Canon 5Dmk2, 10-stop ND & noise

[Jonathan Cross]

On my 5Dmk2 there are 3 noise reduction settings, off, auto, and always on when using long exposures.  I have tried all 3 on the same scene with a 10-stop ND and a 50 sec exposure at f13 and ISO100.  In Photoshop at 100% I cannot see any real difference when looking at TIFF conversions of the RAW images, nor when looking at the RAW images in Lightroom.  It is not clear from the manual whether the noise reduction applies to RAW images. 

Has anyone experience of this and a conclusion about what to use?

Jonathan Cross

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

Hi Jonathan,

Are you saying that the images are all equally noisy at all the settings? Or that you cannot see any difference between the settings??

I use the same camera and in low light situations (if this is what you are doing) and my experience, you are going to get some noise whatever you do. So I leave noise reduction off all the time and never use it and if the image is noisy, I use Nik to clean things up, or if it is mainly colour noise, then I use the colour noise reduction in ACR first and then Nik.

Photobloke

[Jonathan Cross]

The images do not seem very noisy and I cannot detect any difference whatever setting I use.  If the settings do not apply to RAW images then I will not bother further and, like you, do something in post-processing.

Jonathan

[marcmccalmont]

If my memory is correct when I first tested my 5DII longer than 60 seconds was where you would see an improvement with NR on
Marc