the 7d and noise

[the black fox]

after the discussions with paul re-the noise and a/f issues with the 7d my curiosity took hold tonight ,now this is nothing to do with the a/f but rather noise and can it be dealt with ,so i took some hand held shots indoors under halogen lights with the 7d and sigma 120-400 lens ,set to f6.3 same zoom length every shot and all cropped down to a final 6mp size ,without posting the RAW files which are pretty rough i edited each picture in turn exactly the same way to create a benchmark ,the problem i encountered going lower in iso was the shutter speed induced shake ,so i have started at iso 1600and doubled up each pic .
remember the final product noise is the test not the photographic content or value
1st shot at iso 1600


[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/31671466%4

[the black fox]

Re: the 7d and noise

more to follow


6400 by blackfox wildlife and nature imaging, on Flickr


12800 by blackfox wildlife and nature imaging, on Flickr

had to reduce the size in the last two due to bandwidth problems ? ,but i hope you get the gist of what i,m pointing out the camera will take the image without enormous loss of detail as long as you process in a controlled manner .

[walker]

Re: the 7d and noise

Just out of interest are these processed in DPP or Lightroom ? Noise is something I suffer from at high ISO's with my 7D. That said I must admit, I've not really done any testing / come to any definitive conclusion, mean it could well be me!

[the black fox]

Re: the 7d and noise

There processed in aperture 3 and then noise reduced using a plug in called imageonic

[Riggers]

Re: the 7d and noise

I'm interested in this because I'm selling my 60D to fund a 7D. Unfortunately I can't see any difference in those pictures because I think the orange background is slightly blinding.

[colin C]

Re: the 7d and noise

The 7D is a thoroughbred and the more you are in control, the more it will reward you. I have known many that were initially disappointed with their 7D, but sticking with it, learning how to use it to best advantage and knowing when to recognise situations when your standard metering modes will not yield the best results, will help you get the best out of it.

First you need to nail the exposure. Get it spot on and you'll hardly notice the noise in an average shot. The more you need to play with the sliders, whether in DPP, Lightroom etc, the more it will accentuate noise. With any post editing work, don't do what you can, only do what you need to.

Noise is far more noticeable in areas of flat colour, such as skies and blurred backgrounds, so you don't need to use noise reduction on the whole shot.

Part of how noise reduction works is to defocus the shot. Then you have to apply more sharpening than you normally would, so you get sharpening halo's and then you have to deal with those separately.

Sharpening the whole photo will dramatically increase noise in areas of flat colour, so only sharpen elements of the shot that need sharpening.

Generally there are two elements to noise: Luminance and Chrominance. Luminance is the grain effect and Chrominance is the false colours - red and green in the shadow areas and magenta and cyan in highlight areas. In tests, people object to Chrominance the most and will tolerate some luminance. Therefore in your noise reduction program, don't use the Strength slider, but use the advance options and deal with chrominance and luminance separately. I tend to use a ratio of 2:1, so if I choose a luminance setting of 5, the chrominance setting will be 10.

I don't deal with noise at the RAW conversion stage, generally because it isn't normally a problem throughout the whole shot. With your post editing program, make a selection and separate layer of any areas that require noise reduction and only treat that area.

Just some initial thoughts that may help. I regularly use ISO 1600, ISO 3200 and often higher and rarely need to use any noise reduction. Where I do it is generally in areas of flat colour within the shot and I only deal with that element.

[Paulstw]

Re: the 7d and noise

If the need takes me, I can rip the noise right out of a photo in photoshop. Last month I shot an indoor 40th birthday party. All 350 shots were shot at ISO6400. I printed them for the client and they were fine. I've noticed a lot of wildlife shots on 500pc recently where the BG has been totally replaced with a solid colour. Never spotted it before, but now I know what to look for and it stands out a mile.

Using the surface blur tool and masking out the subject on a new layer worked wonders for me via Papa's instruction once.

[MX5]

Re: the 7d and noise

As a former 7D user I agree with ColinC's words of wisdom. The 7D does have a propensity for a comorbidic personality. I did often question my ability (stop agreeing at the back) when using this camera over ISO800 ... I then got in the mindset that I'd loaded Kodachrome 64 and matters improved.

[AndyL]

Re: the 7d and noise

First of all, the 7D is a bloody marvellous camera. But very noisy at high ISOs. Trying to take wildlife photos at this time of year is made more difficult by trying not to exceed ISO 1600 (by means of the fw v2 setting) and a reasonable shutter speed.

Although little can be done about this in camera, I find the following helpful:

1) shoot in RAW - you just get more info that way
2) Use the latest version of DPP (NOT ACR) to convert from Raw to TIFF - I have found DPP to be vastly superior in handling noisy shots
3) Use a noise reduction programme where needed. I use Neat Image, your preferences may be elsewhere. Just don't over smooth or your subjects end up looking blurry.
4) Consider monochrome. If the subject will "take" monochrome, then the chrominance will go away. Magical, that.

Good luck

Andy

[the black fox]

Re: the 7d and noise

hmmmm 1so.6400


robin iso6400 with 7D by blackfox wildlife and nature imaging, on Flickr

[MX5]

Re: the 7d and noise

Exposure spot on ... so everything falls into place ... that's the 7D for you ;-)

[wayne2418]

Re: the 7d and noise

Exposure spot on ... so everything falls into place ... that's the 7D for you ;-)

Yep .....

[AndyL]

Re: the 7d and noise

If your point is that it's *possible* to take reasonable high-ISO pics with the 7D, that's certainly true. But it is a truth generally acknowledged that, on balance, the 7D handles high ISO values quite badly and generates noisy images. Certainly of the 5 or so people I know with a 7D, none would say that it's not noisy in such circumstances.

[MX5]

Re: the 7d and noise

If your point is that it's *possible* to take reasonable high-ISO pics with the 7D, that's certainly true.

That#s the point. I'm not saying it's a doddle ... but just looking at what 7D users published (and have published, e.g. Trev) it can be done (even I managed some acceptable snaps above ISO1600!). But when up at ISO 6400 how many cameras produce noise free images ... it's I think degrees ... keeping noise under control. But getting the exposure spot on under difficult conditions ... try bracketing.

[AndyL]

Re: the 7d and noise

Bracketing works for still subjects. Most of my stuff is wildlife or Weddings (weirdly similar).