Capture One 5.1 blurs recovered dark-shadow detail of 5DII RAW files. Any solutions?

I am perplexed by a finding that needs explaining. When trying to recover some evidence of the back of the head of a dancer in dim light, (panel A in the figure), below, I used the recover slider in Capture One and as expected, the back of the head, albeit grainy, was recovered, (shown in panel B.). Good I thought. I can work with that!

But that was transient. A blur took over in C below.




As the Shadow slider was moved, the back of the dancer's head appeared. It had volume and is distinct from the formless background. No matter what I did, I couldn't retain any clear evidence of even that outline as the "opened up shadow" area was automatically processed a step further. That's so frustrating!

Now can anyone explain why Capture One has to add a blur to the low light recovery area? It seems like when it is getting poor data it hides it by blurring that portion! The rest of the image is no affected at all by the unwanted C1-added blurring artifact!

It seems that there might be a noise removal algorithm that C1 is using. Is there some setting to remove this?

Thanks for your interest and any ideas!

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

Now can anyone explain why Capture One has to add a blur to the low light recovery area? It seems like when it is getting poor data it hides it by blurring that portion! The rest of the image is no affected at all by the unwanted C1-added blurring artifact!

It seems that there might be a noise removal algorithm that C1 is using. Is there some setting to remove this?

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Hi Asher,

Which is exactly what I suspected, noise reduction. I have to assume you checked the built in noise reduction settings on the details tab (magnifying glass icon)? There are different values applied, depending on camera model and ISO used. Personally I perfer to do noise reduction with a dedicated tool, so I turn off the Raw converter's NR (as part of a general Style setting).

C1's noise reduction is adequate for regular cases, but for extreme noise reduction I like the per channel tweaks available in dedicated tools like Denoise 5 from Topaz Labs which also allows to address hor/ver banding.

Cheers,
Bart

Thanks Bart,

I'll look at the setting on the details tab. I guess must have missed it. Well do so first thing in the am. It's now 2:14 am , LOL! guessed it must be noise reduction but have not discovered that in Capture One as yet as thought it was just doing the RAW conversion! didn't notice that in their tutorials either!

So you put Topaz ahead of Neat Image, it seems? Maybe you told us that previously?

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

So you put Topaz ahead of Neat Image, it seems? Maybe you told us that previously?

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Hi Asher,

TopazLabs' Denoise 5 is rather unique in it's banding reduction control, and comes in 32-bit as well as 64-bit plugins for the same price. It allows me to get a good level of noise reduction very quickly, without 'training'.

I prefer the NeatImage level of control, it seems more logical to me but that may be because I'm used to it for so long. The training of NeatImage to a particular noise profile for a certain camera at a given ISO at multiple brightness levels for each RGB channel is very effective. All one needs to do is shoot a built-in target off screen at the same ISO, and process it the same way as the file that needs the NR treatment, and then run a profile from it. Then tweak the settings to be applied.

Adobe Camera Raw 6.1 has become also rather good (you can open an existing TIFF as a 'Camera Raw' file if you use another Raw converter), although it can unnaturally desaturate color, e.g. ambient light reflections, in the process of denoising very easily, so be careful with extreme settings. It may be worthwhile to check it out before investing in yet another tool.

Cheers,
Bart