Noise performance: 60D vs 450D

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weixing
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Noise performance: 60D vs 450D

Post by weixing »

Hi,
This is my attempt to compare the noise performance of the 18MP Canon 60D vs the 12MP Canon 450D (eat too much and nothing to do during cloudy nights... [smilie=bad-atmosphere.gif] ).

Anyway, the method was simple, took a series of dark frames of the same exposure from both camera. Since there is no light, whatever present will be basically the noise. Compare the standard deviation of images from both camera. FYI, when there is no light, the value produce by Canon 450D is 1024 and Canon 60D give a value of 2048... this is the offset or signal bias of the sensor.

For every ISO stop, I first capture 60 frames of 60s exposure at an interval of 10s and calculate the standard deviation of every frames. This'll give the noise performance of the camera as the camera warm up during long exposure. After this, I'll capture 60 frames of 1s expsoure at an interval of 10s and calclate the standard deviation of every frame. Then calculate the median of the standard deviations. This will give the noise performance of a warm up camera for very short exposure (lunar/solar or planets).

Below is the two graphs:
Canon 60D vs Canon 450D (60s exposure)
Image

Canon 60D vs Canon 450D (1s exposure)
Image

From the result, the noise perform of 60D clearly outperform the 450D. I was quite surprise to see that at short exposure, 60D ISO 800 noise level was around the same as 450D ISO 100. At longer exposure (60s), 60D ISO 400 noise level was around the same as 450D ISO 100.

Have a nice day.
Yang Weixing
:mrgreen: "The universe is composed mainly of hydrogen and ignorance." :mrgreen:
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rlow
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Post by rlow »

Well done Wxg!

In fact a noise comparison test seemed to indicate that the 60D slightly edged out the 50D at high ISOs.

In use, the 60D does give excellent IQ up to iso 800, and very good IQ up to iso 3200.
Richard Low
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