Canon R5 help...weird swirls in images

John Sheehy wrote:

Quarkcharmed wrote:

Pmm85 wrote:

The R5...I still think is noiser than my 5D IV when it comes to needing to pull detail from shadows in low light, but at least the rings/swirls are sorted out.

The R5 is much less noisy than 5DIV, if you shoot in the game conditions and settings. I had 5DIV and can compare.

If your R5's images are noisy, there's something wrong with either the camera, or settings, or workflow.

... or manner of inspecting. Lots of people don't fully understand the role of pixel size in both the magnification that they inspect at, or the effect it has on the default sharpening in a converter. Converters' "Sharpness" controls operate at the pixel level, which is a different image frequency for different pixel counts, for the same sensor area used. So, converters assume that the user wants pixel-level sharpness, no matter what the pixel size is, making cameras with smaller pixels seem noisier, as an illusion. For larger pixels, the sharpness mainly tries to recap the analog micro-contrast contrast lost to the AA filter, and for much smaller pixels, it is also trying to compensate for diffraction and aberration, too, which attenuate neighbor-pixel contrast more with smaller pixels. If the converter doesn't do this extra sharpening with smaller pixels by default, the user will likely do it.

Check if you have something like highlight tone priority or electronic shutter enabled (don't use electronic shutter at ISOs less than 800).

Electronic shutter is noisier at all ISOs, mainly in the deepest shadows at low ISOs, and reaching into higher tones at high ISOs. The difference is quite visible at ISO 51,200. There's a difference between reading out the sensor in 14 bits and then quantizing to 12 bits, vs reading out in 12 bits to begin with.

HTP isn't too bad in 14 bits, but HTP plus 12 bit e-shutter is a bit worse than just HTP or just e-shutter. The fine horizontal banding noise is worse in 12-bit e-shutter; it disappears readily with downsampling or NR or filtering, but may be a nuisance with high magnification of the original resolution.

I have the exact same problem with my two Canon R3 bodies. Since I do a lot of low light photography, should I just change the settings on my two Canon R3 bodies from electronic shutter, where they are now, to mechanical shutter. Will that solve the problem? I have been using electronic shutter to save wear and tear on the camera bodies, but if that is what is causing this extreme moire effect in my many low light images, then I will switch to shooting with the mechanical shutter.

I switched from Nikon DSLRs (most recently their D5 and D4S) to shoot with the Canon R3 bodies because I shoot a lot of motorsports and Canon's autofocus for car racing is the best that I've ever experienced.

I edit using Lightroom Classic mostly. For my many pictures with swirls, I am able to get rid of the swirls by using the Topaz DeNoise AI plugin from Lightroom. The "Severe Noise" choice gets rid of the swirls, but the resulting image is muddy-looking — usable but not great, for sure.

I have tens of thousands of my images catalogued in one Lightroom catalog. I am a member of the press and often need to search through my old images to use them in stories, so I need to keep storing in that catalog. Can other, better software/RAW converters still allow me to edit in Lightroom Classic and save to my existing Lightroom catalog?

Thank you.

Jan