50D High-ISO BIF samples

[Doug Brown]

I'm going to post three BIF photos from this afternoon taken in very low light. I hope they will demonstrate the autofocus and high-ISO performance of the 50D, which I would characterize as more than adequate. I'm not going to print these at 24x36, but they hold their own. The 50D's AF performance in low light and low contrast is truly remarkable. I was with a friend who had both the 50D and the 1D Mark III with him. It was his first outing with the 50D, and he was blown away by its AF prowess. The Mark III could not lock focus in this photographic environment but the 50D could do it again and again.

In my opinion, Canon has done some major upgrades to the 50D's AF but isn't letting on; perhaps they don't want to advertise that their prosumer body can outfocus their 1-series pro body.

[Doug Brown]

Here is the first photo, shot at ISO 2500. It is close to full frame. RAW conversion was done in Lightroom 2.1, and additional post-processing was done using CS4. I did 2 rounds of Noise Ninja on the BG, along with my standard routine for the bird itself.



Canon 50D, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/1000, ISO 2500, +1/3 EC, no flash, hand held

[Doug Brown]

Here is the second photo. This one is shot at ISO 3200. Post-processing was identical to what I did to the first photo. The image is roughly 70% of full frame.



Canon 50D, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/500, ISO 3200, no flash, hand held

[Roger Clark]

Doug,
Very impressive. It is obvious that the background is quite complex yet the focus stayed locked on the bird. I assume you were using one focus point? Is this in AI servo mode?

It would also be nice to see AF performance of the subject flying toward you.

Roger

[Doug Brown]

One more photo, also taken at ISO 3200.



Canon 50D, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/500, ISO 3200, no flash, hand held

[Doug Brown]

Roger, this was one focus point and AI Servo mode. The 50D does a great job with birds flying at you. I'll try to dig one up and post it on this thread.

[Roger Clark]

In my opinion, Canon has done some major upgrades to the 50D's AF but isn't letting on; perhaps they don't want to advertise that their prosumer body can outfocus their 1-series pro body.

This helps project possible performance of the next 1D mark 4.
That and the digic 4 performance (6.3 frames/sec at 15 megapixels = 94.5 megapixels/second). If the next 1D Mark 4 has two digic 4 processors, then it could process about 189 megapixels/second, about double 1D III cameras. At 10 frames/second, that could mean the next 1D4 could have about 19 megapixels, with that new improved AF. Let's hope spring.

Roger

[Doug Brown]

Here is a series of 4 photos (a 4-shot burst) from today. I synchronized the adjustments in Lightroom, then cropped, exported to CS4, and ran identical NR and sharpening on each.

[Doug Brown]

The frames are presented in the order that they were taken.

[David Billingsley]

Doug,

Thanks again for sharing your 50D AF findings.

I remember earlier you talking about in-camera (standard level) noise reduction settings. Are you still using in-camera setting in addition to processing in Noise Ninja?

Have a blessed day - dave b.

[Doug Brown]

Hi David. When you shoot RAW and process in Lightroom, in-camera settings for NR are ignored. By default, Lightroom does remove a little color noise. But I do my NR in CS4 using Noise Ninja.

[Chris Starbuck]

Doug,
I really appreciate your sharing your 50D images, both for the images themselves, which are great, and for your evaluation of the 50D in real-world nature photography. Sometimes I get lost in the technology details. It helps to see real-world performance. I haven't had a chance to take my 50D outdoors yet (medically housebound for another few weeks), and can't wait.

[Judy Howle]

I had just about decided not to get a 50D after looking at lots of photos of noise and such which mostly indicated it's not any better and possibly worse than the 40D which I own. I may change my mind after seeing these shots and hearing about the focusing being better, plus the better LCD would certainly be useful as well as the micro lens adjustments. Thanks for posting!

Judy Howle
Southern Exposures
http://ImageEvent.com/jhowle

[David Billingsley]

Hi David. When you shoot RAW and process in Lightroom, in-camera settings for NR are ignored. By default, Lightroom does remove a little color noise. But I do my NR in CS4 using Noise Ninja.

Thanks Doug - just a little more help please.

I currently use a 40D and shoot RAW only - ISO 400 mostly.

I download into DPP for general PP - mostly for Smugmug galleries.

For "Printers" and "BPN" posts - I remove camera sharping in DPP and export to TIFF 16.

Then process in CS3 and Noise Ninja.

I am seriously considering the 50D (after seeing your results). Would you recommend NOT applying NR in the 50D and do all NR in PP? It appears from your above reply you may no longer be using in-camera NR in the 50D. Guess my real question is - would it be best to use only one NR process (either in-camera or PP). Would mixing in-camera and PP NR have a downside?

As always - your comments are greatly appreciated.

Have a blessed day - dave b.

[Doug Brown]

Hi David. If you shoot RAW, in-camera NR is not applied. The setting is noted, but the RAW file is unchanged. For BPN posts, I do all of my NR using Noise Ninja. I still have high-ISO NR enabled in the 50D. I think the in-camera NR is quite good (see some of my early 50D posts that were taken in JPEG format). I went out yesterday to do some more high-ISO flight photography, only this time shot JPEG rather than RAW. For JPEG images, NR is applied in camera (I use the Standard setting). The problem is that my memory card somehow got corrupted during the transfer process to my computer. I'll go out again today or tomorrow and try again.

[John Chardine]

Hi David. If you shoot RAW, in-camera NR is not applied. The setting is noted, but the RAW file is unchanged. For BPN posts, I do all of my NR using Noise Ninja. I still have high-ISO NR enabled in the 50D. I think the in-camera NR is quite good (see some of my early 50D posts that were taken in JPEG format). I went out yesterday to do some more high-ISO flight photography, only this time shot JPEG rather than RAW. For JPEG images, NR is applied in camera (I use the Standard setting). The problem is that my memory card somehow got corrupted during the transfer process to my computer. I'll go out again today or tomorrow and try again.

Only caveat Doug is if you use Canon's DPP. In that case, in-camera settings are used in the processing of the RAW image. Is this correct?

[John Chardine]

The frames are presented in the order that they were taken.

Can't wait to try the 50D out on flying gannets at Bonaventure. Will be there next year with Chris Dodds and Artie.

[Jack Faller]

Have you tried any processing of the high ISO 50D RAW images with ACR 4.6 and CS3 or lightroom? There has been some discussion that 4.6 doesn't do such a good job. My impression was that the 50D AF was significantly better and your images prove it. Just trying to figure out whether a switch to CS4 is really required to get the best performance out
of ACR for the high ISO images. Thanks for any input.

jack

[Joseph Kurkjian]

Well, I'm impressed ... those are darn good examples; especially of the duck coming straight at you. Thanks for posting the shots.

Regards,

Joe Kurkjian

[Doug Brown]

I believe you are correct John. You can undo them if you choose. DPP does a good job with NR on 50D files; better than Lightroom 2 or ACR 4.6 IMO. Too bad the interface is so clunky.

[John Chardine]

I agree Doug. I just did a test with DPP shooting RAW at ISO 3200 and changing the High ISO Noise Reduction settings. I was amazed to see that even with the noise reduction set to Disabled, noise reduction still occurs in DPP. Here is the same image as rendered by DPP and sent to Ps in this post, and as rendered by ACR 4.6 then to Ps in the next post. Both are 100% crops from 50D.

This one is from DPP

[John Chardine]

.... and this one is from ACR 4.6.

[arash_hazeghi]

John, I think you need to set the default NR for DPP 3.5 to 0 for both chroma and luminance NR, otherwise the default for the program is not zero even if you set your camera's NR setting to OFF. Go to tools-->prefrences--> tool palette and then chose "set as default" under "default NR setting" and set both sliders to zero. this way NR is not applied to RAW files by default.

[John Chardine]

John, I think you need to set the default NR for DPP 3.5 to 0 for both chroma and luminance NR, otherwise the default for the program is not zero even if you set your camera's NR setting to OFF. Go to tools-->prefrences--> tool palette and then chose "set as default" under "default NR setting" and set both sliders to zero. this way NR is not applied to RAW files by default.

Thanks. You are correct and I just discovered this yesterday. Bit naughty of Canon to do this. The software really should by default take the in-camera settings and not apply it's own on top of that. Having discovered this I still noticed that there is less noise in a 50D image if DPP is used compared to ACR, and that is will NR disabled everywhere! I'll post an example later.

[John Chardine]

I took the same ISO 3200 RAW image from the 50D and passed through DPP and ACR 4.6 on the way to Ps. I was careful to turn NR off everywhere and no sharpening or other processing was applied. These are 100% crops.

First the DPP example:

[John Chardine]

Now the ACR 4.6: (notice the extra noise in this image, which is processed out of the DPP image BY DEFAULT, WITH NO NR SET IN CAMERA OR DPP). The cost is a softer, more noise-free image from DPP (IMO).

[Joseph Martines]

Thanks for the insight.

The technological advancements brought to us from the manufacturers is amazing and just encourages us to partake of the "cool aid."

I'm torn between full frame and cropped frame sensors.

Have to wait to see what happens with the 5d II.