Well, perhaps a more standardized or scientific approach would be to use LUX as a measure. LUX is a unit measurement of illumination. The illuminance produced on a surface that is one meter square, from a uniform point source of one-candela intensity, or one lumen per square meter. In the military, we call anything below .0022 LUX low light. This refers to the capabilities of night vision goggles, but I'm sure a similar standard could be used in photography based on the capabilities of the instruments we use. Different gear will have different capabilities, so camera A may have a different low light LUX level than camera B.
I see what you mean here Jack. It is interesting to see what different interpretatations of "low light performance" are. I like the quote you used and I have to say that digital has spoiled many of us in reguards to ISO.
I made a point of shooting nothing but Provia 100 for about a year so I could improve my flash technique and framing, blah blah blah. I still never missed a shot and I shot in the dark a lot. Now I did do things like push the film and such.
I suppose what I am trying to say is since I was always able to get something I liked and could use and there wasn't really any noise/grain to speak of that my F5 with RDPIII pushed to a max of 400 has outstanding "low light performance"
maybe in some cases you could say, "my noisy frame is better than your empty one."
However, I don't recall too many people complaining about the 'low light performance' of fast film. Everybody knew the limitations and worked within them.
I think part of the problem is that a lot of the people complaining about the "low light" performance or "HI ISO noise" performance of their cameras are new to photography. Digital is their first intorduction to the craft. They have never used film, so they have no point of comparison. They complain about HI ISO noise in a Nikon D2X at Hi-2 because they have never experienced the golf ball-sized grain of 3200 speed film.
dtomasula wrote:
I think part of the problem is that a lot of the people complaining about the "low light" performance or "HI ISO noise" performance of their cameras are new to photography. Digital is their first intorduction to the craft. They have never used film, so they have no point of comparison. They complain about HI ISO noise in a Nikon D2X at Hi-2 because they have never experienced the golf ball-sized grain of 3200 speed film.
and...back in the day, they compared films (which could be used in ANY camera). Today, they compare cameras.
I class low light as a situation where I cannot get a fast enough shutter speed to hand hold a camera comfortably, so maybe 1/30sec @ 2.8 at ISO400 is my normal limit. If I have to go higher ISO or slower shutter I would class that as low light.
Everyone will have their own definition though.
Good question to ask, Jack. Clearly there's a lot of jargon being thrown around with ambiguous meanings. I'm with Rob, when I hear the works low light performance I immediataly think about AF performance, but I know many others mean it differently.
It's similar to what's happened with the acronym "MLU" - it seems to have a differently meaning now that digital is so prevalent. If nothing else it's now ambiguous for those who never used it on a film camera.
rffffffff wrote:
I have a totally different take on the whole thing...
the D2X is an incredible low light performer in that it can focus in the absolute dark, where the D70, on the otherhand is quite pedestrian in that if the light is low, it won't focus...
OK Maybe I just don't take the same "Low Light" pictures as you do, or maybe it is just the result of using the simply amazing 70-200mm f/2.8, but when my D70 actually focused better and quicker than my Canon 1D, please note that the 1D was using a 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens.
I have no doubt that the D2X, and by inference the D200, have better focusing than the D70 in low light, and maybe it is just my expectations, but the D70 is anything but pedestrian IMHO.
But so that I am not comparing apples to oranges does the below qualify as a Low Light photograph
In the above the ISO was 1600, and the only light was coming from the stage. This was taken with a D70, and the afore mentioned 70-200mm with VR disabled, and it sure did seem to focus quickly, nearly instantly in fact.
- A camera with strong ‘low light performance’ means that the camera must render acceptable images at hand-holdable shutter speeds (i.e 1/30th or higher using an f/2.8 zoom or faster prime) in very dark areas. One of the most apparent ways to do this is to have a reasonably clean high ISO, which the Canons do. I don’t know about the Nikons, but based on what I’ve seen from the D2X, it’s not too bad. I don’t really mind noise or grain in an image, as long as the grain appears random, and does not appear as ordered/banded color noise. One thing I’ve noticed when doing ACR conversions of my 1D Mark II images is that the conversion converts the random color noise in the image to a very nice grainy texture which I happen to like; even at ISO 3200, I can generate printable images. The usable high ISO also gives me the option to stop down in order to increase DoF for group portraits.
- That said, another perhaps more important aspect of a good low light camera is precise autofocus. More often than not, when I am shooting wedding receptions or other low light events, I am shooting at very large apertures, and focus issues become critical; small inaccuracies create unusable images. The people who shoot with 20D’s in our group start to reach the limits of that camera’s AF as the reception lights go down for the first dances and such, but the 1D Mark II’s are still able to accurately and reliably focus in that light (at least at the center point or with 45-point enabled).
Another useful thing to have in low light (and this is more of a system issue than a camera issue) is a good flash management system. I’ve heard nothing but good things about the Nikon approach to mutli- and single flash management, but I can’t say that Canon’s ETTL2 has ever really let me down.
