Continuing to experiment with the new Canon 5D3. Tonight I took it out for some night exposures at low and super high ISO settings. I'm not very impressed with ISO 25600's noise unless I needed to capture action. I would normally use ISO 100 for night shots, or an ISO very close to 100. So I wondered what DPP's HDR tool could do with internal stacking of quite noisy images vs. one RAW out of the camera. I also set the in-camera HDR to do three shots at +-2 stops. This later test combines the three RAW shots and makes a full sized JPEG. As you will see, the in-cam HDR did very well. Actually, I was astonished at the results.

The following shots are all 100% crops. You might have to click the "full size" magnifying glass icon or the picture itself to force full size 100% browser views. All HDR'ing was in the "Natural" settings for both DPP and in the camera. Image set data: ISO 25600, (1/40", 1/10", 0.4"), f/16.

Original RAW .CR2 out of camera image. This is the middle of the three images to compare with the next two. ISO 25600, 1/10", f/16. Cropped to 100% view.


DPP's HDR version of the 3 RAW images on "Natural" setting. Cropped to 100% view. DPP lightened this up a bit by itself.


This is the made-in-Camera HDR version, which saves it as a JPEG. Cropped to 100% view. I haven't done anything with the settings in post. I might be doing in-cam HDR night shots at higher ISO's if I need to.


Now, I could have used a picture style of Neutral and no sharpening, but I didn't. I just shot with my normal defaults of sharpening +3, contrast +1 and saturation +1. Playing around with the settings might yield even better results to allow better refinement in post.

Awfully encouraging results.

In DPP, for optimal results, I think possibly you would have to touch up the final HDR image produced for NR etc (to my eyes the DPP version has retained detail and would respond well to further editing). It would not be a one step process ideally. None of the 3rd party HDR apps are. The in-camera HDR processing is not only doing the HDR stuff but also producing a jpeg, again a more than one step. It is widely acknowledged that jpegs from the 5D3 are battered in terms of detail, while at the same time being very attractive in terms of colour, contrast, noise, and absence of artifacts. This is what I see in the example above.

DPP has not "lightened" the HDR image, but has increased its dynamic range markedly (eg you can see the head rests in the little green car), the aim of the exercise. You would now have to do what you wanted with it, something that DPP cannot know. The HDR jpeg that you got from the camera might or might not be what you want, but you can't do much about it in any case. To me the OOC jpeg has gained almost nothing in dynamic range, but looks more like a severely cleaned-up version of the example RAW.

Still, it's impressive for that crazy ISO, I agree! A fully worked DPP version even better, my feeling.


Neil