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jadams
18th of July 2002 (Thu), 23:20
Hello-

I stopped by a little league game on my way home tonight and shot a few shots with my 1D in ISO 3200. I thought I'd play around and see what kind of results I could get.

All photos shot in RAW with Color Matrix 4. All PS actions refer to Fred Miranda's actions. All images saved as level 7 JPEG in PS.

1- I am VERY VERY VERY impressed with the performance of ISO 3200 with no noise related PS fixes. It looks darn good to me. Maybe I'm just not as picky as others. The photo is linear out of the camera, then Fred's LP Batch Low Saturation - NO Sharpening. Just resised for the web.

http://www.pbase.com/image/3211997

Here is a 100% crop of the file in the same state as above.

http://www.pbase.com/image/3212005

2- I am not very impressed with the abilities of the noise reduction "things". I understand that in the following examples I have "gone over the edge", but I'm trying to make it noticeable enough to see what's going on.

I started with the same image as above, ran the BR +ISOR (High), BR + ISOR (Normal), BR + ISOR (Normal). This seemed to take away all the noise that was going to go away. But, of course, the image is now quite soft. I ran CS Pro (Normal) to sharpen it up. Needed more -- ran CS Pro (Low). End result, obviously not useable in this case.

http://www.pbase.com/image/3211999

Ok back to the starting image (right after running LP Batch). Has noise, so I ran BR + ISOR (Very High). Here's the result

http://www.pbase.com/image/3212015

Humm, not bad. But a bit soft. I ran CS (Normal).

http://www.pbase.com/image/3212018

Notice how it brought a lot of the noise back? I ran the BR + ISOR (Normal) again.

http://www.pbase.com/image/3212019

Ok. I don't like it. But since I'm here I might as well try sharpening it up again. CS (Low) is run.

http://www.pbase.com/image/3212020

Yuck! But actually when it's reduced in size a bit, I guess it isn't that bad.

http://www.pbase.com/image/3212022

Obviously it looks like this is all a compromise between noise and sharpness. Frankly I think that right out of the camera without touching it is the way to go. If the noise that I see in these photos is the worst that Canon has to offer me (and is "so bad" that they needed to make ISO3200 a custom function) then I'm a happy camper.

What do you guys think? What are your experiences?

Jasper

jadams
18th of July 2002 (Thu), 23:24
Oh, in case anyone wants to know. Here's the data on the photo I used...

Lens: 70-200mm f/2.8 L non-IS @ 200mm
1/250 sec - f/3.2
Eval. Metering
-1/3 Exposure Compensation (I cut it down because I wanted to.. hehe)

Honestly, I don't remeber why I had the exposure compensation on -- something to do with my last shoot. I had forgotten that it was on, and just read it from the EXIF data and went "ohhhhhhh... yeah... right..".

Maybe I should retry my tests with a properly exposed file.....

:D

BTW- I was on Auto Focus Servo, and not paying much attention so I really didn't intend to focus anywhere in particular.