Questions about R5 and moire

I am a very long time pro photographer and user of many different high end digital cameras but, I have used Canon DSLR's and mirrorless models for quite some time now. My main camera is now an R5. I am extremely happy with it in almost every way possible.

One thing that I have always noted about Canon digital cameras in the past is that their output was tempered by a very practical consideration for making sure that there was always - except for the 5Dsr - a very effective anti-moire filter in front of the sensor. It may have sometimes limited the appearance of sharpness of output in some cases, but it was more than made up for in being able to have confidence that moire would not ruin some important pictures. The filters didn't eliminate moire, but they sure did make it exceedingly rare.

Now to the meat of the matter. Last week, I shot a family portrait job. It was certainly not an easy one to do, because of the limitations of time, location and lighting conditions, but I overcame those issues in general with good flash lighting techniques in a difficult outdoor environment. I would prefer not to show the pictures, because my client has not even got their pictures yet, much less given me permission to show them here.

In this shoot, I got the most and worst moire I ever got in any shoot I've ever done, due to my clients' clothing. They did wear the exact patterns that I specifically warned them not to wear when I arranged the shoot - small regular, repeating patterns in the material, but this has happened before, using other cameras, with no where near the amount and frequency of the instances of moire in this set of pictures, appearing as both large monochromatic false swirling patterns and as those same false swirls with multicolor bands as well - all the typical false patterns of moire one could expect. It was a processing disaster, as I've had to use incredibly time consuming work-arounds to partially or wholly correct those afflicted pictures.

So, here's my question to the rest of you Canon R5 owners out there: have you noticed more moire in your results than with previous Canon cameras? Does anyone know if the anti-moire filter in the R5 is weaker than in previous Canon cameras? Any information specifically about this would be welcome. And, finally, is this is a problem specific to R5, or is it just a run of bad luck, where all the elements of the shoot came together to produce this woeful outcome, and will not likely occur again, or at least not any more than would happen with any another camera?

Finally, besides using the Lightroom anti-moire tool and bringing the sliders down on the Clarity and Sharpness controls, is there anything else which is even better at fighting moire, with less image softening, in post?

Well, now it's back to the horrible task of completing my post work on that same family portrait job.

Anyone?

I have not noticed this on my R5 on anything I've shot to date, but I can't say I regularly shoot anything that would cause this. It sounds like you know what to watch for and tried to avoid a situation that would cause it, but your clients didn't help.

Anyone else at all.

I would like to get some feedback, because I am now a little worried about this moire nightmare happening more often.

Please reply if you've experienced anything similar, or not, with your own R5.

Sounds like you just hit a perfect storm.

I've done product shots with previous Canon cameras, a lot of it fabric related. Got pretty bad moire, especially on high detail or reflectant fabrics. Happens regardless as AA filters on sensors can only do so much.

One trick I used was to slightly defocus the shot - still sharp enough, but just enough to ensure moire doesn't rear its head. As for how this can be done with mirrorless cameras in a portrait setting, could likely zoom in while taking the shot and adjust focus that way.

Hopefully, you shot RAW or C-RAW. There is a very good chance that you can fix the problem with better RAW conversion.

I ran moire experiments about a year ago and found a significant difference in the moire effects with different RAW converters. See the pictures in my post: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64949671

I follow up with further experiments comparing DxO DeepPrime and Adobe Camera RAW "enhanced" and "superresolution."

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64937922

The result of this short experiment was that Adobe Camera RAW's Enhanced Processing seemed to work the best on dealing with moire followed by DxO with DeepPrime.

Modern software is better able to detect when moire problems are happening if you use the more advanced algorithms that require more processing.

Please let the forum know if this helps in your case.

Hi Karl,

This looks awful promising, in that the "Adobe Enhance Raw" conversion obviously handled the moire in your case way better than other conversion methods you tried.

Now, forgive my ignorance, but what the heck is this Adobe Enhance Raw method and where exactly in Adobe software is it hiding? Is it in Lightroom in some setting I have overlooked. Is it only somewhere in the Adobe Raw processor that is attached to Photoshop. I have no idea what this is. I know about super resolution and have tried it a couple of times with some success, but this function sounds like it is something else. Please let me know.

Thanks very much!

Mike Engles wrote:

I would suggest that you used an exceptionally sharp lens to be so unlucky.The R5 is not particularly sharp in it self.

I have only had moire once to my knowledge and that was with a 5D2 using a very modest Canon 28-135, which does turn out to be very good. It was at a wedding and the culprit was the groom's suit.

Used booth the RF 24-70 f/2.8 and the RF 70-200 f/2.8. Yes, they are both very sharp, but I don't know if that mattered a whole lot in this particular instance.

I'm not sure that I have the nerve to shoot out-of-focus shots on a paid job, but it sounds like you have perfected this method somewhat. What happens when you apply strong sharpening to the image to correct the mis-focus? Does that take you right back to the same problem of moire, or does it somehow still work?

David Franklin wrote:

I'm not sure that I have the nerve to shoot out-of-focus shots on a paid job, but it sounds like you have perfected this method somewhat. What happens when you apply strong sharpening to the image to correct the mis-focus? Does that take you right back to the same problem of moire, or does it somehow still work?

It still looks sharp, the trick is to very slightly misfocus so that the moire disappears, rather than actually reduce resolution.

The thing about moire is that it's caused by out resolving the sensor. The goal of what I do is to make sure it doesn't do that.

David Franklin wrote:

Hi Karl,

This looks awful promising, in that the "Adobe Enhance Raw" conversion obviously handled the moire in your case way better than other conversion methods you tried.

Now, forgive my ignorance, but what the heck is this Adobe Enhance Raw method and where exactly in Adobe software is it hiding? Is it in Lightroom in some setting I have overlooked. Is it only somewhere in the Adobe Raw processor that is attached to Photoshop. I have no idea what this is. I know about super resolution and have tried it a couple of times with some success, but this function sounds like it is something else. Please let me know.

Thanks very much!

It is a little tricky to find the feature and tricky to get it to work (lousy user interface IMO).

From Lightroom (which I don't use), you can follow Adobe's instructions; https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/enhance.html

Using Photoshop (the way I used it) you first open the picture in Adobe Camera Raw as you would normally open a RAW image.

• Then look for the "more options" with 3 little dots and right-click on it. Alternatively, you can right-click on the thumbnail and then click on "ENHANCED" in the menu that pops up. OR you can use the shortcut SHIFT-CONTROL-D.
• Once you open the Enhance you will see the check box options for "Raw Details" and for "Super-Resolution."  You want the box for RAW Details checked.
• Then click "ENHANCED" - NOTE this creates a DNG file and does NOT immediately make it the active file you are opening. You THEN have to click on the DNG thumbnail that will be created to have the ADC open the DNG file and not the original file (easy to screw this up).  Make sure the file name at the top says "enhanced DNG."

I have included some pictures below to help guide you. I have not used the enhance option much and found it to be confusing and easy to not get what you want.  I have included the pictures below to show you how I got it to work.

Finding the more-options submenu (see arrow and ellipse on the right side). You can also right-click on the lower right thumbnail and then click "Enhance."

Showing the "more-options"

Setting up the checkmarks. Note clicking enhance will create a NEW and different DNG file and NOT immediately open it for use (at least that is what happens for me).

Select Raw Details (only) and click Enhanced

After a little processing time, a DNG thumbnail will be created. You need to click on this DNG thumbnail to make sure you open the "enhanced file." Make it stays "enhance DNG" in the file name at the top of your screen (very easy to miss this step and not used the enhance file).

The Adobe enhanced raw processing workflow described by Karl looks like a good bet. However if it doesn’t work out, I would try with a layer based technique, creating a layer with a very slight Gaussian blur (0.3 or 0.5 pixels), which should hopefully remove or minimise the moiré, then using a layer mask to paint that over the affected areas. This would of course be a pain for lots of images, and probably wouldn’t work at all for heavy moiré.

Karl_Guttag wrote:

David Franklin wrote:

Hi Karl,

This looks awful promising, in that the "Adobe Enhance Raw" conversion obviously handled the moire in your case way better than other conversion methods you tried.

Now, forgive my ignorance, but what the heck is this Adobe Enhance Raw method and where exactly in Adobe software is it hiding? Is it in Lightroom in some setting I have overlooked. Is it only somewhere in the Adobe Raw processor that is attached to Photoshop. I have no idea what this is. I know about super resolution and have tried it a couple of times with some success, but this function sounds like it is something else. Please let me know.

Thanks very much!

It is a little tricky to find the feature and tricky to get it to work (lousy user interface IMO).

From Lightroom (which I don't use), you can follow Adobe's instructions; https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/enhance.html

Using Photoshop (the way I used it) you first open the picture in Adobe Camera Raw as you would normally open a RAW image.

• Then look for the "more options" with 3 little dots and right-click on it. Alternatively, you can right-click on the thumbnail and then click on "ENHANCED" in the menu that pops up. OR you can use the shortcut SHIFT-CONTROL-D.
• Once you open the Enhance you will see the check box options for "Raw Details" and for "Super-Resolution." You want the box for RAW Details checked.
• Then click "ENHANCED" - NOTE this creates a DNG file and does NOT immediately make it the active file you are opening. You THEN have to click on the DNG thumbnail that will be created to have the ADC open the DNG file and not the original file (easy to screw this up). Make sure the file name at the top says "enhanced DNG."

I have included some pictures below to help guide you. I have not used the enhance option much and found it to be confusing and easy to not get what you want. I have included the pictures below to show you how I got it to work.

Finding the more-options submenu (see arrow and ellipse on the right side). You can also right-click on the lower right thumbnail and then click "Enhance."

Showing the "more-options"

Setting up the checkmarks. Note clicking enhance will create a NEW and different DNG file and NOT immediately open it for use (at least that is what happens for me).

Select Raw Details (only) and click Enhanced

After a little processing time, a DNG thumbnail will be created. You need to click on this DNG thumbnail to make sure you open the "enhanced file." Make it stays "enhance DNG" in the file name at the top of your screen (very easy to miss this step and not used the enhance file).

Thanks very much Karl. I will definitely try it as soon as I get a chance. If it works, I may never have to live the recent nightmare of correcting 70 shots on one job with some nasty moire.