Lesson Info
20. ISO Speed Settings And Noise Reduction
Lessons
Class Introduction
12:55 2Photo Basics
04:03 3Basic Camera Controls
03:33 4Exposure Modes
20:29 5Top Deck Additional Features
05:29 6Exposure Bracketing
04:14 7Exposure Compensation Metering And Flash
18:50 8Viewfinder
12:31Live View And Movie Mode
23:52 10Autofocus Area
10:16 11Quick Menu
03:48 12Play Back
06:13 13Memory Cards
06:33 14Left And Right Of Camera Features
04:48 15Bottom And Front Of Camera Features
03:23 16Lenses
07:35 17Shooting Menu
10:45 18Lens Aberration Correction
04:31 19Multiple Exposure And Image Type
07:06 20ISO Speed Settings And Noise Reduction
10:22 21Mirror Lockup And Dust Delete Data
03:43 22External Speedlite Control And Anti Flicker
06:36 23AF Method Shutter And Metering
04:45 24Movie Menu
11:36 25AF Menu
23:09 26Playback Menu
07:43 27Setup Menu
24:13 28Custom Functions Menu Part 1
14:28 29Custom Functions Menu Part 2
19:48 30My Menu
05:04 31Camera Operation
09:47Lesson Info
ISO Speed Settings And Noise Reduction
Alright, next up is our ISO speed settings. We do have an ISO button on the top of the camera, but this is where we get to dive in and make some fine-tune controls on the way the auto portion of the auto ISO works. So, first off, you can select your ISO speed here. And it's the same as the button on the top of the camera. If you want to set a limiting range, if you don't even want to have the option of going down into the low settings, or the high settings, you can choose the range that you can choose from, with the button on the top of the camera. Generally, here, I like to have as wide a range as possible. In the auto range, when you are setting the camera to auto ISO, what ISOs do you want to have the camera have access to? And so, normally here you wanna choose 100, and then the highest number that you want the camera to work with. And so, as I mentioned before in my ISO test, I thought 6,400, 12,800 is kinda the upper limit before things start looking a little bit noisy, in my opi...
nion. So that's where I'm thinking it's a good place to have it set at. Next up is another very important setting, if you do have it set to auto ISO, at what point do you want the camera to start using a higher ISO? At what shutter speed, as you start dropping down, as light levels get lower and lower, do you want the camera to jump up? You can come in here, and you can pick a specific shutter speed that you find. If you know that you're not good at handholding the camera at anything less than 60th of a second, you can choose 160, for instance. There is the auto option. And you can let the camera choose, automatically, where to choose it. And it's gonna choose it based on what lens you have on the camera, based on a reciprocal of the focal lens. So if you have a 50 millimeter lens, it's generally gonna wanna give you about a 60th of a second before it drops down and uses the ISO and raises that to another setting. And so this is kinda the way it would work in the Aperture Priority mode. And let's just say you have an Aperture of 5.6 seconds. The camera is gonna be controlling the shutter speed cuz it's in Aperture Priority. And we are talking about auto ISO, so the camera is in control of the ISO as well. And so, in a average lighting situation, you might have a 60th of a second at ISO 100. If it gets brighter, you go outside, sun's brighter, you might get a faster shutter speed, like 1/1000 of a second. As the light goes down and it gets darker, the camera's gonna change shutter speeds, but it's gonna hit a breakpoint. And in this case, 60 is the breakpoint, and at which point, when it gets darker, the camera is gonna use the ISO to compensate for the lower light levels. And, so, the question is, where do you want that breakpoint, where the camera switches from changing shutter speeds, to changing ISOs. And, so, the auto setting's gonna be pretty good, because it's gonna look at what lens you use, and figure out the best, most typical handheld setting for that. But if you want, you can have it. Let's go to the next slide here, let's give an example. So let's say you have a 28 millimeter lens, the camera would normally want to have that changeover happen at 1/30 of a second, but if you are really steady at holding your camera, you could adjust this to the slower setting. If you're shooting more action, and you wanna make sure that you're ensured a faster shutter speed, you could set it to the faster setting. And each one of these notches on the scale, is one stop faster or one stop slower. So this will allow you to work with a variety of different lenses, and a shutter speed that is relative to that particular focal length of the lens. And so, if you were using this at 500, it would be choosing 1/500 of a second in the middle, and then it would be dropping down to 250, 125, or a 60th of a second on the slower side. And so this is gonna depend on the type of subjects that you're shooting, how fast they are moving, and how good and steady you are, at holding your camera. So I think the auto setting is pretty good for most people, but if you're good at handholding the camera, you might wanna have it over towards one of the slower settings. If you're using this with faster moving subjects, you'd wanna have it more towards the faster side of the scale. So that's our sub-menu of ISO speed settings. Next up is our auto lightening optimizer. You don't see it. And that was one, the example that I showed you where it was lightening up the shadows. Alright, long exposure noise reduction. When you shoot a long exposure, let's say 30 seconds, it takes 30 seconds to take the exposure. After that 30 seconds, the camera does processing of that image for 30 seconds, to help reduce the noise on that particular image. Now, from time to time, I like to do nighttime photography, and I like to shoot long exposures, and so I wondered, well, how good a job does the camera do at fixing this noise reduction? And before I show you, once again, this does not impact raw images. It only affects JPEG images. So, I took a scene in my studio, and lit it with some hot lights, did a 30 second exposure, and then I did it 30 seconds with the noise reduction turned on, and I looked really closely at these two images, and I can see a little bit of difference, but it's very, very little. And so, the in camera noise reduction, from my basic testing, does not seem very significant. And that does kinda throw you off in the field, when your camera is unavailable to shoot photos for 30 seconds. And so my recommendation is leaving this turned off, because this is something that you can also fix in post-production software, quite easily. And what the camera is doing in and of itself, is just not that impressive. First off, because there's not that much noise to begin with. Alright, very similar to that, what we just talked about, is High ISO speed noise reduction. And so this is gonna reduce the noise in high ISO, JPEG shots, not being done on raw images, once again. So we're gonna see some different results here. So, the first test is at ISO 25,000. And I'm gonna shoot it without any noise reduction, and then I'm gonna shoot it at low standard and high reduction. And here you can see that noise has been cleaned up quite a bit as we move into the standard and high positions. Now, the higher you have this set, the more it's gonna mar the details and the edge contrast on your images. And so, there is a price to be paid for setting this too high. Let's crank it up to 100,000, and it does clean up the noise, quite a bit. And so, if you really wanna have fine-tune control, leave it turned off, adjust it in Photoshop, or some other program. If you wanna have the camera do a little bit of the work for you, because you're happy with it, and you don't wanna deal with it later on, I'd probably recommend either the low or the satandard setting. The high seems a little bit aggressive, you might say, on its noise reduction. And so it's not one that I would recommend in most situations. Alright, highlight tone priority. What happens here is, the camera wants to go in and protect the highlights, once again, on JPEG images only, not raw, and as you can see in the examples here, with a disable there might be some highlights that go overexposed. And so if you wanna turn this on and enable it, it will protect highlights. However, it will no longer allow you to shoot at ISO 100 on the camera. It immediately sets it to 200. And what it seems like it's doing, is it seems like it's shooting everything about one stop dark, and then it brightens it up in post. And so it is a way of protecting the highlights, but I think it has a few too many consequences that go along with it. So it's not something that I would recommend for most people in most situations. Alright, we're onto the third tab of the shooting menu, image review, when you play back an image. Do you want to see your image on the back of the camera? In many cases, it's convenient to have. I nkow I've used the camera for time lapse photography, and I don't need to see the image every time, so I could turn it off to save battery power. But two seconds is pretty common. Sometimes people want a few more seconds, and four seconds isn't a bad choice, either. Next up, the camera beeps when the camera achieves sharp focus. And this gets to be a little annoying for subjects that you're photographing, or other photographers, or other environments that you might be in, and so, this is something that I often recommend people turning off, jus to be a little bit more stealthy about their shooting. And so you can disable it here. If you do want confirmation that you have achieved focus, well, A, you can just look at the image, and see if it's in focus. But if you want some other electronic confirmation, remember, in the view finder, that green dot, in the bottom right-hand corner, will turn on when the camera has achieved focus. Now, it will only do this, by the way, in the single shot mode. It will not do this in the continuous shot mode. Release shutter without card. This controls whether you can fire the shutter release if there is no memory cards in the camera. And since you don't want to think that you're taking photos without memory cards in there, it's a good thing to leave this on disable, so that the camera will not work unless you have a memory card in the camera. The only people that I think really wanna leave this on enable, is if you're working in a camera store, and you wanna show what the sound of the shutter is like.
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Ratings and Reviews
Fred Innamorato
John does a great job as usual. He provides so many visual aides and demonstrations which really helps you understand how to operate and set up your camera. His step by step explanation of the entire menu and each tab is excellent. In addition to his many photography tips and instructions. What an excellent class and a great value for all the detailed instructions provided. Much better than the manual you get in the box. Plus you get to watch this as many times as needed. I highly recommend this course and all of John's other classes.
Joe Berkeley
I quite enjoyed John's course on the 1DX mark ii. To be frank, I should have taken it 122,000 shots ago when I bought the camera. I learned quite a bit. There were only a few occasions when I thought my cranium could explode. But I walked away from the course with some great tips and in the grand scheme of things, the money I invest in education is always more valuable than the latest and greatest camera strap, lens, or bag. It will probably take a few months for all of the information to sink in but I'm feeling good about what I learned and the price I paid for it. All in all, a good value.
Ian Sherratt
Great video. Loved the clear explanations, great views and mixture of video and slides. Iāve read a lot of manuals and books on settings and use of various Canon cameras but this is the first time Iāve really understood the full range of functions.
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