Is this image noisy?

Sh4d0w · May 10, 2010

I just bought a 7D, and this is one of the first pictures I have taken with it, and maybe I'm being to picky, thus asking you, is this image noisy/grainy for being shot at ISO 200 with a 50mm prime at f2.8?

View at 100%
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1201/4597698792_c3018bfb06_o.jpg
100% crop

zoomer · May 10, 2010

Looks like it was taken at a very dark exposure and then the exposure was brought up in processing....that will make any photo with any camera look noisy.

Sh4d0w · May 10, 2010

zoomer wrote: »

Looks like it was taken at a very dark exposure and then the exposure was brought up in processing....that will make any photo with any camera look noisy.

Thats the problem, the only processing done was the exporting of the image in lightroom.

Sh4d0w · May 11, 2010

Just looking for opinions guys, more that one person has looked at the thread.

Grainbelt · May 11, 2010

100% crop with the resolution of that sensor is the equivalent of what, printing it on my living room wall at 300 dpi? What happens if you resize for your intended display/print size - are the results more to your liking?

final_alarm · May 11, 2010

Sh4d0w wrote: »

Just looking for opinions guys, more that one person has looked at the thread.

In my opinion it doesn't look too bad. one of the things i noticed is flicker may be dumbing down the image a little when displayed in the browser. I downloaded it directly to my pc and it looks a lot better then what is in the browser. I also imported it into lightroom and it looks fantastic if i use the noise reduction slider a little. 20% was about all it took.

I thought my 7D was noisy too until i really started using it and i adjusted some of the settings and how much i blow stuff up on screen. A friend of mine showed me some stuff form his 5D that looked worse then whant im seeing on my 7D at full pixels but looks fantastic printed or cropped or zoomed out to fit the screen. I also thought my Rebel XSI was better noise wise until i did a direct comparison and the 7D was far less noisy at all ISO's by a wide margin.

Here is a shot i took that when viewed in full pixels it looks noisy but in crop form its fine and it printed fantastic on an 8x10. Other then cropping i did no other adjustments to this. This was taken with my 70/200 at ISO 400 F/2.8

dantambok · May 11, 2010

it isn't that noisy you know...

zoomer · May 11, 2010

Yeah that looks really bad, do all your pictures look like that? That looks like 6400 on my D3.
If all your pictures look like that at iso 200 at normal exposure you have an issue.

Was it a big crop, sometimes that will make images look noisy because you run out of pixels.

Sh4d0w · May 11, 2010

zoomer wrote: »

Yeah that looks really bad, do all your pictures look like that? That looks like 6400 on my D3.
If all your pictures look like that at iso 200 at normal exposure you have an issue.

Was it a big crop, sometimes that will make images look noisy because you run out of pixels.

If you click on the link you can see the original image in full.

Brett1000 · May 11, 2010

Sh4d0w wrote: »

If you click on the link you can see the original image in full.

right, it's an extremely small crop of a large photo, it's going to look like that unless you applied photoshop or some kind of noise reduction.

ziggy53 · May 11, 2010

I think that in the Canon 7D, and to a lesser extent the 1D MKIV too, Canon has chosen not to be so heavy handed in color smoothing as it had been in the past.

Remember that most dSLRs use a "Bayer mosaic" to represent color information. Each photosite has either a red or a green or a blue filter over it, so that each pixel only really represents the luminance information of the filtered color at that photosite. The visible image color/luminance information is interpolated out through a rather complicated "demosaic" algorithm. I suspect that in the 7D the color de-noise component has been scaled back since the gross pixel count is so very high. Normal printing and normal scaling for presentation image size will automatically smooth the image through "binning" pixels together.

Considering that your image shows samples of very pure red and pure green, I think that exaggerates the effect, making the color look less smooth in the form of grain. Using a post process noise reduction software should reduce the grain if you desire, but any normal use of the image will also reduce the grain through the binning interpolation process. Do also look at the areas of the image with more complete color mixes (closer to white) and how the grain diminishes.

In other words "yes", I see some filmic type grain in this image. Yes, I think this is probably normal for the camera in this situation. No, it would not concern me for any normal use of the image. Finally "yes" the grain can be removed in post-processing and possibly be reduced in camera setup.

More information about Bayer imagers and demosaicing:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-sensors.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosaicing

http://scien.stanford.edu/pages/labsite/1998/psych221/projects/98/demosaic/kodak/

zoomer · May 11, 2010

Sh4d0w wrote: »

If you click on the link you can see the original image in full.

I can't open any images from Flickr at work unfortunately.

Sh4d0w · May 11, 2010

ziggy53 wrote: »

I think that in the Canon 7D, and to a lesser extent the 1D MKIV too, Canon has chosen not to be so heavy handed in color smoothing as it had been in the past.

Remember that most dSLRs use a "Bayer mosaic" to represent color information. Each photosite has either a red or a green or a blue filter over it, so that each pixel only really represents the luminance information of the filtered color at that photosite. The visible image color/luminance information is interpolated out through a rather complicated "demosaic" algorithm. I suspect that in the 7D the color de-noise component has been scaled back since the gross pixel count is so very high. Normal printing and normal scaling for presentation image size will automatically smooth the image through "binning" pixels together.

Considering that your image shows samples of very pure red and pure green, I think that exaggerates the effect, making the color look less smooth in the form of grain. Using a post process noise reduction software should reduce the grain if you desire, but any normal use of the image will also reduce the grain through the binning interpolation process. Do also look at the areas of the image with more complete color mixes (closer to white) and how the grain diminishes.

In other words "yes", I see some filmic type grain in this image. Yes, I think this is probably normal for the camera in this situation. No, it would not concern me for any normal use of the image. Finally "yes" the grain can be removed in post-processing and possibly be reduced in camera setup.

More information about Bayer imagers and demosaicing:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-sensors.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosaicing

http://scien.stanford.edu/pages/labsite/1998/psych221/projects/98/demosaic/kodak/

I'm starting to feel better about it now, when looking at the image as a whole it doesn't seem nearly as bad, I just think that for spending almost $2000 on a camera it would make sense to have a nice smooth image.

Thank you all for your responses, I can definitely deal with the performance here considering it's performance with high iso and, well everything else. =]

ziggy53 · May 11, 2010

Just a couple more things I noticed:

The large image you linked is at 3038 x 4558 Pixels (13.85 MPixels). This is not a standard size for the Canon 7D so something has either cropped or scaled the image. If the image has been scaled, that could partially explain some color artifacts.

I also note that the image has considerable JPG compression applied. For smoothest tonality use the least compression available. (The number of unique colors in this image is only 473,014 out of a possible color pallet of 16.7 million.)

GadgetRick · May 11, 2010

ziggy53 wrote: »

I think that in the Canon 7D, and to a lesser extent the 1D MKIV too, Canon has chosen not to be so heavy handed in color smoothing as it had been in the past.

Remember that most dSLRs use a "Bayer mosaic" to represent color information. Each photosite has either a red or a green or a blue filter over it, so that each pixel only really represents the luminance information of the filtered color at that photosite. The visible image color/luminance information is interpolated out through a rather complicated "demosaic" algorithm. I suspect that in the 7D the color de-noise component has been scaled back since the gross pixel count is so very high. Normal printing and normal scaling for presentation image size will automatically smooth the image through "binning" pixels together.

Considering that your image shows samples of very pure red and pure green, I think that exaggerates the effect, making the color look less smooth in the form of grain. Using a post process noise reduction software should reduce the grain if you desire, but any normal use of the image will also reduce the grain through the binning interpolation process. Do also look at the areas of the image with more complete color mixes (closer to white) and how the grain diminishes.

In other words "yes", I see some filmic type grain in this image. Yes, I think this is probably normal for the camera in this situation. No, it would not concern me for any normal use of the image. Finally "yes" the grain can be removed in post-processing and possibly be reduced in camera setup.

More information about Bayer imagers and demosaicing:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-sensors.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosaicing

http://scien.stanford.edu/pages/labsite/1998/psych221/projects/98/demosaic/kodak/

Sh4d0w · May 12, 2010

ziggy53 wrote: »

Just a couple more things I noticed:

The large image you linked is at 3038 x 4558 Pixels (13.85 MPixels). This is not a standard size for the Canon 7D so something has either cropped or scaled the image. If the image has been scaled, that could partially explain some color artifacts.

I also note that the image has considerable JPG compression applied. For smoothest tonality use the least compression available. (The number of unique colors in this image is only 473,014 out of a possible color pallet of 16.7 million.)

I apologize but yes the image was cropped down some, didn't realize I did that haha, however the full size you are able to view is 100%, and it has not been scaled.

It was shot in RAW and It's exported at a 100% quality jpeg, and looks just as grainy zoomed in in Lightroom.

rookieshooter · May 12, 2010

After reading this I looked at some of my pics from the "low light" D700. I have noise at ISO 400 in the background too, but NR software cleans it up no problem.

Is this image noisy?

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