What Canon body handles high ISO the best?

[Brendan Dozier]

What Canon body handles high ISO the best? Is there anything comparable to something like the D7000? Appreciate your opinions & feedback.

[arash_hazeghi]

What Canon body handles high ISO the best? Is there anything comparable to something like the D7000? Appreciate your opinions & feedback.

Hey Brendan,

No, nothing comparable to D7000 (in that price range) but the 5D2 and 1D4 both handle high ISO relatively well (not as good as a D3S obviously but good enough within reasonable light levels). Unfortunately if you want to get top quality high ISO images with Canon you need to pay $$$. Of course at the end of the day the output IQ will also depend on your workflow skills and techniques for applying NR, you do need to apply advanced NR for all Canon cameras at high ISO. Visual noise/grain is somewhat subjective in its intrusiveness, some people (including myself) find noise very intrusive but some people can't even see the noise in some photos...it also depends on your eyesight and tolerance. The maximum low light ISO that is acceptable to me for 5D2 is 3200 and for 1D4 is 1600 (in some conditions 3200 is possible too).

Here is an example with 5D2 taken at ISO 3200.



5D2 ISO 3200


and 1D4 at ISO 1600, this one was taken in very low light



1D4 ISO 1600.


I hope this helps.

[Brendan Dozier]

Very helpful, Arash! Thank you, and awesome images.

What NR software is the best in your opinion?

[arash_hazeghi]

Very helpful, Arash! Thank you, and awesome images.

What NR software is the best in your opinion?

It depends on the RAW convertor you use, I like neat image.

[Brendan Dozier]

I'm using ACR currently

[Roger Clark]

Brendan,

The answer depends on what the image situation is. In that regard, (case 1) do you mean for focal length limited situations commonly found in bird photography, or (case 2) frame filling situations where you choose focal length and position, like in landscape photography?

In general, the high ISO performance is a function of light gathering and resolution on the subject and the efficiency of each pixel.

Case 2 is easy: full frame sensors will gather the most light assuming good fast lenses, so the 5D Mark II in the Canon line is the top high ISO performer for landscape and frame filling situations.

Case 1, focal length limited situations, is more complex. Usually, one wants to maximize pixels on the subject that is small in the frame, so sensor size is less relevant and detail on a subject is proportional to the inverse of pixel size. The top performer in this regard in the Canon line is the 7D with 4.3 micron pixels, and second is the 1D Mark IV (5.7 micron pixels). The Nikon D7000 has 4.8 micron pixels so falls in between these two in terms of light per pixel with a given lens. So, if one use the same aperture diameter lens, and adjusted focal length to give the same pixels on a subject, it would be very difficult to tell the images from a 7D apart from a 1DIV and a D7000.

The above is not intuitive and goes against what one reads on the web, but the key factor is to compare images when the resolution (pixels) on the subject is the same. In practice, if you had a 500 f/4, the 7D would give almost the same resolution on a subject with the 500 and no TC as the 1DIV with a 500 + 1.4x TC. When we normalize detail on the subject, image quality is very similar. In the case of the 7D versus 1DIV, the 7D pixels have slightly greater response, but one would have to do careful measuring of noise to tell the difference.

Note back with the 5D Mark II, that the camera suffers from some fixed pattern noise in some low light situations up to about ISO 3200, where the 7D and 1DIV, being a newer generation have less fixed pattern noise..

And like Arash says, the resulting image will depend on the raw converter and any noise reduction. The above info on the sensor capabilities is in regards to the raw data before demosaicing so is independent of raw conversion.

Roger

[arash_hazeghi]

I'm using ACR currently

ACR does have NR, but it doesn't work well with Canon files for a couple of reasons, I recommend turning NR OFF in ACR and using external plugin in PS.

[Giovanni Frescura]

Hello
for me Canon 1D Mark IV is very good...
About NR I use Topaz ..and I am happy about

[Brendan Dozier]

Thanks very much, Roger, Arash, and Giovanni, very helpful information.

I rarely use ACR NR, but it is what I use to convert my raw files. I usually use Topaz NR and once in a while CS5 NR.

[DennyKyser]

1D IV can handle noise great, these only used LR to reduce the noise.

ISO 3200



ISO 5000

[Brendan Dozier]

Wow, great examples! thanks Denny

[arash_hazeghi]

1D IV can handle noise great, these only used LR to reduce the noise.

Excellent images Denny, nice and clean however I think these may not be the best examples for bird photography. For portrait and sports you don't need to keep fine texture, in fact for portrait people prefer to smoothen the skin, so you can apply a heavy dose of NR without ruining the photo, in the photos above there is almost no skin texture or fabric texture left (which is perfectly fine for the application). For bird photography however you cannot apply this much NR as it will destroy the crucial feather details making the bird look unnatural.
I have produced some good images with the MK4 at 3200 but overall for me it is pushing the limits and I try to avoid it. I do use ISO 6400 on both my 5D and MKIv when photographing landscapes and portraits and often results are acceptable.