Having in the past been lazy & shot RAW+jpeg with the purchase of the 80D thought it was about time to shoot RAW only.
On my first outing with the 80D to an airshow (RIAT), looking at my shots via Faststone viewer I was rather pleased with them even at 100% however I'd failed to realize at first that what I was seeing is I presume an embedded jpeg preview as when viewed in Photoshop or Lightroom the noise is very visible at 100%.
Admittedly the shots that showed the most noticeable noise were of grey planes against a uniform grey sky but even others still exhibited quite a bit of noise. At first I was somewhat disapointed considering the 80D was reported to have reasonably low levels of noise.
When I began to think about it some more though:
Obviously a 25MP shot at 100% would be the equivalent of an enormous print & even on the worst examples, at 50% the noise was all but invisible so in practical terms not a problem & easily removed in post processing.
I then compared these shots and some test shots I'd made in better lighting conditions with those taken on an 18MP EOS 100D and when viewed at 100% there was little difference in noise between the two despite the larger file size of the 80D
Jpeg files have noise removed as part of the in camera processing.
Finally I compared some Jeg & RAW files from my 6D - with the 6D there really is little difference between the two viewed at 100% showing how good the noise levels on the 6D are.
I guess the conclusion I get from all of this is that a RAW file from a 25MP cropped sensor will always exhibit a degree of noise and if it doesn't show at normal viewing sizes, I shouldn't worry too much!
One shot along with a portion of 100% crop for info (although even posting here has lessened/smoothed the effect of the noise on the 100% crop):
On my first outing with the 80D to an airshow (RIAT), looking at my shots via Faststone viewer I was rather pleased with them even at 100% however I'd failed to realize at first that what I was seeing is I presume an embedded jpeg preview as when viewed in Photoshop or Lightroom the noise is very visible at 100%.
Admittedly the shots that showed the most noticeable noise were of grey planes against a uniform grey sky but even others still exhibited quite a bit of noise. At first I was somewhat disapointed considering the 80D was reported to have reasonably low levels of noise.
When I began to think about it some more though:
Obviously a 25MP shot at 100% would be the equivalent of an enormous print & even on the worst examples, at 50% the noise was all but invisible so in practical terms not a problem & easily removed in post processing.
I then compared these shots and some test shots I'd made in better lighting conditions with those taken on an 18MP EOS 100D and when viewed at 100% there was little difference in noise between the two despite the larger file size of the 80D
Jpeg files have noise removed as part of the in camera processing.
Finally I compared some Jeg & RAW files from my 6D - with the 6D there really is little difference between the two viewed at 100% showing how good the noise levels on the 6D are.
I guess the conclusion I get from all of this is that a RAW file from a 25MP cropped sensor will always exhibit a degree of noise and if it doesn't show at normal viewing sizes, I shouldn't worry too much!
One shot along with a portion of 100% crop for info (although even posting here has lessened/smoothed the effect of the noise on the 100% crop):