50D ISO Test - living room style

50D w/24-70L resting on the sofa arm. Resized for web, no PP, jpeg straight out of camera.

f/3.5, 1/200, flash fired.

Testing the ISO performance quickly in the living room. I was curious to see what kind of results I would get at ISO 3200 with "standard" and "strong" noise reduction. I typically shoot Jpg since I have little time converting raw to jpg.

I am pleasantly suprised with the 50D's performance at high ISO. Center point was used for AF.

ISO 400 Strong NR

I've never done a JPG test, mostly because I only shoot RAW. On my 1D I shoot both RAW (to CF card) and JPG (to SD card) because I can...

The NR is pretty good in camera on the 50D, with the trade-off of sharpness. With NR enabled, the images are way too soft. I don't like soft images. I pay all this money for sharp L glass, the last thing I want to do is have my camera erase the money I spent on glass in an effort to reduce noise.

Thanks for posting though, it's interesting.

Here's an example. This is a 50D image taken from RAW. Notice how razor sharp the edges of the lines are.