Looking to buy a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7K, but some users complain about too much noise... I know it's not a noisy camera--Any techies know what the noise refers to??
Thanks!! Hey,
Think of noise as grain in the picture. When someone says the camera is noisy, it means it will be grainy in certain light conditions. Most current cameras do well in full sunshine, but only the best ones do equally well in shadows, around sundown, in darker indoors, etc. The image from "noisy" cameras will become grainy in those conditions (sometimes the grain is barely noticeable, but people still make a big deal about it). There are programs that help with noise...NoiseNinja and Neat Image are the most popular ones. Overall, Canon's CMOS sensors are considered the best with regard to noise. "noise" would be fuzziness
like when you are watching television, and the picture isn't as clear as it should be because of "snow" pix-elation noise is the red blue and green pixels or grains you see on a picture...like static. Digital cameras have a habit of producing them and they can be filtered or deleted with photoshop software and there is a free software that just filters it called noiseware at the noiseware community.
I have a 3.2 megapixel camera that the noiseware does wonders with and it makes all my pics look so professional because all the grains are gone! noise is unwanted electronic garbage in the circuits. There is always some, the question is whether it ends up bothering the user.
In the case of the DMC-FZ7, a great camera by the way, the sensor is apparently quite "noisy", especially at higher sensitivities. What does this mean? To behave as if they had more sensitive "film", digital cameras will increase how much the signal from the image sensor is amplified - the goal being to be able to take photos in lower light conditions.
But if the initial signal is fairly noisy, then if you amplify it more, the noise gets amplified more also. This can result in images looking either blotchy, or losing detail if the noise-suppressing electronics are a bit too rough.
Bottom-line for you: if you do not intend to be spending most of your time shooting in low light and w/o flash, this remains a great camera, very versatile. If you want better low light performance, then try the Canon PowerShot S3 IS (but it comes w/o a charger, which I find bothersome). If you will spend a lot of time shooting in low light, get yourself a digital SLR, this is the only way you'll get very good results in such conditions.
Hope this helps
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