Just bought a 50D very recently and have been using it at ISO 640 but find there is quite some noise (especially on plain surfaces and shadows).
How can I set the camera to reduce that noise as I've heard th 50D should be pretty noise free at that setting? Do I have to set up the noise reduction in the menu?
in all honesty, the way it works is this. ISO 6400 (i assume you meant that) will have noise if there is under exposure. What exactly are you shooting ?
THe less under exposure, the less digital noise... if you look in the menu of your camera if you shoot jpg you will find noise reduction options.
Additionally you will find NR options in DPP if you are using RAW files. However again, under exposures will cause noise no matter what the ISO, and ISO 6400 and 12,800 on the 50D while usable will provide more noise then lower ISO's.
I'm thinking he does mean ISO 640 (2/3 stops faster than 400). All I shoot is RAW, so I don't know if this will apply to you, but some tricks that I have learn to fight the noise in the 50D is overexposing by a 1/3 stop compared to what the camera wants to meter. If you look at the histogram on the screen of the camera (JPEG histo), it may look perfectly exposed for the scene, but when you see the RAW histo in PP, you will see there was some room to push the exposure a little more.
50D 24-105L
1/50 sec, f/4.0, ISO 3200
ABSOLUTELY no PP for the exception of the default Lightroom slight sharpening
I know downsampling will help noise, but the full size image looks just the same.
Thanks for the pic CircleMgraphic. Yes I meant 640 ISO. I find that even at that ISO the image is not as clean as I thought it would be. Maybe I should shoot Raw instead of Jpeg. And apply your +1/3 stop trick. Thanks for the tip
No problem. Now a side note on the exposure. It's not necessarily always 1/3 stop. Check your histogram when your taking the pictures. The histo you see on the back is the JPEG histo. You want to push the exposure til you're not clipping necessary pixels. A lot of times what you see clipping on the camera will not clip on the RAW image, so you can push the exp a little more. Spend a good bit of time practicing with different lighting situations. Before you know it, you'll be bumping exp. comp.and nailing exposure before you take the picture. Good luck!
You're fooling yourself if you are trying to quantify the noise at a 100% or greater screen magnification. As you get more and more resolution from a camera, you'll zoom in more and more to see that detail and with that detail will be the appearance of more noise. Now, do a little noise reduction on it as you watch the detail. The 50D images will hold virtually all detail with even a serious dose of noise reduction.
Also, the 50D will introduce more noise if underexposed at high ISO. This camera is a different beast from earlier XXD Canon bodies and once you understand where its sweet spots are and how to post process the images from it, you'll find it is about the best crop sensor body on the market for producing images up to ISO 1600 with extreme detail.
The proof is in the print. I've done numerous prints from this camera at 24 x 36 inches at ISO 1600 and they look fantastic. Compare it with prints from other bodies, not with 100% screen zooms at extreme magnification. The detail from this camera more than compensates for any perceived increase in noise.
Gary Gray:
You're fooling yourself if you are trying to quantify the noise at a 100% or greater screen magnification. As you get more and more resolution from a camera, you'll zoom in more and more to see that detail and with that detail will be the appearance of more noise.
I have done quite a bit of analysis of current and older cameras and I concluded that (much maligned) "per pixel" noise has not improved at all (or even got worse) in the last 4 years. The truth is that EOS 50D can be equal at the best to EOS 30D (or 40D) when looking at the prints (without heavy postprocessing).
By the way, not everyone prints at 24 x 36 inches and does a lot of postprocessing.
The bottom line is that Canon's sensors are not getting better but the resolution is going up.
CircleMGraphic wrote:
No problem. Now a side note on the exposure. It's not necessarily always 1/3 stop. Check your histogram when your taking the pictures. The histo you see on the back is the JPEG histo. You want to push the exposure til you're not clipping necessary pixels. A lot of times what you see clipping on the camera will not clip on the RAW image, so you can push the exp a little more. Spend a good bit of time practicing with different lighting situations. Before you know it, you'll be bumping exp. comp.and nailing exposure before you take the picture. Good luck!...Show more →
I think this is great advice. One thing to add might be, if you aren't planning on printing the files large consider using one of the sRAW modes. The files will be smaller and I've seen some tests show some increase in noise performance. Something worth testing out for yourself.
Murfman wrote:
I have done quite a bit of analysis of current and older cameras and I concluded that (much maligned) "per pixel" noise has not improved at all (or even got worse) in the last 4 years. The truth is that EOS 50D can be equal at the best to EOS 30D (or 40D) when looking at the prints (without heavy postprocessing).
By the way, not everyone prints at 24 x 36 inches and does a lot of postprocessing.
The bottom line is that Canon's sensors are not getting better but the resolution is going up.
That is nonsense. As for cameras with newer sensors (past 4 years)
My 5D clearly produces better prints then a 30D due to more pixels.
My 50D produces excellent details prints a 30D cannot due to extra resolution & detail.
I also liked the 30D, but the new cameras are an improvement.
You don't have to do any more post processing to a 50D image than you do any other camera. You'll get the same benefit if you shoot jpg with camera styles and just use the print button on the back of the camera. If you don't like to rely on out of camera jpg's, and prefer to shoot raw the 50D is going to give you more to work with every time.
Yes, I did neglect to mention 5D, 1D mkIII and even 1D mkII. These are all excelent cameras. The truth remains that 30D is better on pixel level than 50D. As a matter of fact even in print, 50D does not produce much better results than 30D. I am not a defender of older technology (I actually did not like my two 30D cameras thinking that they were not much better than 20D), I am just disappointed that the progress in sensor technology has stalled.
My point is that Canon has not improved the quality of sensors to make S/N for pixels better. Nikon did much better job in this respect
Per Pixel doesn't mean anything. When you make a print, you aren't looking at a print "per pixel." You either print at native resolution or re-sample the image for the size print at the DPI you need. The problem comes with how much resampling is needed to hold the available detail and how much available detail is there to begin with. Noise is then oranges vs oranges only when you look at those resampled images at the print size you want to obtain.
Print 8x10, 11 x 14, you'll never see a difference between a 30D, D300, 50D, 5D, or 1DsMKIII, assuming proper post processing. A 30D file will not hold resolution at 16 x 20 or larger. The D300, a camera that I love, falls apart above ISO 800 with detail and even images below ISO 800, the detail isn't as good as the 50D.
Take a 30D native size image and print at at 16 x 24, you'll be printing at 146 dpi, which is about as low as you'd want to go to hold detail. I'd still res it up to at least 180 dpi just to make sure, maybe even more.
Take a 50D native size image and print it at 16 x 24, you'll be printing at 198 dpi. That's 50 dpi additional detail, native. There is more of a visible difference between a 150 dpi print and a 200 dpi print than there is between a 200 dpi print and a 250 dpi print, so you can see where the 30D or any 8 megapixel camera can not resolve at the detail levels of the newer 12-21 megapixel bodies.
Those extra megapixels not only give you better detail, they give you more control over the noise levels if you need it, while still maintaining superior detail. Open photoshop, crop your 30D image to 1 pixel size and crop your 50D image to one pixel, print them both and tell me which pixel looks better. Per pixel doesn't mean anything. It's a buzz word, catch all phrase. We don't look at a pixel in print, we look at all the pixels. Other things aside, the 30D, as great a camera as it was 2 years ago, is obsolete by today's standards. There's no comparing the reproduction ability and operational flexibility of a 30D and a 50D.
mfurman wrote:
The bottom line is that Canon's sensors are not getting better but the resolution is going up.
Well, on the 5DII they managed to keep the noise the same as on the 5D.
But for crop 1.6x sensors I agree 100% – as they’ve been cramming more pixels, noise has been getting worse.
Moreover, the 50D seems to blow highlights more easily than the 20/30D for example.
Judging by the dropping 50D price, xxD series buyers are obviously not eager to pay a premium for the extra (noisy) megapixels.
And it does make sense, actually – if Canon keeps lowering the image quality of the xxD line to P&S standards, why do they expect people to pay anything different than P&S prices .
Gary Gray:
Take a 30D native size image and print at at 16 x 24, you'll be printing at 146 dpi
I would not even dream of printing 16x24 from a 8 Mpixel camera.
I have had 20D, 30D, 400D, 40D crop cameras and tested 50D. I claim that the progress has stalled. I do not see that 50D is better than 30D as far as dynamic range or color depth at higher ISO (1600) is concerned. 40D at $800 (or C$820) is the best value on the market now.
Let me put it differently, if I crop 50D image to 10 Mpixels, the results will be worse than what I get from 40D.
Nick_b wrote:
One thing to add might be, if you aren't planning on printing the files large consider using one of the sRAW modes. The files will be smaller and I've seen some tests show some increase in noise performance. Something worth testing out for yourself.
The only benefit to sRAW is more images captured on a single card. The reason you are seeing better noise reduction in sRAW is because of the downsampling in the camera. If you take a full RAW file and downsample it in PS to the same sRAW size, you'll see the same (pretty much the same) image as far as noise goes. I fell for this myth for a while before I ran into a picture I needed to crop and really needed more pixels for detail, which I couldn't get back.
CircleMGraphic wrote:
The only benefit to sRAW is more images captured on a single card. The reason you are seeing better noise reduction in sRAW is because of the downsampling in the camera. If you take a full RAW file and downsample it in PS to the same sRAW size, you'll see the same (pretty much the same) image as far as noise goes. I fell for this myth for a while before I ran into a picture I needed to crop and really needed more pixels for detail, which I couldn't get back.
Sorry, you were expecting to upsample a sRAW file to say 15MP from 8MP and you expected the same detail as a photo shot at 15MP from the 8MP file? Wouldn't a more accurate test be shoot a photo at 15MP then down sample it to 8 MP and compare that to a shot taken in sRAW at 8MP
The explanation I've heard is the signal to noise ratio will stay the same when you upsample/ downsample but when you shoot sRAW the signal to noise ratio changes in your favor.
I'm not 100% on this so if someone knows better please correct me.
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