50D high ISO noise reduction & raw conversion

[Chris Starbuck]

In playing with the new toy :) I've discovered something of an annoyance. The in-camera high-ISO noise reduction, like all other settings, only appends some additional data to the raw file, and leaves it to the raw converter to do something with it. Canon's DPP uses those settings - quite effectively it seems, but the rest of DPP's interface stinks. OTOH, ACR 5.1 seems to be completely ignorant of the high-ISO noise reduction settings. I tried using DPP just for the noise reduction, convert to a TIFF, and then use ACR 5.1 for other adjustments, but DPP has thrown away some of the metadata (like which lens was used)!:( Maybe I'm being overly obsessive, since I can always go back to the raw file to check on the missing settings, but I really hate the complication in workflow.

Any thoughts/suggestions/solutions? Any hope of Adobe ever making use of the high-ISO noise reduction settings?

[Robert O'Toole]

chris,

Have you seen the DPR 50D review...http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos50d/?
Interesting reading.
Robert

[Robert O'Toole]

It looks like the 50D applies some NR even with the NR off and at the lowest ISO setting. Also with NR turned off, 0, sharpening is also turned off even if it is set to 5.
I am told that you are correct, ACR does not work as well as DPP.

Dont feel bad its the same case with Nikon, ACR/LR vs. Nikons Capture NX.

CNX works better but it is slower and not as easy to use.

Robert

[Chris Starbuck]

Robert,
I hadn't seen the DPR review; definitely interesting, especially the comments about having likely exceeded the resolution of current lenses.

Do you have a favorite noise reduction plug-in?

[Paul Granone]

I process my 50D RAW files in Canon DPP or Adobe Photoshop CS4. When processing I disable all noise reduction. If using DPP I save as a TIF & open in CS4. In CS4 Adobe Camera Raw V5.2 I also disable all noise reduction.

Once the image is in Photoshop CS4 I use Neat Image v6 to reduce noise. It does an excellent job of reducing noise without an impact on sharpness. Results have been very good. The 50D images show excellent detail with the noise removed.

Personally I do not see 50D as having more noise then the 40D. The 50D has more detail and once post processed produces better images then I when I used a 40D on occasion.