Too much Noise

[1020lvphoto]

Hello All,

First time posting on this forum.

I'm not sure when this happened, but lately (and most notably) since the AI Denoise was introduced, all of my images have excessive noise in them.  I shoot with a Nikon D850 and Nikon Z8 so the sensor is well adapted to not introduce noise.  I just finished a shoot at an outdoor event with plenty of sunshine and the shadows seem to have excessive noise.  Certainly I can run the AI Denoise feature (which works fantastic), but when selecting multiple images to run it, it becomes painfully slow.  Has anybody else noticed this and is there a fix when importing? 

[Per Berntsen]

If you don't mind sharing an image, please export one of these noisy images as DNG (which will include all your edits), then post it here so we can examine it.

If the DNG is smaller  than 47 MB, you should be able to attach it to a post.

If not, use Dropbox or some other file sharing service, and post the link here.

[1020lvphoto]

Thanks!

Having issues loading the file.  Getting this error message.

Correct the highlighted errors and try again.

The attachement's noisy image.dng content type (image/dng) does not match its file extension and has been removed.

The file is 46.8 MB, so it should be okay.

[Per Berntsen]

The attachment feature isn't always reliable, so use a file sharing service instead.

[1020lvphoto]

Thank you for taking the time to review the photo.  Just for information, I am using a MacBook Pro with a Studio Display.  I see the excessive noise when I have zoomed into 200%.

Here's the link to the file.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fx4dhs6xfzswvbl0w8fz6/Noisy-Image-1.dng?rlkey=lv6gli38zs4swz0afscp2tw...

Thanks,

[Per Berntsen]

The contrast in this scene is very high, and the subject is in the shade.

So you have to lift the shadows considerably, and this will inevitably lead to noise, even at ISO 400.

The reason is that shadow pixels have much lower quality than midtone and highlight pixels, and this low quality is revealed when you brighten the shadows.

See this article for a detailed explanation: https://perberntsen.com/misc/technical/exposing.php

The noise is also enhanced by a number of your edits:

• Positive Texture and Clarity values
• A high Sharpening radius. You had it set to 2, I reduced it to 0.5.
• Sharpening masking will protect flat areas (where noise is most visible) from sharpening.
  You had it set to 0, I used 90. (hold down the Option key when dragging the slider, and you'll see the effect. White Black areas are protected from sharpening, white areas will be sharpened)
• You had Color set to 7 under Manual noise reduction, I increased it to 30, which removed the color noise.

Many of the Develop settings you have used are created on import because Nikon mirrorless cameras write camera settings to XMP which LrC understands and honors. I use a Nikon Z7 myself, and find these settings useless.

To stop this from happening, either zero out all settings in the camera, or create a Develop preset that is automatically applied on import.

You can either create your own preset with the sliders set the way you want them, or just use Adobe default.

See https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/raw-defaults.html

You can download my version of the image here: https://per-berntsen.filemail.com/d/sfztbrbsbextqfh

It is still has a bit of luminance noise that you can remove with DeNoise or manual noise reduction.

[1020lvphoto]

Thank you so much!  I'll take a look at the camera settings to see if this helps.