# Question about 5DIII's NR settings



## killswitch (Oct 25, 2012)

Do you keep 5DIII's *High ISO Speed Noise Reduction* off or enabled. If enabled, then do you set it to standard, low or high? It says in the manual that at low ISO the noise in the shadows are reduced if NR is kept on. What are your thoughts on this? I dont like the smudged look when heavy NR is applied, and I was wondering what others have experienced with this feature turned on. Is it helpful for night time shots? Or do you feel keeping NR off, and handle it in LR.

Same question for the *Long Exposure Noise Reduction*.

Another question, out of topic though. How do you guys downsample? I end up downsampling within LR when uploading to sites like flickr. Do you feel the downsampling appears to be better in PS or is it just as same?


----------



## Badger (Jan 26, 2013)

Hope you don't mind me piggy backing on your question since I had the exact same question except for a 6D. I would further ask, if NR is applied in-camera to a RAW file, is that change permanent, or can it be undone in LR? My thinking is I don't want to make any permanent changes to a file that can't be undone. 

One more question, is the noise reduction done in-camera better than what you can get with LightRoom from a RAW file?ISO 6400 and up for example.


----------



## Northstar (Jan 26, 2013)

Badger said:


> Hope you don't mind me piggy backing on your question since I had the exact same question except for a 6D. I would further ask, if NR is applied in-camera to a RAW file, is that change permanent, or can it be undone in LR? My thinking is I don't want to make any permanent changes to a file that can't be undone.
> 
> One more question, is the noise reduction done in-camera better than what you can get with LightRoom from a RAW file?ISO 6400 and up for example.



The in-camera noise reduction feature only applies to JPEGs...if I understand your question right.

You have more control with a RAW file using LR, so yes, if you know what you're doing you'll get better results.


----------



## Northstar (Jan 26, 2013)

killswitch said:


> Do you keep 5DIII's *High ISO Speed Noise Reduction* off or enabled. If enabled, then do you set it to standard, low or high? It says in the manual that at low ISO the noise in the shadows are reduced if NR is kept on. What are your thoughts on this? I dont like the smudged look when heavy NR is applied, and I was wondering what others have experienced with this feature turned on. Is it helpful for night time shots? Or do you feel keeping NR off, and handle it in LR.
> 
> Same question for the *Long Exposure Noise Reduction*.
> 
> Another question, out of topic though. How do you guys downsample? I end up downsampling within LR when uploading to sites like flickr. Do you feel the downsampling appears to be better in PS or is it just as same?



If I'm shooting JPEGs above ISO 2000 then I go with Standard noise reduction....if ISO 800-2000, I use LOW, I turn it off below 800iso.....I've never used HIGH 

RAW gives you the most control over noise.


----------



## RLPhoto (Jan 26, 2013)

I don't use in camera NR but I do keep long expo NR on standard.


----------



## distant.star (Jan 26, 2013)

RLPhoto said:


> I don't use in camera NR but I do keep long expo NR on standard.



My "solution" also.


----------



## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 26, 2013)

killswitch said:


> Do you keep 5DIII's *High ISO Speed Noise Reduction* off or enabled. If enabled, then do you set it to standard, low or high? It says in the manual that at low ISO the noise in the shadows are reduced if NR is kept on. What are your thoughts on this? I dont like the smudged look when heavy NR is applied, and I was wondering what others have experienced with this feature turned on. Is it helpful for night time shots? Or do you feel keeping NR off, and handle it in LR.
> 
> Same question for the *Long Exposure Noise Reduction*.
> 
> Another question, out of topic though. How do you guys downsample? I end up downsampling within LR when uploading to sites like flickr. Do you feel the downsampling appears to be better in PS or is it just as same?


Unless you are doing astronomy photography, keep long exposure nr off. It will take a dark frame of the same length as the exposure and subtract it to remove thermal noise. So, if you have a 5 minute exposure, another 5 minute dark frame exposure will occur. People turn this on and then think their camera is defective.


----------



## 20Dave (Jan 27, 2013)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Unless you are doing astronomy photography, keep long exposure nr off. It will take a dark frame of the same length as the exposure and subtract it to remove thermal noise. So, if you have a 5 minute exposure, another 5 minute dark frame exposure will occur. People turn this on and then think their camera is defective.



Actually, for astrophotography, I would turn NR off and do all of that with post. I would be afraid of losing *any* details with in-camera NR. The astrophotography-specific post processing applications do this best by averaging many fark frames. 

One reason that Canon dominates DSLR astrophotography is because on Nikon DSLRs, you couldn't turn off all in-camera NR, even with RAW files. As a result, Nikon DSLRs got the nickname "star eaters" among many astrophotographers.

Dave


----------



## J.R. (Jan 27, 2013)

distant.star said:


> RLPhoto said:
> 
> 
> > I don't use in camera NR but I do keep long expo NR on standard.
> ...



I have this disabled as I believe that NR was best taken care of in PP. 

What are the benefits of this?


----------



## 20Dave (Jan 27, 2013)

J.R. said:


> distant.star said:
> 
> 
> > RLPhoto said:
> ...



It takes a dark frame at the same exposure settings, which ends up being a frame of noise. It then subtracts that noise from the original exposure. I believe that the biggest non-random noise is thermal noise from the amplifier. I was looking for an old comparison of thermal noise among cameras of the 20D-era, but can't find it offhand.

*UPDATE* Here are the articles: http://ghonis2.ho8.com/DSLRcomparison.html
Specifically, look at the bottom of this one: http://ghonis2.ho8.com/rebelmod500d/rebelmod500dcompare.html
These are now "ancient" cameras, so likely this type of thermal noise has been fixed in newer cameras. 

Dave


----------

