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1DsII long exposures are horribly noisy

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rowan246837

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Just did a quick test with my 1DsII and 350D on the same subject. Here are the jpeg versions inlined, with larger (700k+) PNGs linked underneath.



http://media.sensationcontent.com/rowan/1DsII-noise.png



http://media.sensationcontent.com/rowan/350D-noise.png

(If you have broadband or don't mind waiting I'd highly recommend viewing the PNG images as they do not introduce any compression artifacts.)

As you can see the 350D works very well without noise reduction. I think it even looks a little better than the shot with it enabled.

With NR disabled on the 1DsII it's not pretty. Even with NR enabled it's still somewhat "spotty" if you look closely.

Of course these are 100% crops, not the real world, blah blah. Make of it what you will. :)

^^^ Not sure why I'm smiling, night photography is one of my favourite things to do and my expensive 1 series body isn't very good at it.....
 
Thanks for the informative test. I am in the market for a long exposure, hi ISO DSLR and it looks like the 350 is a real winner in this respect.

Thanks again.
 
Are you pulling our collective legs? Was that really a 35 minute exposure?

Darn thing looks like daylight - well, spotty daylight, but daylight. (And I dang near scratched my Powerbook's LCD trying to clean the dust off it.)
 
Very likely the 350D is applying some sort of spatial filtering noise reduction even when you diable noise reduction. Keep in mind there are multiple types of noise reduction. On the EOS-1 series cameras, the only form of long exposure noise reduction used (for RAW anyway) is dark frame subtraction.

With the non-1-series cameras, there is lower noise, but also less resolution. With the EOS-1 series, the assumption is you will do your own postproessing to get that effect if you so desire.

-Z-
 
Verne said:
Are you pulling our collective legs? Was that really a 35 minute
exposure?
Darn thing looks like daylight - well, spotty daylight, but
daylight. (And I dang near scratched my Powerbook's LCD trying to
clean the dust off it.)
Click to expand...
It's real. You can see from the info on the right hand side that the shutter opened just prior to midnight, and was open for 2,100 seconds. It was nearly a full moon that night.

Here's another "night looks like day" shot that I did a couple of years ago...

 
I presume that noise reduction designed to remove or reduce hot spots would be best applied at the RAW stage... do you know of anything that can do this?
 
Most RAW converters provide noise reduction that is likely comaprable to what is done inside most DSLRs. (I haven't experimented with the DIGIC based noise reduction much so it may be more sophisticated than I expect.) E.g Adobe Camera RAW has controls for luminousity and chroma noise.

-Z-
 
Z (is real) said:
Most RAW converters provide noise reduction that is likely
comaprable to what is done inside most DSLRs. (I haven't
experimented with the DIGIC based noise reduction much so it may be
more sophisticated than I expect.) E.g Adobe Camera RAW has
controls for luminousity and chroma noise.
Click to expand...
To the best of my knowledge, the only noise reduction that happens in Canon dSLRs is DFS, dark frame subtraction , the effects of which can be seen in the first image in the first message in this thread. This is a very different operation from NeatImage/NoiseNinja style noise reduction, which destroys detail.

The noise reducytion provided by raw converters is the same sort of thing as that provided by NeatImage/NoiseNinja and the like.

--
David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan
 
David J. Littleboy said:
To the best of my knowledge, the only noise reduction that happens
in Canon dSLRs is DFS, dark frame subtraction , the effects of
which can be seen in the first image in the first message in this
thread. This is a very different operation from
NeatImage/NoiseNinja style noise reduction, which destroys detail.
Click to expand...
I believe this is correct for RAW files on EOS-1 cameras. I'm not sure it is true for JPEGs and RAW files from the 20D class cameras.
David J. Littleboy said:
The noise reducytion provided by raw converters is the same sort of
thing as that provided by NeatImage/NoiseNinja and the like.
Click to expand...
The above is not currently the case. Note that the two noise reduction applications mentioned above allow for some sort of training for an image. (Either from a flat section of the same image or from a flat section of another image shot under similar circumstances.)

-Z-
 
Z (is real) said:
David J. Littleboy said:
To the best of my knowledge, the only noise reduction that happens
in Canon dSLRs is DFS, dark frame subtraction , the effects of
which can be seen in the first image in the first message in this
thread. This is a very different operation from
NeatImage/NoiseNinja style noise reduction, which destroys detail.
Click to expand...
I believe this is correct for RAW files on EOS-1 cameras. I'm not
sure it is true for JPEGs and RAW files from the 20D class cameras.
Click to expand...
If you look at the high ISO comparisons vs. the recent Nikon cameras, the detail's all there in the 20D/5D shots. There isn't any detail reducing noise reduction going on as there is in Nikon.
Z (is real) said:
Z (is real) said:
The noise reducytion provided by raw converters is the same sort of
thing as that provided by NeatImage/NoiseNinja and the like.
Click to expand...
The above is not currently the case. Note that the two noise
reduction applications mentioned above allow for some sort of
training for an image. (Either from a flat section of the same
image or from a flat section of another image shot under similar
circumstances.)
Click to expand...
Again, this is all detail-reducing noise reduction. A qualitatively different thing from dark frame subtraction.

--
David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan
 
David J. Littleboy said:
If you look at the high ISO comparisons vs. the recent Nikon
cameras, the detail's all there in the 20D/5D shots. There isn't
any detail reducing noise reduction going on as there is in Nikon.
Click to expand...
I disagree on 20D shots. And perhaps to a lesser degree on 5D ones that I have seen. Though I have not played with the RAWs myself, only commenting on JPEGs. It is certainly not as bad as most other manufacturers noise reduction.
David J. Littleboy said:
Again, this is all detail-reducing noise reduction. A qualitatively
different thing from dark frame subtraction.
Click to expand...
There are a number of algorithms for doing post-processing noise reduction. They do all trade detail for lowered noise, but the ones used in most RAW converters are less sophisticated than those used in the top dedicated noise reduction applications.

-Z-
 
Steven Noyes said:
That is the noise reduction done by the camera.
Click to expand...
Yes, I know how to use DFS (see my original post), but it's not always practical.

Dark frame subtraction means that,

a) shot time - and my time - is doubled
b) battery life is halved (or somewhat reduced, anyway)

c) number of shots you can get in while it's still dark is halved due to the extra DFS exposure time required

Imagine doing a 1 hour star trail shot. I'm actually sitting there for 2 hours.
 
Steven Noyes said:
It will surprise you. You will learn a bit from the experiment.
Click to expand...
I've already tried it. What did you think "noise reduction enabled" means in this image? :)



As I said in my first msg using DFS is pretty much mandatory with a 1DsII if you want to do long exposures. I have been in the situation where I'm twiddling my thumbs (or yawning my head off) at 3am while the red light stays on for another hour and a half. I'd rather not have to do that, which is why I've picked up a 350D.
 
There is no reason to stop and "twiddle" your thumbs. Unless you have nothing left to shoot. If you keep you exposures the same, only a single DFS will be taken. This provides the ability to:

1) take the first shot (1 minute or so). Allow DFS.

2) take subsequent shots at the same length. The interval timer is great for this. I get about 1 second between each shot. The same DFS will be applied to all frames.

3) stack all frames later. Adding works very well. So does taking the brightest pixel.

This will work for focal lengths of about 100mm and shorter.Longer than that, and you will gaps between images on the stars.

Steven

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