40D high ISO performance

andy_fozzy

andy_fozzy

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Hi all.
Can you 40D owners please tell me how the 40D copes at high ISO?
I've tried one, and it seems very good.

Just wanted a few more opinions please ;)
 
Do I smell the possibility of someone coming over from the darkside? :D
 
The 40D's sensor achieves unity gain at about Iso 1350 so it should be good upto this level. Cranking the Iso higher will simply result in the dynamic range shrinking and noise being induced exponentially as you go higher.

Bob
 


Click for large.

It's completely usable at ISO1600, less so at 3200 (especially as effectively it's just pushing it a stop - would do better to underexpose a stop and then bring back in pp).

Canon Bob, how do you know so much about the science of cameras?

It genuinely astounds me. :thinking: :thumbs:
 
Cheers guys.

I'm AGAIN thinking of going dark side, purely because of the horrible amount of noise I'm getting, even at 400. Was using 800 yesterday inside a poorly lit cathedral, and most of my shots are ruined by it :'(

Using a noise removal program is ok, but it also removes allot of important detail from the shots, which I cannot seem to get back.

Wouldn't probably need to go higher than about 1600 or so.......
 
foodpoison said:


Click for large.

It's completely usable at ISO1600, less so at 3200 (especially as effectively it's just pushing it a stop - would do better to underexpose a stop and then bring back in pp).

Canon Bob, how do you know so much about the science of cameras?

It genuinely astounds me. :thinking: :thumbs:
Click to expand...

Me too!!!

Cheers bud. Just to confirm, that is on ISO3200 :eek:
 
Is it a Canon thing - this problem with noise?

When shooting high ISO 800/1600 with my 400D the amount of noise isn't even funny!!
 
willbaroo said:
Is it a Canon thing - this problem with noise?
Click to expand...

The problem isn't a Canon thing but the perception most definitely is. Noise becomes an issue when either the gain of the photosite is increased or the time the photosite is exposed to light is increased.....both result in heat.
The popular way to reduce the appearance of noise in the final image is to clip the dynamic range and remove the tonal parts of the image where the noise is most prevalent. Canon simply do a little less in-camera clipping than Nikon. When all things are equal (pixel size and pixel density), then the sensor read noise is also very closely matched. Canon's offerings are a little noisier but offer 1/2 to 1 stop better DR compared with a Nikon body with similar sensor characteristics.

Bob
 
willbaroo said:
Is it a Canon thing - this problem with noise?

When shooting high ISO 800/1600 with my 400D the amount of noise isn't even funny!!
Click to expand...

I rarely shoot at anything above ISO 200. Noise starts to become present at 400.
 
My opinion of the 40D is as follows.
ISO <800 - Insignificant noise
ISO 800 - Completely Acceptable
ISO 1600 - Acceptable
ISO 3200 - Quite noticeable noise, but fine for 6"x4" or 7"x5" prints.

Unless you go FX, not much beats the 40D's high ISO performance. Even the 50D can only just about match it.
 
Orville said:
My opinion of the 40D is as follows.
ISO <800 - Insignificant noise
ISO 800 - Completely Acceptable
ISO 1600 - Acceptable
ISO 3200 - Quite noticeable noise, but fine for 6"x4" or 7"x5" prints.
Click to expand...
That's pretty much my experience, except that I still haven't printed anything. For screen viewing of ISO 800 and 1600 images, I run backgrounds through Noise Ninja and it seems to work a treat.
 
Thank you all for your help and advice.

Looks like the 40 beats the Nikon D200 hands down.
Wish I'd have gone for the 40D now, which I very nearly did :(
 
The D200 is a strange one. It lags behind almost all other Nikon models and all Canon's offerings when it comes to performance in the shadows and darkness. It's almost as though it was designed to be a Mediterranean/Studio flash body...something that it may well excel at.

Bob
 
Although the graphs are available anymore as I ran out of space in my gallery, I summarised my views on the camera noise comparisons based on the measurement work of DxOMark in this thread.

If anyone is interested, I have a PDF of the article I can email out with all the graphs.

For me, the bottom line is:

The Nikon D3 (and D700) is king of the hill when it comes to noise. Before that camera came along, the Canon's offered significantly better performance and that was generally acknowledged. One of the reasons the D3 is seen as so good is that its predecessor, the D2X was so poor.

The reason the D3 is so good is partly it is a modern design sensor but also that it has the biggest pixels of any non MF SLR camera as it is 12Mpx on a full frame body.
 
grumpybadger said:
Although the graphs are available anymore as I ran out of space in my gallery, I summarised my views on the camera noise comparisons based on the measurement work of DxOMark in this thread.

If anyone is interested, I have a PDF of the article I can email out with all the graphs.

For me, the bottom line is:

The Nikon D3 (and D700) is king of the hill when it comes to noise. Before that camera came along, the Canon's offered significantly better performance and that was generally acknowledged. One of the reasons the D3 is seen as so good is that its predecessor, the D2X was so poor.

The reason the D3 is so good is partly it is a modern design sensor but also that it has the biggest pixels of any non MF SLR camera as it is 12Mpx on a full frame body.
Click to expand...

and that it costs 6 times as much as a 40D? Its a bit like saying a Ferrari goes faster than Mondeo
 
grumpybadger said:
Although the graphs are available anymore as I ran out of space in my gallery, I summarised my views on the camera noise comparisons based on the measurement work of DxOMark in this thread.

If anyone is interested, I have a PDF of the article I can email out with all the graphs.

For me, the bottom line is:

The Nikon D3 (and D700) is king of the hill when it comes to noise. Before that camera came along, the Canon's offered significantly better performance and that was generally acknowledged. One of the reasons the D3 is seen as so good is that its predecessor, the D2X was so poor.

The reason the D3 is so good is partly it is a modern design sensor but also that it has the biggest pixels of any non MF SLR camera as it is 12Mpx on a full frame body.
Click to expand...

I don't know if DXO had not tested the D90 at the time you did this. But from what I can tell, the D90 has better low light ISO than any other Canon or Nikon crop sensor DSLR.

Andy, with all your current Nikon lenses, have you considered a D90 ?
 
Nigey said:
and that it costs 6 times as much as a 40D? Its a bit like saying a Ferrari goes faster than Mondeo
Click to expand...

I think you're misconstruing what I am saying. There was a question asked about whether Canon was terrible as a 400D is poor. All I was pointing out is that Nikon have the top camera for noise performance at present and that halo product has obviously done them some good further down the product range from a marketing perspective. What I pointed out was that, until that specific camera came along, Nikon were lagging and so it's not a Canon thing.

As for the price thing, some of Phase1 backs for £30k are appalling at high ISO but that is not what they are sold for. It's not just a price thing, its how the expensive products trade off performance parameters.

leaky5 said:
I don't know if DXO had not tested the D90 at the time you did this. But from what I can tell, the D90 has better low light ISO than any other Canon or Nikon crop sensor DSLR.
Click to expand...

That's really interesting. I hadn't seen the D90 and that really is stunning performance for an APS-C camera. I wonder if that benefit will roll through to the D300S? If so, it will be one hell of a camera.

Its also interesting to note that the 50D score has be refreshed since I wrote the paper last December and the 50D now scores marginally less than a 40D (which seems to be the view of users too)
 
grumpybadger said:
I think you're misconstruing what I am saying. There was a question asked about whether Canon was terrible as a 400D is poor. All I was pointing out is that Nikon have the top camera for noise performance at present and that halo product has obviously done them some good further down the product range from a marketing perspective. What I pointed out was that, until that specific camera came along, Nikon were lagging and so it's not a Canon thing.

As for the price thing, some of Phase1 backs for £30k are appalling at high ISO but that is not what they are sold for. It's not just a price thing, its how the expensive products trade off performance parameters.
Click to expand...

I would have to agree entirely with what you say.
 
I often use hi ISO especially with gig photography, upto and including ISO800 is perfectly good and noise is very minimal, 1600 you do get noise but if your in day light it's not that bad.

couple of examples.

Canon 40D - Canon f/1.4 - ISO1600 - NO NOISE REDUCTION
608075368_bkSjk-L-1.jpg


Canon 40D - Canon f/1.4 - ISO3200 - With NoiseNinja processing
535773019_K9XLi-L-13.jpg
 
andy_fozzy said:
Cheers guys.

I'm AGAIN thinking of going dark side, purely because of the horrible amount of noise I'm getting, even at 400. Was using 800 yesterday inside a poorly lit cathedral, and most of my shots are ruined by it :'(
Click to expand...

If your camera is D200 then there may be an explanation to this. When initial batch of D200s had that weird banding problem, Nikon developed "a fix" for it which involved some adjustments they did. They also did this on all the subsequent batches of cameras. Apparently those adjustments were not working so great for every single camera and for some of them resulted in very noisy sensors where noise could be really horrible at even ISO 400. I am guessing yours must be that case. I have D200 since the time it was just released and when I first got it from Jessops, I exchanged it 3 times within a first couple of weeks until I got a sample that was not producing excessive banding (it still does in some shots but very short ones - you need to have very blown highlights and do 100% pixel peeping to see one) but noise wise it is great. I quite often shoot at ISOs around 1000 and it is very good. Of course if you will try to shoot ISO 1600 in a completely dark room lit by a candle - it will be very grainy, but it is to be expected really (unless you perhaps have a D3 or D700).

Have you tried to check it up with Nikon?

An example of the D200 shot at ISO 1000 in a very cloudy day. No noise reduction applied at all - minimal processing in LR with all noise related settings set to defaults.

100% crop (look at the shadows for noise grain):
p909782849.jpg


of this shot:
p528572067-3.jpg


I did have some shots in a candle lit church somewhere - but will need to dig it up later today (if interested) since they are back at my home PC...
 
I find the high ISO performance to be very good with the 40d. In JPG, I can happy go to about ISO1000-1250. If I have to go ISO1600 or ISO3200, I prefer to shoot in RAW and post process. I was very surprised at how clean my photos turned out when I was forced to use ISO3200 at a recent gig, see examples here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/krishmistryphotography/sets/72157620150950167/
 
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