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?

[Dragbike81]

Robert, a link please?

[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.

[Dragbike81]

Great tip on the sensor issue. I'll have to experiment with 1/2, 1 sec, 2 &4sec to compare noies levels.

[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]

Hi, thank you for the input. I'm not with access to my photos now, but will do so tomorrow morning.

[RobertTheFat]

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@Dragbike81 wrote:
Robert, a link please?

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It should be in your Instruction Manual. Apparently the Canon Web siite is screwed up again, so I can't find a link to it. But if the site ever comes back to life, you might be able to poke around and find it.

In one approach that I took, I was able to find the 5D3 manual, but it told me there were no manuals for the 7D2. The Canon site used to be fine. Why on earth didn't they just leave well enough alone?