I'm shopping for a new camera that will work for shooting wildlife in the low light of early morning, late evening, and dark weather. For starters, here are some initial results of testing a Sony A99 at high ISO's. All were shot in natural light. All the photos are uncropped, and I used no noise reduction in processing.

1. ISO 6400

These all look nice to me, but a little noise is starting to appear in the last shot. I don't really think this a good test though, unless all you plan to do is post uncropped images online at a relatively small size.

Ron

surfnron wrote:
These all look nice to me, but a little noise is starting to appear in the last shot. I don't really think this a good test though, unless all you plan to do is post uncropped images online at a relatively small size.
Ron

To reduce the number of variables for the viewer to consider, I posted the images with the minimum necessary manipulations. I'm assuming FMers will expand the images on their own screens and examine the noise levels at these three high ISOs--and from their experience evaluate the what the quality of the images would be after the processing that they would use.

If I had processed the images as usual by cropping, noise reduction, and sharpening, viewers would not know how much of the image quality was a product of the camera performance at these high ISOs or how much was the product of the processing software and my ability to use it.

But your reply has made me think that a more informative test would be to post both the minimally manipulated image and a processed version to assess the extent to which software can reduce the high ISO noise. I'll try that next.

That does look good. Just have to love the new cameras and how well they are handling ISO.