Max ISO on 5DMkIII and C300?

[Paper_bag]

Hi,

With the 5dMkII, for some reason people (like Philip Bloom) used to advise not to go above 1600.

Is there an ISO for the Mk3 and C300 that you yourself would generally avoid shooting above?

Very interested in hearing some opinions, though I think that, ultimately, there's a whole bunch of variables -- your own tastes, the client's tastes, nature of the project (wedding or documentary), style of the project, how much dark there is in your image and how obvious noise will be, how much time you're prepared to spend denoising...



Regards,

Paper_bag

 

[dustylense]

I'll hit Iso 5000 without worry.

 

[nigelbb]

The maximum that I will shoot the 5D2 is ISO3200. Provided (& this is very important) that the scene is well exposed there is zero noise. The equivalent on the 5D3 is at least ISO12800 i.e. 2 extra stops. The 5D3 in fact has such heavy duty noise reduction that basically whatever level you set it to you won't see any noise although it does get soft.

I got badly caught out with the C300 in low light after everyone raved about how wonderful the low light performance is & used it at ISO6400 on my first wedding gig. It turns out that the C300 low light performance isn't quite as wonderful or at least it needs a bit of work with picture styles or cleaning up with Neat Video. It's discussed here over on DVInfo forum[FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif] [/FONT]http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/new-canon-cinema-eos-c300-c300-pl-cameras/507683-c300-low-light-performance-not-quite-super-expected.html Bottom line is I don't feel as confident pushing up above ISO3200 with the C300 as I do with the 5D3. It's not terrible but I will avoid it if I can. Neat Video always softens the image but the C300 has so much detail in the first place that I am happy swap a noisy image for a slightly softer one.

 

[squig]

5000 on the MKIII looks great, 6400 is still pretty clean. 12800 perhaps if I'm really desperate (haven't been yet). Nailing exposure at high ISO settings is crucial. Don't use 10000 it's really noisy.

 

[Noel Evans]

I got badly caught out with the C300 in low light after everyone raved about how wonderful the low light performance is & used it at ISO6400 on my first wedding gig. It turns out that the C300 low light performance isn't quite as wonderful or at least it needs a bit of work with picture styles or cleaning up with Neat Video.

Bottom line with the C300 is this - regardless of what ISO you use you need to feed the sensor light. i.e. have some brightness in the frame. Ive shot a 5000ISO image next to a 10000ISO image and guess which was cleaner? The 10000ISO due to the fact that I had better exposure readings at 10000, whilst at 5000 my whole image was under 30ire in the shadows. Simply bringing up the ISO gave me more in the 50-60 range so it was cleaner. I find over 10000 on the C300 this theory doesnt work as well as there, it seems to be gaining up to the point that whatever is happening in the C300 starts to not work quite as well. And yes a touch of neat video works in a pinch.

Good case in point: https://vimeo.com/40848329