Pondria wrote:
We observe that one of the recent trend is "High-ISO". Is it just a marketing campaign or you actually need higher ISO and why ? Do you need it for your dark life photography ? Or for high speed sport shots ? Or, are you one of those who believe that the camera that can do High-ISO will also do better in low ISO ?
Or, you don't need but don't mind having it ?
hardly marketing
every try to shoot night or indoor (without strobe access) sports?
ever try shooting inside a museum or pyramid or something like that (no flash and no tripod allowed in almost all cases)?
shooting general events where no flash is allowed indoors?
don't want a flash look or to attract that much attention from the subjects or bother them with flashes going off?
shooting wildlife in deep shade or other poor lighting conditions?
hiking through a forest and don't want to bother slowing things down with constant tripod setup but still want some photos?
out and about on vacation sometimes you are walking all over and can't reasonably carry a tripod with you and sometimes it's not the middle of the day
etc.
I shoot lots of my kids' youth sports. I'm always at 3200 shooting youth hockey, and that's excluding more than half the rinks we play in where it's not worth even trying without ISO6400.
Baseball on cloudy days also requires ISO1600, since I shoot it with a relatively slow lens (100-400).
Definitely need the high iso... I am also a newspaper photographer, shooting sports and other events in low light - I live at 3200 from November to February, and would love to have 6400 on my MkII (or just get a MkIII )
Weddings and corporate events. The latter even more than the former. If you think a dark church is a bitch, wait and see what event marketeers turn up with
Sports as well. I don't know what I would do if I couldn't go higher than 1600. I have gone as high as 3200 shooting baseball! You can't strobe baseball and I don't know how I could have gotten anything other than panning or dugout shots with 1600 or less. There is one gym in this area that has given me grief with my 40D and 3200. I finally got to beat it with my new mark 3 and iso 6400. How about iso 6400, 1/400th, f/2.2......that's the gym from hell.
Emile Gregoire wrote:
Weddings and corporate events. The latter even more than the former. If you think a dark church is a bitch, wait and see what event marketeers turn up with
I thought that I was the only one who would use words like "bitch" in the same sentence with "church."
High ISO is a must for weddings where no flash is allowed and very dim light. Corporate events where they want shots of speakers in action with a long lens so you don't disrupt the meetings. The corporate event use is endless. Just did a boxing match for a charity event shooting too far away on a raised stand for flash to help but needed a fast shutter to capture the movement,last week a fast moving balet at a holiday party. My high ISO uses are endless. If I am being paid I want to keep all my options open. The words sorry it was too dark to get the shot would be followed by you will be hearing from our attorney.
Total cost for (1) = $1450 + $4200 = $5650 + much heavier
Total cost for (2) = $2400 + $1300 = $3700 + much less total weight
Yeah - there are other advantages to the 300 2.8 (including DOF and IS, etc), but still very nice to save some $$ to get similar high ISO performance with less expensive lenses.
Of course the argument in this case can also go in favor of the D300 due to the additional focal length attained due to the crop factor but that doesn't really help low light capability.
There are times, such as shooting speakers or bands where I have been at 200mm, f2.8, ISO 3200 and 1/30 or slower due to the crap lighting. The keeper rate is not so good at that speed. At 1/60 I can just about get away with, but any slower and I just can't get them sharp enough - even with down sizing. So, I end up under exposing (to keep the shutter up) and pushing in post. It's horrible.
So, a good ISO 6400 would get me back in the ball park, but a usable 12800 would be awesome.
The rest of the time, I rarely need to go above 400/800 because I can use 'speedlites' (they are available - which makes them 'available light' )
While some prefer to go with primes that open up to f1.4 or even f1.2 (been there, done that and sold'em all), I usually like to have a little more than half an inch in focus. For some people it's an absolute requirement - I fully understand that - but for me it's not. I'd rather have higher ISO and more DOF.
If I need 1600, the chances are I am in a place where I really need 6400 or more!!
When I'm shooting in my studio with flash, I don't go higher than ISO 200.
For just about every situation using existing light (weddings, sports, wildlife, abstract street and hike shooting), I make use of the full ISO range of the 1DIII, and would sometimes go higher than 6400 if it were available.
I'm sure that getting low noise, high quality results at ever higher "mid-range" settings goes hand in hand with getting higher maximum settings. Large print landscape quality at ISO 6400 would be nice, and so would grainy but sharp results at ISO 51,200. No crazier than our current reality would have sounded to me when I was a kid and film faster than ASA (ISO) 125 was grainy and IQ compromised. And that was b&w; color was worse!
I rarely needed ISO beyond 100 until I went to Europe and found myself shooting in Gothic churches lit by candles and stained glass. No tripods or flash allowed so I used needed ISO 1600 and F2.8 75% of the time! I avoided ISO 3200 because it looked so terrible but would love another stop or two of useable ISO.
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