5D Mark II Low Light Settings?

I just picked up my first DSLR (5D Mark II) and was immediately curious to see how it would perform in low light.

I tried shooting out doors at night with just lighting from the street lights using 1080P at 1/50 shutter speeder with a 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens. Aperture was set to 2.8. White balance was auto. ISO was set to 3200.

I realize this probably isn't the best lens for low light, but my results were extremely noisy and disappointing. I'm a bit surprised and I'm hoping there are some settings that I still need to adjust. I feel like most of the low light examples I see online look a great deal better. Any advice for a noob?

Correct me if i'm wrong but I believe that any on-camera noise reduction settings will only apply to photos taken in Jpeg format. Shooting RAW would require noise reduction editing on computer.

FYI.... ISO 3200 will be noisy no matter what you do on a 5D mkII.

gviado wrote in post #15198432
Correct me if i'm wrong but I believe that any on-camera noise reduction settings will only apply to photos taken in Jpeg format. Shooting RAW would require noise reduction editing on computer.

FYI.... ISO 3200 will be noisy no matter what you do on a 5D mkII.

Hmm...I think I might give this camera one more test tonight. If I'm still not satisfied, I might return it and place a pre-order for the 6D.

I never go over iso 1250 when shooting video. Im pretty sure iso 3200 will be just as grainy on a 6d

I would go with a fast lens. my 60D came with an 18-135mm and its is an f3.5 which great in good light but quite bad in low light. I bought a 50mm f1.4 and it is absolutely beautiful in low light. I was shooting in clouds and fog in the woods under the trees about 3pm on ISO400 and the footage was evenly exposed and no grain. It is true what they say the f1.4 and f1.6 lens makes a huge difference in low light. A bonus is that you get a nice shallow DoF and it looks very cinematic. I normally try to keep the iso under 800 when shooting video, otherwise it does get quite grainy.

TheEngineer wrote in post #15198529
Hmm...I think I might give this camera one more test tonight. If I'm still not satisfied, I might return it and place a pre-order for the 6D.

you won't get a significant increase in low iso performance with a 6D, not shooting at 3200iso anyway. A C300 is about the best low light performer from Canon and none of the DSLRs really come close.

Depending on your editing software, you should look into something like Magic Bullet DeNoiser if you want to regularly shoot 3200iso and look at getting fast primes of 1.8 or 1.4 speed. That'll help more than switching to a 6D

Shoot at 1/30. Having a prime less than 2.8 would help. Use neat video to clean up a 3200 iso shot.
http://www.neatvideo.c​om/howtos.html

That was the technique used for the end of this video:
http://www.fiskefilm.c​om …05/13/liza-jerry-wedding/