Noise...which jpg size to choose ? A77

Generally speaking, the appearance of noise will be proportional to the size. That is, the smaller the size, the less apparent noise will be.

russellsbags wrote: Shouldn't the noise be the same on all three? Isn't noise made by the gain needed per pixel? Whatever the setting the pixel size is the same so the gain should be the same. That said, 6mp is 1/4 of 24 so there should be 1/4 the noise. Oh dear, I've confused myself!

First i thought you were right with the second statement having previously made a preset with half the image size for low light shooting.

Then i thought you were right with the first statement when looking at the results of that and a couple of other sizes where i was just comparing them on a computer screen.

Unfortunatly i couldnt find a good method to measure noise so the only conclusions were subjective.

The only conclusion i could make in the end was that there was more detail to be had in 24 than 13 megs but not much. I kept the 13mb low light preset anyway and still use it even though i dont think it adds much. It would be nice to hear how others have dealt with this :).

Tim

I'm not sure why you would bother with the reduced size of JPEG.

It's not as if your camera does pixel binning and the larger size gives you the flexibility to print larger if needed. It no problem to downsize but not so easy to upsize and retain the quality.

jkp1 wrote: Just wondering if any have view on which jpg-quality/size (6, 12, 24mp) gives the least noise ? To make sure not to mix things together, i need to add, that it is in-camera settings i am asking for. It seems to be the current meaning that noise gets less when downsizing photos in post processing, but i am not asking for post processing, but in-camera settings.

This has been discussed pretty often here. Yes, downsampling does reduce the appearance of noise. But the noise benefit is not all that great among the three in-camera resolutions. Often, though, the native resolution of a camera is overkill for the actual need at hand, and there are other benefits of using lower resolutions. You won't use up storage space as fast. More important, I think, is that the camera responds more quickly, spending less time processing images. But the best answer is to use the resolution that meets your own needs.