Acceptable noise on new Canon 450D ?

[stevoarnold]

Hi everyone

My girlfriend just tested out her new 450D today and we are slightly concerned about the level of noise present at low ISO's.

We have noticed a lot of red grain in shots the sky in shots taken in bright daylight and at ISO100 and we are pretty disappointed at the level of noise and grain that is present in all shots we took in twilight light, just as the sun went down and the shutter was releasing for 1-30 seconds.

Here is one sample and a 100% crop:



100%




It seems that on first impressions, my trusty Sony a200 is producing much better quality images with respect to noise, or lack thereof. When I do long exposure twilight shots at ISO100 with that I get such smooth flawless pictures but using the 450D we havent yet been able to produce that level of quality.

FYI, the EXIF for the above image is as follows:

ISO: 100
55mm using the kit lens
f9.0
1/30sec

also, we had long exposure noise reduction and high iso noise reduction turned on (although the latter wouldnt have come into play anyway)

Any comments or suggestions you may have would be most welcome.

Edit: Oh yeah, i forgot to mention - the image is unedited and the histogram in lightroom shows no shadow clipping on either the full image or the crop. This is not a case of me bringing up the brightness of the shadows to reveal the grain

[sybren]

I'm not too familiar with the in-camera noise reduction schemes. Could you shoot a picture without them?