[Adam]

Compared to the K-x and even K10, I had always been just a little bit disappointed with the out-of-camera noise found on higher ISO shots from my K-7, starting from ISO 400 and up. Out of boredom today, I sat down and fiddled with the in-camera settings and custom functions, and made the following changes:

In camera noise-reduction minimum ISO: changed from 800 to 400.
Noise reduction strength: changed from low to high

Today, I went to a dark indoor ship museum, and I must say, I was blown away by the effect of these changes. I was shooting at ISO 800, F2, around 1/10s, and on manual WB w/ the 85mm. The resulting photos were not only sharp, but also almost entirely noise-free! I'll be posting more of them within the next few days, so stay tuned. So, if you're pissed that the K-7 has a lot of noise, just make the above change

#3 is a 80% crop of #2.

Image 1 EXIF:
F2
1/45
ISO 800

Image 2/3 EXIF:
F2
1/15
ISO 800

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Adam
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[Marc Langille]

Hi Adam,

Looks good - how was the detail retention when you bumped up the settings to NR strength to high. That crop gives me an idea, just curious if you could expand on it a bit more?

Thanks,
Marc

[kittykat46]

You've got it !

The three best ways I've found to get clean High ISO shots from the K-7

a) Shoot RAW, then process with Noise Reduction later

b) JPEG straight out of camera with NR "Off", then process with Noise Reduction software. It sounds counter-intuitive, but NR software like Noise Ninja and Noiseware work best with image files which have not had any previous NR processing done on it.

c) JPEG straight out of camera with "Strong" NR - as you found.
The K-7's detail retention is quite good up to ISO3200, even with Strong NR.

Its usually not as effective as (a) or (b) above, if you don't have any intention or time do anymore PP, that's the way to go.

[Christopher M.W.T]

awesome!

Adam were those shots in RAW or JPEG?

[scorpioh]

awesome!

Adam were those shots in RAW or JPEG?

I think it's really for jpegs that the in-camera settings are going to be in effect. Yeah, he's definitely talking about jepgs.

[Adam]

All JPEGs- I don't shoot RAW

I'll check in with more details once all the photos are processed. As far as I can see, though, the loss of detail is minimal, and definitely worth it considering that there's no noise at ISO 800!

[LeeRunge]

Awesome. I was just playing around with the noise reduction settings tonight with some illumination flares from artillery. I'll try and upload a few later.

[Marc Sabatella]

FWIW, I'd also suggest experimenting with the sharpening settings. I recently discovered I've been oversharpening my high ISO images (not from K-7) for years. I actually like the sharpening settings I had been using in general, but they definitely had been making the noise that much more prominent. I've always known this was true in theory, but didn't think the relatively modest sharpening I was using would be problematic. If you're shooting RAW, I'd suggest turning the "threshold" parameter of your sharpening algorithm up quite a but higher than usual (amount and radius can stay about the same). If you shoot JPEG, I'd simply recommend playing with the different shaprness / fine sharpness settings.

[LeeRunge]

A few captures of illumination artillery rounds out here in Afghanistan. The last shot is a High ISO jpeg to show noise.

Picture 1 ISO 1600
Picture 2 100% crop, ISO 100
Picture 3 ISO 400
Picture 4 worst case unedited ISO 6400 JPEG 30 seconds F2.8

[JohnBee]

I don't mean to nit-pick but I'm not sure ISO800 qualifies as "high" in the ISO arena these days
IMO. the H in High() seems to start at/or around ISO2000 and move on from there. Though for what it's worth, I found the K-7 to do superbly up to/about ISO2000 at which point, the uphill noise battles take place.

Though I've found the K-7 can do quite well up to/about ISO3200 though anything beyond that would require a significant amount of NR work(unjustifiably so). TBH, if low light ISO is your game, then I'd just keep a a Kx in toe to cover my bases(much easier I think).

[LeeRunge]

One more, keep in mind ISO 1600 is the max for bulb. Also I really wish they could fix the down time between long exposures, it seems to take an equal time to the shutter open to process the photo after exposure. A few rounds were fired while I was playing with the long exposure features.

[bikecoboss]

Also I really wish they could fix the down time between long exposures, it seems to take an equal time to the shutter open to process the photo after exposure.

That's actually a 'feature' of the Kx, anything over 30 seconds automatically gets the noise reduction filter, which takes the same time as the original exposure. There have been some others (mostly astro-photographers) that have complained about this, but I doubt we'll see it 'fixed' in the Kx, maybe its successor?

edit: sorry, I see you've got a K-7, I'm not sure if there is a manual setting for the noise reduction on that camera...

[Ex Finn.]

Same dark frame subtraction with K-7. 30 second threshold is when it kicks in.
BTW, I would hate to be the Blimp-driver, talk-about a sitting duck.
Did you catch some milky-way in your Blimp shot, or is it something else?.

[hcc]

Adam,
Great stuff, Thank you so much for trying and solving an apparent "flaw" of the K-7.

I may add one piece of info regarding K-7 and in-camera PP.

I tend to follow option (b) of kittykat46 (ie no noise reduction at all), and use later Noiseware for PP. Why?

Although I dislike spending time in PP, I do a lot of Hi Continuous shooting. I found that the in-camera noise-reduction requires a fair amount of PP and does limit the number of Hi continuous shots that can be taken at 5.2 fps. The in-camera noise-reduction PP is not as time-consuming as the lens distortion correction PP. But it does slow down the camera after 10-20 s depending upon the camera settings.

This will only affect/interest only a few of us, but I hope it will help....

[LeeRunge]

Same dark frame subtraction with K-7. 30 second threshold is when it kicks in.
BTW, I would hate to be the Blimp-driver, talk-about a sitting duck.
Did you catch some milky-way in your Blimp shot, or is it something else?.

I did get some milky way in the ISO 6400.

All shots 1-3, 5 are RAW and the high ISO 6400 is jpeg.

The blimp is unmanned fortunately.

Lee