has changed. produce the largest files possible for your camera, and it gives
you so much more latitude for processing your images on the
If you pick up a copy of National Geographic that was computer. All of which is a good thing!
published in 1981 and lay it side by side with this month’s
issue, the difference you see in the quality of the photographs
largely has to do with the invention of digital photography and
the use of editing software like Photoshop and Lightroom.

By exposing to the right, you ensure that you capture as

much information in the most forgiving tones of light possible.
Once you download and open your images in Photoshop or
Lightroom, you can then simply recreate the dynamic range
you either remember or see in your creative mind’s eye.

To do this, we simply reduce the exposure and adjust the black

and shadow sliders in your raw processor — which means
either Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw if you only use
Photoshop. Dropping down the exposure or darkening the
image in Photoshop/Lightroom is simply a matter of removing
some information. You can take away information all day
long. What you cannot do, however, is add information (light)
without degrading the image to some degree by adding noise.

Whereas noise is created in the field by not capturing enough

information, in Photoshop/Lightroom, it is created by trying to
artificially add light when brightening our images.

Have I made a convert out of you yet? There is nothing about

this that is intuitive. It is the polar opposite idea compared to

The Journal of Wildlife Photography 30

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