Refurb 7D: Noise issue

I just purchased the 7d from Canon's refurb program as an upgrade from my XSI. I really love the functionality of the camera, but it seems to be excessively noisy. Is there a fix for this through Canon? I really love to shoot with the camera, but the XSI IQ seems much better than the 7D. Thanks for the advice in advance.

Post some pictures. We need examples.

Sample pic of the noise. image was taken overcast sky with 640 ISO. No pp done except resize to upload

The noise is to be expected because its underexposed. I pushed the exposure up about half a stop and got the exposure where I thought it should be. Most people find the 7D typically underexposes slightly, so they leave their camera at +1/3 exposure compensation all the time.

The 7D can be somewhat unforgiving of underexposing. If you need to boost exposure more than a smidgen in post processing, noise is likely to become more evident than what you have experienced with your XSi. Too much sharpening is another source of noise. Only "cpture sharpening" should be done during raw conversion. Keep sharpening to a bare minimum and don't try to "fix" missed focus with sharpening. Later, output sharpening can be done in Photoshop to complement the intended output. If you shoot raw images and use Camera Raw or Lightroom for raw conversion, tonal adjustments can be used to help minimize noise in addition to the noise reduction that is built into ACR 6.X.

Mine was the same exact way. I sent it in to Canon before the warranty expired, and I felt like it was worse when I got it back.

What were your settings?

There are tons of threads about noise issues with the 7D but I always ignored them when I owned the camera. But looking back (and now owning the 5DIII) I wasn't that impressed with the quality of my pics when it came to noise.(even at low ISO).

It's funny, but my really good friend actually admitted to me the other day that he definitely saw issues but didn't want to say anything until I sold it.
Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic camera and perhaps some of the blame should fall on me. Coming from a T1i, there definitely is a big learning curve.

ISo 640 is ISO 800 then pulled.

And that image is at least a stop under exposed.

Did you shoot raw or jpg, how did you process the raw?

The image was shot under one of the most difficult conditions for getting a good exposure -- a bright overcast backlighting the subject. And if you increased the exposure, the subject might be better exposed, but then the sky would be blown out. This is a situation where you would be better not having the sky in the scene and also use some fill flash.

I examined the image in ACR and it really is not noisy -- just underexposed and slightly out of focus. I brightened up the image a bit and it looked fairly clean. I decided to apply NeatImage noise reduction, but there was so little noise that it did not make an observable difference. It is possible that more noise would be visible on a 100% crop of the image.

drewborn wrote in post #14295143
I just purchased the 7d from Canon's refurb program as an upgrade from my XSI. I really love the functionality of the camera, but it seems to be excessively noisy. Is there a fix for this through Canon? I really love to shoot with the camera, but the XSI IQ seems much better than the 7D. Thanks for the advice in advance.

After upgraded from 20D, i quickly found my 7D is VERY unforgiving in the noise department. It happens even at low ISO, perfectly exposed images that i took. If underexposed, i can just forget about the image. It requires me to change my PP workflow by adding extra noise reduction step. I refuse to do that. So, i sold my 7D and upgraded to 1D MkIII.

Is it me or is it ouf of focus? The 7D is notorious and it's especially bad when it's not properly exposed. There's almost no room for error.

Teamspeed has some excellent articles on milking the most from the 7D - he really knows this camera.

Start here

https://photography-on-the.net …t=768556&highli​ght=7d+faq

elrey2375 wrote in post #14295527
Is it me or is it ouf of focus? The 7D is notorious and it's especially bad when it's not properly exposed. There's almost no room for error.

It is definitely OOF. It did take me a while, but the 7D did make me a more aware photographer from the shooting technique perspective.

Either my camera is getting better with age or else I have figured out how to post process an image that is not too badly underexposed without boosting noise noticeably. Some of the things I do are very similar to those described by TeamSpeed in his popular thread on 7D noise reduction/avoidance. Avoidance is the key because noise reduction is just barely better than leaving the noise alone. One of the most effective methods of reducing mild noise is downsizing by even fractions (1/2, 1/4 -- just avoid exact thirds).

From what we've read, the 7D is a bit of a noisy camera in general. That said, underexposure will always make things noisier, so yes, check that first.

Thanks for all of the advice. I am trying to shoot as much as possible so I can determine if this camera is a keeper. Having fun with it so far.

This noise issue is kind of common. I upgraded to the 7D from 30D to get better noise performance... it didn't work as well as I would have liked, so went 5d2 and been happy. Sorry to say, you just have to nail exposure everytime and/or use something like topaz denoise to your workflow.