This is a question regarding the Canon 7D and noise. I have shot a series of images recently with both a Canon 24-105 L IS and Sigma 10-20 lenses. Images from both lenses (all shot at f8 and f16) in beautiful, clear blue skies show noise at ISO 100 when I zoom to 100% in my RAW editor.
When I print the images there is not a hint of noise anywhere and the camera truly deserves it's many of the accolades for image quality.
The point I am concerned about is this noise showing up, I cannot submit any of these images for Micro-stock as the noise is very evident and they will be rejected immediatly. Has anyone else experienced this and could it just be a case of my lenses need to be calibrated, the Sigma, well I have never had a great copy of this lens so that I won't bother with but my 24-105 has been superb on my 30D and 40D cameras.
Just looking for some insight here as this is becoming an issue, particularily when you consider the ISO was 100 and the lighting was perfect...
Dave, lens calibration has no impact whatsoever on noise. What you experience suggests that maybe the settings of your camera may cause some noise. There was another similar thread just a few days ago when a member reported noise at 200 ISO, and it turned out to have been caused by his having needlessly turned on the "highlight tone priority" feature. Maybe that is your case as well. If you want more help, posting an example of your "noisy pics" is by far the best way to receive it.
Do you do any noise reduction in your RAW converter?
Looking at 100% with the very high resolution magnifies any noise that might be there. You can't compare it against lower resolution images from your 40D unless you downsize.
Cant be caused by HTP in this case as the OP is talking about iso 100 and HTP's minimum is iso 200.
OP did you have to do any exp increase in post? that may have caused some noise.
Also I would normally say dont worry about 100% as with these mega MP bodies 100% is way large but if its an agency your not going to train thme out of the habit.
Skies always reveal surprising amounts of noise. Even with slow chromes they were problematic. If you're converting RAW in a non-Canon app, built-in NR is usually pretty poor. But DPP default NR is surprisingly good. If you set NR in-camera DPP will use camera settings as defaults. LR, ACR and Aperture ignore camera defaults so you need to dial them yourself. If you use a dedicated NR plugin like NeatImage you can beat DPP with careful tweaks.
Well I was shooting for a few hours the other day using ISO 200 against blue skies and at 100% they were clean. I did ensure the exposures were TTR to maximise IQ. You do see some noise at ISO 400 but nothing to worry about that can't be quickly cleaned if needed.
Pixel Perfect wrote:
Well I was shooting for a few hours the other day using ISO 200 against blue skies and at 100% they were clean. I did ensure the exposures were TTR to maximise IQ. You do see some noise at ISO 400 but nothing to worry about that can't be quickly cleaned if needed.
Agreed. We get almost 350 days of crystal clear and extremely blue skies here in Arizona. I shoot BIF's most of the time at 400 ISO and indeed see a lot of noise from my Mark III in the blue sky area of the shots but it is easily cleaned up either in LR or PS. The same shots taken with a brush or treed background show little to no noise.
I don't know enough about the subject to speak about it technically but as mentioned it doesn't cause me much of a problem to correct.
I sent my camera to Canon and they mentioned some bs about some noise that they found the cause of and fixed. I still see noise at ISO 100. Even in properly exposed shots. I'm wondering if it's only JPGs or also shows up when I shoot in RAW and process it. I haven't tested it with RAW in a while.
Dave, I did own a 7d at one point in time, and I agree with you. Clear blue skies do bring out noise at 100% and I will say that the 7d even at ISO 100 is more noticeable than some of Canon's other camera bodies. Dpreview has a great collection of sample images from each Canon camera made and if you compare just the images with the blue skies, I think you'll notice that for example, comparing 40D to 7D, less blue sky noise at ISO 100 for the 40D. If you look at the 50D, blue sky noise levels at ISO100 appear to be somewhere in between the 40D and the 7D. I too shoot microstock, and that's why I looked into this issue in the first place.
That being said, I think where the 7D triumphs is that images look great at higher ISO even with the 18mp sensor, probably even better than the 40d or 50d. But I guess there has to be a sacrifice made somewhere and that would be slightly more sky/shadow noise at lower ISOs.
Your RAW converter will make a huge difference with noise. I know that in some shots LR2 adds a ton of noise to my 7d photos.. one of the problems is that it uses the Adobe Standard profile and when I switch it to camera faithful it is much better. Do you see the same amount of noise in DPP?
You can sometimes see a very small amount of noise in 7D files at ISO 100 if all NR is disabled.
When shooting JPEGs Canon applies in-camera NR to 7D images at all ISOs, one of the reasons the 7D gets dinged for slightly softer images vs. full frame cameras. If processing RAWs in DPP the same NR settings are applied by default as well. I find Canon's low-ISO NR to be too heavy handed and prefer to retain as much detail as possible, and so I disable it. With higher quality NR tools you can remove this low-ISO noise with virtually no impact on image quality.
However, all that being said, there is no way this small amount of noise should be objectionable to a stock house. If you have so much noise that this is the case, there may be something wrong with your camera.
