Toronto Photography Meetup Group

But this photo EXIF states it is a Canon 5D (12mp), no the 5D MKII.

I would agree with the others in that the first 2 photos lack sharpness due to camera shake. With the first shot being done at 300m, on a crop body equates to 450mm, so be safe you should be shooting at 1/500s at least to maximize for sharpness when hand holding.

I know this will seem like a bad analogy, but think of pixels viewing a scene like a window for big pixels and telescope for small pixels. If you shake a window when looking through it, you can still make out with the scene is. However, if you're looking through a telescope, the slightest shake will render the scene difficult to identify. You have less forgiveness when pixel peeping with more pixels, or rather, smaller pixels. That is the downside, but the upside is that noise is also tighter. So since we don't print off photos at 100% pixel level, noise that does show up appears smooth at the intended viewing size, especially when in print.

The dark areas in the last photo of yours really may not contain the information that is required to show the detail. Regardless of ISO level, even a D700 may have been challenged with this photo with all other things being equal (shutter speed, aperture). As others have noted, your historgram is your friend, but so is your spot meter in the camera. If you were more interested in showing the details in the dark rather retaining detail in the highlights, you could have increased the exposure during the photo and then reduce the exposure in post for the rest of the scene. Or, bracket your shot to do a more realistic HDR end result.

If you push a photo enough in post, you'll eventually see noise in the shadows regardless of camera ... even sooner when above base ISO.

You're right .. I was looking at his more recent photos taken with the mkII and made the mistake. Then maybe I should say "That's why I love my 5D mkI)

Thanks Scott for reposting your photos. I can see only a small amount of noise but overall they still look cleaner than mine.

Maybe I am a pixel peeper?

Thanks, but I don't have $5,000!

Would love to purchase a pro camera, who wouldn't? But the income just doesn't allow me to do so.

Thanks ions for the histogram info. But when do you have the time to fuss and fiddle with test shots? When I'm out and about, the lighting situation changes constantly and I have no time when I want to capture a moment to take a shot, check the histogram, make adjustments then take another shot. As in the Deer shots, they kept moving and to get that one shot of them both looking my way only lasted a few seconds.

It's frustrating. And this is mainly how I use the camera. I do have a tripod but don't carry this around with me when I'm walking about. I use it for home use or if I'm specifically going to photograph somethiing static.

Maybe I should look at taking a photo journalism course because they are in constant changing situations and usually photograph moving objects.

Thanks PotatoEYE. But all those photos were taken on a tripod with long exposures at ISO 200.

Your best bet is to remember that camera light meter is calibrated to see the scene as 18% grey (averages the scene for overall exposure), however, not that many things in real life are and you are the brain behind the camera, so you need to adjust. Having a digital camera doesn't change your job as a photographer

I don't think your picture are overly noisy, it's a crop sensor.
Having said that, one of our wedding photograper using a D300 (not a 's') and his rule is not to go anywhere near ISO 800 or above.
I use to have a D70 and iso 400 is probably the limit.

If low nose is your goal, a full frame body is probably your best bet.

Thanks Louiep83, I had gone back to view some low light shots using the D700 and they do look better. However, when I made the choice to purchase the D300s, I did so because all my lenses are DX.

I'm curious to know how the Canon line fairs with this issue.

For sure! The light changes all the time and really, the last thing you want to be doing while out shooting is looking at the back of your camera instead of through it. But, I'm constantly "chimping" still because I still haven't sorted out what my camera is doing metering wise. I know the sensor behaves differently than film yet I keep expecting film behaviour... Although, I did have an a-ha! moment recently. I have discovered that with my camera it is better for me to shoot up to 1 stop over-exposed according to the light meter. This allows me to get my histogram leaning further to the right and usually with more area under the curve. This also means less noise. This depends on the shot of course, but this logic will apply to the shots you posted above. If the scene is visually too bright for what I want to capture I can tone it down in post, but the detail is there. It took me ages to figure this out, but now that I can semi-predict the metering the process is much quicker. I immediately start with the meter saying I'm a third of a stop over-exposed and that seems to work well. Also, I would suggest setting your camera to blink on blown highlights, if there's any/too much blinking, step down. It's a real quick way to test shoot until you know your camera well enough that you can predict what it is going to do.

Cambridge in Colour has some good reading on Histograms. Histograms 1 Histograms 2 and Noise 1 & 2 are worth reading.

Such questions start wars . I'm not sure about the crops to be honest but in full frame land it's generally agreed the Nikon's have a slight noise advantage over Canon. This has become more negligible with Adobe's latest Raw processors in my opinion. And the next batch of cameras will fall in Canon's favour, the batch after that in Nikon's....

This jellyfish was shot with my Canon 7D @ ISO 3200 using only Lightroom to lower noise:

WOW, cool shot! No noise from what I can see. Thanks for posting.

Great links, Thank you for those. I will definitely study the Histogram.

I haven't been able to figure out how to get the "Highlights" blinking in the preview mode yet on the D300s. I always used that function on the D70 but haven't figured it out yet on the new one.

And ultimately the point...

Cool, thank you for that link. I just did a quick scan and Nikon vs Canon seem to be the same.

ISO1600 on Rebel XSI, the point is: stop pixel peeping and start photographing

OMG, that is an awesome shot. Beautiful, serene and perfect in every way. Thanks for sharing it.

I think nowadays both are pretty much on par with each other with Canon has more pixels, slightly noiser and Nikon has lower noise but less pixels (D3s). I think Canon almost all HD videos on all their cameras and Nikon has a few only.

But back in the D70 days, Canon 30D definitely has a clear edge.

Hopefully I won't start a war here

Hi Leesa

Since I tend to shoot photos of plays and performances I recently was looking at both the Nikon d300 and Canon 50d when it came to sensor noise. I do agree that Nikon out of the camera does a much better job. But what I have found is the more noise which is removed the more detail is lost. I wonder if this is why the jelly fish shot looks so smooth.

The below image is one I took at the Toronto Winter festival at iso 1600 with the canon 50d with the 70-200 F2.8 lens. I have it in before and after view so you can have an idea for real world noise while shooting in the late evening.

Original photo on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/randy_ramkissoon/4339582965/

[/img]

Jellyfish by nature are rather smooth. There wasn't much noise reduction done to the image.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/enian82/4258411704/" title="319 by Yeshwanth_enian82, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4032/4258411704_b3731cb4d7.jpg" width="500" height="334" alt="319"></a>
Just thought of sharing a similar image.... cheers
Yeshwanth

I most say the 7d is impressive, more but smaller pixels yet with less high ISO noise! Now if Canon could only figure out a more practical system approach to flash control then the pendulum will start swinging their way again.

Overall, 7D is a very good camera. I am a bit disappointed that the autofocus system on the 1DMrkIIN is still slightly better than the 7D when it comes to acquiring a lock on a fast moving things on wheels but after that, it's ability to track it is on par with the MrkIIN.

Have you ever tried a Mk4? High pixel density and noise is pushed to a jaw dropping minimum