Oly Guy

If your shutter speed is that low and iso is 2200-I think it's a great shot-beautiful indoor photograph! Good take!
Asheville is beautiful great artistic town!

tomcat

I have both the D500 and the D750 and I can tell you categorically that the D500 is much worse at noise generation at ISO >1600. Probably what you read about the D500 noise levels were for low ISO <800. I tried shooting basketball games at ISO 16,000 and the D500 was so noisy, there were nothing salvageable, not even with Topaz AI Clear..... So I gave it up and went back to my D3s.

rodpark2 Loc: Dallas, Tx

The shot was underexposed so that bringing the shadows up was if they had been at maybe 6400 ISO. Try more exposure and then take highlights down.

Tomfl101 Loc: Mount Airy, MD

By underexposing the original and lightening in post you have effectively equaled the effect of upping the ISO in-camera in the first place. The noise you see is likely the same as shooting at ISO 4000-6000 and really pretty good considering.

Larryshuman

No crop camera is good at high ISO. ISO 1600 on my D3, D800 & D810 is very clean. I shoot raw and I've found that raising clarity-in the ACR screen- to much will increase the noise.

CamB Loc: Juneau, Alaska

I can't quite let this go. My crop camera, a Nikon D7500, is great at hi ISO. You don't need full frame for low light.
...Cam quote=Larryshuman]No crop camera is good at high ISO. ISO 1600 on my D3, D800 & D810 is very clean. I shoot raw and I've found that raising clarity-in the ACR screen- to much will increase the noise.[/quote]

Stanmckinney

My D7200 handles high ISO quite well. I have taken great photos at 20,000 ISO.

tomcat

[/quote]

The term "hi ISO" needs to be clarified every time that we talk about performances in low light. ISO values greater than 12,500 should be the ones referred to as high ISO or perhaps ultra-high ISO. ISO values around 1600 to 8000 to me are definitely not high ISO but instead are like shooting in bright sunshine when compared to the truly high ISO values of 18,000-25,600 that I face in high school gymnasiums. NO crop camera can be successful there--even my vaunted D500 cannot capture at these high (ultra high) ISO values. The resulting images are so noisy that Topaz AI Clear cannot render them sharp. The noise just distorts the sharpness of the lenses that I shoot with, so I started using a D3s with pretty good success (along with a Sigma f/1.8 135mm Art lens and a Nikon f/1.8 85mm lens). I understand that the D7100 series does do fairly well at these intermediate ISO values and they do indeed capture really good images at ISO 1600-3200-----but they cannot at ISO 18,000.

CamB Loc: Juneau, Alaska

You're right. My 7500 fades around 12,000. It's a new world. Used to shoot TRI-X at 1200 and it was a big deal.
...Cam

Jules Karney Loc: Las Vegas, Nevada

Hi Tom:
I thought I would jump in here and give my two cents. This shot I was fooling around with high iso on my D500.
1/1250 @3.2 iso 16,000 taken in manual. Used my 70-200 2.8 vr. The key is no cropping or sharpening in pp, or maybe very very little. Noise is okay because I didn't fix anything in pp. Just my 2 cents worth. Get it tight in the camera and were all good.
2nd shot 1/1000 @3.2 iso 12,800

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amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

I agree with a lot of the points already made here....

To minimize noise in images, do all you can to avoid under-exposure. If you have to boost exposure in post-processing, that will always amplify noise. Pf course, it helps to minimize cropping, too.

It seems counter-intuitive, but often works out better to use a higher ISO that allows slight over-exposure.... not to the point of blown highlights. However, when there are light bulbs in an image (as in this case), or exterior daylight coming in a window, you WILL see the histogram going off the right edge and shouldn't be too concerned about it. Higher shutter speed and smaller aperture might be useful, too... depending upon the lens and your skills hand holding shots.

BTW, there are other types of supports besides tripods.... a monopod or even a "poor man's tripod". That's a length of cord with a bolt on one end that screws into the tripod socket of your camera and a loop on the other end that you step into, to hold the cord taut while taking a shot. Believe it or not, it works! Steadies your shot.... plus you can coil it up and tuck it in a pocket.

I don't find the noise in the original poster's images objectionable. In fact, it sort of ties into the vintage theme of the room that was photographed. And it's really not obvious unless you look at the image really large... 50% or larger (... and "50%" is about 20x30" print equivalent, on most computer monitors these days, with an uncropped image from a 24MP camera).

However, previous posts are correct that various noise reduction methods. In my opinion, it's most ideal to do NR from a RAW file... And NR should be done early in post-processing, before changing size and DEFINITELY well before doing any sharpening (which is usually best done as one of the final steps).

I hope you don't mind, I tried Imagenomic Noiseware on your photo, just to see what it could do. (I have Noiseware as a Photoshop plug-in, but also available as a stand alone software.) I only applied enough to reduce noise, tried to maintain as much detail as possible, and backed off when artifacts started to appear. If it were my image, I might lighten it further and experiment with some more advanced techniques in Noiseware. Here there's still some noise, but it's reduced a bit:

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tomcat

These look excellent. You are correct about getting it tight in the camera. Even in my gym, though, the light is nowhere near what you have in the backgrounds here. I could not product the results you have shown, even with a tight crop because the light is just not there. So there is always an exception to a general statement because you did get excellent results at a high ISO with the D500.

Jules Karney Loc: Las Vegas, Nevada

And sometimes I don't get it right. It's a battle.

Stanmckinney

I wish people would quit bad mouthing “crop” cameras. Many do a great job with high ISO. I bought a D7200 because of how good it was at high ISO. (24,000). Are you guys just trying to justify the fact you paid more for a camera?

Jules Karney Loc: Las Vegas, Nevada

I have the D500 from Nikon and think it's great. I don't think people are bad mouthing crop cameras. Full frame is a totally different animal. They are both good depending on what your shooting.