Slains Castle

by pakman

submit your photo

Hall of Fame
View past winners from this year

Please participate in Meta
and help us grow.

Sign up ×

I heard from some experienced photographers that shooting in live view mode creates additional noise compared to shooting through the view finder under the same conditions. I assume that while using the live view, the sensor heats up and this causes noise in the image.

Is there truth to this saying?

share|improve this question

1 Answer 1

up vote 22 down vote accepted

It is somehow true! For a moment, forget about the live view and consider the case of long exposure. While long exposing, the sensor heats up and this will cause the infamous background noise. So in reality sensor over heating can cause the noise and what happens is that in low light, warmed pixels detect light when there is none. (This last sentence is very not-scientific but naïvely explains the problem!)

This being said, you should consider that in day-light shooting this noise is almost completely harmless because the input signal is strong. But in low light condition this noise can be noticeable. How much noticeable? It really depends on the camera! One of the links below, shows some photos for comparison:

enter image description here

They also state that:

The camera warms considerably in Live View, more so than during the 60 minute exposure but this might simply be due to the LCD screen itself rather than due to the sensor being active.

Which means, the resulting noise is also highly relate to design of the camera body. For further readings, please refer to the links bellow.

Using live view for landscape photography

Long exposures and sensor noise with Canon 5D2

share|improve this answer

Your Answer


