Peter Le wrote:
You and Dan seem to understand this concept well.........but why do so many excellent photographers just not get it.....it is really quite simple.........they just can`t seem to brake away from the fact that a sensor is different then a transparency or film . A different medium....a different technique......similar results .................Peter
Yes I agree entirely. You should use the same concepts to expose a digital capture the same as a transparency capture. It doesn't matter what the final exposure you want to show the world, the fact is underexposing the scene grossly is wasting vast amounts of tonal data. In a linear capture device almost 90% of the tonal values are contained in the top half of the histogram. So as a dramatic example exposing a black square as you would in a transparency would throw away about 95%+ of the available data and the square would have hideous noise. Expsoing it to the right and then bringing it back later will result in a far superior result.
Ok for a complex scene with high DR you have to be more prudent and decide what's the most important, highlight detail or shadow detail and there are workarounds as Dan said, although not all are feasible depending on the type of shot you are doing. If the shadows are really important you have to do something like use flash or blend several exposures or blow the highlights or reduce contrast somehow.
Apart from this brainiac did you do the exact same shot on the 1Ds III, to see how it handles an underexposed scene like this? I've seen noise in ISO 100 shots in the shadows if it's underexposed
BTW I'm not upset about this at all as I don't have a 5D II.
ChrisDM wrote:
Once again, if you measure the quality of a photograph by the "amount of the scene's information"
Good Lord, who said that?! I certainly don't "measure the quality of a photograph by the amount of the scene's information!" To do so would be pointless. Please don't misstate what I believe or what I said.
What I said is that if you want the best possible print that looks the way you want it to look (that's what you are talking about, right?) then the best starting point for exposure with digital capture is typically to aim for capturing as much scene data as possible.
This gives me the greatest potential to create the vision that I have for the print. I actually don't give a damn in an aesthetic sense what my histogram looks like. I do give a damn what my print looks like, and to get there I have to pay attention to some technical matters when I make the exposure.
orangefirefish wrote:
it's a bit like the B&W zone system
Yes, but I'd go further and say that it is almost the digital capture equivalent of the zone system.
And speaking of the zone system, if folks think Ansel captured on the negative the image the way it would look in the print, that is wrong on so many levels as to be laughable. Reading about the creation of the famous "Moonrise" photo will set your straight on that matter very quickly. (Here's one quick description from the web: http://www.aristos.org/whatart/adams.htm Others provide more details of how he turned the image into the print we know by doing significant work in post, as we would say today.)
I think you've found a real issue. You shouldn't see patterns like this. It's probably a bug, and one that Canon could fix if they could reproduce the problem. Why don't you report it to Canon service and tell us what they say?
brainiac wrote:
I haven't made myself clear. I totally agree with you that THIS SCENE could be exposed more to the right for a better result. That is not relevant to the fact that the general scene, which is what I was testing with this shot, will generally show crusty shadows at 200 iso, as this shot clearly demonstrates. Forget about processing, and just remember that whenever this camera is set to 200 iso and the exposure is not adjusted in processing (i.e. exposure is correct), and there are flat not quite black shadows, a crusty texture will show. I do not expect to have to do half an hour's fiddling with a 200 iso file to make noise invisible in the half shadows.
Please understand that I am not being deliberately obtuse; I have a genuine technical reason for not exposing this scene as far to the right as I could. The technical reason is this: the general scene (NOT THIS ONE) contains a much wider dynamic range, and therefore, generally, overexposure is not feasible since it blows whites. Flat shadows somewhere above black really do look like this at iso 200 on my 5D, and your suggestions about overexposure and pulling in post are completely irrelevant: http://cyberphotographer.com/5d2/snowythames_topleft.jpg...Show more →
With respect you are all missing the point - both artists, and technicians.
First Dan is right that if you wanted to get the best possible result from this image, you would expose it a stop or so brighter (effectively shooting iso 100), and then pull by a stop in the raw developer. But that is irrelevant to the point of this thread and I would be grateful if the people talking about this red herring would stop ruining the thread by distraction.
I'm going to try to explain once more why 'expose to the right' is irrelevant to the issue that this thread is really about. This is an unusually low contrast scene. A normal outdoor scene has bright highlights (unlike this scene) as well as deep shadows, and capturing wide dynamic range is one of the challenges of digital photography. In normal scenes, even when exposure stretches to the very right side of the graph, often there are areas where the amount of light (EV) striking the sensor is just so: http://cyberphotographer.com/5d2/snowythames_topleft.jpg
Under those NORMAL circumstance YOU WILL NOT HAVE THE LUXURY OF EXPOSING FURTHER TO THE RIGHT THAN THIS TEST SHOT and therefore you will inevitably see the same streaky noise in the shadows where you would expect to see nice continuous tones (this is 200 iso, remember).
So my point is that the above crop is what shadows will look like at 200 iso when you are faced with a normal scene and there is no possibility of exposing further to the right, a far more common circumstance that the scene shewn which is unusually low in contrast.
If you don't understand this simple explanation, by all means ask questions, but please don't waste everbody's time with yet another great long exegesis of the 'expose to the right' technique which is something that everybody here has known for years, probably better than you, and which is wholly irrelevant to the general problem of shadow noise in 5D2 files at 200 iso.
Interesting thread! It's becoming more and more apparent that the 1Ds3 and 5D2 sensor have noticeable differences, and that the 5D2 has relatively poor low ISO performance. There's been quite a bit of evidence so far that the 5D2 has nasty banding even at low ISOs
My biggest worry is that there isn't really any alternatives for most Canon users who can't justify a 1Ds3 (but still want AF Microadjust)...like me
I cannot understand what the big deal is. Hasn't anyone heard about NR software? Is $50 or $60 too much to spend? The alternative is to pay between $6,500 and $8,000 for IQ matching the 5D II with a $50 software. IMO the the 5D II + a proprietary NR software is a better bet than the 1Ds III or D3X without a proprietary NR software. Or do you guys still insist that the 5D II should perform just like the 1Ds III and D3X w/o a NR software .... and still only sell for $2,700? Is that a reasonable expectation? Am I the only simpleton here.
Dawei Ye wrote:
Interesting thread! It's becoming more and more apparent that the 1Ds3 and 5D2 sensor have noticeable differences, and that the 5D2 has relatively poor low ISO performance. There's been quite a bit of evidence so far that the 5D2 has nasty banding even at low ISOs
My biggest worry is that there isn't really any alternatives for most Canon users who can't justify a 1Ds3 (but still want AF Microadjust)...like me
Dawei Ye wrote:
Interesting thread! It's becoming more and more apparent that the 1Ds3 and 5D2 sensor have noticeable differences, and that the 5D2 has relatively poor low ISO performance. There's been quite a bit of evidence so far that the 5D2 has nasty banding even at low ISOs
My biggest worry is that there isn't really any alternatives for most Canon users who can't justify a 1Ds3 (but still want AF Microadjust)...like me
Lets not get blow this out of proportion. Here's a comparison of 5D2 to 1Ds3 images that brainiac posted back on page 4:
bobbytan wrote:
Or do you guys still insist that the 5D II should perform just like the 1Ds III and D3X w/o a NR software .... and still only sell for $2,700? Is that a reasonable expectation? Am I the only simpleton here.
I believe IT IS in fact a reasonable expectation, in light of canon's own claims:
canon wrote:
Although the individual pixel dimensions of the EOS 5D Mark II camera are the same as the 21.1-megapixel CMOS sensor used in the EOS-1Ds Mark III digital SLR, the new sensor incorporates an improved output amplifier and a more advanced color filter that improves light transmission while retaining excellent color reproduction. By applying the same kind of advancements in sensor design and image processing technology as the recently introduced EOS 50D camera, but at higher resolution and with larger pixels, the EOS 5D Mark II achieves the highest level of image quality of any EOS Digital SLR released to date.[/b]...Show more →
Interesting, I tried shoot a similar scene with my 5d2... and honestly I cannot see this type of noise in the shadows! I will do some more investigations and try shoot the same scene altering ISO, and see if say ISO400 will give a cleaner shadow than 200 (as suggested by some).
Could the criss-crossing pattern be some sort of interference?? IS gyro spinning?
Look forward to you testing your second 5D2 and see if they both behave in a similar manner.
fraga wrote:
I believe IT IS in fact a reasonable expectation, in light of canon's own claims:
Thank you fraga. I never got around to digging up that dictat from Canon's PR department. As you say, Canon did claim that this camera had superior image quality to the 1Ds3. That's one of the reasons why I planned to 'upgrade' to a pair of 5D2's, which I have now done.
Brainiac - surely you must have another picture to post, one that contians highlights. That way the discussions of exposing to the right could go away.
I wonder if this is an isolated case of banding or if all 5DII show it, I also wonder if the banding is only visible at ISO 200 like some people guessed.
Maybe people who already have the 5Dii could do this simple test
The crops are take from the left side of the pictures. The last picture shows how it was done, it is simple the corner of a wall indoors. The color shift comes from the wooden ceiling. Its from the 5D, my II is not here yet.
Issue or not, Canon should have an opinon on this and I really suggest to contact them and ask for advice.
Shadow noise at low ISO (200) underexposed by one or two stops is going to be worse than the shadow noise in the same region at ISO 400 and ISO 800 respectively. It's going to look grungier than one might intuitively expect.
