SL2: Excessive noise on long exposure?

[PhotoCruiser]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

vor 9 Minuten schrieb jaapv:

It cannot be compared to other systems of noise reduction as those work by a blurring algorithm and/or AI driven pattern recognition. 

Yes, after reading the manual i realized that, thats what i meant with "mixed up with jpg denoise".
Chris

[PhotoCruiser]

vor 30 Minuten schrieb LD_50:

So to get the look you’re after, you could shoot a much lower noise photo without the high ISO setting.

You still don't understand,
please read again in my reply #12 what i already wrote regarding the ISO 6400.
All good and i got the answers i asked for.

Chris
 

Edited 11 hours ago by PhotoCruiser

[jaapv]

1 hour ago, LD_50 said:

I get what you’re saying about limited time and it being cold during testing, but I think I’m still missing something on the need for high ISO in combination with f/16. I’m not trying to argue with you, just sharing that there are options to get what you said you wanted (long shutter speed) without having both the high ISO and the small aperture. 

Example of roughly equivalent exposures:

- f/16 + 60” + ISO 6400

- f/2 + 60” + ISO 100 

- f/8 + 60” + ISO 1600

- etc

So to get the look you’re after, you could shoot a much lower noise photo without the high ISO setting.

The lower the ISO the less the base noise of the sensor will be amplified at the same exposure. The widest aperture with the lowest ISO will give the least noise. 

 

49 minutes ago, PhotoCruiser said:

Yes, after reading the manual i realized that, thats what i meant with "mixed up with jpg denoise".
Chris

Denoise has nothing to do with the file format JPG. Unless you mean JPG artefacts, but that is another subject. 

 

39 minutes ago, PhotoCruiser said:

You still don't understand,
please read again in my reply #12 what i already wrote regarding the ISO 6400.
All good and i got the answers i asked for.

Chris
 

These three settings will give EXACTLY the same smoothing of the sea - barring sudden storm. 

[PhotoCruiser]

vor 9 Minuten schrieb jaapv:

Denoise has nothing to do with the file format JPG. Unless you mean JPG artefacts, but that is another subject. 

My German manual show two noise reductions and that is what i refer to, in the english one it's on two different pages and Leica call it
JPG Noise Reduction
Noise Suppression or Noise reduction shown on camera screen

Yes, you are right, i used the wrong word with denoise

Chris
 

[LD_50]

31 minutes ago, PhotoCruiser said:

You still don't understand,
please read again in my reply #12 what i already wrote regarding the ISO 6400.
All good and i got the answers i asked for.

Chris
 

I read what you wrote and all of the posts in the thread. It seems you don’t have a great grasp on exposure settings and how noise is related. I thought I’d help you out with some options to lower the noise you’re seeing.  

Of course you can throw on a 5 stop ND filter, shoot a 5 minute exposure at ISO 52000 and see what happens. The test results just aren’t of much practical use. 

[jaapv]

21 minutes ago, PhotoCruiser said:

My German manual show two noise reductions and that is what i refer to, in the english one it's on two different pages and Leica call it
JPG Noise Reduction
Noise Suppression or Noise reduction shown on camera screen

Yes, you are right, i used the wrong word with denoise

Chris
 

Probably referring to the in-camera  jpg output. It would not be the first questionable remark in a Leica manual over the years.  But it explains your confusion. 

[Stuart Richardson]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I can just add another voice confirming what Jaap and LD50 are saying. I have done a lot of long exposure work with Leicas, and this is the typical kind of noise you get from hot/dead pixels. When you are doing very long exposures in very low light, it becomes harder and harder for the camera to separate random internal electrical noise from actual photons hitting the sensor, which is why you are more likely to see it in long exposures. The liklihood is determined by the total quantity of light energy hitting the sensor: the EV, which is a combination of the ISO, aperture and time. It is also why Leica often limits long exposure to something like ISO 100 for 2 minutes, ISO 200 for 1 minute etc. It is their determination that below that EV, the quality of the sensor's output is insufficient. I can't remember if they still do that on the SL2, but they did it on the S cameras. When photographing with extremely little light, you want to give the sensor as much light as you are able. Opening the aperture more is going to give you better results in this context. 

As Jaap said, LENR should be turned on unless you plan to do it yourself manually. The camera will take two identical exposures for each photo longer than a second or so, and subtract the noise from the dark frame from the main photo. You may still see spots in extreme cases, or if you push the exposure a lot from there. This is one of the scenarios where a camera like the SL2S or Panasonic S1 will give a better result than the SL2. 

[PhotoCruiser]

vor 20 Minuten schrieb LD_50:

I read what you wrote and all of the posts in the thread. It seems you don’t have a great grasp on exposure settings and how noise is related. I thought I’d help you out with some options to lower the noise you’re seeing.  

Of course you can throw on a 5 stop ND filter, shoot a 5 minute exposure at ISO 52000 and see what happens. The test results just aren’t of much practical use. 

You still don't get it 🤷‍♂️
Again, so you may understand it now.
I wanted to take a photo at ISO 6400 and intentionally set the SL2 to 6400 to see how much noise my SL2 produces at f/16, simply like that.

If this test is of no use then thats fine for me, i was just curious to see how much noise will be shown under that exposure.
You understand now?

That is what i wrote in # 12 and from the beginning that the shooting was a test, nothing else.
Also again, the ISO 6400 have nothing to do with my question about the noise what seems to be hot pixels.
So i learned something about my camera and that was the purpose.
Chris
 

 

 

 

[LD_50]

Just now, PhotoCruiser said:

You still don't get it 🤷‍♂️
Again, so you may understand it now.
I wanted to take a photo at ISO 6400 and intentionally set the SL2 to 6400 to see how much noise my SL2 produces at f/16, simply like that.

If this test is of no use then thats fine for me, i was just curious to see how much noise will be shown under that exposure.
You understand now?

That is what i wrote in # 12 and from the beginning that the shooting was a test, nothing else.
Also again, the ISO 6400 have nothing to do with my question about the noise what seems to be hot pixels.
So i learned something about my camera and that was the purpose.
Chris
 

 

 

 

ISO 6400 absolutely has something to do with the noise. The heat + additional gain increases the noise, which was why I offered options to lower it. 

You say you wanted ISO 6400 and f/16, but you also said you chose f/16 to smooth the motion. You can smooth the motion with lower ISO by using larger aperture. 

I’ve tried to help. Obviously you know what you’re doing… 

[PhotoCruiser]

vor 3 Minuten schrieb Stuart Richardson:

As Jaap said, LENR should be turned on unless you plan to do it yourself manually.

Thanks Stuart
I understand very well how exposure works and i wanted to test what happen when the SL2 takes long time exposure with various times and apertures as never did with the SL2. I do such things with most of my cameras to get used how they behave under certain circumstances.
It was a very useful test for me as i found out some things to consider in a real shooting when it matters that i know how to set the camera correctly.
Again, this was simply a test what happen if, nothing else.

Yes, i switched LENR off intentionally to see what happen, and the result was bad, so i learned another thing; to leave it on for long time exposure.

Chris

 

[PhotoCruiser]

vor 10 Minuten schrieb LD_50:

ISO 6400 absolutely has something to do with the noise. The heat + additional gain increases the noise, which was why I offered options to lower it. 

You say you wanted ISO 6400 and f/16, but you also said you chose f/16 to smooth the motion. You can smooth the motion with lower ISO by using larger aperture. 

I’ve tried to help. Obviously you know what you’re doing… 

i see ...

And if i want to see hat happen with high iso and small aperture, what i did?
Is it forbidden to do some tests what happen using high iso and small aperture?

You still do not understand that my question regarding the photo with the hot pixels has nothing to do with the photo i took with ISO 6400 for a completely different reason, to see what happen.
Please watch the photo i asked about you will notice that i used ISO 400  and not 6400 on that.

Chris

Edited 9 hours ago by PhotoCruiser

[jaapv]

20 minutes ago, PhotoCruiser said:

You still don't get it 🤷‍♂️
Again, so you may understand it now.
I wanted to take a photo at ISO 6400 and intentionally set the SL2 to 6400 to see how much noise my SL2 produces at f/16, simply like that.

If this test is of no use then thats fine for me, i was just curious to see how much noise will be shown under that exposure.
You understand now?

That is what i wrote in # 12 and from the beginning that the shooting was a test, nothing else.
Also again, the ISO 6400 have nothing to do with my question about the noise what seems to be hot pixels.
So i learned something about my camera and that was the purpose.
Chris
 

 

 

 

I don’t mean this in any negative or insulting way, but this irresistibly brought this Internet classic about doomed experiments to mind:

 

[PhotoCruiser]

I got my question regarding the pixels answered, ISO 6400 has nothing to do with my question.
Thanks
Chris

Edited 9 hours ago by PhotoCruiser

[Olaf_ZG]

Sadly, imho, the SL2 (or any other Leica I had) are not the best for long exposures (>1min). It’s the main reason why I sold my SL system, despite loving the SL lux.

[PhotoCruiser]

vor 9 Minuten schrieb Olaf_ZG:

Sadly, imho, the SL2 (or any other Leica I had) are not the best for long exposures (>1min). It’s the main reason why I sold my SL system, despite loving the SL lux.

Oh, thanks for this information.
Max exposure time in the test i did was 60 seconds, so i should test longer than 1 minute exposure times too.
The photos i took were good, except the last one where sensor probably got to warm/hot and i had LENR off.
Will do some more specialized tests as this would be important for me.
Chris

[Olaf_ZG]

5min exposure. The file is clean, but LENR is a must, without it the file would be useless. 
Using LENR doubles the exposure time, so for this image I needed 10min.

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[LD_50]

18 minutes ago, Olaf_ZG said:

Sadly, imho, the SL2 (or any other Leica I had) are not the best for long exposures (>1min). It’s the main reason why I sold my SL system, despite loving the SL lux.

I’ve had good results with ND filters and long exposures. The LENR is needed and it’s annoying, but the results have been good. 

[jaapv]

Are such exposure times not part of leisurely photographing ? It can hardly be action or event.  I would just have a sip of coffee