People are generally over-worried about noise and draws to much attention how pictures look when viewed on a screen. A big problem in many situations is that screen viewing is making one look at pictures at a much higher magnification ratio than on print.
As long as you print, noise is barely seen or annoying. As Slag69 stated, even a ISO 1600 picture from my D200 will look nice in print as long as focus is nailed and exposure is somewhat okay.
Noise is also very dependent on the scene. In a light, well lit situation like the duck picture above there are simply enough photons to hit the sensor, whereas even a D700 in a low light scene could produce a lot more noise than that at ISO 1600.
People afraid of using ISO 800+ on a D90/D300 are either not experienced enough or solely looking at their pictures on the computer.
The (great) picture of the wedding couple above does also show how easily highlights are blown out at ISO 3200, and that noise is mostly visible in the dark areas.
JonasY wrote:
People are generally over-worried about noise and draws to much attention how pictures look when viewed on a screen. A big problem in many situations is that screen viewing is making one look at pictures at a much higher magnification ratio than on print.
Definately agree with this.... digital has made us much more picky about our images.
In the rainforest in Costa Rica. This was actually taken around 1pm, but it's incredibly dark in some spots under the canopy and I was using the 70-300 VR at 300mm, stopped down to f/8 for maximum sharpness. I had auto-ISO set to 1/200s since these guys were moving around pretty quickly. In this case though, I hit my max-ISO and it only allowed 1/160s. No noise reduction applied. The low grain is incredible, but look how much detail you can still get in his black fur.
Speaking of the D300... the unfortunate thing for this camera is that the FX bodies were introduced in the same generation, otherwise we'd have gushed a lot more about its high ISO performance...
... as it is, it's a HUGE improvement on the D2X/D2H/D200/D80 bodies we used the generation before, but it does take a bit more effort than the incredible D3 / D700 to get those results, and is less forgiving of imperfect exposure. Still, I'd say the gap between the D2Hs and D300 is bigger than between the D300 and D3/D700.
epuja wrote:
Taken w/Canon 5d & 85L II at f/1.2
Taken at ISO 1600 and pushed one stop in Photoshop (equivalent to ISO 3200)
Taken in almost total darkness...
Thanks for the Canon post - now I know why I went with Nikon!
epuja wrote:
because of Nikon's broad lineup of super-fast primes?
Nothing wrong with the Nikkor 85mm f/1.4. And lots of people that use it actually get their target in the depth of field without having to resort to the Canon 85L II f/1.2 method of spray and pray.
epuja wrote:
because of Nikon's broad lineup of super-fast primes?
Who wants an 85/1.2 that is so slow to focus, and especially inaccurate on anything less than a 1-series so you have to do the "85L Wobble"? Your shot is clearly not in sharp focus. I'm not entirely sure why you are posting in the Nikon forum with 5D shots, but I've liked some of your stuff I've seen in the past.
TWoK wrote:
Who wants an 85/1.2 that is so slow to focus, and especially inaccurate on anything less than a 1-series so you have to do the "85L Wobble"? Your shot is clearly not in sharp focus. I'm not entirely sure why you are posting in the Nikon forum with 5D shots, but I've liked some of your stuff I've seen in the past.
Twok -
Yeah its clearly not one of the better examples of high iso.
Anyway, I apologize for intruding on the Nikon forum - I will be more careful next time.
epuja wrote:
Twok -
Yeah its clearly not one of the better examples of high iso.
Anyway, I apologize for intruding on the Nikon forum - I will be more careful next time.
