5D mkII long exposure terrible noise, bad sensor, heat, or what???

[WilliamLesch]

I have had my 5D mark II since 08, and have done tons of long exposures with it, mainly between 1 sec and 5 minutes, but some 8-10 minute and longer, both in daylight with heavy ND and at night, so I am used to dealing with some noise issues, but i was doing some tests this week with full moon night skies - exposures between 2 minutes and 20 minutes - and had little white dots, thousands of them, all over the entire frame.  they are fairly faint on the shorter exposure, but on the 20 minute exposure they ruin the shot, all over the place, millions of them.  zoomed all the way in on the monitor they look like clumps of pixels, some straight lines, some odd shaped clumps, mostly three or four to ten or twelve pixels, some white, some pink, all lighter in color than the background sky color, which is approx middle value.  I've never got anything this drastically bad before, makes the shots unusable.  tried noise reduction, no help, looks the same.  seeing the same thing in daylight using heavy ND filters, 4.0 and up - does not show up much under 2 minutes, but on everything over 5.  these are raw files and i see them even zooming in before i open in ACR, so its in the camera, not the post.

I'm in Tucson and its hot as heck, even at night, so thought it might be heat related, but I tried some indoors with the A/C on, let camera cool down, and still getting it.  not using live view, to rule that out.

just upgraded firmware last week, from 1.0.6 to 2.0.7, hope that wouldn't be it, as i can't go back.

Trying to figure out if my camera just died, got too old, or if this happens with all 5DmkII - I looked at some 10 minute night sky shots i did back in March, and they are fine, can't figure out what is going on.

I tried shooting 10 and 20 minute exposures with the lens cap on and got brightly colored pixels, not near as many as the white dots, but all over the frame, but then tried long exposure noise reduction and it got rid of them, but it doesn't do a thing for actual exposures in the landscape.

Thanks for any help you can give, I'm getting gear ready for a kayak trip down the Grand Canyon in a month, and need to decide if i need to buy a new body (not me, the camera)

Bill Lesch (williamlesch.com)

[walter.sk]

I  I've never got anything this drastically bad before, makes the shots unusable.  tried noise reduction, no help, looks the same.
Bill Lesch (williamlesch.com)

Bill:  When you say you tried noise reduction, are you talking about NR in the RAW converter, or even further in post processing, or are you referring to the dark-frame subtraction type of noise reduction that is an option with your camera settings?

It is possible that you had that turned on in the past, and somehow either got it turned off, or perhaps when you installed the new firmware the in-camera long exposure noise reduction got turned off?

[PierreVandevenne]

Trying to figure out if my camera just died, got too old, or if this happens with all 5DmkII - I looked at some 10 minute night sky shots i did back in March, and they are fine, can't figure out what is going on.

Rule of thumb: dark current noise doubles every 6°C

White dots are a bit puzzling though - typically hot pixels will be either R, G or B, or at least with a marked tendency towards one of these colors. This is what you get rid of through dark frame substraction. In order to have white dots, you'd need the R G and B  pixels to all be "hot" at roughly the correct level for the debayerisation to obtain white. While hot pixels may be somewhat grouped, it would be a bit strange to have that many balanced groups.

Could you post a raw file somewhere?

[Doug Peterson]

Try running it through different raw converters. Capture One Pro in particular has a noise reduction slider specifically for long-exposure-style noise and generally handles noisy frames very well especially in regards to color accuracy. Irrident Digital Raw Developer also has some great characteristics for handling such tough files and Canon's DPP is free with your camera and at least worth installing and trying.

If you have the budget for a particular shoot you rent a Phase One P45+ which will trounce any other camera for very long exposures or longer exposures in warmer temperatures.

Doug Peterson
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[Paul2660]

If would be great if you could post a raw file with the effect.  I have used the 5D MKII on single exposures up to 50 minutes.  I might
have seen some of the white dots you mention, but not an entire frame of them.  

In Arkansas, here, the heat is on now.  I have noticed that usually the first frame will be the cleanest and anything after that tends to get
more noise, but I see mostly the RGB stuck pixel noise with a spattering of white dots.   I should also note that I only see the white dots on
exposures longer than 30 minutes.  I routinely use ND filters in my work with daylight exposures with the 5D MKII up to 5 minutes, (mostly
30 sec to 3 minutes) and have not noticed the spots on these shorter exposures.

I have totally swtiched to Capture 1 for converting the 5D MKII longer exposures.  I feel it has by far the best long exposure noise reduction,
better than Lightroom or Canon DPP.  I have not tried Lightroom 3 yet.  Capture 1  vr 5.1 really can produce a clean file.  

Paul Caldwell

[Scott Martin]

Hey Bill. I'm a night photography workshop instructor that shoots with the 5Dmk2 myself. Not only have I done a lot of multi-hour exposures with it, I have also done a number of side by side comparisons with workshop participants' cameras and compared the results. I think the 5Dmk2 is possibly the best camera for very long exposure work around today and have an article that goes into the details why at http://www.on-sight.com/2009/05/29/5dmark2...-photography-2/

But to address your question:
1) Heat has a huge impact on noise. Any camera is going to be noisy during long exposures in the kind of heat you are dealing with now in Tucson. I've done some 3 hour work in 100+ degrees in South Texas and man is it noisy. I've also had some really lousy, old cameras produce incredibly clean, perfect images at 5 degrees Fahrenheit. So temperature is a *huge factor* for all digital cameras.

2) Definitely Turn on Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR) in the Custom Functions. Set it to "ON" not "Auto". This really helps.

3) Consider Image Stacking. Image Stacking is a technique where you shoot a bunch of shorter exposures and combine them into a single, long exposure. Not only are each of the frames cleaner but software applies noise reduction to each and every frame before and after they are put together. The results are incredible! There are too many ways of doing this to go into here, but I'll just say that the LR/Enfuse plug-in for Lightroom is, IMO, the best. You'll need to turn LENR off if you choose to use image stacking.

Lastly, don't let the heat stop you. I have an exhibition of 3x5 foot and 5x7 prints up right now that includes a single frame, 15 minute exposure taken at 100 degrees as night with the 5Dmk2. I had the LENR turned on and used LR3 to print it. Those dots might look bad on screen at first but you might be surprised at how it all turns out on the final print.

[mitchdob]

Bill... I've experienced the exact same issues with noise on long exposures as you with the 5DM2. Almost made me give up on the camera (which I still may). But I have long exposure noise reduction turned off, so now need to run some tests with it turned on. But with the gross artifacts I'm seeing I don't see how it could help that much. What I see is total frames destroyed. But maybe I'll be surprised after a test?  - Mitch

[mitchdob]

Also, Scott..... in your article (link listed above) you talk about the 5Dmark2 allowing you to start taking a new photo, while temporarily holding (buffering) the noise reduction processing for later. How? I couldn't find that control as after I shot an exposure the camera started its noise reduction process - but would not allow me to take another shot until it completed.
Thanks for the help. - Mitch

[Scott Martin]

Almost made me give up on the camera (which I still may)...But with the gross artifacts I'm seeing I don't see how it could help that much. What I see is total frames destroyed.

Have you actually made prints from these files or just looked at them on screen? The camera is high enough resolution that you might be surprised how tiny or insignificant small noise artifacts are when printed. I wouldn't give up on it - I work at night with a lot of camera and can say from experience that the 5Dmk2 is really fantastic. The Nikon D3s is fantastic (super clean) but that's in part because it's only 12 megapixels. Lower the resolution of a 5Dmk2 file down to the equivalent of 12 megapixels and the file cleans up too... Again, make real prints before you judge quality and usability.

Also, Scott..... in your article (link listed above) you talk about the 5Dmark2 allowing you to start taking a new photo, while temporarily holding (buffering) the noise reduction processing for later. How? I couldn't find that control as after I shot an exposure the camera started its noise reduction process - but would not allow me to take another shot until it completed.

And you were in full manual or bulb mode, manual focus, and doing an exposure of less than 30 minutes? From what I can gather from my own experience, the 5Dmk2 has about an hours worth of LENR buffering capability. Maybe a tad less. So that can be four 15 minute exposures, two 30 minute exposures or one hour long exposure. If you haven't filled up the buffer you can simply click the shutter to begin another exposure. If you press the shutter and it won't start another exposure that means the buffer is filled. I've confirmed this on about a dozen different 5Dmk2 cameras. Try again in manual focus mode, in manual exposure mode with a 15 second exposure to test this.

[mitchdob]

"Have you actually made prints from these files or just looked at them on screen? The camera is high enough resolution that you might be surprised how tiny or insignificant small noise artifacts are when printed. I wouldn't give up on it - I work at night with a lot of camera and can say from experience that the 5Dmk2 is really fantastic. The Nikon D3s is fantastic (super clean) but that's in part because it's only 12 megapixels. Lower the resolution of a 5Dmk2 file down to the equivalent of 12 megapixels and the file cleans up too... Again, make real prints before you judge quality and usability. "

** I attached an example image of what I'm seeing. Not worth printing (which I do a lot of) as the artifacts exist on the RAW file just the same.

"And you were in full manual or bulb mode, manual focus, and doing an exposure of less than 30 minutes? From what I can gather from my own experience, the 5Dmk2 has about an hours worth of LENR buffering capability. Maybe a tad less. So that can be four 15 minute exposures, two 30 minute exposures or one hour long exposure. If you haven't filled up the buffer you can simply click the shutter to begin another exposure. If you press the shutter and it won't start another exposure that means the buffer is filled. I've confirmed this on about a dozen different 5Dmk2 cameras. Try again in manual focus mode, in manual exposure mode with a 15 second exposure to test this."


** OK, I figured out the problem. The ability to keep shooting and buffer at the same time does not work with Live View activated. Works fine w/o it. And seems to hold approx an hours worth just as you noted.
Thanks again for the help, its really appreciated.

[Scott Martin]

OK, I figured out the problem. The ability to keep shooting and buffer at the same time does not work with Live View activated. Works fine w/o it.

Great! The Live View usage is a good point. Minimize your Live View usage just for quick focusing prior to making long exposures. Excessive Live View usage can warm up the sensor and lead to noisy images.

[Kirk Gittings]

Aside from the suggestions above minimizing noise in the capture with the 5DII, the new noise reduction tools in Lightroom 3 are superior to any of the plugins I have used like Noise Ninja.

[Scott Martin]

Aside from the suggestions above minimizing noise in the capture with the 5DII, the new noise reduction tools in Lightroom 3 are superior to any of the plugins I have used like Noise Ninja.

Yep, Eric's new noise reduction algorithms are fantastic. It's always best to start from the RAW file and only resort to reducing noise from rendered files if you must. The new Topaz DeNoise 5 plug-in looks pretty impressive and might be useful in extreme situations. They have some 5Dmk2 examples with LR3/CS5 comparisons at http://bit.ly/bf03jB . That said, I like the idea of being able to to everything you need to parametrically and avoid the plug-ins altogether.

[Kirk Gittings]

Yep, Eric's new noise reduction algorithms are fantastic. It's always best to start from the RAW file and only resort to reducing noise from rendered files if you must. The new Topaz DeNoise 5 plug-in looks pretty impressive and might be useful in extreme situations. They have some 5Dmk2 examples with LR3/CS5 comparisons at http://bit.ly/bf03jB . That said, I like the idea of being able to to everything you need to parametrically and avoid the plug-ins altogether.

I am an architectural photographer and high ISO's are a rarity for me. But last week in Vegas I had to shoot a baseball game at twilight to show the sports facility in use. So i was shooting at ISO 1600 making these files considerably noisier than the rest of the shoot. With LR3 I cleaned up these high ISO files with ease=far better than I could do with my old standby, Noise Ninja.