Iso 1600

Very low light situations when you need a fast shutter and can't open the aperture any further or when you specifically are looking for film grain type noise.
 
Is ISO 800 still acceptable most of the time? I have experienced that at night, outside, when only street lights are on I need to shoot ISO 1600.
 
truely depends on the camera. SOme cameras handle higher ISO's better than others. I've found that the canon line 20D 30D, at 1600 iso is very similar in look to 400ASA film grain. So for what you get, that's not that bad.
 
yeah, i hear canon is the best at high iso's in dslr, and fuji in digital point and shoots.
 
On the Canon 5D, noise barely exhists at 1600 when you use higher shutter speeds. (1/250, ect.)

You would use high ISOs like this usually in low light situations where you need a faster shutter or smaller aperture, the ISO acts as compensation.

One tip I've read over and over and stick to is only to use the main multiples of numbers. This gives you the best compensation. So 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, ect.
 
I'll repost something I posted in the Nikon thread. The photo was taken at 11:00 pm and it was so dark I couldn't see to focus so it's soft on focus but you can see what I got with no lighting available. This is at ISO 1600, f5.0, 25 second exposure.

Old_Tracks_Night.jpg
 
Here's a better example. This was taken as a bts shot using the set lighting. ISO1600, f4.5, 1/15 second.

ISO1600Example.jpg
 
Hey Blaine,

Not a bad shot for handheld at a 1/15th!

For some reason this image brings back a memory or two.

As for the original question, the "ISO" rating is really just a way of expressing the gain in front of the quantizer in a digital acquisition device (such as a camera). When you go from "ISO 800" to "ISO 1600" you are actually increasing the gain by 6.02 dB and hence the tendency for increased noise (to put it into more video camera terms).
 
Blaine--

Tripod? THere's no way I could get a sharp shot like that at a 1/15th shutter with my bare hands.

I've noticed in my D70 that there's a lot of grain at iso 1600, as well. I try to stay away from it.
 
Kholi said:
Blaine--

Tripod? THere's no way I could get a sharp shot like that at a 1/15th shutter with my bare hands.

I've noticed in my D70 that there's a lot of grain at iso 1600, as well. I try to stay away from it.
Click to expand...
No tripod. I had one but never got it out. On some of the pictures I took, I should have...:)
 
The noise character of any given camera at the "equivalent" ISO rating will differ directly in relationship to the area of the individual sensor elements (so called pixels). A bigger sensor (say a full frame one) will have less noise at the same number of pixels than a smaller one. An equal sized sensor (area) with less pixels will also exhibit less noise.

The current trend toward higher and higher pixel count is really a marketing effort, not a performance one (in many cases at least). The cost of increasing the number of pixels is nearly zero (as the Si area is the same) as opposed to making a larger sensor (which has a squared cost factor due to yield issues).
 
I have to shoot 1600 every now and then (usually races) or (dancing at weddings) when I am far away.

Honestly, I hate it on my D70. The noise is atrocious at 1600 using a f/2.8 lens. But I only do it when I know I can fix it with DFine.

I am a nikon user, but I would honestly prefer a D5 when it comes to low light. You can shoot up to 1000 iso without seeing any grain on prints 24 inches.
 
Blaine said:
Here's a better example. This was taken as a bts shot using the set lighting. ISO1600, f4.5, 1/15 second.

ISO1600Example.jpg
Click to expand...

Blaine, this is an especially great shot because of the ISO and it being a D200, which isn't the lowest noise camera out there. By far the best looking D200 1600 ISO shot I have ever seen (regarding signal to noise)


Given the issues I have had with my D200 I shot a wedding recently with the D50 and ended up shooting a good portion of the interior reception shots at ISO1600 (D50 has no damned ISO setting in view finder). The images have some noise but it looks more like classic film grain rather than noise. Regardless, it makes post processing a *****.
 
On my D200 I normally shoot ISO100 or 200... On my D50 I stick to ISO200 or 400 unless the situation demands it. Normally I prefer to keep the ISO as low as possible.

For macro work, as low as the camera will go if I have a tripod or as high as it will go if I'm shooting hand hold.
 
In reference to when to use ISO 1600, I use it a lot for indoor horse shows where I'm too far back to even think about using a flash while there's enough movement where I need a fairly quick shutter. It looks like crapola, granted, but it's a whole lot better than massive underexposure or tons of motion blur.
 
I have been grapling with the whole noise issue for a little bit now and What I have noticed is that it is much more important to get an over exposure by one stop so that your shadows have good detail as well as your hihglights since raw files hold a lot fo information in the hihglights. By over exposing a little you can later lower the expsure and make your noise a lot better no matter what ISO you are on. I tried shooting something proparly exposed on my rebel xt at 400 ISO and then over exposed using teh same setttings at 1600 ISO Those two stops of over exposure made such a large diffrence. The 1600 looked very clean where as even if I left the image as it was at 400 you could see noise in teh shadows
 
Jeremy Ordan said:
Blaine, this is an especially great shot because of the ISO and it being a D200, which isn't the lowest noise camera out there. By far the best looking D200 1600 ISO shot I have ever seen (regarding signal to noise)
Click to expand...
Thanks, Jeremy. As bts shots, I wasn't overly concerned with noise. I was just trying to document the shoot. I had a tripod with me but things were moving too fast to stop and use it. I just did the best I could to hold the camera steady with long exposures.
 
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