NOISE

[Fotogejst]

Perhaps we should have compared 110 film with 35mm film and the analogy that the OP was asking Olympus to produce a 110 size film giving the same performance as competitor's 35mm films.

On the surface an exellent analogy to the 4/3rds - FF comparision, but it isn't really valid. After all, we usually make the comparison between the digital systems under an assumption of equivalent technology (apart from the sensor size). This is where the 110 - 135 type film analogy breaks down, because films with two stops different sensitivity cannot be considered equal technology.

 

[olyflyer]

If you add 2 stops to that ISO capacity a future Ex has 8 stops and FF has 10 stops, 4/3rds relationship went up from 66% of FF to 80% of FF. This is the synopsis FF faces.

But it will still mean quadruple the amount of light for each from where they are now. Add this to the current FF and you will probably not need the tripod ever. Unless you want to pan the action with the long lens of course. Can not say or expect the same for FT, unless it goes through another quadrupole cycle, which may and probably will take some very long time.

Sergey,

You are a great protagonist for the virtues of FF v FT. Yet when I look through your excellent galleries I cannot find any FF examples.

Why is that?

For the simple reason that he does not use or own an FF, which he never made any secret of.

Never the less, it is still possible to discuss the subject, isn't it? This forum has many "experts" with no practical knowledge or experience with the system or the camera they are discussing. This thread is no exception, it is full of Nikon and Canon experts, not to mention all the lens experts discussing lenses they only dream about. So why wouldn't Sergey have the right to be here, even though he is not shooting FF. At least he is occasionally shooting Oly...
--
http://www.olyflyer.blogspot.com/

 

[bbrault]

I am just saying I would love to see the Oly flagship have super squeaky clean ISO at 3200 - that would make life for Oly so much more admirable I think.

Lee
--

I'm technically not a 'qualified professional photographer', but I play one online.....

Oly is admirable.

Why would it need squeaky clean ISO 3200?

it needs to reflect the competitive forces against it
or it needs some other reason to outcompete

--
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Agreed and we all understand that OLY cannot compete on ISO simply because of its sensor format. In-camera noise processing does very little for RAW shooters.

Those who must have low noise and razor sharp DOF will migrate towards FF where most of the time they will be wishing they could mount their 12-60 on it and post-crop.

Compact m4/3 may share the same sensor and matching IQ but it only qualifies as an accessory to those with HG or SHG glass.

A PRO mirrorless body seems to be the obvious way forward.

If OLY is heading in that direction, it might as well get there sooner and faster and leapfrog its competition.

OLY fan base should also stop obsessing about noise and DOF. Once the concept is well understood, those discussions often turn personal, nasty and into endless loops like being in a bad dream or in an afternoon soap.

 

[Frank C.]

Low light photographing was possible already with the flash. I don't think high iso will ever change that. Because where there is no light you can't catch light.

at iso 100K+ you certainly can(!) but 5K$ is the price of admittance =-(

though it's nice to see technology marching onwards (!)

 

[Rriley]

I am just saying I would love to see the Oly flagship have super squeaky clean ISO at 3200 - that would make life for Oly so much more admirable I think.

Lee
--

I'm technically not a 'qualified professional photographer', but I play one online.....

Oly is admirable.

Why would it need squeaky clean ISO 3200?

it needs to reflect the competitive forces against it
or it needs some other reason to outcompete

--
ʎǝlıɹ

plɹoʍ ǝɥʇ ɟo doʇ uo ǝɹɐ ǝʍ 'ɐılɐɹʇsnɐ uı

Agreed and we all understand that OLY cannot compete on ISO simply because of its sensor format. In-camera noise processing does very little for RAW shooters.

i dont know enough about that to comment
there is always .tiff though
we used to have that option once
the files would be huge, but storage (cards and HDD) is less of an issue now

Those who must have low noise and razor sharp DOF will migrate towards FF where most of the time they will be wishing they could mount their 12-60 on it and post-crop.

Compact m4/3 may share the same sensor and matching IQ but it only qualifies as an accessory to those with HG or SHG glass.

A PRO mirrorless body seems to be the obvious way forward.

mirrorless may be trendy of late, but on its own it isnt the answer to our problems, its just a solution for alternate configurations

If OLY is heading in that direction, it might as well get there sooner and faster and leapfrog its competition.

OLY fan base should also stop obsessing about noise and DOF. Once the concept is well understood, those discussions often turn personal, nasty and into endless loops like being in a bad dream or in an afternoon soap.

i dont disagree with the mind re-adjustment
but threads like these provide a platform that goes both ways

so were any minds adjusted, thats the question

--
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[TrapperJohn]

After hearing for years how critical high ISO was and how us poor misbegotten Olympus owners were really missing the boat, it was an interesting contrast to get an EP1 that does have a decent 3200 (some noise, but it's a pleasant, filmlike grainy noise), and even a useable ISO6400, albeit with more noise and a bit of color shift.

It doesn't help that much. Don't let the numbers fool you. 3200 sounds like a lot more than 800, but it's just two stops. It's not four times better, not even twice. Just bumps shutter speed up a bit, but not as much as you might think.

If you take a look at 3200 or 6400 RAW files with no NR from C/N, you'll find that some of their clean image is aggressive in camera noise reduction, and consequent loss of sharpness. You can do this in PP with Noise Ninja, Neat Image, etc... so to a degree, you're quibbling over whether NR is done in camera or in PP.

I will give Nikon a nod, they always seemed to get more out of a Sony sensor than Sony could.

Remember that those of us who use intermediate or above ZD have a bonus, we get an extra stop or two on the low end of the aperture, because our glass doesn't go all soft when shot wide open. Against FF, it's roughly a two stop difference. The larger formats have advantages, but sharpness wide open isn't one of them.

Nor does high ISO turn a slow lens into a fast one. I ran comparison shots of the EP1 at 3200/F4 with the kit glass in somewhat dim conditions, against the PL25 at 800 and F2 on the same scene. Exposure was pretty much the same. The PL25 shot wasn't just sharper, it was a lot sharper. In bright sunlight, you'd be hard pressed to tell the one from the other. In dim light, the sharpness difference between the slow lens and the fast one is very pronounced. High ISO is not a substitute for fast glass. Not if you care about image quality.

Why worry about a single component like high ISO? Look at the big picture - we have these magnficent fast zooms that don't go soft wide open. Accomplishes the same goal with better IQ.

 

[Vaughan Williams]

I just read somewhere about monitor, print and noise. Looking at 3200ISO on a monitor will be noiser, than on print. I have to agree, I've printed 13x19 prints at 3200ISO and sold them. We sometimes peep too much into the images and we don't give the camera or the image a chance to succeed.

That is true, but then there is another side of this. We share our images through the Internet, or mail them to our friends, or even show them only on computer screens, not priniting. So the less noise there is in the screen image the better it is. Even if at some stage images are printed it is hardly a disadvantage to have less noise in an image, is it?

Olyflyer! I can't believe you wrote that! Surely you know that downsizing images so that they can be viewed on monitors is just as effective at removing the noise as printing?

--
Vaughan
http://www.flickriver.com/photos/jvwpc/

 

[bbrault]

bbrault wrote:
In-camera noise processing does very little for RAW shooters.

i dont know enough about that to comment
there is always .tiff though
we used to have that option once
the files would be huge, but storage (cards and HDD) is less of an issue now

My understanding for .tiff is that it is very similar to .jpg but either uncompressed or with lossless compression as opposed to the much smaller lossy .jpg.
Still no substitute for RAW.

I used to shoot exclusively .jpg and thanks to many users on this forum, I converted to shooting exclusively RAW.

I used to think that shooting RAW would complicate things with marginal benefits but it turned out to be the completely other way around. Much fewer parameters to concentrate on while shooting and greater development flexibility.

Shooting RAW also implies by-passing the in-camera development processing: sharpening, noise reduction, etc... Therefore also by-passing a relatively important piece of the camera manufacturer's proprietary know-how and differentiation.

 

[trooplewis]

"Perhaps the most stunning example I experienced was photographing a bear swimming in a lake between Russia & Finland. It was well past midnight and I can honestly say that I could not see this bear with my own eyes - only a slight twinkle of light on his wet nose allowed me to focus. Because of usable ISO 12800 I was able to freeze a moment of bear behaviour"

In my books this is not just about high ISO, but an AF system to match and a situation which would have been missed or overlooked had it not been for a camera like that.

--

I guess it would be great to have a camera that could see things that the human eye cannot see, sort of like Sony shoot-in-the-dark video cameras.

But I think we have really spoiled ourselves when we envy someone's camera because they can shoot in the dark and we can't. So much for worries about "the light".
--
Always looking for good images to display as a POTD!
potdgroup.com

 

[odl]

Honestly, Olyflyer is enjoying his new system soooo much, he has become one of the top 5 posters here, almost all of his posts belittling the Olympus system, praising his new system etc.

I now know why there are so many "trolls", and i am not calling Olyflyer one, in here, they are all former Olympus users who honestly feel they are opening the eyes of their friends, they want to still enjoy the Olympus forum, but show us all the error of our ways.

What none of them realise is they simply end up looking like trolls, ruining what was once a very nice forum... honestly, when i started posting here (and it wasn't that long ago) things were better. The competition has released a few strong bodies in that time, a few olympus users have moved on, but their ghosts remain to haunt this forum

Ahhhh well, one day olympus will pull out of the SLR market, and all the converts will stay here, praising their FF systems on the Olympus Forum. Wont that be fun.

Ab

--

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” - Albert Einstein

E-3, E-300, 50mm f2, 35mm f3.5, Sigma 105mm f2.8, 12-60, 14-45

 

[Rriley]

bbrault wrote:
In-camera noise processing does very little for RAW shooters.

i dont know enough about that to comment
there is always .tiff though
we used to have that option once
the files would be huge, but storage (cards and HDD) is less of an issue now

My understanding for .tiff is that it is very similar to .jpg but either uncompressed or with lossless compression as opposed to the much smaller lossy .jpg.
Still no substitute for RAW.

you would prefer noisy ISO3200 RAW v/s clean .tiff
not to say RAW is impossible, I just dont know that it is possible
if you get my drift

I used to shoot exclusively .jpg and thanks to many users on this forum, I converted to shooting exclusively RAW.

I used to think that shooting RAW would complicate things with marginal benefits but it turned out to be the completely other way around. Much fewer parameters to concentrate on while shooting and greater development flexibility.

well it gets a little wearing at 100 images a day let me tell you

Shooting RAW also implies by-passing the in-camera development processing: sharpening, noise reduction, etc... Therefore also by-passing a relatively important piece of the camera manufacturer's proprietary know-how and differentiation.

depends how its written apparently
there are more than a few examples where RAW includes those attributes

really the problems with many jpegs are to do with the crudeness of the image engine. Its usual to use a finished jpeg anyway, it is simply a matter of how you arrive at that point.

--
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plɹoʍ ǝɥʇ ɟo doʇ uo ǝɹɐ ǝʍ 'ɐılɐɹʇsnɐ uı

 

[Rriley]

Ahhhh well, one day olympus will pull out of the SLR market, and all the converts will stay here, praising their FF systems on the Olympus Forum. Wont that be fun.

lets make that the thought for today

--
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plɹoʍ ǝɥʇ ɟo doʇ uo ǝɹɐ ǝʍ 'ɐılɐɹʇsnɐ uı

 

[OM 6Ti Plus]

My mother once told me, there is nothing worse than a convert...

As olympus users we are plagues by the negativitiy of converts. My E-3 is STILL a pro body, you need ISO 1,000,000 go for it, but dont hang around here as a negative nancy trashing equipment you chose to leave behind.

I can buy any camera equipment i want (and i can not only afford it, but expense it), the question is what do i need. So please keep those kind of commments to yourself or go to the Canon forum and behave like that. Being here and trashing Olympus pro bodies is just irritating.

Honestly... my mother was right, there is nothing worse than a convert.

Ab

The voice of a true convert??

Mike

 

[Gainsboro]

I dont think a lot would, but I am quite certain that some would. Let me put it too you this way, you can have any camera you like, but for each stop above ISO3200 it will cost double. Is the answer how much money do you have, or how much is your desire for ISO128,000? Only the individual can answer that, but I can say this, most cameras are sold below the US$1,300 price line. The price to sales relationship is inordinately stronger than peoples desire to have whatever they want. Whenever you want the truth to a poll sample attach a price to it, people get the idea pretty fast that not everything is free.

For sure, the less expensive cameras will dominate the market, just as they do now, and likely always have. I don't know what percent of people with cameras own DSLRs, but I suspect it's a lot less than how many own compacts. And I don't know what perfect of those with DSLRs own FF, but I bet it's only about 5% of how many own smaller sensor DSLRs.

What I'm saying is that of the current FF owners , most will likely always want the advantages that FF offers and stay with the format, rather than switch to a smaller format when some particular quality threshold is passed. However, I can see FF owners adding a smaller sensor system to their FF kit. I'm wondering how many Canon FF users are considering adding a 7D, for example. But I doubt many are thinking of replacing their 5DIIs with one.

yes but this isnt NR as we know it, its more a blend of PP procedures that span HDR, focus stacking, and an advanced NR algorithm. Take this as a glimpse of what could be done. With a sensor that you are able to extract several reads at the same time, you now can have multiple identical images that the processing engine can deal with in a number of pre programmed ways.

From a number of exposures it will increase DR, and enables us to eliminate noise. It can do this by varying the e/v from the desired exposure to over exposure. B/se noise lives in under exposed parts of an image, we can say that more light equals less noise, therefore if you overexpose some of the image layers, we have a noiseless record of the scene, albeit with overexposed parts. What the processing engine then has to do is reassemble the image layers, analysing the differences in the layers to eliminate the noise.

The blown out bits are recoverable b/se we have an accurate file of the proper exposure, they dont contain our noise problem anyway. The noise is definable from detail, b/se unlike detail noise is random, noise will appear in different places on the image, perhaps the same areas, but not the same pixels. Take enough reads from the sensor, and the difference between noise and detail will be obvious. (This is something akin to finding new stars from images, actually much easier.)

I've advocated this myself in the past -- in-camera image stacking. However, it is only effective with longer shutter speeds. So, it's an effective technique for low ISO photography, but ineffective for high ISO photography.

For example, let's say we're shooing a landscape and our shutter speed is 1/400, but we could safely capture the scene at 1/50. The camera could shoot the scene at 1/100, 1/200, 1/400, and 1/1600 -- two stops under and over -- in 1/50s with a single press of the shutter. The stacked images would result in a two stop improvement in shadows, highlights, and DR. However, it requires 1/50s instead of 1/400s. If we were shooting at a higher ISO and could use 1/50s instead of 1/400s, then we'd likely be better off just dropping the ISO two stops than stacking mulitple exposures.

What I can assert is that $2000 worth of processing hardware and code, will be an advantaged deal over the FF sensors of today. Bang for buck is something manufacturers usually get a handle on pretty quickly. So remember, you heard it here first...

As I said before, I think we passed that mark some time ago. Photographer skill, both at the camera and in PP, matters significantly more than the differences in equipment. It's just that the differences in equipment often add to whatever skills you have.

 

[zigi_S]

Totaly agree with you. The olympus disadvantage in the sensor is the olympus advanage in lenses. I think oly made the right decision. Two stops of less noise in sensor can't match two stops faster glass. Never.
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zeegee/

 

[Gainsboro]

It doesn't help that much. Don't let the numbers fool you. 3200 sounds like a lot more than 800, but it's just two stops. It's not four times better, not even twice. Just bumps shutter speed up a bit, but not as much as you might think.

The same "just two stops" is what makes people opt for a 14-35 / 2 over the kit lens, the 35-100 / 2, and the 25 / 1.4 over the 25 / 2.8.

If you take a look at 3200 or 6400 RAW files with no NR from C/N, you'll find that some of their clean image is aggressive in camera noise reduction, and consequent loss of sharpness. You can do this in PP with Noise Ninja, Neat Image, etc... so to a degree, you're quibbling over whether NR is done in camera or in PP.

Fact is, FF is two stops cleaner than 4/3 at the same level of detail and same generation of camera:

http://www.seriouscompacts.com/2008/12/panasonic-g1-nikon-d700-iso-shootout.html

Nor does high ISO turn a slow lens into a fast one. I ran comparison shots of the EP1 at 3200/F4 with the kit glass in somewhat dim conditions, against the PL25 at 800 and F2 on the same scene. Exposure was pretty much the same.

The exposure for ISO 3200 f/4 is two stops away from the exposure at ISO 800 f/2. The apparent exposures are the same.

The PL25 shot wasn't just sharper, it was a lot sharper.

Not surprising, since it was shot with two stops lower ISO on the same format. However, if you had instead compared the PL 25 on 4/3 at f/2 ISO 800 to a 50/1.4 at f/4 ISO 3200 on FF, you'd have seen a different result.

Why worry about a single component like high ISO? Look at the big picture - we have these magnficent fast zooms that don't go soft wide open. Accomplishes the same goal with better IQ.

Except, that, as you noted in your test, they do go soft wide open at the higher ISOs. This is the reason for faster lenses and/or a larger format for those that need it.

 

[Gainsboro]

Two stops of less noise in sensor can't match two stops faster glass. Never.

It can on a sensor with four times the area and the same efficiency, or with the same size sensor that is two stops more efficient.

 

[bbrault]

bbrault wrote:
In-camera noise processing does very little for RAW shooters.

i dont know enough about that to comment
there is always .tiff though
we used to have that option once
the files would be huge, but storage (cards and HDD) is less of an issue now

My understanding for .tiff is that it is very similar to .jpg but either uncompressed or with lossless compression as opposed to the much smaller lossy .jpg.
Still no substitute for RAW.

you would prefer noisy ISO3200 RAW v/s clean .tiff
not to say RAW is impossible, I just dont know that it is possible
if you get my drift

I do and it is certainly possible to further reduce read noise and thermal noise.
As you already know, photonic noise is present even before it hits the camera.

The .tiff will be generated from the RAW file anyway in-camera or out-of-camera.

I now prefer to process RAW out-of-camera! Once you care about IQ to the point of being interested in SHG glass, it would be silly not to shoot RAW at least some of the time.

I used to shoot exclusively .jpg and thanks to many users on this forum, I converted to shooting exclusively RAW.

I used to think that shooting RAW would complicate things with marginal benefits but it turned out to be the completely other way around. Much fewer parameters to concentrate on while shooting and greater development flexibility.

well it gets a little wearing at 100 images a day let me tell you

Not from my experience. I do not want to promote any software but the workflow can be automated and still offer the full flexibility.

Shooting RAW also implies by-passing the in-camera development processing: sharpening, noise reduction, etc... Therefore also by-passing a relatively important piece of the camera manufacturer's proprietary know-how and differentiation.

depends how its written apparently
there are more than a few examples where RAW includes those attributes

Then it is no longer RAW! Is it?

really the problems with many jpegs are to do with the crudeness of the image engine. Its usual to use a finished jpeg anyway, it is simply a matter of how you arrive at that point.

Exactly!

--
ʎǝlıɹ

plɹoʍ ǝɥʇ ɟo doʇ uo ǝɹɐ ǝʍ 'ɐılɐɹʇsnɐ uı

 

[rssarma]

"Perhaps the most stunning example I experienced was photographing a bear swimming in a lake between Russia & Finland. It was well past midnight and I can honestly say that I could not see this bear with my own eyes - only a slight twinkle of light on his wet nose allowed me to focus. Because of usable ISO 12800 I was able to freeze a moment of bear behaviour"

In my books this is not just about high ISO, but an AF system to match and a situation which would have been missed or overlooked had it not been for a camera like that.

--

I guess it would be great to have a camera that could see things that the human eye cannot see, sort of like Sony shoot-in-the-dark video cameras.

But I think we have really spoiled ourselves when we envy someone's camera because they can shoot in the dark and we can't. So much for worries about "the light".

No envy on my part, although I do have admiration for what Nikon has been able to achieve with its sensor technology.

--
Always looking for good images to display as a POTD!
potdgroup.com

--
Raj Sarma
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rssarma
--
Follow me on Twitter: rssarma

Olympus enthusiasts from NYC Metro, join UKPSG:
http://snipurl.com/crc3n

 

[illy]

Honestly, Olyflyer is enjoying his new system soooo much, he has become one of the top 5 posters here, almost all of his posts belittling the Olympus system, praising his new system etc.

I now know why there are so many "trolls", and i am not calling Olyflyer one, in here, they are all former Olympus users who honestly feel they are opening the eyes of their friends, they want to still enjoy the Olympus forum, but show us all the error of our ways.

What none of them realise is they simply end up looking like trolls, ruining what was once a very nice forum... honestly, when i started posting here (and it wasn't that long ago) things were better. The competition has released a few strong bodies in that time, a few olympus users have moved on, but their ghosts remain to haunt this forum

Ahhhh well, one day olympus will pull out of the SLR market, and all the converts will stay here, praising their FF systems on the Olympus Forum. Wont that be fun.

Ab

--

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” - Albert Einstein

E-3, E-300, 50mm f2, 35mm f3.5, Sigma 105mm f2.8, 12-60, 14-45

we like to read how every lens for our Nikons are coke bottles.........expensive.......lack resolution........aren't sharp wide open and stuff like that.
--
http://illy.smugmug.com