For RAW capture, any ISO above 1600 has the same S/N as ISO 1600 shot at the same Tv/Av (and thus underexposed for ISO 1600) and exposure compensated in RAW conversion software. Underexposing at ISO 1600 has however the advantage of preserving extra highlight headroom. The only disadvantage is that the jpeg thumbnail and embedded jpeg are dark.
Thus for RAW shooters, all ISO's above 1600 are basically a gimmick. For jpeg shooting however, the higher ISO's can be useful in order to fit the DR of the scene into the limited DR of jpeg format.
I do a lot of bird photography and am faced with dark overcast days in the UK. The birds also like to hide in dark trees giving very slow shutter speeds. IS is useful but the birds also dont like to sit still so bumping up the ISO helps me a lot. On my 30D I dont like ISO 1600 but it is often a necessity and quite often still not enough. I would love to have a clean ISO 3200 or 6400 to aid me in my shooting
ejmartin wrote:
For RAW capture, any ISO above 1600 has the same S/N as ISO 1600 shot at the same Tv/Av (and thus underexposed for ISO 1600) and exposure compensated in RAW conversion software. Underexposing at ISO 1600 has however the advantage of preserving extra highlight headroom. The only disadvantage is that the jpeg thumbnail and embedded jpeg are dark.
Thus for RAW shooters, all ISO's above 1600 are basically a gimmick. For jpeg shooting however, the higher ISO's can be useful in order to fit the DR of the scene into the limited DR of jpeg format.
I think you have misunderstood some information somewhere down the line. If a camera supports a native ISO of 6400 then taking a shot at ISO 6400 will have a far greater DR than a pushed one at ISO 1600 regardless of whether the shot is in RAW or jpeg.
I use ND filters just to get the grain like appearance of overexposed 6400 and 12800 on my 1dIII and 5dII. Only with the rendering of the LR camera raw workflow.
I rarely use ISO 3200, but I use ISO 1600 A LOT! A simi-clean ISO 6400 makes for a very clean 3200. If I could go beyond 3200, I probably would from time to time, but the gain for me is in the ISOs I already use. So yeah, bring it on! Buy me a 5DII, and I might change my opinion!
I like shooting candids. I like to also take pictures in available light in bars. This very often necessitates higher ISOs. Take a look at the street photos at night and the portaits at the bar: http://flickr.com/photos/25641456@N08/
The B&W was taken at ISO25'600 and even then I could get only 1/5th of a second.
ditto on night or indoor sports, indoor family snapshooting; and for museums or clubs where flash is not allowed or not appropriate. Anywhere in low light and you just want the no-flash look.
I shoot city/landscape, so I always have my tripod in hand. I'd much rather lug the tripod around for long exposure shots, then shoot at a high ISO and have the image quality be not as good as what I would shot at ISO 100 or 200. But it's still nice to have - even though I never go past ISO 400.
Theatre, music, and dance productions often have lighting that needs ISO 6400, F1.4, 1/60 sec exposure. However, noise is acceptable for most of these shots.
I shoot soccer. And I shoot it ain the evening. The division I shoot is the second. The first division in my country has fairly/good light. But the lightning in the second division is poor. Some of the teams, that played in the first division but degraded t the second have the lights conform the rules of the first division.
But a lot of teams have very poor lightning. For example, sometimes I shoot at ISO 6400 with a shutterspeed of 1/400 and an aperture of f/2.8 and even then i'm underexposing one stop. In those situations I feel like Luke Skywalker, fighting the dark side
brainiac wrote:
Chris, could you email me the raw file? I would love to have a go at noise reducing this file...
Richard, the 35mb RAW file hung in my outbox for a couple hours, holding up other outbound business mail so I had to kill it... But I thought you had a 5D2, or you're still "in transition" with your switch from your 1Ds3?
