Noisy images with Lightroom lately?

[peteh13]

Hello everyone,

I have an EM1 Mk2 and have had it for a couple of years. Have always been happy with the quality of the images, until recently.
My processing flow is RAW from camera -> Lightroom to crop, straighten, lighten, darken..etc, -> Topaz Denoise (if shot at high ISO) -> Lightroom -> export to JPG.

Recently, I've been seeing very grainy/noisy images as soon as the RAW file comes into Lightroom, even when I've been shooting at ISO 200.

I haven't changed anything in the camera. Haven't changed lenses.
So, I'm assuming that it's something in a recent Lightroom update?

Anyone got any ideas, comments?

Will try and post some images to show what I'm seeing.

[peteh13]

Here's a typical example. Bright sunny day, EM1 Mk2, Oly100-400mm, ISO 200, f11 to get a bit of rotor blur. Full size shown for context, and then a zoom in Lightroom.

[blackfox]

Pure and simple heat haze .. there is no answer to it a bugbear of long range summer shooting .. getting closer is the only answer

[griffljg]

In my experience, that is probably Topaz related. Your ISO is 200. Is de-noising really needed? Why did you even bother with Topaz? Let us see what the photo looks like if you export directly out of Lightroom.

[peteh13]

This is Lightroom only. Hasn't been into Topaz at this point.
(And to be fair, it looks a bit worse in this screenshot than it does on screen, but you get the idea).

In this case, I'd use Topaz to clean it up and it would do an excellent job I'm sure. I'm just wondering why it looks so noisy in Lightroom given that it's ISO 200.

[griffljg]

Sometimes that's what my photos look like after I have used Topaz. Other times they look ok. Why not download a trial copy of DxO PureRAW 2 and process the raw file before importing the resulting dng file into Lightroom? I would be interested to see the result.

[pdk42]

I’ve not noticed any difference in LR’s noise handling. And I do a LOT of shadow pushing where it would be immediately noticed.

[MJ224]

I found that the OM-1 RAW's in Lightroom were quite noisy, unless the light was very good. Noisier than the Mk3 or X. But this a Lightroom factor rather than the camera. Look at the JPEGS OOC and see what they are like. They were always PDG IMHO.

Now we have DXO back, I no longer have that problem. But Topaz always fixed the noise.

[griffljg]

My preferred raw file convertor, Capture One Pro (COP), already had full support for the OM-1 even before I received mine and so I just kept on using it and was quite happy with the results, except for when the ISO was upwards of 6400. While DxO PureRAW didn't provide support for the OM-1, I was forced to revert to using Topaz DeNoise AI after I had finished editing the file in COP by generating a TIFF file. I did try to get Topaz to edit the ORF file and generate a DNG file which I could import into COP for further editing, but the DNG file produced by Topaz isn't quite what COP is expecting and some of the values are a bit jumbled.

I have a current subscription to Adobe for comparative purposes and gave it a try. Like you, I found that the OM-1 raw files were quite noisy, but found that Topaz interacted perfectly with Lightroom Classic, although some sort of circular noise was still retained on some of the files. So that was always an option, while DxO wasn't providing OM-1 support.

Now that DxO provide OM-1 support, my noise problems have gone away and my workflow for files which need noise reduction is: ORF -> DxO PureRAW -> DNG -> Capture One Pro -> JPEG. For files which don't need noise reduction, just drop the "DxO PureRAW -> DNG" step.

I'll probably not renew my Adobe subscription when it comes due early next year and will probably not do the next upgrade to the Topaz software which I am using.

[Bruce Clarke]

Looks over-sharpened to me, try default settings if they have been changed. I use the sharpen masks a lot at around 40 in LrC which keeps the skies and smooth areas less noisy.

[blackfox]

I still say it’s heat haze ,that’s one hell of a crop in the second image .plus the 100- 400 does seem to suffer at full range as opposed to prime lenses . As I said before you notice it more with birds as cropping is order of the day

[Growltiger]

Perhaps you changed the Lightroom settings compared to before.
Reduce the Lightroom sharpening. Noise looks normal. A blurred image makes the noise look worse. Try a sharp image.
The motion blur makes that crop look bad - use a faster shutter speed. Topaz Sharpen might help a bit.
Also f/11 will be showing some image quality loss, Stay no smaller than f/8 whenever possible..

[peteh13]

Thanks for all the replies folks. I still feel like something in Lightroom has changed lately, but I may be imaging it! Certainly Topaz will get rid of any noise like this anyway.
And, with hindsight, this image probably wasn't be best example to use. I'll keep an eye out for any other (slightly better) examples as I'm taking & processing any new images.

I'm also now wondering if it's just the IQ of the 100-400mm at the long end. It's a great lens, but as someone said, it's nowhere near as good as a prime, or even my 12-100Pro which is a stonking lens!

[pdk42]

One point to make here is that images tend to look noisier if they lack sharpness. I guess it’s a trick the mind/eye play on us. If there’s heat haze, slight camera shake, a less-than-stellar lens, slight misfocus etc, then it will look noisier, even if the actual noise is no different to any other image at the same ISO and lighting.