7D Mk 2- Painting w/light, TIPS Plz for keeping noise down, 10 to 20 Sec exposures.

[Dragbike81]

Greetings, I enjoy shooting in darkness and painting with light.  Not uncommon for me to use 10 or 20 second exposures or more.  I generally will use a hand held flash light, or pop a strobe by hand.  HOW best can I keep noise down with my new 7D Mk II?  Thoughts, comments or suggestions please.

[ebiggs1]

High ISO = noise
Keep the exposures to the minimum
Use LR or PS noise reduction
Would really help to see it as these are just common procedures.

[RobertTheFat]

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@Dragbike81 wrote:

Greetings, I enjoy shooting in darkness and painting with light.  Not uncommon for me to use 10 or 20 second exposures or more.  I generally will use a hand held flash light, or pop a strobe by hand.  HOW best can I keep noise down with my new 7D Mk II?  Thoughts, comments or suggestions please.

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Look into "Long Exposure Noise Reduction". My original 7D's have it, so I assume the Mk II does as well. The premise is sort of hokey, but some people claim that it works. (Full disclosure: I've never used it.)

[Dragbike81]

I always use ISO 100 And my exposures are generally in seconds. I use LR in post PR, and I'm wondering why I see so much noise in darkness with a max low ISO?

[ebiggs1]

"... and I'm wondering why I see so much noise in darkness with a max low ISO?"

Noise is also produced with long exposuers.  It happens as the sensor heats up.  I think post is where you will want to tackle this.  You can try the in camera noise reduction but PS is going to be the better of the two.

[TCampbell]

I'm wondering if what you're seeing isn't really "noise".  20 seconds at ISO 100 is nothing for a 7D II.  I have 8 minute exposures at ISO 800 and, while they have "noise" it's pretty low (and easily handled in software.)

Can you post an example?  It might be better to post a link to a full-resolution image because the process of resampling an image to a lower resolution has the natural side-effect of reducing noise.

[Dragbike81]

Good morning.  I hate to sound like a dolt, but how do I load images here?

[Dragbike81]

Hi There,

My name is Tom McCarthy and I'm new to shooting the Canon series of cameras.  From the Canon Community board, I can see that Tim Campbell is a mighty knowledgeable guy when it comes to Canon cameras and long exposure shots.

  In as much as I enjoy shooting at night, I'd very much like to locate and exchange with Tim on how to get the most out of my new 7D Mk II Canon.

The message board and means to exchange VIA the Canon Community is very cumbersome to me.  I am hoping to contact Tim directly to exchange photographic knowledge.

Can you please help me reach Tim?

Thank you,

Tom McCarthy, [email address removed per forum guidelines]

[RobertTheFat]

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@Dragbike81 wrote:

Hi There,

My name is Tom McCarthy and I'm new to shooting the Canon series of cameras.  From the Canon Community board, I can see that Tim Campbell is a mighty knowledgeable guy when it comes to Canon cameras and long exposure shots.

  In as much as I enjoy shooting at night, I'd very much like to locate and exchange with Tim on how to get the most out of my new 7D Mk II Canon.

The message board and means to exchange VIA the Canon Community is very cumbersome to me.  I am hoping to contact Tim directly to exchange photographic knowledge.

Can you please help me reach Tim?

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The moderator will probably remove your email address as soon as (s)he sees it. But poke around in the forum options. There's a provision for sending private messages to forum participants; you can send a message to Tim with your email address in it.

[TCampbell]

Tom,

I sent you a private message.  Near the upper-right corner of the web page there's a tiny red envelope icon you can click to access private messages.

As of about 2 days ago (I think) I noticed the Canon community site takes an extremely long time to load a page -- making the site unusable.  But I've been re-checking about once per day in hopes that the issue would be resolved (so far it's still not resolved.)  Consequently, I have not been very active.

(Incidentally, for those who support the site ... I was suspicious that it might be my machien, or a browser plug-in, etc.  I've tried switching browsers, switching computers, and I've even tried when I'm away from the house on a different network (e.g. using the iPad).  It doesn't seem to matter what I use or from where... the painfully long load times persists.)