at the edge of light...

[EXA1a]

In Germany it happens on St. Martin's day (November 11th) around dusk, that little children walk through the streets, sing the song "Laterne, Laterne, Sonne, Mond und Sterne..." and carry a lantern (with their parent's guidance, of cause).
You can imagine, there's not much light around. I tried to shoot some pics without using a flash.
300D, 50/1.4 at f1.4, 1/40sec, ISO 3200:
http://www.bidencap.de/StMartin.jpg
I know it's grainy but did I capture the mood?
--Jens--

[Bruce Watson]

Jens,

Very nice shot, it's a great candid portrait.

Cheers,

Bruce

[Hellashot]

You cannot do ISO 3200 on a digital rebel. With a 20D. anyways ISO 1600 on a Drebel is horrible.

[Bruce Watson]

You certainly can do 3200 on a 300D if you are using the "hacked" software that is freely available.

[tpinchback]

You certainly can do 3200 on a 300D if you are using the "hacked" software that is freely available.

true, you can do it, but is is unusable

[edsarkiss]

true, you can do it, but is is unusable

apparently mr EXA1a shows that it is indeed "usable".

[defordphoto]

I know it's grainy but did I capture the mood?
--Jens--

Perfectly. Good job.

[Adam Hicks]

That's definitely not unusable. As a matter of fact it goes to show another great reason for using the 'hack.' At ISO1600 he wouldn't have been able to get that crisp of a shot handheld without a flash.

Great job!

[chucksberg]

great shot. It's about the mood, not technical specs.

[wolf]

Actually real nice when you remove a bit of noise.

http://www.wolverineenterprises.com/photo_net/StMartin_filtered.jpg

[Bruce Watson]

You know, I am constantly amazed by both what the new generation of cameras can do (esp. digital) and how we so quickly forget the limitations of the "old days".

3200 is noisy? Yep, but then again, if it lets you get that once in a lifetime shot, you live with some noise and/or post process with Noise Ninja or the like.

Back in the day, we often had to "push" Tri X film to get a shot. It looked like crap in big blow ups, was just okay in reasonable size, but that was the price you paid for low light/action shooting.

I think it was Ansco or maybe after they changed to 3M brand that came out with a 400 ASA colour slide film in the seventies?

Grainy? You bet, but it was fast.

I for one am more then delighted with high ISO results from my 10D and 300D. Having just upgraded to the 20D, I have not shot anything at that setting yet, but I am confident it is improved.

But I still think a great shot like Jens is a great shot, all latest and greatest factors aside.

Cheers,

Bruce

[dhbailey]

Wolf, how did you remove that noise?

[sparker1]

Great shot. I don't know what wolf did, but I've used the "despeckle" filter in PSE to reduce that kind of noise. You lose some detail, but it generally just softens the image a bit...not bad for this lad's face.

[wolf]

Wolf, how did you remove that noise?

I used Neat Image (http://neatimage.com) on that photo. Nice software, highly recommended.

[EXA1a]

Thanks a lot for all of your comments and feedback.
What I wanted to point out with my post was the possibility to shoot pictures with a 300D at very low light levels. The picture was shot at LV 0, in contrast to full daylight which equals LV 15 which is 32,768 times brighter (LV = light value). LV 0 is close to the edge of nowaday's technology. Only the 50mm/f1.0 would have given an additional stop.
While I shot this pic without flash, someone else took pics with a P&S camera and flash (of course). I didn't look at his pics but they will be for sure much sharper, less grainy and have greater DOF. But besides getting red eyes the dusk and lantern mood will be gone completely. What would you prefer: No pic at all, sharp flash shot or what I did? I'm glad I took it.
Hellashot: My 300D employs the modified firmware. I make use of MLU, FEC, One Shot, Av flash synch speed (auto or 1/200s), and sometimes ISO 3200.
Wolf: I had heard about Neat Image in this forum a lot and still I'm really amazed of the result. Thanks for your effort!

--Jens--

[Rayz]

Quite remarkable! It seems a bit devious of Canon to produce a camera and disable some of its functions so that it doesn't compete with it's more expensive models.

I have one question. Would an underexposed shot at ISO 1600 with exposure compensation applied in Adobe Camera RAW, or C1, look any different?

[Andy_T]

Wonderful shot, Jens!

I just love the reflection of the lantern in his eyes.

The NeatImage result is also pretty impressive, Wolf.

Best regards,
Andy

[Jon]

Quite remarkable! It seems a bit devious of Canon to produce a camera and disable some of its functions so that it doesn't compete with it's more expensive models.

I have one question. Would an underexposed shot at ISO 1600 with exposure compensation applied in Adobe Camera RAW, or C1, look any different?

Devious? Do you think it's "devious" of GM to produce the same car, and charge more for the one that has "Cadillac" on the front than for the same on with "Chevrolet"? Or Ford/Lincoln, or . . .

Yes an underexposed shot would look different. All exposure comp. tells the camera to do is adjust the shutter speed and aperture to under/overexpose from the theoretically-correct meter reading. It's still capturing sensor levels at the ISO 1600 setting, and your histogram's going to be at the dark end of the scale relative to a correctly-exposed image. That means that there will be more dark areas showing ISO1600 noise. If you're recording with a sensor sensitivity of 3200, it'll amplify the captured levels of all the sensors, but the exposure will be closer to correct, and the noise-levels will be less obvious. You're also going to have better shadow detail (because the data collected from the sensor originally had it present).

[Rayz]

Devious? Do you think it's "devious" of GM to produce the same car, and charge more for the one that has "Cadillac" on the front than for the same on with "Chevrolet"? Or Ford/Lincoln, or . . .



I'm not sure I understand your point. Does the Chevrolet or Ford use some of the same components as the Cadillac, but deliberately disabled to make them less fuctional?

However, I do understand the general process of ISO adjustment in a digital camera. The higher the ISO, the less light the sensor receives. To compensate for this unavoidable underexposure, the analogue signal from the sensor is amplified before A/D conversion. Unfortunately, amplifiers can also amplify noise as well as introduce additional noise of their own.

For all I know, it might well be the case that the 3200 ISO option has been disabled or deliberately omitted from the 300D because it serves little purpose, possibly because of the lack of other noise reduction circuitry which would have increased the cost of the camera; hence the question.

However, I sometimes forget when asking such questions that not everyone shoots RAW. For those who shoot in jpeg mode, the option of recovering detail and removing noise during conversion has been lost.

[Jon]

I'm not sure I understand your point. Does the Chevrolet or Ford use some of the same components as the Cadillac, but deliberately disabled to make them less fuctional?

However, I do understand the general process of ISO adjustment in a digital camera. The higher the ISO, the less light the sensor receives. To compensate for this unavoidable underexposure, the analogue signal from the sensor is amplified before A/D conversion. Unfortunately, amplifiers can also amplify noise as well as introduce additional noise of their own.

For all I know, it might well be the case that the 3200 ISO option has been disabled or deliberately omitted from the 300D because it serves little purpose, possibly because of the lack of other noise reduction circuitry which would have increased the cost of the camera; hence the question.

However, I sometimes forget when asking such questions that not everyone shoots RAW. For those who shoot in jpeg mode, the option of recovering detail and removing noise during conversion has been lost.

Chevrolet and Cadillac are both made by the same company, and in many cases the differences are only the name on the front. Same with Ford and its' Lincoln brand, or, for that matter, the new Ford Five Hundred, based on the Volvo S60 chassis.

The 3200 ISO isn't all that was disabled. It might be part of a bundle of features which couldn't be individually disabled; that disabling one would have a serious impact on others. AI-Servo springs to mind as a possible culprit.

[dphoto]

What I want to know is, how did you take that image at 1/40 sec without any blur? I'm scared of 1/60 so I usually don't go below 1/80. Good job! :)

-Deva

[tim]

That's a great shot. I'm in the "who cares about noise if you get the photo" camp, as you can clean it up nicely, as wolf has shown. Maybe it can't be printed at A2 or A1 size, but that's not going to happen often anyway. I have shots (eg this one (http://mrwild.co.nz/PhotoGallery/2004/AucklandTrip2/slides/IMG_0812.html)) that I couldn't have gotten without ISO3200. I must clean that one up some time, actually.

Wolf - is there much difference in the end product when you use the free vs the paid for version? The free version's fine, but I know it can't do batches and is only 8 bit. Jpg's only 8 bit anyway IIRC.

[toddb]

I agree, I think that iso 3200 looks great. As computer people that we are, we notice noize so much more now because we are always looking at photos at 100% the actual size where with film you only saw this in the dark room. I was surprised at what the "print" actually looked like, you don't notice the noize nearly as much. I did a test on my 10D a while back, take a look at this:

ISO Speed and Noize (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=41270)

This is also interesting because you can also see that longer exposure is also better then higher iso. I'd still love for someone to do the same test on a 20D and run the whole iso range with the same shot to see the difference of the new noize reduction it has.

I would agree that pumping up the ISO is better then under exposing. I'm reading an interesting book on raw images called "Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS" by Bruce Fraser and found out that over half of the captured data in our digital cameras is in the lightest stop in the dynamic range. This is because the digital cameras have a linear gamma unlike what we see and like negative film so it's harder to push a the infromation up because there is actually allot less data in the dark side. Interesting stuff and good to know when taking pictures with this technology.

[rkoshy]

Chevrolet and Cadillac are both made by the same company, and in many cases the differences are only the name on the front. Same with Ford and its' Lincoln brand, or, for that matter, the new Ford Five Hundred, based on the Volvo S60 chassis.

The 3200 ISO isn't all that was disabled. It might be part of a bundle of features which couldn't be individually disabled; that disabling one would have a serious impact on others. AI-Servo springs to mind as a possible culprit.

I didn't hear anyone complaining when Intel made the 486 and then DISABLED the onboard math-processor functionality to sell a cheaper SX version... :)

[wolf]

Wolf - is there much difference in the end product when you use the free vs the paid for version? The free version's fine, but I know it can't do batches and is only 8 bit. Jpg's only 8 bit anyway IIRC.

On thing I have heard in another forum is the quality of the saved image is not as good with the free version. I can't verify that though.

[drisley]

Quite remarkable! It seems a bit devious of Canon to produce a camera and disable some of its functions so that it doesn't compete with it's more expensive models.
I have one question. Would an underexposed shot at ISO 1600 with exposure compensation applied in Adobe Camera RAW, or C1, look any different?
Underexposure of a high ISO shot with compensation in software will result in LOTS more noise than a properly exposed high ISO image. Never underexpose a high ISO image unless you have no other choice to get the shot. It's preferable to actually slightly overexpose (shoot to the right) high ISO images to reduce noise.