SoundHound wrote:
I rate the D3 as up to 1 stop more "effective" at hi ISO (D3=6400 and Mk IIIs =3200).

But how are you doing that comparison? To make the comparison fairly, you need to...
a) take the same picture under the same conditions at the same shutter speed and aperture
b) making sure that you use the same lens, as f2 on one lens doesn't necessarily transmit the same amount of light as f2 on another
c) process out of the latest DPP with no sharpening or noise reduction
d) apply Neat Image or some other noise reduction filter to the Canon file, and if necessary, the D3 file
e) uprez the D3 file to 21 megapixels and compare on screen

You might also test by printing the two images to the same size.

If you didn't do it that way, there's little point in zooming in on pixels and trying to assess which is noisier, as that won't tell you which camera is more usable at iso 6400, it will only tell you how noisy a pixel is.

Nothing fancy here but I just did these with my 1D III. First the photo right out of ACR, then the 100% crop which on its own isn't too bad, then the addition of default setting of Noise Ninja. All handheld using the 16-35mm L at f2.8.

Gary default of noise ninja wont help, you need to at least profile the image.

Nikon is nearly as good now so i guess we should all think about jumping ship.
Seriously, great example.

Noise Ninja profiled with increase to 5 strength on color and lumi.
Sharpness at 110.

GlassBottles:

Original:

Well this is not super high ISO, but when handholding at ISO 800 and it looks like ISO 200, pretty good with that.

morganb4 wrote:
Gary default of noise ninja wont help, you need to at least profile the image.

I guess I misspoke on that one. It's the default 1D Mark III profile I downloaded from their site.

Gary even so, the default NN profiles are less effective if you use LR/ACR because of the amount of noise the these engines produce. If you want the best high ISO performance, use DPP.

If you want to use ACR/LR then you need to profile each image individually. Or make your own set of profiles through LR/ACR.

Sorry, its a bummer I know but those is the facts :-(

I just printed two 8x10s of my ISO 3200 shots. That's as large as I can print at home. One from DPP with no noise reduction or sharpening and the other from photoshop after using Noise Ninja. I see no noise at all in either one. I declare the 1D Mark III perfectly usable at 3200.

Might it make sense for Canon to provide the 1DsMkIII with a firmware update that allows ISO 6400 and 12800 (assuming it could be done with FW)? They might fear that pixel peepers would consider the results too noisy, but the sheer number of pixels obviously allows the camera to produce very usable prints at those exposures, so why leave it necessary to use exposure compensation to get the exposure index we want?

I use a 1DIII, not a 1DsIII, but from looking at other's results, it seems to me that ISO 12800 shots from a 1DsIII would make better prints of any given size than ISO 3200 shots from the original 1D, and maybe better than ISO 1250 shots from the original 1Ds.

I was following this discussion with great interest. The main thing that I don't get is people using DPP and getting great results. I find that DPP gives the most atrocious results, especially when it comes to noise. Then I see that other people have better luck. So let me ask: this is an image from last night, 1Ds3, ISO 3200, not what I would call underexposed / pushed. First one with DPP (newest version - no NR and sharpening, as stated in the "directions" in this thread), then in ACR, with no luma NR and 25 chroma NR (my standard settings). Maybe it's just me, but I find the DPP results ... well, atrocious. The ACR image has been white balanced and has a custom camera curve applied, but that should not explain the shocking difference.

What am I doing wrong?

Vampire Weekend rocks

Nice photo!

Stanj, turn all noise off in LR/ACR. Match the WB, it does have an effect on visible noise, I can see your wb is off a bit. You are also comparing a NR reduced image to a non NR reduced image.

At any rate, you still need to remove the noise in Noise Ninja afterwards. I didnt say that the noise wasnt there, it is, its just that it has less of an impact and IQ.

morganb4 wrote:
Stanj, turn all noise off in LR/ACR. Match the WB, it does have an effect on visible noise, I can see your wb is off a bit. You are also comparing a NR reduced image to a non NR reduced image.


Yes I am aware that I am comparing a NRd image with a non-NRd one. On purpose. My question is: Brainiac, in his original post of the guitar player, says that he had NR and sharpening off in DPP, just like I do with my photo. My image has this freakish pattern noise, while his does not. So I am asking what I am doing wrong.

People keep saying that ACR will give inferior results to DPP. Therefore, I think it's fair for me to use the settings in ACR to get the "best", and in DPP to get the "best", where in DPP I was told to turn NR and sharpening off, while in ACR I am using my default settings.

The white balance will make a difference, but it does not explain the pattern noise.

So, back to my original question - how do people get the smooth result in DPP? Let's keep ACR out of the equation for a minute, as not to cause any confusion.

And since we're comparing decoders and methods - this is what Aperture comes up with with default settings. As much as I don't use Aperture, for high ISO stuff it's pretty much the way to go.

Do you have 'high iso noise reduction' switched on in the camera?

In DPP you get fewer speckles with sharpening at zero and noise reduction at zero. You may still get some speckling, but it doesn't matter very much, as it is highly susceptible to a slight dust & scratches filter with a high threshold in photoshop.

brainiac wrote:
Do you have 'high iso noise reduction' switched on in the camera?

In DPP you get fewer speckles with sharpening at zero and noise reduction at zero. You may still get some speckling, but it doesn't matter very much, as it is highly susceptible to a slight dust & scratches filter with a high threshold in photoshop.

Nope, o NR functions are turned on in the camera. I need all the buffer I can get

Stanj, I think its also ambient dependant too. I get much more noise from certain light sources than others. This could have something to do with it. I dont know what lighting Braniac shot under.

stanj wrote:
morganb4 wrote:
Stanj, turn all noise off in LR/ACR. Match the WB, it does have an effect on visible noise, I can see your wb is off a bit. You are also comparing a NR reduced image to a non NR reduced image.


Yes I am aware that I am comparing a NRd image with a non-NRd one. On purpose. My question is: Brainiac, in his original post of the guitar player, says that he had NR and sharpening off in DPP, just like I do with my photo. My image has this freakish pattern noise, while his does not. So I am asking what I am doing wrong.

People keep saying that ACR will give inferior results to DPP. Therefore, I think it's fair for me to use the settings in ACR to get the "best", and in DPP to get the "best", where in DPP I was told to turn NR and sharpening off, while in ACR I am using my default settings.

The white balance will make a difference, but it does not explain the pattern noise.

So, back to my original question - how do people get the smooth result in DPP? Let's keep ACR out of the equation for a minute, as not to cause any confusion.

nadroj wrote:
Vampire Weekend rocks
Nice photo!

Well spotted. Thanks.

morganb4 wrote:
Stanj, I think its also ambient dependant too. I get much more noise from certain light sources than others. This could have something to do with it. I dont know what lighting Braniac shot under.

That's absolutely right. It's not just the colour of light, but light levels and subject matter too, since lots of flat shadowy areas will show striping much more severely. I can't remember what the original colour was like on this shot, but if light is quite blue that usually helps as the blue channel is often the noisiest.

Aperture raw processing looks great. Early versions seemed to handle continuous colour tones quite badly. Is that fixed?

brainiac wrote:
Aperture raw processing looks great. Early versions seemed to handle continuous colour tones quite badly. Is that fixed?

V2 color, as especially detail (beyer) reconstruction is vastly better than before. As a matter of fact I think that detail is by far the best of any raw converter now. They still don't have camera color calibration, though, and that matters to me more.

cogitech wrote:
...Bibble... I'd love to have your RAW file to play with, so I can demonstrate how effective it really is.

OK - I'm very interested in that. It's a 28 meg file. I am uploading it now but it will probably take some time. The link is below, but please everyone don't kill my server.
http://cyberphotographer.com/c/20080628costa/838.CR2

Edited by babakn on Jul 08, 2008 at 10:21 PM GMT

brainiac wrote:
OK - I'm very interested in that. It's a 28 meg file. I am uploading it now but it will probably take some time. The link is below, but please everyone don't kill my server.
http://cyberphotographer.com/c/20080628costa/838.CR2


This was quick run through DPP to Neat Image (from within PS CS3) with a preset profile. If I spent some time with it and fiddled with neat Image, I could probably get it a little better. Relative to the other noise reduction try earlier, this one is a little more aggressive but seems to retain more of the wood grain detail on the face of the guitar.