How have high ISO bodies affected your habits

[dwswager]

This topic prompted me to spend Thanksgiving with the 24-70mm f/2.8 on the D7100 to test it out.  Shot all day using only a little on camera flash for fill in some shots.  It was very enlightening.  The camera was set to Auto ISO with a min shutter speed of 1/50th.  Shots ranged from ISO 200 - 6400. 

Observations:

1. The D7100 has really decent ISO performance for a 2 year old, DX size sensor with 3.9 micron pixels.

2. f/4 proved sufficient for DoF for most candid shots even though in normal shooting the camera would be trying for f/5.6

3. Except in situations with really bad backlighting, lack of flash was not a big issue.

4. Seemed that highly saturated colors suffered most from the higher ISO.

[allegretto]

The 7100 was my last Nikon

Did not like it above 1600

Very red/orange skin tones

Not a "bad camera" just not a fun one for me.

[dwswager]

The 7100 was my last Nikon

Did not like it above 1600

Very red/orange skin tones

Not a "bad camera" just not a fun one for me.

I normally shoot it in RAW or Neutral Picture Control.  It does struggle with over-saturation in yellows and oranges.  But every camera needs 'tamed' or semi calibrated in some way.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi Solobodan,

It is a question about signal vs noise. What you see is that noise goes down at higher ISO settings, but signal is also going down when exposure os decreased. In Jim's example noise is reduced from say 6 electron charges to 3 electron charges when going from 100 ISO to 1600 ISO, but signal would decrease 16-times.

So, 100 ISO would have something like 8X better signal noise ratio than 1600 ISO.

Best regards
Erik

Less is better, of course, but the graph seems to show that the worst noise is at ISO 64, which, again, seems counterintuitive.

[Telecaster]

Before going to sleep last night I was sitting on my bed, strumming & picking my namesake guitar, when I noticed that it looked quite nice in the muted light (I have a multi-bulb fixture controlled by a dimmer, which was backed off from maximum). So I stopped playing, grabbed my Oly E-M1 with 12–40mm lens along with a clean bath towel and took some pics. I snapped away for ~40 minutes, all photos in the ISO 2500–6400 range with the lens wide open—f/2.8—after which I processed some of 'em on my iPad. Just the JPEGs since this was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I like the results. There's some noise, which I made no attempt to minimize…I think it adds a pleasant texture. There's no way I'd have done such a thing prior to current tech. In particular using the m43 format let me shoot at a relatively fast aperture while still providing enough depth-of-field for reasonable definition in OOF areas. There are no exhibition images in the lot, nor anything I'm likely to print, but that wasn't the intent. I acted on impulse, had fun doing it and as a result now have an iPad Photos folder containing more pics of my favorite musical instrument than I'd taken of it during the past 20 years. 

-Dave-

[kitalight]

I often read that cheap lenses suffer on FX sensors...but.....I just got the D610 and have learned yet another lesson....

The quality of the 610 sensor's IQ @ 3200 make it possible to use F8 with a nice fast shutter speed in cloudy situations getting the most out of such lenses...

It's nice that I can meter with them on the Nikon, and it's nice that the 610's LED confirm focus works well too...also nice that I can view/focus wide open while the aperture is set for a smaller aperture....

I just shot this with the really cheap manual focus Tamron Adaptall-2 70-210mm/F3.8-4....ISO 3200....@ F8.

This is full frame and 2 crops, center and corner...
These are not 100% crops because that isn't how I shoot..

However, these are 3200 pixels wide crops reduced to 1600 wide, crops I may have to resort to, and are posted here as examples of how well the 610 works with such a "low-rent" lens....Of course, the less cropping the better.

...I've had the 610 for only a week and I'm very impressed with how much I can get out of my lenses....most are Nikkor primes, but the Vivitar Series1 zooms I have and this Tamron are surprisingly good...

70FF by kitaflix, on Flickr

70C32u42 by kitaflix, on Flickr

70Cc32u42 by kitaflix, on Flickr

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... It is a question about signal vs noise. What you see is that noise goes down at higher ISO settings, but signal is also going down when exposure os decreased. In Jim's example noise is reduced from say 6 electron charges to 3 electron charges when going from 100 ISO to 1600 ISO, but signal would decrease 16-times.

So, 100 ISO would have something like 8X better signal noise ratio than 1600 ISO.

Thanks, Erik.

I did faintly remember that I read something along those lines before, but now that you spelled it, it makes sense again.

[dwswager]

It is a question about signal vs noise.

Exactly why SNR is what gets measured.   Having a number for noise is pointless in itself.  Why we are concerned with the shadow regions isn't because the noise is worse there, but because the signal is so much smaller there and gets overcome by the noise!  The key is can I find the signal within the noise.  I work military imaging systems of all types. Target discrimination goes a step further trying to determine what is signal (target) versus noise (other attributes) in the image itself.

[ErikKaffehr]

:-)

Thanks, Erik.

I did faintly remember that I read something along those lines before, but now that you spelled it, it makes sense again.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I got myself a full-frame camera recently (Canon 6D)... I almost feel like a real photographer now.

Took it for a spin to the holiday-lights lit streets of Chicago, with my daughter as the model. Put a little hot-shoe flash (Canon 220ex) in its place and put ISO to 3200. Why so high? To capture the holiday lights behind and to provide for a more pleasing combination of direct flash and ambient light. The lens was 24-105/f4 L at 105mm and f/4. Here is the result:


Sandra, Holiday Lights by Slobodan Blagojevic, on Flickr

And then there is this portrait with a meager restaurant light, shot at ISO 16,000 (no, not 1,600), at 50mm, 1/40s handheld, no flash. Not a particularly nice facial expression, it was around 10-11pm, she was already tired as she worked that morning from 7am. But still, it was ISO 16,000!!! Yes, there was some Lightroom processing and noise reduction, but sharpness and detail remained nevertheless.

[Misirlou]

I got myself a full-frame camera recently (Canon 6D)... I almost feel like a real photographer now.

Took it for a spin to the holiday-lights lit streets of Chicago, with my daughter as the model. Put a little hot-shoe flash (Canon 220ex) in its place and put ISO to 3200. Why so high? To capture the holiday lights behind and to provide for a more pleasing combination of direct flash and ambient light. The lens was 24-105/f4 L at 105mm and f/4. Here is the result:

And then there is this portrait with a meager restaurant light, shot at ISO 16,000 (no, not 1,600), at 50mm, 1/40s handheld, no flash. Not a particularly nice facial expression, it was around 10-11pm, she was already tired as she worked that morning from 7am. But still, it was ISO 16,000!!! Yes, there was some Lightroom processing and noise reduction, but sharpness and detail remained nevertheless.

Slobodan,

It might be interesting to run that image through DXO's latest version, to see what their PRIME noise reduction would do with it. I've had petty amazing results from that with my 6D at high ISOs.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Slobodan,

It might be interesting to run that image through DXO's latest version, to see what their PRIME noise reduction would do with it. I've had petty amazing results from that with my 6D at high ISOs.

Right, might give it a try. I did not do much in Lightroom, just Noise Reduction Luminance to +40 and Sharpening Amount to 55 (the rest are from the LR Faces preset, i.e., Radius 1.4, Detail 15, Masking 60)

[NancyP]

I have to say that I use the 6D for night sky photography at ISO 1600 to ISO 3200, single-shot mode (no stacking), and get really good results with very little chrominance noise at ISO 1600 at least. I don't like to smooth out chrominance noise in Lr because it also smooths out star colors. The subtle star colors are part of the charm of a night sky landscape photograph. It is a nice camera.

[dwswager]

I got myself a full-frame camera recently (Canon 6D)... I almost feel like a real photographer now.

Took it for a spin to the holiday-lights lit streets of Chicago, with my daughter as the model. Put a little hot-shoe flash (Canon 220ex) in its place and put ISO to 3200. Why so high? To capture the holiday lights behind and to provide for a more pleasing combination of direct flash and ambient light. The lens was 24-105/f4 L at 105mm and f/4. Here is the result:

Nice!  Same here.  Been shooting APS-C since leaving film and recently got a D810.  Took it for a spin an rekindled my passion for photography all over again.  Shot some basketball up to ISO6400 and the D810 quality blew me away.  I always tried to stay under 1600 with my D7100 which is where it comes down to the 7DmkII quality level based on test data and ISO 800 with my D300. 

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I don't feel high ISO bodies matter much for me. I have a few shots at 6400 ISO and some at 1600 ISO, but mostly I am a 50 ISO shooter.

That said, it is a good thing to be able to shoot a horse jumping at 6400 ISO and still end up with acceptable A3 size prints. Raising ISO can also be useful in windy situations.

Best regards
Erik