IMAGE CATALOG – PHOTO HANDBOOK

Noise / Dust

Please be careful and inspect your images for dust and noise before you submit them.

Sensor dust
Sensor dust is the light grey specs/blotches that are more noticeable in blue skies and grey areas of an image. Sensor dust is caused by dust particles or extremely small particulates that land on your digital cameras sensor. How do they get on your sensor? When you change your lenses, your camera sensor area is exposed to the elements. When the shutter inside opens and closes, what dust may be in the chamber can get onto the actual sensor. Please refer to your cameras manual on how to clean your sensor.

ISO Noise
ISO noise are the spectacles that appear if your ISO is set to high. Ideally, for sunlight, an ISO of 100 will give you a perfectly clear image. If you go indoor and require setting your ISO upwards of 400,800 or 1600, you will have noise in your image. This noise may appear as ‘dots’ that are off color from what the subject should appear as. This noise will be noticeable if you blow your image up to 100%. One of the better ways around this is to use a lower ISO and use a tripod or flash. Just be careful if you are using a flash to keep your settings on the flash correct to expose the image properly.

Other Noise
Other types of noise may be present if you do not save your image as the highest quality JPG setting. You may also experience noise if you try to increase the size of you image beyond the dimensions that your camera was designed for. This is a process known as interpolation. If done properly, and with the right type of image, you may be able to increase your image size slightly with no noticeable degradation. If you do not do this process correctly, you will experience noise and your image will be rejected.

Sensor dust (circled in red)	Image noise - Notice the specs/dots

Images may appear fine at web resolution, however in print resolution, we do not have room for error. Dust on the sensor may be edited out with Photoshop.