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"tested" an E-P2 at a shop... Strange results

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spiderfrank

Guest
Hi guys, yesterday I went to a shop and asked to see the OLY E-P2 with kit zoom and a manual lens (they gave me a brand new Summicron... oh my God! ;-) ).
I made some shots in the shop, using my SD card, the Summicron is a dream, of course, but I noticed a lot of noise and some sort of "stripes of noise" in the darkest areas. I was almost convinced to buy the camera, but when i saw the images, it was a broken dream to me. i didn't noticed anything like this in the pictures on line. I'd like very much to have your opinion about this issue.

Thank you
Franco



500 iso


200 iso


1250 iso


640 iso


1600 iso


640 iso
 

kweide

New member
You should set GRADATION to normal. All other settings will increase the noise level in darker areas.
An other point is: What Noise filter was set ??? Was it OFF ? You should use LOW
Give is a second try...
 
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spiderfrank

Guest
kweide, I don't know how was the set-up of the camera, I supposed it was at the default values. Your photos are very good like all the images I found in Internet. Can you reproduce the problems with a "right" (wrong) set-up of the parameters?
 
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spiderfrank

Guest
Michiel, this is not a photo-contest, I like very much the shots of Kweide, but the question is if what I saw in the shop is the "reality" of the camera, or only a mix of bad menu settings. That camera costs a huge amount of money, and I want to be sure of it's qualities and issues before eventually deciding to buy a m4/3 camera. Of course in ten minutes "on hand" it's impossible to explore the menu and find the "right" settings...
 

pellicle

New member
Hi

... but the question is if what I saw in the shop is the "reality" of the camera, or only a mix of bad menu settings. That camera costs a huge amount of money, and I want to be sure of it's qualities and issues before eventually deciding to buy a m4/3 camera. Of course in ten minutes "on hand" it's impossible to explore the menu and find the "right" settings...
your original post was:

but I noticed a lot of noise and some sort of "stripes of noise" in the darkest areas. I was almost convinced to buy the camera, but when i saw the images, it was a broken dream to me.
I've looked hard and can't see any trace of your stripes of noise anywhere. I even examined the pictures you posted carefully in photoshop at 300%


click picture to see fully 300%


could you make clearer what you see wrong?

I know that with the G1 (I have a G1 not a Oly, but there are valid comparisons to be made with them) will show some strange artifacts in RAW files depending on processing and in JPG at higher ISO. This can be found when looking for these problems.

For instance, this image was taken (camera JPG at 1600iso)



zooming in to 100% (if you follow the picture link)


will show focus errors and some camera shake (hand held with a 300mm at 1/50th sec) and some noise but nothing I'd call funny for a sensor like this at ISO like that.

more information on the broken dream (and what your dream originally was) please
 
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spiderfrank

Guest
what I mean with "stripes" (sorry but English is not my language) is that the reddish points of noise seems to form orizontal bands in the dark miosier areas. I don't see them in your photo of the conference, and don't see noise in the first two from kweide. If the shots of kweide are the normal behaviour of the camera, I think it's a beautiful little toy...
 
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spiderfrank

Guest
ah ah ah!! :D
the mazing is... amazing!

out of joke, any other opinion about my little test?

thank you
Franco
 

ptomsu

Workshop Member
testing my EP2 continuously since 2 months in real life and -

NO STRANGE RESULTS

something must be wrong ;)
 

kweide

New member
And yes... if E-P setup went wrong you definitly have a lot more noise in the pictures as usual.
But keep in mind: Setup cannot do miracles. You have to do a little PP to achive the look you want. E-Px cams are no DSLRs and no P+S cam !
Okay, here we go

Noise filter: LOW ( On Higher ISO from 1250 to max: NORMAL )
Noise reduction AUTO
Gradation NORMAL ( lifts dark areas and has great impact und shadownoise )
Shadowing comp: OFF ( lifts the shadows in the edges but increases noise as well )
Colorspace: ADOBE RGB
Sharpness: -1 to max 0 ( sharpnes accentuates even lowest noise. I always do sharpening in PP ).

Thats it

Mostly Gradation and Shadowing comp are set wrong. Both settings cause NOISE in dark areas. Just check that both are set correctly.

Another points for noise are:

Whitebalance: It has an impact on noiselevel as well. With wrong WB you will have more noise !
Expose to the right ! It is even better to overexpose a little ( +1 to max +2 ) and reduce the brightness in PP to normal mode. You will see a lot less noise !

But yes, the E-Px cams are NOT NOISEFREE. You have to do a little rework as usual on all digital cams. But with a little setup and a little PP you will see fantasic outcome.
BTW. I dont see any banding in your pics. Only a little Noise in the dark areas ( assume Gradation and/or shadowing comp are on wrong values ) That level can easily be controlled with Noiseware pro Noiseninja or NIK Define or whatever you like...
 

pellicle

New member
Hi SpiderFrank

ok ... some thoughts on how to make better with what you get.

Firstly your shots were indoor, not outdoor. People tend to think of cameras as magic boxes, but its not just "white-mans-magic" and there are some principles of physics and engineering you can apply and which are comprehensible to 'mortals'

Firstly, I'm reasonably comfortable that the sensors on the cameras are balanced for daylight and I'm reasonably sure that white balance is not done by tuning the analog gain of B or G sensors in the array.

So, if you shoot in daylight all things will be at their peak, but if you shoot in other light and use AWB then the camera will "fix" for you in the data (not in the analog Analog to Digital conversion stage) the imbalnce of light colours you see.

so, if you set your camera to be daylight (not AWB where the camera makes some guesses as to the colour temperature) of an indoor shot you'll get something like this:


This is a snapshot of the back of my G1, notice how much better the red signal is, and how little blue there is?

Split the channels of a AWB shot from indoors and you'll see that most of the noise is in the blue channel looking at the above historgram you can see that to "normalise it" one would need to stretch that blue significantly. Depending on what happens on how your camera reports clipping, you may get red channel only reporting causing the blinking warnings ... I'm told that's common.

So, if you want to expose right, and minimise noise you can either blow out the reds (recoverable to some extent in RAW post processing) or do something quite old fashioned and use a colour correction filter such as an 80A wratten on your camera when you're indoors.

These are a deep blue and will really help your digital images (just as they did our film images years ago).

so while we've largely forgotten about colour filtration and film "colour temperature" the concept still holds importance. I'm sure if you did you're test outside you'd have been happier with what you saw from the camera, and if you used the 80A on the camera inside you'd be happier than you were with the images you found.

I encourage you to split the test image into RGB in photoshop and look at each of the R G and B layers.

:)
 
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Jamesmd

Guest
Hi , kweide , thanks for tips ;-) .Do those settings afect RAW ?

Pellicle , yes , whe forget things , and sometimes think digital is magic , thanks , I'm of to buy a filter . ;-)

cheers

James
 

kweide

New member
If you like to use Auto WB, reduce the R value in the WB setup ( 1- or -2 ) and increase G by the same amount.

This prevents the red channel to be blown out either....

@James
RAW is RAW, all camera internal setting touch only the JPG Engine. RAW is untouched....

@Pellicle
This is so beautifully said.... thats what i meant with "Set the WB to the right value". Do never trust AWB. Always do an individual White balance. It is sooo easy...
And afterwards make a channel by channel Level correction to R, G, B channels
 
J

Jamesmd

Guest
Thanks Kweide , I understand Raw are raw , thats why as you gave settings I thought perhaps the camera had some settings before actually recording the raw .

cheers
 
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spiderfrank

Guest
Hi guys, I'm back on this topic because I just bought a Pen E-PL1 with viewfinder (VF2) and 14-42 kit lens.
Now I'm starting to orient in the menus and terminology, but from the first shots it seems to be less noisy than the E-P2 I tested in the shop, so probably there was some wrong setup. Next step is to buy an m39-m4/3 adapter, so I can use my Voigtlander lenses, plus some old vintage lenses.

Not so elegant like the E-P2, but still a beautiful toy ;-)

Franco
 
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spiderfrank

Guest
ps: I'll try to use the kweide's tips with my E-PL1, wait and see... ( Thank-you Kweide )
 
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