Pentax K10D RAW noise reduction
I shoot a lot of long exposure shots with my Pentax K10D. One of my pet peeves is waiting for the built-in noise reduction to take a 1:1 dark frame subtraction exposure. This ends up doubling the length of time for each shot. Not that big of a deal if you are shooting 1 second exposures but a bit of a PITA if you’re shooting 5 minute bulb shots.
In-camera noise reduction is pretty critical for shooting JPEGs. Sure, you can always shoot your own series of dark frames at different ISOs and use them with 3rd party software to remove hot spots, etc. but this seems a bit extreme. So, I have just left the in-camera NR on and lived with the dark frame subtraction double exposure.
Many times I’ve noticed that there are hot spots in the initial Adobe Lightroom previews of my long exposure RAW files that disappear the first time I zoom in to 100%. This got me to thinking that maybe Lightroom could take care of long exposure noise on its own without the camera’s help. After searching Google in vain for a definitive answer, I decided a quick test was in order. I was pleased to learn that, now that I am shooting exclusively in RAW, I can turn off the in-camera noise reduction on my K10D and eliminate the wait between long exposure shots. (In-camera NR is still recommended for JPEG shooting).
Here’s what I found in the test. All shots are 30 seconds at f/16 and ISO 400 using my 50mm f/1.7 SMC-A lens with only LR’s default processing applied. Sorry for the crude composition…
JPEG with NR OFF
100% crop of JPEG w/ NR OFF
RAW with NR ON
100% crop of RAW w/ NR ON
RAW with NR OFF
100% crop of RAW w/ NR OFF
From what I could tell from this test, there is virtually no difference in noise between the RAW images with and without in-camera noise reduction. In fact, to me the images without the NR has slightly better contrast and more shadow detail. Keep in mind that these are unprocessed RAW files so I could easily get similar contrast and saturation as the JPEG image while maintaining the greater detail and dynamic range of the RAW images.
February 2nd, 2012 at 12:19 pm
I’m just starting using my Pentax k10D for night shots. How do you turn off the noise reduction? Can this only be done in “Raw”?
February 15th, 2012 at 1:47 pm
It’s in the Custom Settings menu. It works for both RAW and JPEG modes. Sadly, I don’t have my K10D anymore so I can’t tell you exactly how to get to it. The reason why I like to disable noise reduction is because I shoot RAW and Lightroom seems to be able to handle the noise fine without the extra step. Be advised that the K20D does not allow disabling long exposure noise reduction.
March 22nd, 2012 at 8:59 am
Great advice Robert – I will try this on my next outing. It took me 2 hours to take three 25 minute exposures on a freezing moor the other night, and my battery ran out on the third one! I’d have wrapped it up in an hour without noise reduction. For some reason, my K10d didn’t write the Jpeg files, even though it was set to RAW + JPEG? I’ll also resist the temptation to upgrade to the K20D or one of the others just yet!