40D best setting to reduce NOISE

atp_image

atp_image

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Adam
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I have been taking several shots in low light situations and lately i have been bugged with too much digital noise for my liking. I have played around with the menu items controlling noise but i feel like i have caused myself a mischief.

Does anyone know the best setting to have the lowest noise on the 40D.
Any help would be great :thumbs:

Cheers
 
Get the exposure right and the noise even at 1600 should be pretty good. Also, it looks a lot worse at 100% zoom than it does on a print - pixel peeping can be bad for your wallet :lol:
 
Hi,

I've found than when using higher ISO's with Canon camera's, you can get much more acceptable results by avoiding underexposures, i.e not having to increase the exposure in post. Over exposure is handy however as decreasing the exposure in post will allow a cleaner result.

T.
 
Tomas Whitehouse said:
Hi,

I've found than when using higher ISO's with Canon camera's, you can get much more acceptable results by avoiding underexposures, i.e not having to increase the exposure in post. Over exposure is handy however as decreasing the exposure in post will allow a cleaner result.

T.
Click to expand...

thats what technique i use with my 400D and managed some okay shots. Took me a while torealise this is the best way to shoot at minimal noise!
 
Cheers for the suggestions.
I know how ISO works but its the things in the menu settings that im talking about.

I will check out the Dynamic Range Extension setting. :)
 
I don't have a 40D but on my 1DII, nailing the exposure really helps. Any correction for an under exposure brings up the shadow noise. That and Noise Ninja means I am happy to print 12x8 from a full frame image...
 
atp_image said:
Cheers for the suggestions.
I know how ISO works but its the things in the menu settings that im talking about.

I will check out the Dynamic Range Extension setting. :)
Click to expand...

I have no idea what "dynamic range extension" is supposed to mean on a 40D (I've had mine for over a year), but if you mean "Highlight Tone Priority" then it should be disabled for minimal noise. If you enable it the camera will purposely underexpose the shot by one stop (to protect the highlights) and then apply a custom tone curve to boost the exposure levels for the shadows and mid-tones to bring them back to what they should be. This can be effective if you shoot JPEG but is really pretty much a waste of time if you shoot raw.

If you shoot JPEG then expose correctly first time. If you shoot raw then expose correctly, or, even better, expose to the right (use the histogram) to maximise your data capture and then sort out a more pleasing exposure in post processing. That will help crush noise as much as possible.

Obviously you should use the lowest ISO setting that gives you the result you need in terms of DOF control and motion control.

FWIW here's a sample image shot with my 30D at 1600 ISO. It was shot raw and processed in Lightroom 2 with default settings for noise reduction and sharpening. I did adjust the black clipping levels to bring out some shadow detail (which would increase noise if anything) but left all other exposure related adjustments unchanged.

2963286311_9871b3fc4b_o.jpg


100% crop....
2964128470_e21c06bbdc_o.jpg
 
I just did a wedding with my 40D and 70-200 f/2.8. Shot almost the entire thing at 1600 and got terrible noise because I had not choice but to underexpose my shots (the lighting was so poor I was shooting at a shutter of 1/125 at times which was still underexposed by a few stops).

Shot in RAW so they turned out ok, need to re-edit them as they are pretty dark, but the noise isn't as bad as it looks in the original RAW files.

Oh and Lightroom has really good noise reduction, worked a treat with my shots.
 
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