Canon 50D High ISO noise? (800)

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stevebuk

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Steve
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Hi all,

Just got my first DSLR and having a little fun playing with it. I shot this picture tonight. Handheld, 800 ISO, 50mm. I have only played a little with the camera, but on my indoor low light shots they seem quite noisy. What do you think? Is this amount of noise normal for the 50D at 800?

The first has no sharpening and the second, a little output sharpening.

Many thanks.
Steve

No sharpening
4561492850_83a18840ca.jpg

Output Sharpen
4560871463_f6df81f625.jpg


Larger size can be seen at my flickr page:

flickr
 
When I used the 50D I felt that in some cases the noise was a bit heavy @ 800, but often this was only when viewed at silly magnifications. I had some bird shots that were a little noisy & I ran them through noise ninja to clean them up nicely.

Your shots look fine noise-wise although the second is rather heavily sharpened to my tastes.

Phil
 
Thanks for the comments guys. With regard to the sharpening, it's an area I really struggle to get to grips with.. I'm never quite sure when enough is enough.... Need to do some more research on that topic for sure.

Thanks
Steve
 
I found with my 50d that I was getting a fair bit of noise when I shouldn't have been and did a little researching. I found that under the custom functions (C.Fn II) there is a thing called Auto Lighting Optimizer (ALO) which is meant to auto adjust contrast and brightness while maintaining highlights. I found that it put some noise in my shadows.
I disabled that and found the noise levels reduced to more in line with what I would expect from a £700 camera. I also keep the HIGH ISO Noise Reduction on STRONG.

hope that helps!

Thought I would add, I can't see anything wrong with the photos either!
 
There's something not quite right here Steve. That first image looks far too sharp to be an unsharpened image considering it's been reduced quite a lot in size. It should look a mite soft and need sharpening, but that image certainly doesn't need it, and any sharpening on it would produce over-sharpening.

The other thing is the aliasing (jaggy edge) on his hand just in front of his lip. Sometimes this is just an unfortunate effect you get with adjoining areas of high contrast, but it can also happen if you've used the wrong algorithm when resizing your image. Have a look at the help menu for your editing package -you need different settings for resizing depending on whether you're increasing or decreasing the size of the image. If you use the wrong algorithm the image wont resize properly and will cause you problems also when you come sharpen. Worth checking out anyway.

I's use the 50D quite happily at 800 ISO and 1600 ISO at a push with no undue noise issues.
 
Hi CT,

I may have misled when I said unsharpened. I use Aperture 3 and the file was RAW. As such it has the Aperture 50D raw sharpening. I would normally then add edge sharpening and brush the eyes with extra sharpness before output. So image 1 has RAW sharpening, not output.

With regard to resizing. I exported from Aperture to 1024 x 1024 and the other rescaling for the ones I posted was done by Flickr. I'll export at 800 next time and then I can use the image without flickr resizing on here.

Kind Regards,
Steve
 
One thing that will help a lot is not to underexpose the image at all.

It's a bit counter intuitive to what you are normally trying to achieve in a "bump the ISO" situation but expose to the right is very definatley your friend if you are troubled by high ISO noise.

HTH

David
 
OK Steve - gotcha.

I wouldn't do any sharpening at all at the raw stage. Output your file as a TIFF or jpeg and do all your sharpening on the image at it's final output size - whatever that is. Sharpening should be the last thing you do to an image before saving anyway, and after you've made any adjustment to levels or contrast.

You should find most of your sharpening problems disappearing.
 
What noise? There is none that I can see, except a tiny bit in the top right corner on the lamp, which is completely inconsequential.


Willid1 said:
One thing that will help a lot is not to underexpose the image at all.

It's a bit counter intuitive to what you are normally trying to achieve in a "bump the ISO" situation but expose to the right is very definatley your friend if you are troubled by high ISO noise.

HTH

David
Click to expand...

Agreed. I use to think high ISO noise was absolutely horrid on my camera, because even at 800 (and sometimes 400) I was getting noisy images, even at web sizes. It wasn't until I realised that I was underexposing every one of them that the error in my ways became clear. Now, as long as I expose correctly, I get better images at ISO 1600 than I often would at ISO 800.
 
Hi,
I was worried about the noise at the base of the hair. I agree it is hard to see on the 500 x 500 images. It is clearer on the 1024 on my Flickr link.

Regards,
Steve
 
Is there something wrong with the links or is it my pc:p
 
Byker28i said:
Hi Steve,


Have you turned ALO and HTP off in the custom menues for better picture quality when shooting raw?

Both are in the Custom Function 2 menu.

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Click to expand...

Hi Byker,

I've turned both these off, however I was under the impression these options only had any effect when shooting JPEG. is this not the case?

Regards,
Steve
 
stevebuk said:
I've turned both these off, however I was under the impression these options only had any effect when shooting JPEG. is this not the case?
Click to expand...
No. Both these options are intended for use only when shooting jpegs, but when shootoing raw they've been shown to adversly affect noise in your images. Raw format gives you more than enough exposure leeway that you don't need either option anyway.
 
Interesting comments about ALO and HTP - what exactly do they do? I've just disabled em on my camera after the comments above but I am wondering if I will notice a difference.
 
ALO - Automatic Lighting Optimiser... analyses the subject and attempts to adjust your images to give you the best balance between light and dark areas in the image.

Video of ALO effect

HTP - Highlight Tone Priority, jsust biases your exposures in favour of preserving the highlights.
 
CT said:
HTP - Highlight Tone Priority, jsust biases your exposures in favour of preserving the highlights.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't that be good then.. so as not to underexpose and make more noise???
 
Janice said:
Wouldn't that be good then.. so as not to underexpose and make more noise???
Click to expand...
Well it would Janice except it's only intended for shooting jpegs and has the adverse noise affect on raw images. Raw shooting overall has benefits far outweighing any advantage from ALO anyway - certainly for experienced shooters -like yourself.

*Slaps legs till they're all red* :D
 
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