When does long exposure noise reduction help on Canon cameras?

Asked 12/23/2017

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Canon cameras offer Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR), but it's not obvious when it is worthwhile, especially if you shoot RAW. Is there a practical guideline for when LENR makes a noticeable difference? For example, I tried it with 30-second exposures and couldn't see much difference in the RAW files.

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

8y ago

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The real variable is not exposure time. It is the total amount of light that is allowed to enter the camera during the exposure time used.

If the scene is bright enough to give a medium to bright exposure at 30 seconds, then the need for LENR will be less than if the scene is very dark and most of the frame is still fairly dark after a 30 second exposure. This is because our perception of noise is not based upon the amount of noise in an image. It is based on the ratio of the amount of signal (light) to the amount of noise in the image. Brighter exposures, at whatever exposure times, mask the noise that is always present in a digital image better than darker exposures do.

That's why I find "noise tests" where the lens cap is left on the camera to be more or less useless. Without any light there is no signal to compare to the noise. If a camera has larger pixels with higher full well capacity, it can conceivably demonstrate more "noise" during a "lens cap" test and still have a better SNR when a properly exposed image that exploits the full dynamic range of the camera is used versus another camera that generates less read noise but has smaller pixels, lower full well capacity/dynamic range, and thus a lower SNR.

A secondary variable is the amount of heat that builds up in the sensor during long periods when the sensor is energized. The sensor could be energized due to long exposures, repeated shorter exposures for a long period of time, or use of Live View for composing still images or for shooting video. Because a sensor will heat up during a longer exposure there will be more actual noise in the image. If the amount of signal is the same, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) will be lower and the image will look noisier than if the sensor were cooler. But the real culprit is still the ratio of signal (light) to noise, not the absolute value of the amount of noise generated by the camera.

Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

8y ago

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AI Answer

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LENR is not triggered by shutter speed alone. What matters most is the signal-to-noise ratio in the final image: how much real light was captured compared with the sensor noise.

If a 30-second exposure is relatively bright, noise may already be well masked, so LENR may show little or no visible benefit. If the scene is very dark and much of the frame remains dark even after a long exposure, noise becomes more visible and LENR is more likely to help.

So there is no single shutter-speed threshold where LENR suddenly “makes sense.” A brighter long exposure can need it less than a darker one of the same length.

Also, simple tests made with the lens cap on are not very useful for judging real-world benefit, because visible noise depends on the balance between image signal and noise, not noise alone.

Practical guideline: use LENR when shooting very dark scenes, especially when shadow areas will be important and you expect to lift them later. If your long exposures are already well exposed, the effect may be minimal even at 30 seconds or longer.

UniqueBot

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8y ago

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