Grain & Noise on CANON 24-105 L.. Help

[Ty Spence]

Hi all, so i bought the 24-105mm Canon L, primarily for shooting video given the price/quality and IS.

Ive only heard good things about this lens for video, however my initial findings are not great, and Im wondering if anyone else has had the same issues.

Basically whenever Im fiming, the footage I get out the camera is noisy,grainy and just plain nasty, Im shooting on an EOS 650D in cinestyle, and I just find the footage unnacceptable.

Ive only shot indoors up to now but at ISO 400 (1 stop below correct exposure), or ISO 800 (correct exposure).

The thing is I can use the exact same settings on my nifty fifty and the footage coming out is clear as day.

Is this something anyone else has found form the 24-105 or have I bought a duff lens? Or is it only really good outdoors with shed loads of light?

Any help from you guys would be fantastic as I fear its my lens.

Cheers

[Mat Thompson]

That has nothing to do with the lens...other than that its only a F4 so if you expose using the same ISO/shutter as you do your 50mm /wide open (1.8?) then you are over 2 stops less exposed.

Doe the aperture function correctly and does it open up to F4?

Maybe I'm not understanding the question/situation....

[Ty Spence]

Hi thanks for the response, no if i put the nifty fifty on i set it to F4 same settings exactly, same shuttter speed, same Aperture, same ISO.

Noise performance on the fifty is far superior. Im hoping Im doing something wrong as I paid out alot of money for the 24-105.

I mean I can rid myself of the bulk of the noise in Post but I was hoping for better than this.

This is what lead me to believe maybe I got a duff lens, having the same settings on a cheap lens and outperforming the expensive lens on noise.

[Donald McPherson]

Just a guess here. There will be less glass in the fifty compared to the zoom. Therefore more light reaching the sensor.

[Mat Thompson]

Hi again
Hhmmmm yeah that makes no sense. Does the image seem much less exposed? If so I'd say there's an issue with aperture somewhere.

I would physically look at the aperture in the lens and make sure the camera telling you F4 is actually F4.

If the apertures are the same size and you are matching shutter and ISO then the performance should be the same as far as noise goes.

Do you have any clip examples ?

Mat

[Ty Spence]

Thanks for getting back guys, I noticed a couple of things.

My in camera settings had the high ISO noise reduction switched on medium settings. I had heard this can cause some issues so have turned that off now. I also looked at the histograms and all of the settings were in the left hand side of the gram meaning that all the scenes were underexposed. Even checking the RGB parade all the information is in the mid to lower half of the parade. So I guess the footage was underexposed.

I will run some test footage and try to re-create the same circumstances and settings.

Thanks for your info guys.

One thing I wanted to ask was if the image is underexposed, and there is no chance of getting more light into the scene (it was in a sports centre filming a martial arts grading), the only way of getting more exposure is realistically, making the shutter speed slower (to a minimum of 25 given im shooting in PAL), open the aperture wider (already at wide open F4), or increase the ISO. But wouldnt increasing the ISO just make the image more noisy?

Do you guys have any tricks when shooting in settings with less than desirable lighting conditions (wedding receptions, functions etc)?

[Jon Fairhurst]

One thing that can happen is that you might set the aperture at f/2 with a fast lens, change to an f/4 lens, not touch any exposure button and, of course, the best you'll get out of the slower lens is f/4. Change back to the faster lens and (I believe) that it will open up to f/2, as the setting was never manually adjusted.

Make sure you have enough light and set both lenses to f/4 or tighter for a fair comparison.

Of course, you still might prefer the look from the nifty fifty. Optically, t's a very nice, sharp lens. I've used the 24-105/4L and always felt that it was not bad in any area, but not great in any area. It does cover a useful range for video though.

[Ty Spence]

Thanks Jon.

Actually Ive just thought of something, I have a UV filter on my 24-105, I got it primarily to protect the L Glass, but i thought with it being a UV filter it shouldnt adversely affect the image.

Does anyone know if using a UV filter could cause problems with noise and grain?

[Willard Hill]

Usually filters are not a problem, but I have had a few instances where they really caused trouble, so the first thing I suspect and check out is the filter if I have image quality problems. With my 24-105 I could not use the image stabilization without destroying the sharpness. I also read of others that had this problem. I was using either a skylight or a uv filter (I forget which) to protect the lens. When I stopped doing that the problem was solved. I have had this happen with the same type of filter on my 100-400mm lens. Most other filters I have tried do work with this lens, but I usually avoid them anymore except for using ND filters in bright light.

[Chris Medico]

I would put the camera in manual and ramp the iris from fully closed to fully open and back. Make sure you see the exposure changing on the monitor. If you don't see it change there could be something wrong with the lens.

[Mat Thompson]

What Chris said! - Check the aperture is moving and that the shown stop corresponds to the aperture given!

[Ricky Sharp]

Originally Posted by Ty Spence

Thanks Jon.

Actually Ive just thought of something, I have a UV filter on my 24-105, I got it primarily to protect the L Glass, but i thought with it being a UV filter it shouldnt adversely affect the image.

Does anyone know if using a UV filter could cause problems with noise and grain?

A UV filter shouldn't be affecting your image quality if it's decent quality. A low-quality filter could start degrading your image. What UV filter do you have?

Personally, I use B+W filters and rather than UV for a "protection" type of filter, I use clear ones.

So definitely conduct an experiment. Shoot two clips; one with the filter on and one with it off.

[John C. Chu]

Originally Posted by Ty Spence

Hi all, so i bought the 24-105mm Canon L, primarily for shooting video given the price/quality and IS.

Basically whenever Im fiming, the footage I get out the camera is noisy,grainy and just plain nasty, Im shooting on an EOS 650D in cinestyle, and I just find the footage unnacceptable.
Cheers

I just noticed you were shooting with Technicolor Cinestyle profile? For me, it is a bit challenging to set proper exposure with that profile. Try shooting some stuff with the Standard or Natural profile and see. I know when I experimented with Cinestyle on a T2i EOS 550d and undexposed, it wasn't a pretty picture.

[Ty Spence]

Thanks for all the info guys Ive done a load of tests now with various different fixes mentioned above. Truth is I think it was a mixture of unfortunate circumstances, especially the sports hall i was filming in. I used the same lens last week for a corporate training video and I found noise minimal, admittedly there were also larger windows in that room and I could drop the shutter speed lower given it was slow moving subjects.

As usual you guys are great, many thanks, Ill let you know if I get the dreaded noise back. ive also resigned myself to the fact that sometimes you just cant do anything about the noise. Perhaps one of the reasons why cams that have better low light performance are way more costly.

Ive also been eyeing up a C100 and the 5d Mark III, think Ill have to talk the wife round.

Cheers