noise on T2i compared to 7D

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Lenilenapi

Carbonite Member
Has anyone compared the noise levels on the T2i with a 7D? I'm wondering especially sinc ethe 7D is supposed to have less noise at the 320, 640, etc off ASA values does that mean the T2i noise is compromised or is it optimised for teh 200, 400, 800 settings.

I haven't heard any complaints about this yet.
 
If the t2i doesn't have 320, it's safe to assume something like 200 is its native ISO. The developers don't go out of their way to give us noisier images.
 
My 550D/T2i is definately noisier than the 7D. Very slightly, but I can tell because of the digitally weird streaky banding in shadows/highlights :(
 
I can't comment on the 7D as I've only ever held one, but using my T2i extensively for the past month, I can tell you that noise is not a problem if you properly expose. While the ISO stops are fewer on the T2i, they're plenty to work with. You can set the camera to limit your maximum selectable ISO. I set my max at 1600, and try to rarely go there, mentally leaving 800 as my highest value. Then, you construct your lighting around that limit and it's not even a problem. I recently shot a scene after dusk with only a window and an oil lamp as light sources. Here's a screengrab:

rVCSKl.jpg


This is straight out of the camera, converted to ProRes 422 - no other adjustments. Noise is minimal in the blue midtones, and to my eye, nonexistant in the blacks. Shot with a Sigma 28mm lens open to 1.8. ISO was 800. You can see the lantern actually overexposes and blows out the oatmeal box carton.

My understanding is that the 7D and T2i have functionally the same imaging sensor, only the 7D is powered by two processing chips and has a faster readout rate (8 pins as opposed to 4). These aren't variables that really affect noise levels. Noise is much more dependent on how much light you're feeding the lens and the range of those luma levels across the image. When comparing the two cameras, it really boils down to proper exposure. The differences are negligible at best.
 
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i'm getting a lot of noise in the blacks.. especially in this video. Is there something wrong with my camera or is this normal?

using canon 50mm 1.4, iso800, picture profile: neutral and aperture wide open if i remember all this correctly.



it's more noticeable when the video is on fullscreen.
 
David G. Smith said:
Nice. Thanks. So,what did we learn in school to day? Proper exposure is a good thing.
Click to expand...

C-

Many people think a higher ISO automatically means more noise. This is not the case. It's that a an underexposed image creates noise even though a higher ISO may seem to "correct" the exposure.
 
semajha said:
i'm getting a lot of noise in the blacks.. especially in this video. Is there something wrong with my camera or is this normal?

using canon 50mm 1.4, iso800, picture profile: neutral and aperture wide open if i remember all this correctly.
Click to expand...

That looks fairly normal to me, and it's really not that bad. You can always dip the gain with a color corrector to minimize that blue noise on your blacks. It will crush them, but will look better. Remember too that you were exposing the band, not the audience. The camera's trying to "create" information where there is little/none with the audience silhouettes.

That 50mm/1.4 looks nice, by the way. I've got an old FD mount 50mm/1.4 SSC that I wanted to use, but the FD-to-EF adapter makes the image look horrible.
 
thanks for the tip haircut, how do I go about "crushing" the blue noise? For the color correction I had the blacks set towards the bluish area and lowered the gain by a little bit. Any lower would have made the video look to dark. *i'm pretty noob at color correcting, i kinda got lucky with that video*
 
The simplest way is, in your 3-Way Color Corrector, drop the level of the blacks. This darkens them, loosing details in the process. However, the detail in those silhouettes is just noise, so you'll lose a large portion of that.
 
I am able to shoot stills at iso 160, 320, 250, 500, 640 etc on the 550D. I did notice that shots taken at 160 and 320 have significantly less color noise than 200/400.

The way I do it is to play around with shutter speed and aperture until when i half click, the iso switches within the space of a second, between 400 then 200 then 400, or 800/400/800 for 640 and 500 shots.

Unfortunately in video this does not happen, though I think could give us those extra iso steps in the next firmware.
 
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