Mini-Review: Getting the most out of 5D3 High ISO shots

I did one of these for the original 7D, and it seemed to be a great hit. I decided to do something similar with the 5D3. Since the 7D, Canon has upped the game with better NR and JPG generation, but how good is it, and could it be improved? Could you, with some minor steps and 3rd party tools, do better? That is what I ventured out to see.

So the test shot is under one of our Christmas trees, in a dark room this morning before the sun came up. 5D3 with the 24-70L at ISO 25600. Shutter speed was set to be at least twice my focal length so that I didn't introduce any shake, so that I could get the most detail out of the ornamental boxes. I use Photoshop filters, and then 3 iterations of Noiseware in different configurations.

Keep in mind, I have this set up in an action, so I just pull up a JPG and run this action. I don't mask. The final step of NR can be made a bit more relaxed to leave noise in if needed for those that like to mask off and surface blur, and whatever else they do. My goal with my homegrown recipes that I develop is to remove nearly 1 stop of noise while retaining 85-90% of the detail (or better). This adds to the flexibility of whatever camera I use.

Here are the sequence of shots you will see:
- Shot of the OOC JPG with High ISO NR set to Low (do anything more aggressive than that, and lose alot of detail)
- Shot of the Raw->JPG using my settings of (sharpening down to 0 or 1, ALO turned off, NR sliders set to 5 each, saturation 1 left of middle, almost same as 7D)
- 100% clip from this last file before Photoshop post processing
- Screenshot of my "recipe"
- 100% clip after color channel clean up
- 100% clip after all post processing
- Shot of the cleaned up photo
- Animated gifs of before/after for raw vs post processed, then OOC JPG vs post processed
- Links to full-size images (you have my permission to use any of them for your own tests) interspersed ahead of images where appropriate

OOC Jpg with NR set to Low
(http://teamspeed.smugm​ug.com …-kHJxk32/0/O/5P1B2678.j​pg)

Histogram of original Raw->JPG file, filled most of the range with this example.

In summary, I believe that you can get some great shots as OOC high ISO from the 5D3, but you want to keep the High NR set to low, no more than standard. The strong setting will basically remove any detail at all.

However, it still stands that you can just shoot raw high ISO and with a few steps and Noiseware, you can end up with a result that is still better. Canon still has a way to go for better in-camera NR and JPG processing, however I think they could make some improvements in the software, and it may be that there is little to be gained by shooting raw, other than to recover exposure.

Looks good, but not the night and day difference between the SOOC jpg and the PP'd RAW of the 18 mp sensor!

Did you mean "note the difference"? And 22Mpx vs 18Mpx?

Thanks for doing this, again. Very interesting. I have read your post on the 7D @ high ISO.

I am in the habit of shooting raw, with some +EC, then bringing exposure down and removing noise with LR 5.7. Are you saying I should shoot for proper exposure, JPG, and treat for noise from the in-camera jpg? Oh, I use a 6D, mostly.

GeoKras1989 wrote in post #17328187
Thanks for doing this, again. Very interesting. I have read your post on the 7D @ high ISO.

I am in the habit of shooting raw, with some +EC, then bringing exposure down and removing noise with LR 5.7. Are you saying I should shoot for proper exposure, JPG, and treat for noise from the in-camera jpg? Oh, I use a 6D, mostly.

No, I still ETTR as well, about +1/3 was all I could go here without blowing out the reindeer. I am not processing the OOC jpg either, I am taking the raw from the same image, and doing about the same kind of things as the 7D to produce the final JPG you see. However, I think that if Canon were to tweak their algorithms just a bit more, NR could be cleaner yet, and the JPG results a bit better to the point that most of the time you could use the JPG from the camera. They are much closer now to getting something within reach of what a processed raw would look like.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #17328175
Did you mean "note the difference"? And 22Mpx vs 18Mpx?

Νο, I meant that there is a night and day difference between the SOOC jpg and RAW PP'd image in the 18 mp sensor (7D, 60D). There is a lot more noise to deal with in the 18 mp sensor.

On the other hand, I think there is less and rather 'well natured' noise in the 5DIII sensor and it takes less drastic handling to arrive at an acceptable result. At higher ISO too...

I compared some 60D SOOC jpgs @ 6400 to the 6D SOOC jpgs at 25,600. I find the 6D files to be better than the 60D. If I shoot raw, there is less than two stops between them. Shooting jpg, it appears to be more than two stops. Now to make this all relevant: I take this as evidence that Canon IS improving their JPG engines.

These are in essence my findings as well... A stop, maybe a stop and a third improvement for RAW based, pp'd photos.