Noisy digital shadows - was: Re: [Leica] re: digital treadmill

[scott at adrenaline.com (Scott McLoughlin)]

B.D. and others,

This is something that vexes me about digital (Nikon D70) - noisy shadows. 
It especially confounds me with shots that I *want* to be very dark. For
example, a nude shot, where the nude is almost in silhouette, but not quite.
I took a pic like this sometime ago and got that nasty vertical banding kind
of noise in the pic.

Now is this "underexposure" or something else.  I don't have  good mental
model regarding (1) the physics or whatever of the capture in this kind of
lighting or, more importantly, (2) how to achieve this look the "right way"
using my DSLR.

In other words, formulating a kind of thought experiment, if I *never*
wanted to take a nicely exposed daylight snap kind of photo, would I just
have to abandon digital capture for the time being?  I imagine not, so I
feel I must be missing something.  OTOH, noise in "shadow rich" pics
seems to be a problem not unique to me.

So what gives?  Yes, it's a Leica forum, but all you guys and gals know
more about photography - film or digital - than the digicam kids on most
digital oriented forums.   Any and all advice appreciated.

Scott


B. D. Colen wrote:

>[snip]
>No, I'm not thrilled with the noise in shadows, but I'm getting used to it.
>I know that there are those who say 'why get used to it  when you can use
>film?' And the answer is "because it is part of what is now main stream
>photography."  If I was really bothered by it, I'd go with Canon and get
>smoother, cleaner results at iso 1600 than I got with the best 400 iso film.
>But I'm not all that thrilled with the overly clean Canon look - probably
>because I grew up on Tri-X.
>
>  
>