Noise handling on the 7D (ISO 200-6400)

Just thought I'd throw this up incase anyone was interested (I struggle to find such images around the net when I search, so...).

I've been using the 7D for almost a year at this stage, but I've always ruled out going over ISO 800 for people photos (I used a 20D before this). Of course, there are always times when you can't stay below ISO 800, so I did a little ISO/Person/Noise test to see where I stood (for an upcoming wedding).

I headed to the church and met a friend there. She happily stood for me whilst I belted out a few photos around the church. Don't ask me why, but for some reason I never thought to shoot her at ISO 100 (I was more concerned with the higher ISOs, but still can't figure out why I didn't do ISO 100 at the time).


Anyway, I just thought I'd throw up the results for all to see. The camera was in Shutter Priority at 1/50.

(I realise that resized images are useless for this kinda thing, so the full sizes are available to view on Pix by clicking the image);

(ISO200 has it's exposure compensation a little lower than the rest)


ISO200



ISO400



ISO800



ISO1,600



ISO3,200



ISO6,400




At the small sizes posted above, the noise isn't really all that noticeable at all (if you were printing small I'd imagine 6,400 would be perfectly usable?). The photos do tend to look a bit more 'washed out' though.

Lens was a 24-105 f/4 IS L (IS was engaged).



So yeah. Probably boring, and people likely have no interest, but I couldn't find such high-ISO person-based results when I was looking, so no harm in having them there. 7D is getting old enough that I suspect a replacement will be announced sometime soon (7D Mark II?) but I believe it's the best value camera on the market at the moment (at least in the Canon range, anyway).

5uspect

I'm not sure I see the point of this. There are loads of noise samples online like in the dpreview review of the 7D which is surely much more comprehensive.

DaireQuinlan

These things are kind of pointless though unless they're conducted with a little bit of rigour. IE, your 400 asa shot is at f/4, your 800 asa shot is at f/6.3. Completely different EV values, it's underexposed by about 1/3rd of a stop compared to the previous one, it should be f/5.6.

In addition there's a big shiny window right behind the subject, that's probably had some indeterminate effect on your metering, so it's impossible to tell whether or not the shots are actually exposed correctly for the subject. Ideally you'd need to incident meter from the position of the subject and shoot completely manually to ensure some level of consistency, but even so there are probably too many other variables to make it a useful test.

magicbastarder

might be a good idea to show a 100% crop on some of the detail, with a bit of highlight and shadow?