Why do my Panasonic FZ82 indoor photos look grainy even at ISO 100?

Asked 11/10/2019

4 views

2 answers

0

I’m a beginner using a Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82 and expected cleaner indoor photos than I’m getting. Even in a fairly bright room with lots of windows, my images look grainy.

Example settings: ISO 100, 3.6mm, f/2.8, 1/13 sec, handheld, shooting RAW. I understand the basics of ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, and I’ve read common advice about high ISO noise, but that doesn’t seem to apply here.

Why would a photo still show visible grain/noise at low ISO indoors on this camera?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

6y ago

2 Answers

6

The DMC-FZ82 is a camera with 1/2.3" sensor and 18MP resolution, starting at ISO80 and with F5.9 at the long range (F2.8 at wide). To put this into perspective, the 1/2.3" sensor flagship DMC-FZ300 has the same sensor size but 12MP resolution, starting at ISO100 and with F2.8 at the long range (which half the reach at 600mm rather than the FZ82's 1200mm).

Now if you distribute ISO100 brightness over 18MP instead of 12MP, for the same number of photons per pixel (and thus the same photon noise level) you'd need to set the camera to ISO64. Is the FZ300 noise free at base ISO level? No. It is a small sensor camera, after all.

What is the high resolution good for? For one thing, more fine-grained digital geometric distortion processing: modern compact cameras with large zoom ranges cheat considerably in the optical department, leaving it to the camera to fix up geometric distortions digitally. The resulting interpolation leads to a loss of definition and sharpness, particularly seen in the corners at wide angles. Working with a higher resolution sensor causes less loss of actual optical image data.

For another, cropping and closeup: if you close up, the details may not look great but you get some.

So the most important advice: don't look at the pixel level.

Then the next: avoid acerbating the problem. For an FZ82 this means: turn off edge enhancements/interpolation that amplify noise levels: you have a basic unavoidable noise level because of sensor size and resolution and don't want to make that fundamental problem have more of an impact than it has to have. i.Resolution and i.Zoom and digital zoom all need to be "Off". Images via Imgur are stripped of EXIF data but I suspect that you have i.Resolution active because of the "mealy" noise appearance.

You have enough optical zoom to work with, and enough pixels for edges. Play with your settings for NR (noise reduction) and sharpness. Higher sharpness levels lead to halos around edges and also amplify noise. While you can tamper that with noise reduction, noise reduction also smudges details.

Shoot with as much light as you can get into the camera reasonably (it does have good image stabilisation) and only go as high with ISO as necessary to get good exposure. Don't underexpose: if you cannot get more light/longer exposure, you need to raise ISO rather than underexpose. Correcting underexposure digitally creates more noise than appropriate ISO.

If you have plenty of light, use ISO80. If the situation is not bright, the F5.9 at the long end reduces light to less than a quarter of the F2.8 the camera has at the wide end. This is a long-reach camera for good weather outside. A nice compact compromise for birders, for example.

Inside, you might want work more with flash, but a second camera with larger sensor and much less zoom range tends to be a quite preferable option.

Originally by user87923. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user87923

6y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

The main cause is the FZ82’s small 1/2.3-inch sensor. Even at ISO 100, each pixel gathers relatively little light compared with larger-sensor cameras, so noise is more visible—especially indoors, where light is much dimmer than it appears to the eye.

A few other factors make it look worse:

  • You’re shooting RAW, which shows more of the sensor’s real noise until you apply noise reduction.
  • Phones heavily process images with strong noise reduction and other computational tricks, so they can look cleaner at first glance.
  • Viewing a zoomed-in crop on a large screen exaggerates noise; almost any image looks worse at 100% than it does at normal viewing size.
  • Your exposure was 1/13 sec handheld, so any underexposure or slight blur can make the image look rougher.

So yes: low ISO helps, but it does not guarantee noise-free indoor photos on a small-sensor superzoom. To improve results, use more light, avoid underexposure, apply RAW noise reduction, or use a larger-sensor camera if low-light image quality is a priority.

UniqueBot

AI

6y ago

Your Answer