A bad workman blames his tools? (5DMkIII)

[neuroanatomist]

There is circuitry that's designed to generate less noise (and this is one thing that Canon has stated as am improvement in the 5DIII and 1D X), but that's not the same as noise reduction. 

What does that mean?

Any electronic process generates noise.  There's noise added by the photosites, noise added by the ADC, etc.  Circuitry can be designed to be less noisy, for example by generating less heat (one way of many).

[awinphoto]

JR, MA changes from camera to camera... A few years ago I shot with 2 50Ds and I borrowed a 24-70 from Canon's CPS for a few weeks... one camera i needed an MA of like -2 and the other 50D i needed a MA of almost +10...  Also were you shooting in full auto AF or were you shooting in spot AF or expanded AF?  I've gotten feedback from a few users that full auto AF may be "off" a bit but when i told them to shoot spot or expanded, all of a sudden their images got increasingly sharper.  Lastly the 2 RAW softwares, one a beta which may do wonders for you, or may irk you and the other DPP which has a bug... All those factors could factored into your results... all but one, full auto AF, not being the cameras fault, per se, but the software for DPP being a canon issue.  Also unlike adobe, canon doesn't allow people with preproduction cameras to shoot raw let alone use beta versions of DPP, so they could get no feedback that it's buggy... Perhaps if they stopped that policy but allowed them access to beta versions and keep that under the NDA agreement, they could head off some of these issues in the future. 

Neuro i fully agree with you about expectations... Sad thing is from a XXD or 7D user, the 5d3 will likely be more than they could have asked for, but for 1d and prior 5d users, i can see how it could have been seen as a disappointment.  I personally see it both ways, but since i never really faulted the 5d2s image quality when I had my 5d2, I just hated the body/af/etc the new features and any improvement of IQ and ISO is welcome.  Is it on paper as impressive of DR and IQ as the D800, probably not, but i'm not going to waste time fretting about it either. 

[JR]

I was using a single pot AF point to eliminate the AF system as a variable.  But you guys have some good point about MA, maybe I naively gave up too quickly.  I will go and look back at my pictures tonight because I know I use my 50 1.2L a lot for the testing and maybe it was the problem.  I shot a few with my 135L and now remember the issue to be lessen.  If it turns out most of the softness were with the 50 1.2L then MA would likley have helped for sure.  (while I had the kit version, I dont want to base my judgment on the 24-105 because in general I find it softer then my prime lenses).

Thanks for the feed-back guys...I will look again.

[AnselA]

Any electronic process generates noise.  There's noise added by the photosites, noise added by the ADC, etc.  Circuitry can be designed to be less noisy, for example by generating less heat (one way of many).

Are you saying this is not "officially" a noise reduction option on a menu b/c for me that is noise reduction at its most effective.

[ereka]

neuro - thank you for your comprehensive reply to my 'couple' of questions 

Just for the record, I started shooting 'RAW only' some time ago because I found myself hardly ever using the in-camera jpegs and concluded therefore that they were just cluttering up and unnecessarily filling up space on my hard drive.

I can see a use for shooting RAW+small jpeg for instant 'proofs' though or just for my wife to whack up on FB quickly e.g. after a party. For 'serious' shooting, I stick to RAW.

Having said that, I've just set my 5DMkIII to shoot RAW to the CF card and large fine jpeg to the SD card, but that's only because of the RAW processing issues currently. I figured I can manage with the jpegs for now and if necessary do better conversions using the RAW files when more reliable RAW conversion software becomes available.

Although I have LR3, I don't really use it (at the moment, but only because I haven't learned how to). I tend to do everything in Photoshop CS5.5, which I'm more familiar with, but I'm hesitating to download and install ACR6.7 release candidate in case it mucks up my system. Is there any danger of that happening? How easy is it to uninstall if it causes problems?

PS: the main reason I asked about the effect of various in-camera processing parameters on the sharpness of in-camera jpegs is because that's what a lot of people seem to be commenting on and I thought there might possibly be some easy fix simply by adjusting the camera settings.

[JR]

Although I have LR3, I don't really use it (at the moment, but only because I haven't learned how to). I tend to do everything in Photoshop CS5.5, which I'm more familiar with, but I'm hesitating to download and install ACR6.7 release candidate in case it mucks up my system. Is there any danger of that happening? How easy is it to uninstall if it causes problems?

I downloaded the ACR 6.7 and found no issue from a messing up of my system perspective 

[neuroanatomist]

Any electronic process generates noise.  There's noise added by the photosites, noise added by the ADC, etc.  Circuitry can be designed to be less noisy, for example by generating less heat (one way of many).

Are you saying this is not "officially" a noise reduction option on a menu b/c for me that is noise reduction at its most effective.

I suppose it's semantics.  I consider 'noise reduction' to be processing which reduces noise after it's generated.  The improvements in sensor circuitry result in less noise being generated in the first place, so there's less need for NR.  The bottom line is still less noise in the image.  The difference is that NR has a penalty - you reduce sharpness along with the noise; if you prevent the noise from being generated in the first place, there's no sharpness penalty.

[Shawn L]

Ereka:

I used to only use Photoshop for image editing, too. Some friends suggested LightRoom, but I really didn't see the need -- how could an application much less powerful than Photoshop be of help?

Then, I took the time (a couple of days) to learn it (Scott Kelby's book (http://www.amazon.com/Photoshop-Lightroom-Digital-Photographers-Voices/dp/0321700910/) is awesome by the way). Now, I can churn through more photos in the same amount of time. Moreover, the changes are non-destructive (i.e., the original file remains untouched).

In addition to the editing features, being able to tag photos with keywords means I can easily find all my photos that are animals, or more specifically birds, or maybe just parrots -- without regard to when I took them or where on disk they live.

So, fwiw, taking the time to learn LightRoom might be well worth your time.

Your mileage, of course, may vary

Shawn L.

[ereka]

Ereka:

I used to only use Photoshop for image editing, too. Some friends suggested LightRoom, but I really didn't see the need -- how could an application much less powerful than Photoshop be of help?

Then, I took the time (a couple of days) to learn it (Scott Kelby's book (http://www.amazon.com/Photoshop-Lightroom-Digital-Photographers-Voices/dp/0321700910/) is awesome by the way). Now, I can churn through more photos in the same amount of time. Moreover, the changes are non-destructive (i.e., the original file remains untouched).

In addition to the editing features, being able to tag photos with keywords means I can easily find all my photos that are animals, or more specifically birds, or maybe just parrots -- without regard to when I took them or where on disk they live.

So, fwiw, taking the time to learn LightRoom might be well worth your time.

Your mileage, of course, may vary

Shawn L.

Thanks, Shawn! I already have that book - just haven't got around to reading it yet. Even more frustrating, I'm wondering if I'll need to buy the "Lightroom 4 version" if and when it comes out before I've even read the "Lightroom 3" book! 

I have the LR4 update (boxed version) sitting under my desk waiting to be installed, but I've been holding off until all the bugs are fixed! It seems from another thread that there might be something coming out later this week.

[ereka]

Poll update: so far, almost 90% think there isn't any real problem with 5DMkIII IQ - very encouraging 

[bycostello]

i think your post title says it all....

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I took a couple of quick shots when I got my camera, and the raw images were fuzzy.  Then I buckled down, put it on a tripod with my 100mm macro and used live contrast detect autofocus and images were razor sharp.  since I was also tethered to my pc, I could quicklly compare phase detect and contrast detect, and that lens does indeed need AFMA, just as it needed -10 with my 5D MK II.
 
I wish Reikan FoCal were ready, I'll have to do it manually with my LensCal target, iof I can just find where I stashed it a few months ago.
 
I also wish that I could adjust AFMA with the remote shooting window, that would be fast and easy, or at least relatively so.
 
Here is a sample using contrast detect at f/2.8 and my 100mm L.  I used Adobe DNG converter and lightroom with the sharpen and NR sliders turned all the way down.  I did have lens and CA correction turned on.
 

 
 


 
 
 
 
Its a bit sharper at f/5.6
 
 

 
 

[skitron]

Any electronic process generates noise.  There's noise added by the photosites, noise added by the ADC, etc.  Circuitry can be designed to be less noisy, for example by generating less heat (one way of many).

Are you saying this is not "officially" a noise reduction option on a menu b/c for me that is noise reduction at its most effective.

At the circuit level, it is more "noise mitigation" i.e. avoiding creating extra noise in the first place and of course it makes no sense to have a menu choice to tell the hardware add some noise.  Whereas "noise reduction" in camera terms is a software process to try to undo noise that is already there and of course it makes sense to add a menu option for that since sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

[AnselA]

Skitron

At the circuit level, it is more "noise mitigation" i.e. avoiding creating extra noise in the first place and of course it makes no sense to have a menu choice to tell the hardware add some noise.  Whereas "noise reduction" in camera terms is a software process to try to undo noise that is already there and of course it makes sense to add a menu option for that since sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

I was fine with neuro's last explanation of what he meant. Noise reduction is an umbrella term for all efforts to create the mythical clean signal. When applied to software we might use in a camera I think we all know what it means. Naturally the current software create a smoothing of the details to create the noise reduction so, like everything, there is a trade-off.