7D Mark II noise at low iso

[thegios]

This is a 3:1 crop taken with a 7D Mark II with a Canon 17-55 f2.8 lens at 17mm f11 iso 100 1/200 sec: is it normal such a noise on the sky?

[diverhank]

Did you brighten the image in post?  Then the answer is yes.

[thegios]

Nope... Just imported in Lightroom, which applies by defult the following sharpening:

- Amount 40

- Radius 1

- Detail 25

- Masking 0

I tried seeting masking to 100 and the problem is a lot mitigated.

Just wondering if this is a normal behaviour.

[diverhank]

Then light room sharpening is the culprit.  I usually don't use sharpening at all.  Try just a bit of clarity , vibrance and saturation.  When you need to sharpen, use a brush and target specific area (avoid the sky).

[ebiggs1]

"Just imported in Lightroom, ..."

Now you can fix it in LR if it bothers you.  Any solid darker color will show some noise even at lower ISOs. NR in LR is under the sliders you listed as the ones edited.  The camera also applied some sharpening so you got it twice.  You can set that to 0.

[thegios]

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@ebiggs1 wrote:

The camera also applied some sharpening so you got it twice.  You can set that to 0.

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It's a raw file opened in lightroom, so any in camera processing done on the JPG should not affet the preview.

[ebiggs1]

"It's a raw file opened in lightroom, so any in camera processing done on the JPG should not affet the preview."

You may not know, is that Lightroom doesn't automatically apply your camera settings. It uses them and then it converts them back to Adobe Standard. That is why a Raw image that looked great on the cameras LCD and then it looks different on your monitor.  However LR does use them for a starting point.

Photos are imported and immediately display the photo's embedded preview.  Embedded previews that are created by the camera.  All settings applied. However, the embedded previews don't match how LR interprets the Raw files. 

[TCampbell]

Can you post the original RAW file?

(you can’t post it here, but if you post it to a Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. account then you can share it with a link.)

[thegios]

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@TCampbell wrote:

Can you post the original RAW file?

(you can’t post it here, but if you post it to a Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. account then you can share it with a link.)

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https://www.dropbox.com/s/07htcgtcvo4jlue/_31A9703.CR2?dl=0

here it is 🙂

[TCampbell]

Keep in mind ALL images have noise. I'll avoid the technical discussion on why, the different types of noise, why it is unavoidable, etc. 

I imported this to Lightroom. 

At 1:1 scale, noise is very low (I have difficulty seeing it with my eyes)

At 4:1 scale (400% zoom) I see noise similar to the section you've posted here.

We sometimes ask people to post a 1:1 crop of an image to show an issue... but usually not a 4:1 crop. 

If you needed to produce a very large print, you'd navigate to the "Detail" section of hte Develop module, hold down the 'alt' key, and slide until the sky goes flat black.  (For this image, I got that result with the Masking slider set to 9.)  The masking slider looks for edges of contrast from flat areas so that "sharpening" occurs only where there are edges but skips areas that are flat (such as the sky).  Similarly, de-noising will be emphasized in flat areas, but will be reduced near edges of contrast (to avoid losing details).

Having done this, you can increase the Luminance noise reduction.

I usually try to minimize de-noising so that it's 'just enough'.