Annoying Noise

This picture is really annoying me. On holiday in Barcelona the truth had dawned that, while phone photography has its strengths, its weaknesses (at least, for me) will inevitably lead to poor photographs under less than ideal conditions. Even so, when we returned from Spain to Bristol we found a heatwave in progress, so for my first walk along the Avon Gorge I thought – ignoring my self-taught lesson – that I'd not encumber myself with anything more heavy than the iPhone in my trouser pocket. Along the way I encountered these two guys at the top of their climb in the Gorge, and the potential of the composition was exciting. I asked whether they'd mind if I took a quick shot, and as fast as possible tried to arrange it on a screen which was practically invisible in the ambient glare.

Later, looking at it on the phone, it appeared that I'd managed to get a good one, despite the guesswork. But... The "raw" file turned out to be unusably noisy, and the JPG had smoothed things out so much that it looked like it had been rendered with a palette knife. I have tried every trick in the book to save it, and what you see here is as good as it will ever be; which is not quite good enough, and a permanent reminder of quite what an excellent picture it coulda / woulda / shoulda been.

Compare it, for example, with this photo made a couple of weeks later with my Fuji X-T1 at almost the same spot under exactly similar conditions:

No noise, great detail and colours, excellent dynamic range, good depth of focus (yes, that is Wales on the other side of the Bristol Channel in the distance)... Now, I realise these are not necessarily the criteria a normal person would consciously apply to a photograph – indeed, I suspect most would respond more positively to the first image, whatever its perceived technical "faults" – but at some level such things must surely register in anyone's appreciation. So, what a good picture the "climbers" would have been with the photographic qualities of that second image! But: lesson learned, again.

Here is a less annoying gallery of photos taken in and around Bristol during those weeks of late summer sun: