Quick Tips: Turn Off In-camera Noise Reduction

In-camera noise reduction is now a default feature in existing and new digital slr's.  It is quite a useful little tool to make your photos better.  To me it is quite a nuisance because it slows the camera down.  The camera would take a bit of time processing to reduce the noise and in photography, every moment counts.  That is why I turn noise reduction off.

2 types of noise reduction

Most dslr's have two types of noise reduction: a High ISO noise reduction and a Long exposure noise reduction.

High ISO Noise Reduction

In most dslr's, High ISO NR will be applied on ISO800 and above and only on JPEG files will NR be applied.  High ISO NR will not be applied on RAW.

The thing I noticed when this option is turned on is that, in continuous-shot mode, the camera's image buffer will be lessened.  Instead, for example, a 20 image buffer at ISO400; when ISO is adjusted to 800 above, the image buffer goes down to about 10 images.  Then, the camera's frame rate slows down or, at times, disables the shutter because the camera is currently busy processing.

But when High ISO Noise Reduction is turned off, the camera can capture roughly 20 images before the buffer fills up.  This is why I turn this option off.

Long Exposure Noise Reduction

This option commonly uses a dark frame subtraction.  Basically, the camera takes an image with the shutter closed, a dark frame.  A dark frame is essentially an image of noise in a sensor and can then be subtracted on subsequent image to correct the noise.  

Now the kicker, if you take a 30 second exposure with this noise reduction option turned on, the camera would take another 30 seconds to capture the dark frame; giving you roughly 60 seconds (or more counting the NR process time) before you can take another shot.  

In landscape photography, every second counts especially if your shooting sunrise or sunset.  If every shot you make takes two times longer the shutter speed then you'd miss a lot of scenery.

This is why I turn this option off too.

If I turn off noise reduction feature, my images would be noisy.

Yes they would...

You can always reduce the noise on post.  Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw have effective noise reduction features.  These are found in the Details section, under Noise Reduction.

There are also lots of third party noise reduction plugins for Photoshop and Lightroom.  So your images will be noise free.

I also find the images captured with NR off a bit sharper compared to images where in-camera NR is applied.