7D Noise - Unusually high at low ISO

[Rocco]

Okay.. SO I'm shooting a wedding on the 1st. To my extreme excitement, a local shop has the 70-200 f/2.8L IS II for rent for only $35 a day. I went down to the shop today and put it on my body to see for myself why everyone is so in love with this lens. Now I think there may be an issue with my camera.


I have had a my suspicionsabout this issue for a while now, only now it has become very evident.. I really don't believe my camera should have this much noise at such a low ISO. (ISO 200 in the example shots.) Am I off my rocker or is there something wrong here?





[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/7/5340.7d-noise.jpg[/img]


Now, I realize that this site only allows relatively small uploads, so here's another without changing image size, only changed the canvas size to 550 pix.


[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/7/2068.7d-noise-2.jpg[/img]


This is a fairly accurate representation of what I'm looking at. Image is straight from the camera. Does this look.. off to anyone??





Sigh, I hope I don't have to deal with Canon on this one. But luckily my body is still under warranty.

[freelanceshots]

Different scenes can exhibit different noise levels even at low ISO's. Your example seems like a dark image anyways so one way to maybe improve on the noise there would be to slightly over expose and then back it down with your software. That usually would mean shooting at an even higher ISO but dark scenes just create noise. When I shoot with my 5D2 in a dark room at ISO 200 at slow shutter speeds I can really start to see noise as well. Its just a fact. If your camera is under warranty then I'd send it in if your really concerned. Most likely they will send it back to you and say they looked at it and even tweaked it but you will see the same results once you get it back. Its your call. If you process it in DPP do you have any level of noise reduction selected? What's the noise reduction setting that you have set in camera?

[neuroanatomist]

Every digital image has noise. Every image. The only questions are how much noise...and how close you look. Noise is more evident in dark areas of a photograph, and also areas which lack detail (out of focus background) - it's there in lighter parts with lots of detail, but there your brain has other stuff to pay attention to, whereaswith lack of detail, you try to see something...and what's there is noise.


Looking at your image and crop, I'd say what you're seeing is perfectly normal.


Here's an ISO 100 shot from the 7D, and below that are 100% crops of a light area (near the top) and a dark area (near the bottom right). These were processed with DPP; I think DxO does a better job at NR, so the noise is a little less evident (but still present).



[url="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dr_brain/4745141175/in/set-72157624491646603/lightbox/][/url]
EOS 7D, EF 85mm f/1.2<span style="color: #ff0000;"]L II USM, 1/6400 s, f/1.2, ISO 100


[img]/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer-Components-UserFiles/00-00-00-35-15/7D_2D00_noisecrops.jpg[/img]

[Rocco]

Thanks for the replies. Once again, my monitor on my laptop is a major source of annoyance for me. (nearly impossible to calibrate, too.) You should see how much brighter the image is on my screen at home.. which makes photo edits a really big challenge for me. Now that I

[andnowimbroke]

Cameras don

[Rocco]

Compromise has consisted of eyeballing the histogram in camera and in post. Still not 100% what kind of pictures you guys are actually seeing from me. The images I posted above were taken when I was testing auto focus and IS, my goal primarily to not get my shutter speed or ISO too high, thus the darker than usual image.


As far as monitors go, Tax returns will not yield any lenses this year, but instead a new computer with two of this monitor: www.newegg.com/.../Product.aspx


Words cannot describe how excited I am to get started on a computer build.

[Daniel Browning]

Does this look.. off to anyone?

I wasn't able to see the noise until I increased the brightness. It doesn't really look like a 100% crop that I'm used to seeing from the 7D+Lightroom -- there were more maze artifacts than I'm used to, but it may have been from the jpeg compression. (If you hit this problem in the future, you might try posting a PNG 100% crop instead, so we don't get side-tracked by JPEG compression issues.)


In any case, the 7D definitely has lots of noise at low ISO compared to other manufacturers (e.g. Nikon D7000 mops the floor with the 7D), and even more than cheaper Canons (e.g. 600D). But it wont be noticed by most users because they only use 5 - 7 stops of dynamic range. The only time you will see it is when you use 8 or more stops. The 7D has several flaws that cause these noises, including imbalanced gain (causes mazing, which is usually fixed by blurring the image, which is why most people say the 7D requires more sharpening), fixed pattern noise, and temporal FPN.


The sad part is that all of those noise problems could be fixed in firmware or the raw converter, but none of the raw converters bother to do it, except Raw Therapee. Rather than fix the firmware, Canon just fixed it for the next cameras to use that sensor (550D, 60D, and 600D) -- leading to the situation where the cheaper cameras have a lot higher quality sensor than the expensive one.


When it comes to sensors, the disparity between Canon and Sony has grown so large that it's embarrassing. Unless Canon is about to come out with a huge leap forward, they really should just close down their entire sensor development operation and start buying Sony sensors like everyone else (Nikon). The Sony models from several years ago are still several orders of magnitude better then Canon's newest.

[Rocco]

The jpeg artifact issue is a good point. Daniel, if you're interested, I'll post a link to the CR2 file on dropbox for download when I get home tonight. I'm curious to see what your take is on it with your setup.

[Daniel Browning]

Sure, I

[andnowimbroke]

You might consider just getting one nice monitor and the second one just being a cheapy for your menus and stuff. Never used that Asus monitor before but I know NEC has a couple in that price range and they are pretty nice. Not Eizo "coloredge" nice, but also not Eizo priced either Let me know what you think of it. I