Beginner Canon 750d - ISO - how to reduce noise

kzsolt87

kzsolt87

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Hi All,

This is going to be my first thread on this forum and I'm also pretty new in photography. I got a Canon 750d and recently got a Tamron 150-600 lens. I really like this lens and found it very useful for wildlife photography. However, I found it a bit noisy on a cloudy day. The long focal length comes with higher ISO / short exp time to freeze the subject.

At this point, I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or it's because of the equipment.

How would you rate the Canon 750d in terms of handling higher ISO settings?
Would it make any difference to switch to 80d for example? (looks like it's better on higher iso) OR switching to an entry level FF camera?

Usually I shoot in RAW and trying to reduce noise as part of post processing.

Thanks :)
Zsolt
 
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At high ISO levels, it would be better to over expose slightly. This may sound counter intuitive, but what you are actually doing is increasing the amount of light captured by the sensor. So either increase your ISO or slow your shutter speed.
Noise is always a problem at high ISO, it's just what is acceptable to you. Also don't pixel peep.
A ff will obviously help, it's whether you can justify the cost.
 
Thank you! I will give a try to over expose and see how it affects the result :)
 
Maybe an example would help others see how much noise there is.
 
I have the 550D, so a couple of models behind yours in the same range, and use the Sigma 150-600 for wildlife. I have the same problem with high iso noise, however a lot of it is what's acceptable to you. I will accept a far higher level of noise in a wildlife image than I would in a landscape. I try not to shoot wildlife in dull conditions, although bright sunlight can cause it's own problems. As Dom said try not to underexpose, or at least don't underexpose an area of the image that matters. I shoot jpeg (because I shoot mainly birds and using raw would make continuous shooting almost impossible) but I can still selectively nr the background in pp. Once I've processed an image I don't find the noise really noticable.
 
Lower ISOs mean less noise, so first of all find ways out how much you can extend your shutter speeds in dimmer light without losing sharpness, better camera holding techniques, perhaps using a monopod. Still animals are often very still. Look into ETTR exposure setting. That gets the least noisy image into the camera.

Then consider how best to reduce the noise in post processing. Using one of the better specialist noise reduction programs, such as Neat Image, or an image editor with better noise reduction capabilities, such as DxO's PRIME, can often get you a couple of stops better noise reduction over just relying on what the camera can do, or the default noise processing built into an image editor.

Finally, consider how visible the noise will be at your intended image viewing size or print. Zooming into the pixels on a modern high MP camera will show up noise in shadow areas on a 100 ISO image. But that might correspond to looking closely at a print a metre wide. Careful processing of noise reduction and reducing the image size to an A4 print or a big high res computer monitor can make a rather noisy and slightly blurred image appear commendably clean and sharp.
 
chris malcolm said:
Lower ISOs mean less noise, so first of all find ways out how much you can extend your shutter speeds in dimmer light without losing sharpness, better camera holding techniques, perhaps using a monopod. Still animals are often very still. Look into ETTR exposure setting. That gets the least noisy image into the camera.

Then consider how best to reduce the noise in post processing. Using one of the better specialist noise reduction programs, such as Neat Image, or an image editor with better noise reduction capabilities, such as DxO's PRIME, can often get you a couple of stops better noise reduction over just relying on what the camera can do, or the default noise processing built into an image editor.

Finally, consider how visible the noise will be at your intended image viewing size or print. Zooming into the pixels on a modern high MP camera will show up noise in shadow areas on a 100 ISO image. But that might correspond to looking closely at a print a metre wide. Careful processing of noise reduction and reducing the image size to an A4 print or a big high res computer monitor can make a rather noisy and slightly blurred image appear commendably clean and sharp.
Click to expand...

Thanks Chris, I read about ETTR. It takes time to get used to it (honestly, sometimes I forget about this while shooting... :) )
 
The camera and lens may not be helping but if you could post some examples it would help us to help you further. What ISOs are we talking about? Are you using the lens wide open?

Sometimes conditions are so poor ISO will be high and shutter speed low, it can take some management of the exposure to get something resonable. Dull conditions aren't the photographers friend, light can make or break an image but images can still be taken in poor light with care.

One thing I will say about noise is the only people that obess about noise are photographers and camera club judges! If I show one of my photos to my wife she has never said 'that's awful, it's far too noisy', she just looks at the image and what it portrays.

There are many ways to reduce the effect of noise but we need some more information from you before anyone can really help.
 
Nostromo said:
At high ISO levels, it would be better to over expose slightly. This may sound counter intuitive, but what you are actually doing is increasing the amount of light captured by the sensor. So either increase your ISO or slow your shutter speed.
Noise is always a problem at high ISO, it's just what is acceptable to you. Also don't pixel peep.
A ff will obviously help, it's whether you can justify the cost.
Click to expand...

I would recommend the opposite and under expose. Cutting your ISO in half (and therefore reducing the exposure by 1 stop) can easily be recovered in post without having the noise that comes with that doubled ISO level.
 
Oliver Pohlmann said:
I would recommend the opposite and under expose. Cutting your ISO in half (and therefore reducing the exposure by 1 stop) can easily be recovered in post without having the noise that comes with that doubled ISO level.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I will try that one too. I tried to over expose yesterday, but did not help much. I forgot to bring my external drive to work, so will try to post some samples in the evening
 
I use to use the Canon 70D great camera and I could get away sometimes using iso 6400, but I did have good software for NR, the 80D is also good at high iso too. You have a good camera in the 750D, try not to worry too much about noise, as some times a bit of noise/grain can make a shot better.
 
I think everyone has been here at some stage and to some degree you just have to learn to live with noise. It's much better to have a noisy image to keep than a blurred image from gambling with slower shutter speeds that ends up getting deleted - this is even more of a problem with long reach lenses and wildlife photography, when you often only get that one chance for a shot.

Also personally speaking, I would also rather have more noise than bad noise reduction - it often looks better in prints. Sometimes just removing the more garish and obvious colour noise and leaving the rest in gives decent results and helps preserve detail.
 
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I disagree about underexposure with Oliver. My experience with using a crop-format body (Canon 7d1) for bird photography was that noise started to become a problem as soon as you opened up the exposure. The temptation was always to underexpose to get that extra stop of shutter speed or depth of field but it just wasn't worth it. I don't know the 750d specifically but I found the switch to full frame made all the difference when it came to quality of the images I was getting.

Don't forget with your kit combo you're getting a magnification of up to 19x. There all sorts of other issues that can come in to play when you're using such extreme magnification. are you sure there's not some camera shake as well?
 
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