7D Setting; it's very difficult for me to get on final decisions

[prashant thakar]

I have tried to set my 7D on the best setting to get fine and noise free exposure :(, could any one help me regarding setting of 7D, I am pretty new on the 7D

my current setting as follow

Custom

I exposure
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
0 0 0 1 0 1 0

II Image
1 2 3
0 2 0

III Autofocus/ Dive
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Slow 0 0 1 0 * 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

Picture style: Faithful with some changes
sharpens: 5 contrast: 1 saturation:1 color: 2

is there anything wrong? please need help and suggestion

[DickLudwig]

The most important setting on your 7D in determining how much noise the capture will have is the ISO setting.
Set the ISO to 100 for the least amount of noise to be recorded in the image file.
The higher you set the ISO value the more noise you'll see in the image.

[David Stephens]

My 7D controls noise very well up to ISO 800, so avoid under exposure and shoot at ISOs of 800 or less and you should get manageable noise levels. Always use the lowest ISO that light and your required SS and aperture will allow.

[Diane Miller]

The settings for sharpness, contrast, saturation and color only apply to JPEGs, and will be seen in the image on the back of the camera. Same for color space (sRGB or AdobeRGB).

Good sharpness is best with a good tripod and / or careful technique.

[prashant thakar]

Thanks all.

Diane, I always take pictures in raw format. is that setting work for row as well?

[Diane Miller]

The settings I mentioned above apply only to JPEGs and are just ignored when the image comes into a RAW converter. They do no harm, and most people would adjust them to give a pleasing image on the back of the camera, which is a JPEG the camera creates using those settings. But the LCD screen is not a color-correct monitor, and the brightness can be set according to what you need for the lighting conditions, so that image only tells you about composition. The histogram you can display there is a very valuable as a light meter -- to check your exposure, as are the "blinkies" which can be turned on to show overexposed areas.

You have more exposure leeway when you adjust a RAW image than with a JPEG, but you still need to be very careful about exposing as high as you can without blowing out highlights, and keeping ISO as low as possible. That's often a difficult balance with nature shooting. In many situations, an overexposure of 1-2 stops will give a better final image. You may need to darken some areas in RAW conversion, but that gives a much better result than trying to lighten areas that are too dark.

Different images will have different settings that work best.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Except for long exposure noise reduction you will not improve noise with the custom functions. As David mentions, do not underexpose (expose to the right whenever you can) . I'm OK with ISO 800 with the 7D, and use ISO 1600 successfully too if I need to. The noise cleans up nicely with any noise reduction program (I use NR on the background only to avoid losing detail on the subject)