Wandering off topic a tad. Didn't you say previously that you never used ISOs above 100, maybe 200 at a push?
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That remains mostly true, but this was a non photography related weekend with my girlfriend. No tripod, just a D3 with a 85 f1.4 lens on it.
This image would obviously have been even better shot at ISO200 (the lowest value available on the D3) on tripod, but the noise is only slightly visible in the OOF areas of the image, and a pass of noiseware or noisenija does really help with that. But then again, even on the 30 inch wide print, that I tried last night the noise is really not disturbing at all as it is.
On the other hand, my point of view now is that there are cases where shooting at a higher ISO with the D3 has some value in terms of optimizing the image quality. For instance:
- Windy situations with wind affected subjects or with pano of grand landscapes where a sufficient shutter speed is needed to avoid pano head vibrations,
- Dusk or dawn panos during which an exposure longer than a few seconds results in visible change in luminosity than can negatively impact the quality of stitching.
The rule still remains to shoot as an ISO as low as possible, but taking into account the problems that slower shutter speeds can induce.
Impressive quality on pic though.
But if you had a Gigapan device you could shoot even higher quality pics with a P+S!
[a href=\"http://www.gigapan.org/]http://www.gigapan.org/[/url]
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Well yes, but number of pixel is not the only thing that makes this image work. The lack of shadow noise and DR are also key elements.
The best compromise would probably have been to shoot this at f9-f11 with a light 200 mm lens (for instance the Nikkor 70-300 f5.6 VR) on a D300 with a pano head on tripod. That would take us at around 300 megapixel, meaning probably better than drum scanned 8x10...
Cheers,
Bernard
