Noise question

[theantiquetiger]

It seems everything I produce now is very noisy. Is it just me and my lack of practice, or does my camera need maintenance? Even well exposed images seem to be noisy.

[Runmonty]

The few you have posted today don't seem too noisy to me (although as i write this, Flickr is having some problems so I haven't seen a larger version of them yet).

I notice the latest batch were at night. What was the ISO?

Have you got a specific image as an example of what you mean (including exif data). Ideally it would be good to see the raw image prior to processing too (bearing in mind that trying to recover detail from underexposed areas will give noise)

[theantiquetiger]

No image exactly, just I’m noticing it on all of them. I expect it on the night shots, but not the well exposed (or at least I think are well exposed).
Should a camera have check ups?

[Runmonty]

I am afraid I cant help with that mate. I dont know about a check up.

On Flickr I looked at mardigras2 and couldn't notice much noise (but I will concede there wasn't a lot of uniform colour area where it would be most obvious)

Marko did an excellent podcast with Royce Howland talking about noise (and other artifacts) that is worth another listen. Podcast 117

[Marko]

I think you need to post the exact problem photos with their exif data.
Your night shots look fine noisewise to me...i'd expect as RM suggested, they were taken with high ISO in low light.... Show me a noisy day shot