Looking for a few tips shooting with higher ISO

Hello all. I have not had the best success with my 40D using higher ISO settings. I tend to see noticable noise even at ISO 400 with average lighting conditions. Do any of you have any shooting tips or suggestions that could improve my images when shooting at higher ISO speeds? Thank you.

Ron

nail the exposure

What do you mean by noticeable noise? People seem to have a tendency to zoom in to a 20 pixel area and declare it too noisy. How are the prints?

Also post samples.

I've shot at 3200 ISO in very poor light and found the images usable when printed with no software noise reduction. Certainly no worse than 400 ISO film pushed to 1600 ISO.

Nail the exposure (or get damned close anyway) and use some flash if possible to lift the light to a realistic level. If you do things right, the 40D should be spotless at ISO800 and damn near so at ISO1600.

For reference:

http://www.dpreview.co​m/gallery/canoneos40d_​samples2/

Including what was mentioned above about the exposure, you could also try turning on the High ISO Noise reduction feature of the 40D. Helps quite a bit if you under expose.

Coincidentally I just happened to shoot some 40D 1600 ISO test shots today - just firing off randomly round the house. Conditions outdoors were overcast so it definitely wasn't strong lighting indoors. There is a series of images shot with HTP off and another series with HTP on. There's a good mixture of highlights, midtones and deep lowlights in the pictures. The images have been uploaded to an online album at 25% size, to deter anal pixel peeping. The images were shot raw and processed to jpeg in DPP with no NR whatsoever. The only edit tweaks were to set WB to cloudy, picture style to Standard and sharpening to 3.

Here's the album....

http://picasaweb.googl​e.com …00ISO?authkey=3​AKLDhhhL34

My understanding of High ISO Noise Reduction is that it is only applied to jpeg files, so I leave it turned off. From what I've read it only affects chroma noise, not luminance, but will slow down raw shooting because the NR does get applied to the embedded preview image, although not to the raw data itself. It is thus a redundant but annoying function for raw shooters.

I agree with the others - nail the exposure, or better yet, shoot raw and expose to the right, and you should have little to worry about.

I'm not afraid to shoot my 40D at iso 1600. Just gotta nail that exposure, or shoot to the right a hair.

OP, what's your final output?

Thanks for the replies. I guess I am talking particularly in low light situations like wedding receptions with little lighting. I have posted one example, but I have to get ready to video a wedding today and also 1 tommorrow. I will post some more samples on Sunday. In this sample I focused on their faces. The EXIF data should be intact. I know there is a degree of blurriness due to the low shutter speed and 2.8 aperature coupled with them dancing.

You've also got really really really high levels of compression artifacts going on there. 80k is really small data-wise for a pic of those dimensions.

RonA18 wrote in post #6073004
Thanks for the replies. I guess I am talking particularly in low light situations like wedding receptions with little lighting. I have posted one example, but I have to get ready to video a wedding today and also 1 tommorrow. I will post some more samples on Sunday. In this sample I focused on their faces. The EXIF data should be intact. I know there is a degree of blurriness due to the low shutter speed and 2.8 aperature coupled with them dancing.

I cannot find any EXIF data...

Performa01 wrote in post #6073030
I cannot find any EXIF data...

Nope, me either.

Rogan wrote in post #6072445
nail the exposure

sorry for jacking the thread, but as a newb, what does this mean?? hahahaha, thanks!

static808 wrote in post #6073067
sorry for jacking the thread, but as a newb, what does this mean?? hahahaha, thanks!

It means once you've got enough beer in you and the exposure's starting to look good, take it home!

If that's a ISO 400 shot it looks like you underexposed 1-2 stops and brought the brightness up.