5D2 (not mk3) ISO

[nitsujwalker]

Sorry if this has been asked before (I didn't have much luck with the search function). What did you 5d2 users find was your maximum usable ISO without losing too much detail (for portraits or any other area of photography)? I was also curious if there is a specific NR program you all use or if LR 3 is 'good enough'. I've heard of several, but am curious what everyone uses! Thanks in advance.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

ISO 6400

Here is one

 

[wickidwombat]

i try to stick to 3200 as a max but 6400 can work with a fair bit of NR
for NR i use topaz de-noise which gives more flexability than PS or LR

 

[nitsujwalker]

Spokane, that photo is great! What lens were you using? wickidwombat, thanks. I'll check out topaz. That's the program I've heard the most positive reviews for.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Spokane, that photo is great! What lens were you using? wickidwombat, thanks. I'll check out topaz. That's the program I've heard the most positive reviews for.

That was my 135mmL at f/2. Little or no NR. Adding a little NR will make it cleanup at large sizes, but for 8 X 10, its not needed.

When I first bought my 5D MK II in 2008, ISO 3200 was noisy and pushing it. Newer versions of lightroom, DXO, etc have really improved the processing such that ISO 6400 is reasonably usable and prints look excellent, a printer is a great noise reducer.

I don't bother with third party NR mostly because I'm happy with lightroom. With LR4, you can use the brush to apply NR, sharpening, etc to just the areas that need it, but this image is pretty much straight out of the camera with color NR added, but I don't recall using luminance NR.

Now that I have a MK III, I'm thinking of using up to ISO 25600, so I might give some of the third party NR add-ins a try.

Here is a snapshot taken last night at 25600 with my MK III, I tried to do the best I could with Lightroom NR and sharpening.

I was actually testing autofocus, the lights in our laundry room were off, so only light from another room down the hall was available. This was pretty much the absolute limit of the MK III to AF. There is a lot of noise and lost detail that can never be recovered, but it will look very good printed.

 

[wickidwombat]

topaz denoise is powerfull because you can seperately treat
shadow noise
highlight noise
colour noise
luminescent noise
and account for pattern noise
all have seperate sliders so you can tweak a bit more of the shadows without smearing your midtones which might not be too noisey, the detail recovery is also pretty decent too for stopping overly smudgy NR