Noise ?

We all know high ISO creates noise but how much does shutter speed do. From my reseach on the web I gather it does but at less of an impact than ISO. The other day I was shooting air bourne gulls on my local lake the light was variable and I had to go 800 iso or 640 ish suddenly the sum was out or I panned into an area of light. When I got home I had some great shots but useless due to bad noise in some areas of the image I noticed my shutter speeds had inadvertaintly shot to 6000 or 8000. Now I guess this has some logic a tiny bit of exposure is going to have less light hitting the sensor right ? hence noise. The other situation I have noticed noise is in low light even with tripod and my D300 set to lowest ISO and longer exposures I have still gotten some noise which rendered the images useless especially when I tried any adjustments in lightroom. Whats this does the low light render the image less stable? or is my 7 year old camera not up to these situations of low light where a modern camera might be ?

Thanks

Personally I always use shutter priority when shooting the aircraft and then check the aperture adjusting the ISO if necessary.
If in image is underexposed then you can guarantee that the sensor hasn't picked up enough information from the exposure. Sensors aren't linear and they gather most of their digital information from the light at the right of the histogram. For every stop it halves the information obtained from the stop before it so you can quickly calculate how little information you will be getting on the left of the histogram. When you try and pull up the exposure you are trying to work with a lot less digital information than you really need. Software is good but it can't do the impossible.

Nothing wrong with your camera, you will get pretty much the same results with a new camera if your exposure for what you are trying to capture is incorrect to begin with, if you are shooting ISO 100 or 200 on the D300 you shouldn't see hardly any noise unless you are continually shooting long exposures and the sensor is red hot, even then it should be very useable. I think the answer certainly lies in your processing methods rather than your gear, the low light doesn't render your image less stable you just need to understand that you will need a huge dynamic range to cover it all in low light , shooting below this needed range will mean that you may be trying to get what you didn't capture at the time using processing at home... bad news, it will never work....because it isn't there. I work on this rule, in low light or high contrast scenes, shoot far more than you need if you can to get every last bit of range, even if you discard it later, shooting under and recovering later is the single worst mistake you can make, regardless of your camera, and the D300 is pretty capable, especially with the bracketing options it has. Have a read of your post again, you say that all of a sudden your shutter shot up to 6000 or 8000 (mega high) - you are shooting at high ISO's - it will go sky high if you point it at the sky in bright light..... then when you get your bird pic, the sky is exposed at 6000 but the bird is underexposed, so what do you do... lighten it... noise central. Reading the post especially with the bit about noise at lowest ISO on the D300, and the surprise at getting shutter speeds of 6k-8k in bright skies I'd just suggest going right back to basics here with aperture / shutter speed / ISO. It isn't your gear, 7 years old digital or 27 year old film cameras will give you the same results exposure wise. Try and forget about processing and bang those correct exposures in every time in camera, you'll have no need to worry about noise.

Thanks pete good advice and thanks for the informative post. I know the metering will push the shutter speed right up when panning in variable light but you make a good point the sky is exposed but the subject is under hence the noise so it's not the shutter speed. Although I do generally get poor results with very high shutter speeds I tend to find it better under 2000. Re the bracketing on the d300 I use this a lot but it has limitations when there is movement anything with trees / clouds I am usually disappointed so in these situations tend to shoot a single frame.

Have a go at shooting brackets in the 3's so you aren't getting crazy long times and can handhold them if not using a tripod, you dont have to combine them just see what works later, often I'll use the overexposed one only as long as its sharp and bring the exposure down as there will be no noise addition..... if I really need any more darker additions to the frame I have the other 2 to use creatively. Look up ETTR shooting, exposing to the right, get the hang of that and it will help out your noise issues no end, just be wary not to push it too far the histogram is key to doing it, not the image on the back of the camera.

I always thought it was best to underexpose to the left because it was near impossible to get detail back from over exposure but easy with under exposed...have I been doing it wrong all this time lol

Interesting, will have to try that then! I guess the downside being a slower shutter speed (I sometimes do underexpose just to try and get a useable shutter speed in dull situations).

Wow ! What a revelation we have here. It's clearly a lot if my landscape noise issues are recovering from underexposed. I have always thought shoot slightly under but I will give slightly over a try especially low light landscape shots

Yes, Just get a feel for what your camera can cope with recovering dynamic range range wise, ignore the rear image pic and make sure you can interpret your histogram correctly, shooting under you're asking for bother recovering that way, if the histogram isn't touching the right hand side you have plenty of leeway, I usually won't go over more than 1 3/4 - 2 fully 'indicated blown' channels, but as Oy says this will vary on your own cameras limitations