7D - Another Look At ISO vs Noise - Blue Sky

[steve_byland]

<p >Another test of ISO vs noise with my new 7D. This time, I focused on an object with the blue sky in the background, which as a wildlife photographer, is a common type of shot for me. All in all, I am very pleased with the results. Some of the comparisons can be seen at:</p>

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<p >I am VERY happy with this camera. I will be able to use much higher ISO on shots that I intend to sell which means I can shoot longer and faster and crop tighter. All that means money in the bank! </p>

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[mike_stemberg]

I'm impressed too but Steve, will you be doing any high ISO / low light focusing tests at all? I would love to hear your conclusions on that too.

[steve_byland]

<p>Mike - I'm not sure how to quantify that, but it is probably a good idea to get a feel for that before I really need to use it in real life. Probably best to try a side-by-side with my 40d and go with a "gut feel."<br>

I do like the numerous variations on AF that the camera has. After using the camera in the field today, I feel that the AF is far superior to the 40d for the kind of shooting I do. Today, I focused on flying birds that were just pindots with ease. I know that the 40d would have had problems. I then tried to focus on a bird feeding on the ground among sticks without changing from AI servo. It locked on perfectly - again, the 40d would have had problems in the same situation.<br>

In my "field test" today, I selected the center AF point and used one of the custom functions to select the points above, below and to either side of the center point, forming a "cross" of 5 points rather than a "square" of nine points. </p>

[philip_wilson]

<p>Steve how do you rate the Af in low light. I have a 7D on order to add to my 5DII for indoor sports use. thanks for posting these and the previous set. It looks like the 7D is fine up to ISO 800 and with care can be used at ISO 1600</p>

[steve_byland]

<p>Philip - I haven't given it much of a workout in real low light (very early or late in the day), but it was extremely capable on a very cloudy day. Full disclosure - I really have never been very happy with the 40d AF in ANY condition. I did side-by-side tests with my old 20d and felt that the 20d was far better at locking onto moving images (like flying birds), especially against a busy background and always felt that the 20d tracked moving subjects better. Of course, as my eyes get older, the screen on the 20d gets smaller and smaller ;-)</p>

[philip_wilson]

<p>the 40D is supposed to be slightly better than the 5DII. Is the 7D significantly better than the 40D in terms of speed to achieve focus and ability to track moving subjects?</p>

[cromwell1664877587]

I promise not to put this same basic post in all of the 7D praise posts, but at the moment I'm not getting all this noise free 7D hoopla. From my experience, the noise in skies is far worse with a 7D than with my 20D. If those are 100% crops then you had the sharpening turned to 0 and the images were super soft and/or(probably and) you had the noise reduction cranked up. If I'm wrong, please email me some full size pics or post some straight from the camera pics somewhere with all the exif data. Here's a 100% crop of the sky I took yesterday with my fisheye lens at iso500, noise reduction set to standard, and sharpening set to standard. Like I said in another post, maybe I just got a bad copy, but I'm starting to hear other people say the same about theirs. My very first picture with my 7D was of a bird house in the middle of my yard with an out of focus stockade fence for the background. I immediately picked up my 20D, took the same shot with the same settings and compared. The 20D shots had a creamy background, the 7D shots looked like crap. I then started to panic, jumped in my car with my camera, and went to the camera store to compare theirs with mine. Naturally, they didn't even have a display model left, so I'm still in a state of panic.:) Here's a test comparing my 20D with the 7D. <strong>I'd love to hear any 7D owners opinion of them....better, same, worse than what their 7D does.</strong> All the camera settings between the two are identical and the only thing I did to the pics out of the camera was change their names. You can float over the right side, click on "original", then right click and save. <a>http://sccromwell.smugmug.com/Other/7D-VS-20D/9838232_cUmmb#668848655_YMveL</a> Dark area noise is about the same, but the averagely exposed plain background like the wall has more noise than the 20D. I could get rid of some of that noise by setting the sharpness to 0, but after sharpening in Photoshop or DPP to equal the sharpness of the 20D, it's back to the way it would have been. It seems like I shoot mostly at iso400, so I took the 20D test shot, upsampled it to 18mp, brightened, and color balanced to match the 7D sample, although not sure why it wasn't the same to begin with. Given the brutality I gave the pic, it looked surprisingly good compared to the 7D test shot. The 7D was obviously better, but we're talking about the hot new 18mp compared to a 5 year old 8mp camera's pic that just got upsampled 225%. The difference was not that great and it should have been. <div></div>

[kari v]

<p>Scott, I compared your ISO 1600 samples. 7D wins whichever way you sample the images. No one ever said that 20D was bad at high ISO, it's still pretty fine after five years, but 7D gives you 10Mp more and better noise characteristics. Perhaps not the difference you were looking for but hey, it's still aps-c.</p>

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<p>Dark area noise is about the same, but the averagely exposed plain background like the wall has more noise than the 20D. I could get rid of some of that noise by setting the sharpness to 0, but after sharpening in Photoshop or DPP to equal the sharpness of the 20D, it's back to the way it would have been.</p>

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<p>Why would you sharpen OoF background to bring up the noise?</p>

[cromwell1664877587]

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Although I'm more concerned with lower iso than 1600, since that's what I'll mostly be shooting, the iso1600's look pretty darn close to call to me. I didn't say anybody said the 20D had bad high iso, but they're all saying the 7D has way better high iso than the 40D and 50D. You're right, most people never even bring up the old 20D...my bad. Yes, yes, you get more pixels to play with. I'm well aware of that, but not my point. If you want to go to extra post processing work, then you wouldn't sharpen the oof background, but for all intents and purposes we have to judge the pics without any selective post processing.

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[paddler4]

<p>Steve's Flickr posting mentions Noise Ninja but does not make it clear whether he had applied Noise Ninja or just thought Ninja could clean it up. The only comparisons that are really meaningful are ones to which nothing has been done to the RAW image, other than converting to JPEG so that they can be posted. Any sharpening or NR will conflate postprocessing with the capabilities of the sensor. For good examples, see Bob Atkin's comparison of the 40D and 50D.</p>

[cromwell1664877587]

<p>I didn't do any sharpening or NR. The camera was set to the default sharpening of 3 out of 7. Just as the 20D was set to the default setting. When shot in RAW, nothing done, and converted it's still set to the same sharpening. Pretty much the same difference. I realize I'm about the only one left that shoots exclusively in jpg, but I think my samples do have some meaning, especially for us jpg shooters....me and that one other guy. Unless you were talking about the poster's crop samples, then agreed. We need the whole untouched pic.</p>

[steve_byland]

<p>I just converted RAW images using DPP at the standard settings (sharpness at 3, NR at 3/5). I didn't apply Noise Ninja to the photos posted. That said, there are a lot of things on the 20d that I liked relative to the 40d. I haven't used the 20d for a couple of years and didn't even try to do a direct comparison in side-by-side tests to the 40d. I just tried to show that, up to ISO 1600 my 7d produced acceptable results for me where I never got a sky shot with my 40d at even ISO 800 that I could salvage enough to get past the reviewers at the agencies where I sell my photos.<br>

I took the camera out to photograph Hawks in flight today. The ability to track moving birds, including Peregrines and Merlins was just stunning. It locked onto moving birds far better than my 40d and kept the focus quite well.<br>

As the the question about low light, high ISO AF. There were mixed results, but managable. Using my 100-400 lens at 1600 ISO in deep shade I found that the AF was useless on distant objects when I did not limit the range of the lens (i.e. 1.8m to infinity). Also, single point spot AF did not work at all. On the other hand, single point AF with the lens limited to 6.5 meter to infinity was flawless.</p>

 

[cromwell1664877587]

<p>Then both of our settings were pretty close to the same and my iso500 sky shot looks about like your iso3200. Pretty significant difference between two shots from the same model of camera. You want to trade?</p>

[steve_byland]

<p>Scott - I sent the files you asked for. Is it possible that a fisheye lens (or even just a different type of lens) might cause more noise? Maybe different aperture? The angle you shot at relative to the sun? I really don't know enough to say - just putting this out as a possibility. I used a 100 - 400 with hood at 400mm on a tripod using the timer shooting with the sun almost at my back. I'd be interested to know what you think after having my shots in your hand.</p>

[cromwell1664877587]

<p>Thanks for the pics, Steve. I didn't have anything but a sliver of sky on the iso500 shots and nothing that was exposed close to yours. The shot with the most sky, with an area that was almost exposed like yours, and with an angle to the sun that was close to yours was an iso250 shot. When you scroll around to find the spot that comes close to matching yours, it might be a hair cleaner than your iso400 shot. I think it's going to be rainy and cloudy for the next week, but if I get a chance I'll put on the same lens as yours and try to replicate your shots at higher iso's. I suspect now that they'll be pretty close. I'm thinking I might just go ahead and quit worrying about it and try to enjoy my new toy that I couldn't afford. <br /> </p>

[steve_byland]

<p>Scott - something else that might be a factor - I shoot as bright as I possibly can without over-exposing a shot. I feel that this reduces overall noise (although it costs shutter speed). On the histogram, I always try to get something in the right hand box. Your shots seemed nicely exposed. Mine, on the other hand, were probably a bit on the bright side (if I shot the way I intended to). Although I didn't do any other processing on the photos I posted, I almost ALWAYS have to darken my photos a bit in post processing. In my experience, darkening a photo will, if anything, reduce noise, while lightening increases noise.</p>

[philip_wilson]

<p>Steve - thansk for this post. I will pick one up this week and compare it to my 5DII at the weekend. Hopefully your low light / high ISO issue is like the 5DII where you can only get good results in these situations with a fast lens (F2.8 or better). I will be shooting kids hockey at the weekend and will let you know.</p>

[thierry nguyen cuu - nomad]

<p>Canon 7D out of the box with the 35 f1,4 L<br>

No change in factory settings: P mode, Auto ISO, Auto AF select<br>

<a href="http://nomadphotography.com.au/blog/2009/10/canon-7d-out-of-the-box/">http://nomadphotography.com.au/blog/2009/10/canon-7d-out-of-the-box/</a></p>