BRIAN KHANG | PHOTOGRAPHER

I’ve recently received a few emails from photographers asking, how can they get smoother looking photos at high ISO’s with NO noise? Here is what I do and by no means is it the right way, it’s just how I do it.

Shooting: When you must shoot at 1600 ISO or 3200 ISO or more if you can, one thing that I find helpful in preparing the photo, is to NOT shoot the photo underexposed. By doing so, any of the areas that are black in the photos will tend to create more noise, such as shadows etc. You will want to nail that exposure dead on if you can.

Software to reduce noise: There are many softwares out there that can help reduce the noise in your photos. The one that I use is called Neat Image and I have the plugin version for Photoshop. I find the plugin version for Photoshop great, especially if you want to batch a bunch of photos at one time and it’s a pretty inexpensive tool.

Here are 2 samples below and I will run though how it was shot and the settings I used to reduce the noise. Please note these photos are “straight out of the camera” except the one that I used Neat Image on.

I purposely shot this photo in low light and an object being black to show you the noise. This photo was taken with my Canon 5D, 50mm F/2.5 Macro lens, Manual Mode, 3200 ISO, F/2.5, 1/40. Notice the grain and color noise on the photo.

Here is a screenshot of my settings. Play around with the settings and see what works best for you. Please note the green circled area. This is how I adjust how much noise I want to reduce. 100% is really strong and if you use it on people, they will look like plastic “Ken & Barbie” dolls.

Here is the result at 100%. Again, it’s great to use 100% on objects. The only downside of reducing noise in photos, is that you loose sharpness the more you reduce the noise. If you have any further questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Have a great day!

I think I have a new segment for my blog, which I will appropriately call, what have I been doing? I guess during the whole busy wedding season, it’s difficult to really talk about what I have been up to or doing, due to blogging all the weddings, so I will try to do this at least once a week.

Since the wedding season is winding down for the year, what I have been doing this past few weeks is attending as many networking dinners and lunches possible. I think it’s great to meet new faces and talk about business and non business related stuff. And how you might ask have I been able to connect with so many peers in the industry? Through the [B] School of course. If you haven’t signed up already, I would get on it asap! You’ll be able to network with tons of people in your area and get together over lunch or dinner like I have.

Next week will be another busy week of networking with other photographers, so I am definitely looking forward to that. Ok I am going to keep this post short and sweet and I just want to share with you all a few photos from the past events. The photos below were shot by Matthew Saville, Michael Campbell and my trusty point and shoot. The photos were converted by Poladroid.

Thank you everyone for emailing me such awesome suggestions.  I had a question from Tim Goodchild that I chose, because it’s a good question and plus I do love emails, but Tim was the only one who posted it in the comment section, so I decided to write about it first.  I’ll definitely be bringing back some more questions I received in future blog posts.

Here is what Tim wrote, “Lately I’ve been having some trouble with my prints being dark but maybe that’s just because I edit on a laptop… Anyway, I’d love to hear how you keep your monitor calibrated”

I think this is something that can definitely be overlooked.  Again, I want to let you all know that I’m no expert on monitor calibrations, but here is what I do.  Once a month usually on the 1st of each month, I run a monitor calibration tool on all of my monitors.  I use Spyder to calibrate them. It’s really easy to use, just push a few buttons and it only takes minutes to do. Also on my laptop I do notice that the screen isn’t as bright as my other monitors, so I try not to edit off of it, but if I do, the laptops are usually set on full brightness, while my other mac monitors are usually almost turned all the way down. It’s really trial and error when it comes to brightness on monitors or you can just follow what the calibrator tells you.

Besides brightness, skin tones and colors are always tricky too. And what I do to resolve that is to get test prints. Normally I do have print orders every month or so, so I just normally test it to see if it’s close to what I’m seeing on my monitors, which they normally are. If I don’t have any prints ordered, I contact my printers and ask for a test print. Normally there isn’t any charge for that. What also helps is that they have ICC profiles from your photo lab that they can send you and you can use those to help calibrate your images on your screen vs printing them. If you’re using either their ICC profile or a calibrator, you should be really close.

I hope that helps out and if not, please post your questions in the comment section.

After watching this short video of John Chiara, it really makes you think about things. I mean yes, the man has a camera the size of a trailer and setups the camera for 1 photo. Did I mention too that he manually exposes the image himself? To think of all of the thousands of photos we take, image if you can only take 1 photo. There would probably be a lot more thought into lighting, composition, etc. I joked with a bride that yes I take thousands and thousands of photos, but I was only going to give her one photo. This all made me think about every time you take a photo, is it that 1 photo you were only able to take? Meaning, can you look at that 1 photo and appreciate every aspect about it? Yes I know we’re all not perfect to shoot 2,000 amazing photos every single wedding, but I try really hard to make sure that every time I push the shutter, that photo is the 1 photo, 2,000 times. This idea goes back into the film days. I didn’t know this till recent, but Helen’s father was a wedding photographer too. And I’m sure back in those days when he was shooting and where he was shooting, they maybe shot 2 rolls of film the entire wedding. I guess the moral of this story is, when you’re firing away photos at a wedding, think about composition, light, etc. Are you making that photo, the 1 photo? Well checkout John Chiara’s video and be inspired.