topic Re: EOS R5 - High pixilation in low light in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

EOS R5 - High pixilation in low light

lsvasan — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 01:43:03 GMT

Hi, Shooting with my R5 in low light with ISO greater than 1600 gives me a very grainy picture. I dont have this problem when I use my 5D Mark IV. Any suggestions on I can avoid getting a grainy shot using my R5.

Re: EOS R5 - High pixilation in low light

Tronhard — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 02:23:23 GMT

Hi and welcome to the forum:
If this is happening across multiple cameras and types, then it would suggest your issue is technique. To help us to assist you further, it would be very helpful to know the following:
What types of images you shoot - sport, portrait etc.
What lenses you use
What modes you shoot in: M, Av etc.
Any custom settings
What metering methods you employ: e.g. evaluative, single point, spot etc.
What you produce - images for social media digital display, prints (greyscale or colour?)

Finally, some sample images - preferably without processing and with the EXIF data as well. Please provide a link rather than post images, as we need to see the original images, not downsized ones to fit the site size limits for posting.

Re: EOS R5 - High pixilation in low light

AtticusLake — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 08:46:05 GMT

So of course this is somewhat subjective; "very grainy" to you might be "OK" to someone else. If you want a baseline for comparison, I actually shot a test of the R5 by the light of one candle. Skip to 03:35 to see what it's like at ISO 25,600 -- to my eyes, it's not too bad. The test has no post noise reduction applied; it's straight from the camera, apart from de-logging. You'll see the settings I used.

https://moonblink.info/MudLake/gear#Candlelight

Re: EOS R5 - High pixilation in low light

shadowsports — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 09:55:14 GMT

Hi Isvasan,

Like atticuslake I've had very good results indoors, in low light with higher ISO's. His candlelight video would test the ability of any sensor's low light capability. Here are 2 examples of ISO 2500 and 12800. Please provide some example images as requested by Tronhard with details about the shooting conditions (artificial lighting?, shooting mode, settings, etc)

38mm, f3.2, 1/80, ISO 250034mm, f3.2, 1/80, ISO 12800

Re: EOS R5 - High pixilation in low light

johnrmoyer — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 14:00:53 GMT

I hope some of this might help.

It seems to me that the EOS R5 is very sensitive to temperature. As the temperature increases, so does the noise (graininess). The biggest difference between the EOS R5 and your 5D Mark IV is the IBIS and the higher resolution. IBIS means that it is more difficult to cool the sensor chip. Higher resolution on the same size sensor means that each photo site on the sensor collects fewer photons with the same exposure so that the probability of unexpected luminance or color is higher. Higher temperatures will also increase noise in the 5D Mark IV.

I try to avoid using the big screen and use only the viewfinder to reduce power usage since power use turns into heat. In the power settings, I set the screen and viewfinder to turn off quickly.

Also, it seems to me that enabling any of auto lighting optimizer, highlight tone priority, peripheral illumination correction, or portrait lighting in the camera menus makes it more likely that there will be noise. I enable these later in the Canon DPP software if that is desirable.

In Canon DPP, one may see the noise reduction that the camera would have chosen. The camera will reduce the amount of digital lens optimizer as the noise increases.

One strategy for dealing with the noise would be to apply noise reduction, then downsample, then apply unsharp mask. For noise reduction, Canon DPP works for me and other software also does noise reduction. A median filter would work for noise reduction before downsampling. I expect that one would not need to downsample to the resolution of the 5D Mark IV to get noise similar to the 5D Mark IV at the same ISO. I might downsample a noisy image to 75% (I use graphicsmagick for this, but other software also has good algorithms). Unsharp mask should have a radius larger than any remaining noise to avoid sharpening the noise.

exiftool -CameraTemperature *.CR3

will report the sensor temperature.

Re: EOS R5 - High pixilation in low light

lsvasan — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 20:55:07 GMT

I was shooting at an indoor event. Used a RF24-105 - F4 L series lens in Manual mode. No custom setting, used evaluative metering. Attached is a picture. appreciate your inputs.

Here is a link to two images:

https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/bv7sdtbtSRiprFNUleYZuw.cVBrRvytHDVqYGNaAI_25-

Re: EOS R5 - High pixilation in low light

lsvasan — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 20:56:54 GMT

I was shooting at an indoor event. Used a RF24-105 - F4 L series lens in Manual mode. No custom setting, used evaluative metering. Attached is a picture. appreciate your inputs.

Here is a link to two images:

https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/bv7sdtbtSRiprFNUleYZuw.cVBrRvytHDVqYGNaAI_25-

Re: EOS R5 - High pixilation in low light

Tronhard — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 21:16:31 GMT

My first reaction is that these are both under exposed, which would cause noise to appear in your images. I am curious why you are shooting in manual mode...

Can you try a few shots in Av mode and see what they turn out like please?

Re: EOS R5 - High pixilation in low light

lsvasan — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 21:47:41 GMT

sure, will do

Re: EOS R5 - High pixilation in low light

lsvasan — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 22:25:59 GMT

thank you. I will try using just the viewfinder and see how it help.

Re: EOS R5 - High pixilation in low light

lsvasan — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 22:27:08 GMT

I was shooting at an indoor event. Used a RF24-105 - F4 L series lens in Manual mode. No custom setting, used evaluative metering. Attached is a picture. appreciate your inputs.

Here is a link to two images:

https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/bv7sdtbtSRiprFNUleYZuw.cVBrRvytHDVqYGNaAI_25-