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Even at ISO 3,200, the Canon 50D's sensor and processor combination delivers smoother images than its predecessor the Canon 40D. Where the 40D mostly suppressed the chroma noise in the shadows, you can still detect more green and purple blotches amid the luminance noise, while the 50D's shadows are more even.
High ISO. Getting hand-holdable shots indoors and at night is the holy grail of photography for a great many of us. From consumers to pros, we want our cameras to capture the interesting light we see with our eyes. Consumers especially don't care why it's difficult to do so with digital cameras, they just want the shot. Enthusiasts and pros know why it's harder, but few carry tripods to stabilize their cameras for slow shutter speeds. Instead they invest in fast lenses and image-stabilized cameras and optics. What's been missing is faster sensors, and now camera companies are working to meet that need. Canon's 50D does well enough in most situations that you can feel safe shooting at up to ISO 800 with little loss to image detail, even when printing at 13x19 inches; ISOs below that can withstand printing up to 20x30 inches. At ISO 1,600 detail is still good, but 13x19 is probably the upper limit thanks to noise and softening due to suppression.
Those are some pretty large print sizes.
ISO 3,200 shots are still pretty decent at 8x10, with little chroma noise, but ISO 6,400 shots start to get a little grainy, and banding starts to show up in the shadows; when shadows make up a large part of the image, banding is severe. At ISO 12,800, noise gets worse, with yellow and purple blotches, as well as noticeable hot and dark, and sometimes bright red pixels scattered among the noise. Only when you set the noise suppression to high are these images usable at 5x7-inch sizes, and even then you have to forgive the banding and blotchiness. Depending on what you shoot, you might not notice the grain, and if you shoot raw and process the images with a good noise suppression program, you might come out with more usable images, but for the most part I suggest steering clear of ISO 12,800.
The Canon 50D almost achieves parity with the Nikon D90 and D300 at ISO 6,400 when noise suppression is set to high, but falls short of the mark. Of course, some of that is due to the smaller pixels on this sensor when compared to the 12.3-megapixel sensor in the Nikons.
Naturally, the Nikon D700 does better at ISO 12,800. We're comparing apples to watermelons at this point, since the D700 is a 12.1-megapixel full-frame sensor, with much larger pixels, but if you're looking for a superb low-light camera, you might want to consider the D700 (we have not seen samples from the Canon 5D Mark II as of late October, so we can't say how it will compare to the D700 at its highest ISO settings).
The Canon 50D delivers high enough quality from ISO 100 to 3,200, though, that most users will just be impressed. Shooting indoors with a reasonable shutter speed is usually achieved at ISO 1,600 or 3,200, so there's still room to play, especially if you have a faster lens.
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