I am probably just being old fashioned here but I don't quite understand it when I see lots of photographers always wanting the ability to work at super high ISO settings. The general message is that any camera which isn't capable of shooting completely clean noise free images at 3200 ISO is a pile of junk. For many years I shot every image on 100 ISO film and somehow always managed. The photographer I assisted worked with EPR rated at 50 ISO and pushed 1/3rd so effectively it was 40 ISO but again, somehow we always managed whether shooting 35mm, medium or large format.

Today I shoot digital like most others but the camera stays on 100 ISO and I am reluctant to work at anything higher than 200 ISO because ultimately the best quality comes from sticking to a low ISO setting, so if I have to use a tripod or flash that's fine. Perhaps others are taking different sorts of images, but unless you spend a large chunk of your time walking around in the dark I don't see the need for this big emphasis on high ISO settings in day to day practical use.

High ISO is certainly a boon to news and sports photographers and others who may be working in low light environments where flash or tripods are not practical.

While I don't do this for a living, I did some set photography for a small indie film and a music video. Even under movie lights you're grasping for every bit of light you can get to maintain a decent shutter speed and aperture to try to stop action and get some DOF. ISO 3200 was barely adequate.

When I shoot landscape, it's not a big deal since I normally shoot at base ISO with a tripod. But even there, clean higher ISOs can open up more creative options.

Paul

Yes, you are. Not every shooting situation allows for a full-blown studio lighting setup. When shooting concerts, for example, you aren't generally allowed to use flash of any kind; you're limited to whatever stage lighting is available. If you want a reasonable amount of DOF and a shutter speed fast enough to keep motion blur to reasonable levels, a high ISO setting is mandatory. 800 is pretty much the minimum needed for consistently good results. The same is true of dance and theater productions. If you're a sports or press shooter or cover charity dinners, weddings (the actual ceremony and the reception, not the formal family portraits), and other such events, you're working with even less light, since most gymnasiums, hotel ballrooms, restaurants, and churches don't have a full-blown lighting setup for the entire venue. Using flash for such things is best limited for subtle shadow fill to avoid underexposed backgrounds, and you also run into mixed-lighting color cast problems unless you gel your flash to match ambient lighting.

Having a usable high ISO makes life much easier in many shooting situations, and in many cases makes the difference between getting a salable shot and not.

So you don't need super high ISO, but tripod/flash isn't fine for everyone.

High ISO capability gives more options, and I'm all for more options.

I am not interested in photographing concerts etc. personally. Obviously I have no problem with more useful options but I suspect that some of those who are screaming for higher ISO settings are merely gear freaks shouting for the sake of it rather than because of real need in their day to day photography.

I would of agreed once, after all 100 iso was the norm for me. Now being able to shoot at higher iso gives me more choice on lens aperture and night shooting for me with film was very much hit or miss with my subjects. http://www.theimagefile.com/?skin=892&...p;ppwd=dv5086mr I would love to have a nice clean 6400 iso with good colour and DR, trouble is when it arrives everyone will be doing it.

Kevin.

I would like a super clean ISO 400 so I don't need such powerful lights. Outside against the sun of course you still need them.

Yup ... a bunch of geeks managed to shout loud enough to get the sensor and camera makers to add useless functionality just to annoy you ...

Yes, I'd certainly go along with that. It would be useful with indoor situations as well when you are balancing daylight with flash. I just wonder about those who are so quick to leap on the latest and greatest camera simply because of a supposed improvement in noise levels at the top end. When you hear them shouting on certain forums you would think the previous camera which they once loved was suddenly complete junk.

Hey, I'm all for people leaping for the latest and greatest! This has allowed me to buy lightly used, top-end gear at a sizable discount. I shoot for pleasure, not commerce, so being one generation back is not a bad thing

Paul

Not only that some photographers do need this capability, but improvement in noise levels at high ISO goes together with lower noise level at lower ISO settings; this means greater dynamic range. That too is a capability, which is lost on many photographers.

I'll definitely second this. I've shot a few weddings this year where I've not been able to use flash in some situations, like in the church, and had to shoot at 2.8 on ISO 1600 on a 1dmk3. As clean as the files from the 1d3 usually are, 1600 and beyond are really noisy.

I tested a Nikon D700 earlier this year and absolutely loved the ISO6400 shots (a good couple stops cleaner than the 1d3) but didn't like the ergonomics of the camera. High ISO like this would guarantee me more shots that I could keep and present to the client.

I was wondering if this was a serious post. Some thoughts:

1. High(er) ISO settings that produce acceptable images mean that the photographer can confidently cover situations where he or she needs more light, and can't use a flash set up.

2. Any improvement that allows a photographer to make an acceptable image or work more creatively is truly an "improvement."

3. The Canon 1DS MKIII is not noisy at ISO 1600 properly exposed and once you run it through a properly configured noise reduction algorithm. Moving to Nikon because the high ISO noise is cleaner is ridiculous, simply because Nikon uses more aggressive in camera noise reduction (Unless you're shooting jpgs in a fast moving environment, such as journalism

4. If you don't need high ISO capabilities surely that doesn't mean others can't and don't really benefit from it. I was looking at my mom and dad's wedding pictures from 1953 a while ago, and the photography was professional and clean. However, the guy had to use a flash, and he did the very best he could, but you could see shadows on walls (down angled as much as he could, and they were very unobtrusive), black backgrounds in many photos, and by today's standards, unacceptable light fall off around the perimeters.

5. Anything that allows photographers to increase their creativity and stretch their abilities, I would think, is a good thing. At least the history of art and photography is on my side.

I think that is very well said and couldn't agree more.

Urban legends never die...

Cheers,
Bernard

I agree with you that the best possible low ISO quality (DR, clean midtones,...) is the most important characteristic of a camera for some applications, like landscape.

This being said, clean high ISO can be valuable for most applications, including landscape:

- Need for higher shutterspeed to stop wind motion or water motion,
- Ability to shorten exposures when shooting panoramas,
- ...

Cheers,
Bernard

Your Nikon colours are shinning brightly Bernard. I don't think anyone who shoots anything other than Nikon would dare say a bad word about a D3X for fear of getting blown out of the water by you - yet you seem to take the opportunity (even delight in it) to sideswipe Canon's truly excellent 1DSMK3 and Sony's A900 at every opportunity. Is it really necessary?

Sorry I don't mean to steer this off topic - but its getting a little tiring.

Hello Josh,

I don't remember having written anything negative about the 1ds3 in the recent months Josh, and certainly not in this very post, I was only reacting to the claim that the D3 high ISO performance was mostly software based.

I believe that both are excellent cameras, and my recent posts on the A900 topic were focused on some very specific claims that were simply not inline with my observations. I didn't comment negatively on the A900 in that context by the way.

Anyway, I agree with you that all this is waste of time and will act accordingly in the coming months. A small LL break is probably the best solution.

Cheers,
Bernard

I'm not so sure it's quite that simple. I think some optimizations for high ISO performance can hurt low ISO performance. Maybe not in dynamic range, but in other aspects of image quality. Take the 5D2, Canon weakened the CFA's, which improved high-ISO performance relative to the 1Ds3, but actually hurt color depth slightly at low ISO, if you look at the DxO Marks. While the D3x isn't bad at moderately high ISOs, it seems like Nikon really did everything they could to maximize image quality at low ISO rather than high.

I don't risk to deny this generally, but I don't know of any specific example for that.


I guess you are referring to the "color separation". The spectral characteristics of the filters have nothing to do with ISO. Different filter combinations have different advantages and disdvantages, equally with all ISOs.


I claimed only, that good high ISO means good low ISO as well, but not the other way. For example MFDBs have very good low ISO performance, but they don't have any high ISOs at all (they are faking it), or if they do, that's not much better than faking (in this context 400 is already "high ISO").

Its great to see photographers opening up new ground by being able to now photograph concerts and indoor events due to higher ISO performance. It makes me wonder what happened before photographers needed high ISO??? Was there any concert photography in those days?

Or is it now the case that concert photography (as an example) will end up looking like an outdoor wedding shoot, everybody on stage regularly recorded in minute detail frozen in an instant of time? Sounds good, until you look at what you lose. Its fine having the option of high ISO performance, but most people who ask for it will use it because its the easy thing, and yet again any expression or flair or excitment that used to be generated by a skilled photographer is filtered out into boring pap. There was once a day when great concert photography couldn't be reproduced because not everybody had the flair to do it well, but now, like studio trends in family portraits, overuse of digital techniques mean that even less great work is done, and even more (very) average work is accepted as good by the populace. Its all just one more nail in the coffin of good photography, asked for and abetted by photographers because they consider it a right to make money at photography, rather than a paying outlet for skilled expression.

So, I'm just saying there is more than one way of looking at the apparent benefits of high ISO. Give the monkey a banana and whats likely to happen? Even more people demanding to be called photographers on the basis of a sharp well exposed shot, thats what. And if you can't see the critical downside to that in terms of quality photographs and what gets into the press nowadays then you haven't got a fearful bone in your body. The demise of good journalism and portrait and studio and wedding work has started, and while digital options didn't cause it, nobody is thinking about how to stop it. Its great seeing an upside to even higher ISO performance when you know you can use it skilfully yourself, but lets give a thought to the consequences in the longer term?

Steve

I didn't mean that Nikon was software noise reduced Bernard. What I meant was that the 1DS MKIII can shoot as clean as the D3X after running it through a software based noise algorithm at a properly exposed ISO 1600, and shooting RAW. Do you dispute this?

I shoot Canon, but I do think the D3X is a better camera in some ways, higer MP with lower noise and reliability being two areas, since the DS MKIII had lots of problems in the beginning. I have had my PCB board replaced and several other major things that others have had also. No doubt the D3X is the current king, for sure. Credit due where is deserved. Nikon is back in the game and hitting hard.

Actually the D3x doesn't shoot that clean at 1600 ISO -it has grain- but it shoots sharp and has enough DR so that with Dlight all your shots are ok. I don't rate the thing well as a low light camera, I rate it as a normal-light camera that focuses well and can use decent shutter speeds so your 24MP makes sense. Hopefully, the D3Xs or whatever it will be called will be a real low light camera.

I did a set of portraits with available light in the middle of a Paris avenue, at noon, in February, and could not get a single decent shot due to low shutter speed (shake) and insufficient depth of field. The Nikon at least always works at noon in winter daylight

Edmund

No doubt it's a great camera. I've noticed low light focusing problems too with my 1DS MKIII. I'm not too happy with the 1DS3. I mean I like it, but if I was buying it at the same time the 5D MKII was out, I would be the owner of a 5D MKII right now, and not a 1DS III.

I just shot 1600iso on a 1DsmkIII in very low light and it does not need any extra noise reduction. I had a 20 x 30 inch print made from one image to check all is hunky dory and it's as smooth as a babies bum.

Kevin.

I think the reputation of the D3 carried over to the X version, I don't see it has any great advantage noise wise over the 1DsmkIII. I shot a 700 next to a 5dmkII and 1DsmkIII up to 1600 iso . the 700 had less noise and much less pixels. A slight brush with Noise Ninja and they all looked like the same camera.
I looked at a change to Nikon, excellent cameras they are but not such a gap to toss all the Canon into the bay, besides next month the Canon X will leapfrog the Nikon, the month after Nikon will leapfrog Canon and so it goes on. Right now Canon has the best lens range for me, fast lenses in the f1:4 range that do actually work. I would rather have the option of shooting at lower iso, as it stands Nikon need better high iso than Canon. They only have one fast lens.
These are all tremendous cameras, one camera these days covers areas we once used two or three systems to cover.

Kevin.

Thanks for adding this very well thought out post.

You two should get a room.

Gimme a break ... complaining about better tools because you think 'people' don't deserve them because they aren't as 'something' as you think you are ... man ... get over yourselves ... we're all just monkeys.

I think you are taking it the wrong way Jeremy. That certainly isn't what I meant. Just because you make something simpler though doesn't mean the end result will always be better and I think that is a valid point.

Great thought, let's forbid selling DSLR's to non-pro's, they're killing the pro market and inhibit the selling of "real good" photographs

Which nobody is arguing against. Having a more capable camera (whether higher usable ISO, greater resolution, or whatever) does not guarantee a photographer will capture better images. Incompetence can trump any technological advancement. But in competent hands, a new or improved capability can be used to do things previously impossible.

The counter-argument that an enhanced capability cheapens the result by making it easier to achieve is of course bullshit. Taken to its logical confusion, we should all go back to pinhole cameras and expose our images on hand-coated glass plates like Real Photographers^®. The truth is that technical advances raise the bar of what a competent photographer can achieve, and anyone who is content to merely do what he has always done the same way he always has deserves to be left behind.

I'm referring to Canon's own marketing materials, which claim "a more advanced color filter that improves light transmission while retaining excellent color reproduction." To me this sounds like they weakened the CFA to allow more light to hit the sensor. They claim color reproduction is still excellent, but according to DXO Mark it's not quite as good as the 1Ds3 at low ISO's.

That's all right, but I don't see how it would have to do anything with ISO.


I don't see anything like that on the DxO site - not as if I regarded those evaluations as the bible.

Sorry, Panopeeper, actually Canon are buying better S2N from the same light at the price of color discrimination; think of it as having non-orthogonal color filters in the interest of getting enough light on the sensor to minimize the effect of read noise. The digital backs have "very orthogonal" filters, which is one of the reasons one can get such good color out of them. The Hasselblad CEO Christian Poulson explained this stuff to me - he's actually quite technical.

Edmund

One such example of differences in spectral response in the red channel, likely introduced to improve global sensitivity of the sensor, is discussed in the DXO comparison of the Nikon D5000 and Canon EOS 500D.

I did not dispute this aspect. Jeff's claim was, that the change of the filters negatively affects the low ISO capability, in other words the effect depends on the ISO. All I am saying is, that there is no such connection.

Compare 5DII and 1Ds3 at DxOMark. Look at the Color Sensitivity detailed results. At low ISO, the 1Ds3 is better. At higher ISO's this advantage goes away, presumably because of less noise from the 5D2.

Often but not always: increasing quantum efficiency with no change in dark noise levels or well capacity leaves DR the same: it just moves the minimum usable ISO speed up, with the higher base ISO having about the same DR as the lower base ISO did before.

Worse still, consider one hypothetical "high ISO tuning" strategy: keep the total cell size ("pixel pitch") the same, but reduce the well size within it and so reduce full-well capacity, and then use good micro-lenses to steer all the light into the smaller wells. The smaller well capacity could allow smaller amplifiers and other components with lower maximum charge/voltage/current capacity, which could reduce amp. noise (and smaller wells produce a bit less dark current noise too). At high ISO, the wells usually do not get close to full anyway, so you would have equal signal, lower dark noise, and so better S/N ratio. But base ISO speed would be higher (less highlight headroom) and at the new base ISO speed the lower well capacity would likely make IQ worse.

Maybe some sensor technology options do effectively involve this "smaller well in same sized cell" approach, like CMOS vs FF CCD.

High iso has opened up situations that just were not able to be photographed handheld before and is a huge help for sports, weddings etc. It is annoying that people that have never shot film post on forums whining that were is noise in their iso 3200 shots and shouldn't be because they spent £xk on their camera. Sorry, the laws of physics still apply

LOL.

Put very diplomatically. I agree with this but would like to state it in a different manner.

First, higher ISO capability is a double edged sword: Now the photography has to think about how much light he or she needs, instead of simply not getting the image. In other words, you now have the ability to stop action in low light, but should you stop it, if not, how much blur "should" one have for a particular shot? Or, if you're shooting environmental portraits, you need to decide whether or not the shot would look better with more ambient light (higher ISO) or less ambient light and more flash. If you don't have the option of ISO then you default to flash, and you have no choice in the matter, easier yes, more creative, no.

This makes a "photographer" have to think much more about the artistic aspect of what he or she is trying to create. Most people never understand light, and the best they can do is set up a fabricated light pattern using studio lights or use auto on camera flash and point and pray. Yes, they can get good exposure and sharp images, but that's about it.

So you can see that the ISO thing cuts both ways: Amateurs calling themselves "photographers" is laughable, but so too is a photographer acting like an amateur--just in a different manner.

The same thing goes for technology, as Johnathan pointed out. When photography was created, artists thought it would put them out of business. When the 35mm was created, same thing. When auto exposure was created, same thing.

One thing that bothers me is that a really good Photoshop expert can put together a stupendous landscape shot comprised of several average shots taken in different parts of the world, composite them, and you'd never know it (such as taking the cloud structure of one shot and laying it over the dunes of another.) But I'm ok with that.

Question regarding whether or not technology cheapens the medium are legitimate, but how many people would be doing photography today if all we had was tintype? I'd suspect that some of us would just not be aroused by tintype or its process, and thus would find other ways to express ourselves.

Last, it doesn't matter what we think or want, technology will continue to change everything. Our only option, as Johnathan pointed out, is adapt to it.

Jeff, I have seen that, however I dismissed it not ony as irrelevant, but as unreliable as well: the difference with ISO 100 is 21.9 bits vs 21.6 bits.

According to DxO, the SNR at 18% of the 5D2 is a tiny bit better than the 1Ds3, the DR measured at SNR=1 of the 5D2 is a tiny bit lower, than that of the 1Ds3, namely 11.16 EV vs 11.25 EV.

My experience with such measurements shows, that not only the measuring accuracy is the limit. Worse, two shots made by the very same camera, within seconds, may exhibit greater differences than the posted ones.

The effect of the difference of the color filters over the sensels is the same as the effect of a filter on the lens or the effect of the change in the illumination; it has nothing to do with the amplification, which occurs at a later stage.

This issue demonstrates, that one has to be cautious when evaluating such comparisons with close results.

I suppose there are numerous examples for such development, right?

Perhaps? Here's what ISO 12,800 can do for you ...

http://chsvimg.nikon.com/products/imaging/...mg/pic_004b.jpg

Jeremy, this is an excellent demonstration for how good a huge, horrendeously noisy image looks sufficiently downsized (and thus ISO 12800 is really useful), but would not it be better to insert a link instead of a 6.5 MB image in-line?

Anything else need to be said? lol Excellent example!

Yes there is. Or rather, there is a negative impact, which is uniform across ISO. By decreasing the color selectivity of the CFA, in a converted image the colors will be desaturated (easy to see by taking the extreme limit of no color selectivity in the CFA, which yields a greyscale image). Color saturation has to be restored in the conversion to the output color space, and that saturation boost increases chroma noise. Canon seems to have made a calculation that the gain in overall photons recorded is a worthwhile tradeoff, since their "R" pixels are practically Yellow.

I'm not sure, but I seem to recall that the same color selectivity issues plague Foveon technology -- that discriminating color by the absorption depth of the photon is not so accurate, and consequently the RAW data requires a large saturation boost which dramatically affects noise performance. IIRC there is a section of code in dcraw's Foveon processing that does median filtering of chroma channels in order to beat down that component of noise.

You found a rather circumstantial way to express your agreement with me.

Well then I'm not sure where your disagreement with my original statement lies. What I said was that Canon took steps to improve overall high ISO performance, and that there was an negative impact on color response at low ISO. I didn't specifically say there was no impact to the color response at high ISO, although I do think that the impact is pretty much lost in other aspects of the high ISO performance, which is why you get a net gain in image quality at high ISO.

You can parse words however you want, I'm just glad Nikon made the design decisions they did with the D3x, rather than the design decisions Canon seems to be making on their newer cameras.

What are you talking about? 4256x2832 pixels is the original image size. Yes, there is some noise visible, but not so much it would significantly detract from the image, especially in a print.

I printed it at 12 x 18 on premium luster and it looked pretty darn good.

Looks to me like the new 12,800 may be as good or better than 6400 was on the D3/700.