Q3 - Weird dots on photos

[georgechan]

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Greetings.

I just got my Q3 couple days ago and I tried to shoot in low light tonight. I was playing with the file and trying to see how far I can push them, and I found that whenever I try to push the shadow up, there will be some weird white dots showing up. (Please see the first photo)

At first I thought it might just because I took that photo with 12500 iso, but then it also happens on other photos, including this one taken with 1250 iso (look at the darkest area in the second photo).

I have also attached a photo I took with my M10R with 20000 iso, shadow push to 100, there's no white dots.

What have I done wrong and how to fix this problem?

(Edited: The photos look much less "grainy" in LR but the white dots appear when exported)

(Edited: Just reviewed the photos again and I found that when shooting above iso 4000 the photos are unacceptably grainy. I don't mind grainy, and in fact, I usually add grain in my photos when I was shooting with my M10R and I push it to 12500 iso when needed. But the photos I got from Q3 shooting with iso4000 is as grainy as M10R shooting with 20000...)

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Edited July 29, 2023 by georgechan

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[trickness]

Q2M has the same issue for me at anything 12500 or over. It's kinda random, some pix have tons of white spots, then next frame with same light & settings have only a couple. When I first got the camera it happened at even 400 ISO sometimes, then acknowledged it and did a firmware update for pixel mapping. That improved it, but didn't fix it at high ISO.

The bottom line is that you have to expose correctly at higher ISO or you're going to have noise in the shadows. Bring them up, you're going to see it and it's going to be ugly. Run the picture through an AI noise plug in before you edit and results will be slightly better. But the marketing hype, even for the monochrom cameras about how they're so great at super high ISOs comes with a caveat. There's going to be noise in the images, might be white spots, might be banding or webbing, and if you try to bring the exposure up you will see it a lot more. 

Every time I use either my SL2 or my Q2M at higher ISOs I know I'm going to be in for a lot of work in post, so I try to either avoid it, or actually lean into the noise as a creative tool.

 

 

[goodbokeh]

George, I own the Q2 and I think your Q3 is fine. I think the PR IQ spin on this new sensor is inflated. You won't get top quality results above 1600 ISO.  I say this because I have this same Sony sensor design in two of my non-Leica cameras. I usually lid them at ISO 1600 but will go to 3200 if I have to. White dots are just a manifestation of pushing the sensor beyond it's quality limits, that's all. I also have the M10-R and would say the noise level is in the same neighborhood as your Q3 and I follow the same ISO limit of 1600-3200. My M10-M is quality up to 12,500.

[georgechan]

6 hours ago, trickness said:

Every time I use either my SL2 or my Q2M at higher ISOs I know I'm going to be in for a lot of work in post, so I try to either avoid it, or actually lean into the noise as a creative tool.

5 hours ago, goodbokeh said:

You won't get top quality results above 1600 ISO.  I say this because I have this same Sony sensor design in two of my non-Leica cameras. I usually lid them at ISO 1600 but will go to 3200 if I have to. White dots are just a manifestation of pushing the sensor beyond it's quality limits, that's all. I also have the M10-R and would say the noise level is in the same neighborhood as your Q3 and I follow the same ISO limit of 1600-3200. My M10-M is quality up to 12,500.

Thank you all for the reply. I don't mind the grain but i have never seen this amount of white dots on my M10R photos even when shooting above 12500 iso. Also, when in Lightroom preview, the amount of white dots are acceptable, but it gets ugly and the amount of white dots increases substantially when exporting the file to jpg. Just like this: Same photo, same setting, in Lightroom, and exported as jpg.

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[jaapv]

It is what monochrome sensors do at high ISO and underexposed. Don't forget, if you push ISO 20.00 shadows 100%, you are effectively exposing for ISO 40.000 No Bayer filter to blur them out and this is the result. Avoid this by exposing liberally.

[katieg]

Looking at your histogram on the screenshot grab, it looks at least a stop or two underexposed. Care to share how you metered? 

[georgechan]

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17 minutes ago, jaapv said:

It is what monochrome sensors do at high ISO and underexposed. Don't forget, if you push ISO 20.00 shadows 100%, you are effectively exposing for ISO 40.000 No Bayer filter to blur them out and this is the result. Avoid this by exposing liberally.

Thank you for your reply. This is not the monochrome model but a Q3. What makes me feeling confused is that my M10R never had this problem when pushing the shadow, it just looks more grainy but never had these weird outline “patterns”. I found that it’s ok to push the exposure not the shadow, which will only brings in more grain not “noise”. And also any idea on why the amount of noise increases when exported to jpg compare to looking at the photo in LR?

[georgechan]

8 minutes ago, katieg said:

Looking at your histogram on the screenshot grab, it looks at least a stop or two underexposed. Care to share how you metered? 

Multi field and I left the iso setting on auto

[katieg]

In such a dark setting, my advice to you is that the camera still may require some exposure compensation on your part to help balance out the meter for proper exposure. I just tested this in my home indoors and it’s past sunset. No matter which metering setting I use or setting it to auto ISO, I still see the need to make manual exposure compensations. Look at your in camera histogram to see if you need to make some adjustments for the image. When I tested this just now in my dark room, I found I needed to bump up 1.5 to almost 2 stops of exposure compensation to get a more balanced histogram. Hopefully this helps give you a better exposure values to start with then making edits and reduces the digital noise. 
 

As for the jpg vs. raw, I’m not sure why the difference, I only use raw files for Q3. 

 

So far for me personally, ISO 6400 is producing outstanding results on the Q3 (miles better than Q2 was), anything north of that starts getting pretty dicey, have to really dial in exposure. If I needed to do much higher, I would probably use the new DeNoise feature in Lightroom.

[georgechan]

2 hours ago, katieg said:

In such a dark setting, my advice to you is that the camera still may require some exposure compensation on your part to help balance out the meter for proper exposure. I just tested this in my home indoors and it’s past sunset. No matter which metering setting I use or setting it to auto ISO, I still see the need to make manual exposure compensations. Look at your in camera histogram to see if you need to make some adjustments for the image. When I tested this just now in my dark room, I found I needed to bump up 1.5 to almost 2 stops of exposure compensation to get a more balanced histogram. Hopefully this helps give you a better exposure values to start with then making edits and reduces the digital noise. 
 

As for the jpg vs. raw, I’m not sure why the difference, I only use raw files for Q3. 

 

So far for me personally, ISO 6400 is producing outstanding results on the Q3 (miles better than Q2 was), anything north of that starts getting pretty dicey, have to really dial in exposure. If I needed to do much higher, I would probably use the new DeNoise feature in Lightroom.

Thank you and I understand what you mean, but I’m still feeling confused as why this never happened to my M10R (the excessive amount of white dots on photos), which supposed to be less advanced than Q3, as well as the LR issue mentioned above. 

[georgechan]

An update/suggestion for those who experiencing the same issue as mine: do not try to push the shadow dramatically, simply push the overall exposure so you can avoid getting those white dots. I have attached two sample photo, one I pushed two stops of exposure, and the other one I pushed 1.5 stop of exposure and pushed the shadow to +70. The first photo looks grainy but still acceptable to me, and the second one is unusable. 

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