Mini-Review: Trying To Get the Most out of the 7D High ISO Images

mannetti21 wrote in post #13528926
I my very well be missing something, but bumping up the EC seems like it would be defeat the purpose of using high ISO. Typically, when I choose to increase ISO is in low-light situations when I need an increased shutter speed...however, if I increase this EC, this is going to in turn DECREASE the shutter speed again.

If you're maxed out with your standard, non expanded ISO's, then the trade off is a underexposed image that is free of camera shake induced blur, but needs to have more NR in post, which can take away detail. But as long as you can increase your ISO, that should be done along with exposing as much as you can without blowing highlights.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #13426750
Okay, I have a new item to add to this thread to help others. I had completely forgotten about uniWB, and if you shoot ETTR, using uniWB really helps. Just shooting with the regular histogram, and trying to push the curve right doesn't really help if you blow out a color channel. The histogram won't easily reflect that, even if you use the RGB histogram.

So I did a very low light uniWB and ETTR combo with the 7D at ISO 12800 this morning. I shot a black frame at ISO 100, f1/1000, and then set that as my custom WB image. I then took a picture of my daughter, who got up a bit too early this morning and quietly made her way down to the basement to color.

I took a shot of her with the RGB curves far to the right so that they didn't blow out, but came very close. I then post processed the image in DPP.

Hi teamspeed, i set my 7D to uniwb and HAMSTTR with a neutral picturestyle and process the RAW (always shot in RAW) with DPP, but my images doesn't looks as good as your photo...could you share your camera settings and your DPP workflow? thank you in advance.

Could you upload your CR2 file somewhere so I could take a look? My action sets were customized for my 7D and 1D4, and once I process the image out of DPP into a JPG, I run them through CS3 past my action (which uses Noiseware under the covers, but channel by channel).

I'm glad this thread popped up again, I forgot to bookmark it last time it was around. It's excellent and has lot of very good info - Thanks TeamSpeed for the effort.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #13648632
Could you upload your CR2 file somewhere so I could take a look? My action sets were customized for my 7D and 1D4, and once I process the image out of DPP into a JPG, I run them through CS3 past my action (which uses Noiseware under the covers, but channel by channel).

Hi, thank you for your replay, i take two photos at different ISO's
thank you for your help.

The first thing I would say is that you didn't really shoot to the right on these. You shot these so they were nicely exposed at 0, but you had another stop of headroom on the green channel, which was the farthest to the right. Basically, you have the histogram basically almost centered over the middle. Not a big deal, the nicely exposed material should still be easy to work with.

Steps:

1) Your contrast was all the way to the left, I brought that up
2) Your saturation was all the way to the left, I brought that up
3) Sharpness was fine at 1
4) I moved the NR sliders in DPP down about 1/3 way in order to give my actions some room to play
5) I actually had to move exposure to +1/3 (if this was ETTR or HAMSTTR, I would have had to dial exposure down)

Then I took the resulting JPG to CS3 and ran my action, then added a bit of saturation and USM.

First shot is the resulting JPG from your raw with no alterations at all, at not quite a 100% crop (maybe a 60%), then my attempt at the settings above.

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TeamSpeed wrote in post #13656060
The first thing I would say is that you didn't really shoot to the right on these. You shot these so they were nicely exposed at 0, but you had another stop of headroom on the green channel, which was the farthest to the right. Basically, you have the histogram basically almost centered over the middle. Not a big deal, the nicely exposed material should still be easy to work with.

Steps:

1) Your contrast was all the way to the left, I brought that up
2) Your saturation was all the way to the left, I brought that up
3) Sharpness was fine at 1
4) I moved the NR sliders in DPP down about 1/3 way in order to give my actions some room to play
5) I actually had to move exposure to +1/3 (if this was ETTR or HAMSTTR, I would have had to dial exposure down)

Then I took the resulting JPG to CS3 and ran my action, then added a bit of saturation and USM.

First shot is the resulting JPG from your raw with no alterations at all, at not quite a 100% crop (maybe a 60%), then my attempt at the settings above.

Hi teamspeed, as you see on the exif data, i used the cinecolor picture style with low contrast and saturation because these settings allow a very similar lcd histogram to the RAW one than the neutral o faith pictuestyle (in my particular case), i overexpose by 2 1/3 in camera exposimeter to produce a near zero exposition picture (a little bit right metering), my upper exposition limit with this setting is 3 1/3 with the highlight indicator starting to flash. My DPP workflow is the following:
1.- In Raw tab i dial the sliders to zero.
2.- Dial down the overexposed value to the right histogram value.
3.- Adjust contrast, bright, shadows..etc (RAW tab).
4.- On RGB tab adjust the contrast.
5.- Adjust the chrominance value, then the luminance value (this one at 4 max.).
6.- Back to RGB tab and dial the sharp to 125 to correct the strong AA filter.
7.- On RAW tab dial a little bit the sharp slider at two value before the artifact (noise appears).
8.- Convert to JPG.

I have the PS with the noiseware pluging but as you can see my pp software is the DPP.

Thank you very much for your help and work.
p.d. sorry for my english but is not my native languaje.

TeamSpeed, I am very glad to see that this thread was resurrected because I somehow missed seeing it the first time around. I mainly use ACR with PS CS5 and have been very pleased. I also use noiseware, but have found that it is not needed nearly as much with CS5 as it was with CS3. I also occasionally use DPP to compare the results with ACR and get roughly the same results in noise reduction, but with considerably less work in DPP. The end result going the two separate routes produces images with a slightly different "look" and which you prefer depends somewhat on what you want to see as the final product. I agree with earlier conclusions that lines seem to be preserved better with ACR/LR while fine details seem to come out better with DPP. Even the latest NR in ACR does not have satisfactory luminance NR although their chroma NR is outstanding. Since one of my primary interests is bird photography, it is a fact of life that higher ISO speeds are often necessary and it is important to have images sharp enough to distinguish the feather barbules. I will look further into your processing (and shooting) suggestions and using DPP to see how it compares to my results using ACR.

totoyo wrote in post #13657642
Hi teamspeed, as you see on the exif data, i used the cinecolor picture style with low contrast and saturation because these settings allow a very similar lcd histogram to the RAW one than the neutral o faith pictuestyle (in my particular case), i overexpose by 2 1/3 in camera exposimeter to produce a near zero exposition picture (a little bit right metering), my upper exposition limit with this setting is 3 1/3 with the highlight indicator starting to flash. My DPP workflow is the following:
1.- In Raw tab i dial the sliders to zero.
2.- Dial down the overexposed value to the right histogram value.
3.- Adjust contrast, bright, shadows..etc (RAW tab).
4.- On RGB tab adjust the contrast.
5.- Adjust the chrominance value, then the luminance value (this one at 4 max.).
6.- Back to RGB tab and dial the sharp to 125 to correct the strong AA filter.
7.- On RAW tab dial a little bit the sharp slider at two value before the artifact (noise appears).
8.- Convert to JPG.

I have the PS with the noiseware pluging but as you can see my pp software is the DPP.

Thank you very much for your help and work.
p.d. sorry for my english but is not my native languaje.

Try shooting a black frame with your body cap on (or lens cap on), then set WB to custom, and set your WB value to that frame. Then do some shoots where you look at your color histogram and make sure that all 3 color channels are to the far right without clipping. The onboard meter is fine, but it takes into account your metering mode. Using the color histogram will make sure that you are shooting as far to the right without clipping any of the 3 color channels. I never use the color highlighting tool in the camera, I find it annoying and the histogram and image view works best for me personally without all the blinkies!

Take the raw and then set the proper WB and bring your exposure down to what pleases you. Then do all the other DPP and post processing you want from that point forward. Please report back. You should have a really bright green image when you first take the raw into DPP!

TeamSpeed wrote in post #13658034
Try shooting a black frame with your body cap on (or lens cap on), then set WB to custom, and set your WB value to that frame. Then do some shoots where you look at your color histogram and make sure that all 3 color channels are to the far right without clipping. The onboard meter is fine, but it takes into account your metering mode. Using the color histogram will make sure that you are shooting as far to the right without clipping any of the 3 color channels. I never use the color highlighting tool in the camera, I find it annoying and the histogram and image view works best for me personally without all the blinkies!

Take the raw and then set the proper WB and bring your exposure down to what pleases you. Then do all the other DPP and post processing you want from that point forward. Please report back. You should have a really bright green image when you first take the raw into DPP!

Hi teamspeed.
I made all you said with DPP and last used PS noiseware plugin at the end of my workflow...this is the pp photo:
I am happy with the photo at high iso..thank you for your advice.

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I am glad I could help, even if a little!

I don't even have a 7D and this thread just took my LR3 sharpening skills up a peg or two.

Thanks! Was something I was having issues with not getting aggressive enough apparently. lol

Thank you so much for this thread. Very interesting. Also interesting to note that if I had seen such clean digital images at high ISO like this 7 - 10 years ago, my head may well have exploded.

I know your 7D is gone, but could you show what the 1D4 looks like after the post processing similar to the 7D files at ISO 6400? Just to see what kind of difference there is.

Here is one from this morning on the 1D4 at ISO 6400 when I was getting some shots from a Sigma 50 1.4 that I am selling.

Then a partial crop from that.

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