Quality of ISO levels

Seán_B

Just a quick question to the masses, what is the camera you use like at high ISO (800,1600+)??

I've a 400d and the quality at even 800 is fairly grainy, while 1600 is quite poor (IMO). I was just wondering what the 30d, 5d and so on are like at high ISO.

If your wondering how all this came into my head, i recently was at a wedding with high dark ceilings and my only option was to increase the ISO, 400 was okay but shutter speeds were low and needed care shooting handheld, higher than 400 and the quality noticably dropped.

Contrastingly, the official wedding photographer was rattling shots away, handheld with fast shutter speeds, no flash. He was using a 1d!

Any thoughts??

gandalf

He was probably using a fast prime at f1.4 or f1.8, what lens were you using?

elven

The 5D looks the same at 1600 as my 350 at 400, meh. I suspect the 1D is similar, or better if it's a 1Ds... also as gandalf said, fast lens. The b*stards.

/grump

Sorry Jealousy is an awful awful thing!

Borderfox

If you expose properly then you get less noise, the 5d is even better than the 1ds at not showing noise. I think it is down to the amount of pixels and the distance between them, also you can overexpose by a little bit and get great results such as the shot below.

ISO 3200 Canon 20d and a Sigma 70-200 f2.8

elven

3200? No way!!!

Seán_B

gandalf wrote: »

He was probably using a fast prime at f1.4 or f1.8, what lens were you using?

Gandalf, he was using the same lens as me, canon 24-70 f2.8! So I can't blame the glass!!!

@Borderfox, you've reminded me of that thread about pushing the histogram towards the right to reduce noise!!! In retrospect, any attempt i made at high ISO in the past have been predominatly left biased to try and keep a reasonable shutter speed without forcing the ISO too high, definately worth some investigation!!!

And ISO 3200!!:eek:!! If i took that at the moment it could have passed as a scene from white christmas!!!

jlang

High ISO grain that looks awful when viewed at 100% or pixel-for-pixel on screen can look much less bad once printed or when the resolution is reduced. Consider your 400D (same as me) has over 10 megapixels - far more than really needed for reasonable size prints. Also, it's amazing what noise reduction software can do to reduce the graininess (e.g. NoiseNinja / NeatImage and PhotoShop has NR filters too). I've come to terms with the fact that high ISO and multiple exposures are essential in low light - I'd rather deal with grain than blur. (Although I do agree with you - ISO 800/1600 are definitely much grainier than 400)

Most wedding photogs I've seen don't use primes - they have the likes of fast f/2.8 zooms which allow them a bit more zoom flexibility. With so many group shots and funny cross-church angles to get they need more than the tiny depth-of-field that huge apartures like f/1.4 give so I figure they'd probably have to shoot stopped down anyway.

Borderfox

I think the main advantage of a fast prime is the ability to stop it down a bit and then the image quality is fantastic, while still keeping the ability to shoot a f1.4 or f1.8 too. I shot the shot above handheld and overexposed by one third of a stop and used Guy Gowans actions on it, hand on my heart thats ISO 3200 with a 20d.

dhaslam

The noise problem seems to be related to pixel size, the 6Mp APS sensor which was used various Pentax, Nikon and KM models was excellent at ISO1600. The replacement 10Mp sensor used in the Nikon D200, some Pentax models and Sonys own A100 had high noise above ISO 400. Both the Canon 5D and the Nikon D3 have low pixel density and should be better but they use CMOS sensors which may loose picture quality in other ways. Wide angle lenses help by avoiding out of focus areas.

Not sure if this link works, example of a wedding photograph at ISO 1600, KM 5D with Sigma 17-35 at 1/40th f6.3.

www.pbase.com/dhaslam/image/86307135

Hugh_C

dhaslam wrote: »

The noise problem seems to be related to pixel size, the 6Mp APS sensor which was used various Pentax, Nikon and KM models was excellent at ISO1600.

I have direct experience (and lots of it) of that sensor in a Nikon D70 at 1600 and it's very bodacious. I like the noise, such as it is, being a total film snob and being used to high ISOs.



The above was shot in near darkness and is reasonably noisy, but nice noise at that. The processing workflow also determines noise (or quality thereof) - this was posted in Lightroom which has good noise reduction. Subjective, I guess.

elven

It's not even the presence of noise that bothers me in that spotty, grainy way - it's that my camera seems to like to make it into nasty looking patterns, lines, and almost like a criss-cross thing going on - mostly when I've underexposed and have to bump it up in post processing mind you. Need steadier hands...

Borderfox

Sometimes if you push too much you get banding across the frame but this can be stopped by either spot metering or manual exposure or over exposure, its always better to bring back rather than bump up.

FreeAnd..

In my experience the 5D was made for high ISO's - with 1600 and 3200 both being very useable. I still get shocked at the quality of some 3200 and 1600 is usually as good if not better than 400 was on my old 350D. Here are two examples ..

ISO 1600



ISO 3200



I probably have better examples of the two settings but you cannot get these results with a camera like a 350D or 400D no matter what glass you have on. The second shot above is of the emerald Buddha and it cannot be photographed from within only from far outside. I had to use the 70/200 with 1.4 extender so at 1600 all shots were blurry because the lowest I could go was f5.6...this is where ISO3200 came in...

elven

Continues to amaze...

I find myself having to underexpose simply because i don't have the leeway for a wider aperture or a slower shutter speed, in theory, I'd love to push it and bring it back every time though.

Borderfox

Spot metering is very handy in these tight situations, it is hard to get the shutter speed to do this, maybe for days out bring a bean bag that you can rest the camera on and get a lower shutter speed and lower ISO. Other than that I would say to go up the camera chain to get ISO expansion to 3200. 5d is so smooth at all ISO it really is in a different league to anything I have used even the 40d..

DotOrg

i was flicking through some 12x8 prints of mine the other evening and was looking at all the prints from film, (fuji 1600 superia) and (ilford delta 3200) and then came to some prints from my canon 20d at the same iso levels

the digital prints looked so so clean and noise/grain free compared to the older film prints

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=2170573 is an example of 1600 film grain

Borderfox

Lovely shot DotOrg, I see what you mean but the grain in this is really nice and gives it a character not like the noise in a digital image

DotOrg

Borderfox wrote: »

Lovely shot DotOrg, I see what you mean but the grain in this is really nice and gives it a character not like the noise in a digital image

but the digital shots I have at the same iso show so little noise when they are printed. i've done huge A0 prints from my old 350D with iso of 800 and you can barely see any noise

noise you see when you zoom to 100% on a computer is irelevant really, it''s the prints that count and digital images from modern cameras look stunningly clean of noise/grain from all the large format prints I've done

Borderfox

I suppose in some ways its like cd's and vinyl

rahtkennades

DotOrg wrote: »

....noise you see when you zoom to 100% on a computer is irelevant really, it''s the prints that count ....

Surely noise is noise, regardless of where you're looking at it?

Fajitas!

3200 on the 5D is beautiful tbh. And 1600 is really nice.

Sample @ 3200 Iso

Sample @ 1600 Iso

I've taken to using my 5D at either 100 or 1600/3200.

DotOrg wrote: »

but the digital shots I have at the same iso show so little noise when they are printed. i've done huge A0 prints from my old 350D with iso of 800 and you can barely see any noise

noise you see when you zoom to 100% on a computer is irelevant really, it''s the prints that count and digital images from modern cameras look stunningly clean of noise/grain from all the large format prints I've done

Agreed 100%

rymus

spankin gorgeous guvnor

DotOrg

rahtkennades wrote: »

Surely noise is noise, regardless of where you're looking at it?

yes it is, but a print is an entirely differnet thing than a computer monitor and noise looks very different on prints than it does at 100% on a monitor

5uspect

As already mentioned the sensor size will govern the noise performance most. The bigger the photo sites the more photons the camera records for a given quantum efficiency.
A CCD will usually be better than a CMOS as the photo sites will be larger on the CCD so thats why the 350D suffers with banding. But CMOS sensors are getting better all the time. I read somewhere that the 1D MkIII is two stops faster than its competitors...