topic Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related) in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

EOS R6 Mark II - Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

tmoney275 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 15:16:33 GMT

I have been shooting with a R6ii w/ rf 35mm 1.8 lense. All was good first day out and got some great shots. Shooting at F2.0 / auto iso / 1/1000th shutter. Photos were pretty sharp and no real issues.

I went out today and shot some photos. Very bright conditions out so i stopped down to f5.6 / 250 iso / 1/1000th shutter. I had some crazy issues with my photos looking very grainy and noisy. No idea what the issue is. Seems that if i shoot at wider aperture around 2.0 I am getting way sharper results, even with higher ISO.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

tmoney275 — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 23:16:25 GMT

Here's a link to some photos. The first 4 are decently sharp photos we are happy with. The last 4 are the grainy ones with the last photo showing an upclose look with camera settings.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/zUHWjrK2TFCoKiSU8

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

deebatman316 — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 23:31:00 GMT

These pictures don't have any metadata attached and they're NOT in the RAW format. Are you sure its a sharpness issue or a depth of field problem. Did you previously shoot with shoot with an APS-C camera. Most lenses aren't their sharpest at wide open. Also a wide aperture such as F/2 has a lot bokeh (background blur) making it easy to have things out of focus. Even when not intended.

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

johnrmoyer — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 23:46:58 GMT

I hope some of this might be helpful.

Do you have the camera set to save a raw file as well as JPG?

You could get greater depth of field with F/8 or F/11 instead of F/5.6.

Is the unsharp mask applied in the camera or in other software?

If planning to use the out of camera JPG file instead of editing a raw file, then you might want to turn on the "digital lens optimizer" https://cam.start.canon/en/C012/manual/html/UG-04_Shooting-1_0280.html#Shooting-1_0280_4 and turn on "chromatic aberration correction" https://cam.start.canon/en/C012/manual/html/UG-04_Shooting-1_0280.html#Shooting-1_0280_5 and use "picture style" "Standard".

I suggest that a shutter speed of 1/1000 is much faster than needed. It might be good to try 1/250.

If you want foreground and background to be clear as well as the climber, you might use Av mode with F/11 or even F/13 and leave ISO and shutter speed to auto. "digital lens optimizer" will remove much of the small aperture diffraction blur from F/13.

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

tmoney275 — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 23:53:17 GMT

Yes, fully aware these are not raw, its a google photos album to share some examples......
I appreciate your response although i don't think you read my original post? I am aware of how lenses operate at their sharpest, which why I am confused and posting here for ideas.....We are saying the same thing. I'm stating that my first shoot I was shooting a f2.0 and got sharper results than i did today with f5.6 and up. Far more noise in my narrow f stop photos. I will upload some raw files.

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

tmoney275 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 15:18:16 GMT

Apologies. I only shoot in Raw. Just uploaded some raw files with meta data. The first two I am mostly happy with from last week. The last two are from today and have some grain / noise issues. Dont know if it was just a light thing or what.

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

tmoney275 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 15:18:31 GMT

***Just uploaded some raw files with meta data. The first two I am mostly happy with from last week. The last two are from today and have some grain / noise issues. Dont know if it was just a light thing or what.

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

tmoney275 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 15:18:44 GMT

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

deebatman316 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:10:32 GMT

How much are you zooming in on your pictures. If you zoom in to 100% you will see exactly what you say. Also is lens correction on too. RF lenses usually shoot a little wider than the stated focal length. This is to account for lens correction. EF lenses did not account for this because lens correction did not exist when the EOS system was released in 1987. Also I originally responded on my phone which has a much smaller screen than my laptop. Do you have Auto ISO ranges set up in the camera.

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

deebatman316 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:15:39 GMT

These pictures still lack metadata are you sure it wasn't stripped out when you uploaded them.

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

tmoney275 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:19:54 GMT

Yeah, zooming in to 100% and can see a noticeable difference in sharpness with todays photos vs the ones I took last week. All lens corrections are turned off in the camera. All settings are the same other than ISO, Aperture, and Shutter. Generally I manually set my Aperture, Shutter, and the run Auto ISO and just make sure I'm not getting too high with ISO.

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

tmoney275 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:22:19 GMT

If you click on each picture and hit the info button on the top right you will see the details for each photo

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

deebatman316 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:28:10 GMT

I found the EXIF Data. You do realize that pixel peeping will result in loss in quality and detail. Do you normally pixel peep. Cropping a picture also has the same affect as pixel peeping does. I would turn on lens correction too. Some lenses will show very noticeable vignetting if lens correction isn't turned on. I'm not sure if that particular suffers from this.

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

tmoney275 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:37:02 GMT

I appreciate you taking the time respond but we are way off track here on the varying results I am getting with my set up. Pixel peeping is the not the cause. Thanks for the thoughts. I'll wait for some others to take a look and respond.

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

deebatman316 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:48:03 GMT

The pictures look fine on my end but again I'm not working on my desktop computer which has 2 24 inch 4K computer monitors. I'm currently using my laptop which has a 15 inch screen. Now pixel peeping at 100% I do see noise but its not extreme like my old EOS 40D at ISO 1600. Which is H1 on that camera the ISO range was much more limited on older cameras. Also the extended ISO range for that camera was ISO 1600 & ISO 3200. Do you have your Auto ISO range set in camera. Or is it set to allow the entire ISO range instead of it being limited.

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

wq9nsc — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 01:02:30 GMT

On the second two photos, I am not seeing noise so much as a bit of overexposure and some reduction in contrast. The issue could have been the light angle and dispersion with moisture in the atmosphere. I have run into that issue multiple times on hiking trips to the Smoky Mountains where subtle changes in natural light make a tremendous difference in photographs regardless of lens, exposure triangle, etc. I have run into the same issue shooting afternoon sports where lighting doesn't create excessive glare or "hot spots" of over exposure but simply results in a somewhat washed out photo that can be somewhat corrected with contrast along with shadow and highlight gain settings during RAW processing.

Rodger

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

Peter — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 15:22:00 GMT

@tmoney275 wrote:

***Just uploaded some raw files with meta data. The first two I am mostly happy with from last week. The last two are from today and have some grain / noise issues. Dont know if it was just a light thing or what.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/zUHWjrK2TFCoKiSU8

The CR3 files there are not downloaded as raw files.

As you can see Picasa from Google exports the raw files to JPEG files.

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

tmoney275 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 15:42:57 GMT

This likely an issue with uploading to google. Regardless, I am importing from the SD straight to Lightroom. I only uploaded to show the difference in picture quality which can be seen whether its a JPEG or RAW on google. I appreciate the thought but not related to the issue at hand.

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

tmoney275 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 15:44:13 GMT

This is super helpful. The light was a bit odd, the sun was directly over head and made for tough conditions. Wondering if its a combo of lighting plus narrow F stop. Thank you!

Re: R6ii Noisy / Lack of Sharpness help (not ISO related)

Peter — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 15:53:02 GMT

It is like this every time CR3 files are shared via Google Photo. Not just this time with your files.