Another 7D Noise & Sharpening

Hey POTN'ers,

I had a T2i and 60D prior to my 7D and never felt the need to do much noise reduction. I just bought the 7D and after three times out I was highly disappointed at first with my results. I knew Lightroom well but not noise reduction.

I am posting these photos looking for feedback on my noise reduction/sharpening technique.

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There's nothing obviously wrong with either sample from a post processing standpoint. You might get more helpful comments if you post before-and-after 100% crops to better show what you did. We have no point of comparison with these because there's no way to tell how much noise/sharpness was in the shots before you processed them.

For the images you posted...... they seem to have a good balance of NR and sharpening to my eyes.

The second shot, lamp housing on the left looks a little unnatural, though.

From my brief experience with the 7D, the blue channel has some serious noise issues even at mid ISO's.

Probably the last camera I would use for landscape/sky images, unless you like to spend a lot of time in post.

I really don't see anything "wrong" with these. can you post the exif data?

Lee, i noticed the 7D noise more than acceptable too on my bird images compared to my trusty 20D's noise handling. Be it a bird inflight with blue sky bg, or grebe swimming in a greenish pond, when blowing the images up at 100% during PP, the 7D noise is obviously worse than similar shots taken with 20D. I am talking about perfect Exposure based on histogram, ISO800 and RAW.

After i bought the 7D, then only i heard about the heavy AA filter it uses. Although i don't have intimate knowledge about the AA filter, i thought it should make noise less conspicuous. Well, whatever theory/explanation behind it, i'm not a happy 7D user.

I'm not the OP, but as there has been a request for a 100% before/after example I thought I'd add one to the thread.

This was shot raw and has no NR beyond Lightroom defaults. Its at 800 ISO, which I think is a reasonable figure for demonstration purposes. The only adjustments are small changes to sharpening and (of particular importance) the sharpening mask. I think I might be somewhat insensitive to noise, as I rarely see issues when other complain loudly, so I don't know whether people feel this example is good, bad or indifferent, but make of it what you will.

The second attachment is the same file with the same adjustments, shown as a 33% crop, which will almost fill my 17" 1920x1200 pixel monitor and I think is a far more practical demonstration of the IQ to be expected at more normal enlargement sizes.

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cfcRebel wrote in post #13991075
Lee, i noticed the 7D noise more than acceptable too on my bird images compared to my trusty 20D's noise handling. Be it a bird inflight with blue sky bg, or grebe swimming in a greenish pond, when blowing the images up at 100% during PP, the 7D noise is obviously worse than similar shots taken with 20D. I am talking about perfect Exposure based on histogram, ISO800 and RAW.

After i bought the 7D, then only i heard about the heavy AA filter it uses. Although i don't have intimate knowledge about the AA filter, i thought it should make noise less conspicuous. Well, whatever theory/explanation behind it, i'm not a happy 7D user.

The AA filter is designed to eliminate moire', not noise.

Why are you shooting at ISO 800 on a what looks like a sunny day?Your also taking a pixel peep at a very small area of a large picture, so how does the printed out picture look?I suspect you don't see any noise at all on the printed picture.With the 7D you can crop pretty heavy at ISO 100 but if your lenses aren't long enough maybe you should get a longer FL lens instead of trying to super crop your images.I can shoot at ISO 3200 on my 7D and print a 4x6 and not see ANY noise.

You probably don't need 1/1600 here, lower the ISO to optimize the result. TBH, I feel you're expecting a little much from ISO 800, those pictures look good. These cameras are low noise, not no noise.