How often do you shoot at ISO1600?

[Tapeman]

As it gets darker I adjust my ISO higher. I have my camera set up on a tripod looking at a bird feeder. Should I stop at ISO 800 or push it further?

[AjP]

time to time, depends on situation, but if it is doo dark I bump my ISO

[cecilc]

Should I stop at ISO 800 or push it further?

Go ahead and push it!

That MKII will hold the noise down at 1600 really well ....

I've shot basketball with a 20D at 3200 during last season and was still producing 8x10's from them - so you shooting at 1600 with a MKII should not be a problem ...

[lostdoggy]

When I need to otherwise I'll shoot at the lowest ISO that I can.

[tim]

Use whatever ISO you need to that gives you the shutter speed you need. Better a clear photo with a bit of noise than a blurred photo with less noise. 1600 is the highest I consider using for paid work, I prefer to stay to 800 if possible because the amount of noise increases a lot between 800 and 1600. Make sure you exposure it well, if you underexpose and tweak later it'll look terrible.

[JBillings]

I shoot lots of indoor basketball games and will bump my 20D to 3200 as required. With NeatImage I get great results.

[Raj]

My 20D iso 1600 pics are quite acceptable, so I believe you dont have much to worry abt 1600. I try to stick to as low iso as possible when subject is stationary + I have the liberty to use a tripod. For all other occassions I bump up the iso & reduce noise in s/w later.

[EricKonieczny]

I use it quite often, almost every weekend when I am at a club or concert.

These were taken at ISO 1600, 1/15 sec, f4.5, hand held


http://www.ekreating.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=3305
http://www.ekreating.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=3295

[ayotnoms]

If the conditions warrant it, I'll use ISO 1600. I use whatever is going to give me the right exposure and use NOISE NINJA to take care the noise that comes from using it.

In very low light conditions, I'll crank that sucker up to 3200 :-D

What's the concern?

[Scottes]

I did a night shoot a few weeks ago at ISO 3200, got 8x10 prints done (some cropped) and they were great. I was *very* surprised.

As Tim said "Better a clear photo with a bit of noise than a blurred photo with less noise." Noise reduction software will do very well, and using a surface mask with NR will be even better. But it might not even need it.

Bump the ISO, get the shot!

[rfreschner]

I use ISO 1600 quite a bit because I really don't like to use flash...... ok, so I really don't have a good flash.. :D

Images come out quite well on the 20D at 1600.

[Johnny V]

All the body building shots - Xcalibur and Garden State - were shot hand held with my XT at 1600 ISO at f4 around 1/225 sec....using Canon 70-200L f4 of course:

http://homepage.mac.com/johnvito/PhotoAlbum29.html

Some of the images are cropped too...not too shabby...the zoom is tack sharp!

[Mitcon]

I'm shooting with the 350D/XT and use 1600 about 40% of the time, 800 50% and 400 here and there when I can get away with it. I don't many prints over 8x10. As people have already said, use the lowest ISO you can get away with but if your shutter speed needs it, use the higher ISO as you can tweak a bit of noise when PPing but all you can do with a fuzzy photo is trash it.

[reemas]

tim or anyone, can you explain this:
Make sure you exposure it well, if you underexpose and tweak later it'll look terrible.
im still trying to learn how to expose my pictures. everything i shoot seems noisy, not sharp, or other problems.

im using a 20d with a 1.8 50mm and a 17-85 IS USM.
thanks.

[lancea]

I have no hesitation at all going to 1600 or 3200 if it means the difference between getting a shot or not.

As to why we should expose for the highlights, to paraphrase (and heavily summarise) Bruce Fraser in "Real World Camera RAW", if you have 4096 levels to cover a range of 6 stops, the top half are used for the brightest stop whereas the darkest stop only has 64 levels available. If you underexpose, you therefore have to stretch-out the levels where less data is available.

[tim]

tim or anyone, can you explain this:

im still trying to learn how to expose my pictures. everything i shoot seems noisy, not sharp, or other problems.

im using a 20d with a 1.8 50mm and a 17-85 IS USM.
thanks.

Make sure you check your histogram and have a good distribution of brightness. If the photo's not bright enough you have to boost it in software, which makes noise much worse.

[Mitcon]

Reemas, it's hard to help without seeing some of the problems so maybe post up some sample images and let us know the settings you used and with what lens. Be alot easier for people to help you with some ideas then. Learning to expose and meter well isn't that hard it just takes a little thought to what your photographing and getting to know your camera/lens combo and practice, practice, practice. You need to learn how to look at and process everything you see in your veiwfinder, not just the subject or main focal point.

This may sound hard but once you get to know the gear your using and how to adjust it and take into account everything in your capture it gets alot easier. Read your manuals well, understand your equipment. Then you learn to understand light and how your settings affect the capture of it. In the end it becomes automated, driving a car is harder and takes just as much or more concentration. Best thing I can say is know your gear (read manuals) and practice alot untill it becomes second nature.

[reemas]

thanks all for the excellent replies. i know my equipment well but im always shooting and forgetting to bump up/down the iso, and using the histogram is tough.

if i read it right, its best to have the histogram leaning slightly to the right? if so, 90% of my shots that lean right (even a little) have flashing white spots, or over exposed areas.

i'll start putting up some shots and the exif info. maybe some can tell me why i'm not getting the "right exposure."

a quick question as well: isn't somehting like 1/8 and f/10 and roughly f/20 and .5" going to give you the same exposure (except for dof)? but it doesn't right?

[syburn]

I have never used my ISO on my 350D cos I thought Its just one more setting that can be acheived by altering speed or aperture. If your shot stilllooks to dark do you think that resorting to ISO will be helpfull?

As far I as I have read arn't we supposed to be having the historgram towards the left (dark) so we dont risk loosing data from the sensor with the hotspots?

Simon

[FScott]

I try to stay at 800 or below but if I need it for the shot I don't hesitate to use 1600 or even 3200 on my 20D. I use NeatImage for post processing and it can do amazing things for noise. You can also use masks or the history brush in photoshop to restrict the noise reduction to areas without lots of detail. Having three axes for exposure control: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO plus the histogram on the playback is one of the truly great things about digital photography!

-- Scott.

[Johnny V]

I have never used my ISO on my 350D cos I thought Its just one more setting that can be acheived by altering speed or aperture. If your shot stilllooks to dark do you think that resorting to ISO will be helpfull?

Use the ISO! You'll see better image quality if you change the ISO for the appropriate situtation. When you change the ISO it affects how the image is processed via the in-camera hardware.

As far I as I have read arn't we supposed to be having the historgram towards the left (dark) so we dont risk loosing data from the sensor with the hotspots?
Simon

Expose to the right without clipping the highlights is the way to go.

Read this thread about proper exposure to the right:

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@617.fzBxexuFKAv.8@.3bb6a869.3bbb1172/0

[muscleflex]

i used 1600 and 3200 tonight for the first time, on my way home from the gym, i noticed a black cloud of smoke. it turned out to be the building close to my house was on fire. so i drove home, ran in and picked up my camera and ran to the scene and fired some shots with the tamron 28-300 on the long end..so i used the high ISO to avoid blur.

[syburn]

QUOTE -Read this thread about proper exposure to the right:

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/...a869.3bbb1172/0

Hmm..... cant seen to see exactly what you mean here. I have looked but mostly they are talking about colour, ACR ect. Can you tell me more detail about where it is.

Sorry to be a bore?

[FScott]

i used 1600 and 3200 tonight for the first time, on my way home from the gym, i noticed a black cloud of smoke. it turned out to be the building close to my house was on fire. so i drove home, ran in and picked up my camera and ran to the scene and fired some shots with the tamron 28-300 on the long end..so i used the high ISO to avoid blur.

I ran the neatimage noise reduction filter on your image and got the following. It would have done a much better job on the full resolution image:

-- Scott.

[muscleflex]

oh wow!!! that is so cool!!!!! i can email you the full raw image tonight if you like?

[griff2]

Or you could download Imagenomic's "Noiseware", it comes in various flavours, but if you're happy staying with jpeg it's free.

[jesusdelallata]

What is the link for imagenomics?

[Johnny V]

QUOTE -Read this thread about proper exposure to the right:

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/...a869.3bbb1172/0

Hmm..... cant seen to see exactly what you mean here. I have looked but mostly they are talking about colour, ACR ect. Can you tell me more detail about where it is.

Sorry to be a bore?

Read post: http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@617.9WqceFGEKWE.10@.3bb6a869.3bbb1172/41
Here's an excerpt written by Jeff Schewe:
"Yes, the ideal would be to spot meter the highlights that you wish to have textural detail and expose to just get that texture without clipping.

Because digital captures are linear, there is an incredible amount of detail in that brightest 1 stop of a scene. Looking at the LCD on the back of the camera as a preview or even looking at the histogram (which tells you little that's useful) will not really tell you what is textural highlights vs specular highlights intended to clip.

One of the reasons Thomas put in the curves function of Camera Raw 3.x was because he was convinced by several people (Bruce and Steve Johnson in particular) that there was so much data there in the highlights that only a custom curve function could allow reditribution or useful data and only in the linear stage, not after the image has been processed into a gamma encoding."

Another post to read: http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@617.9WqceFGEKWE.16@.3bb6a869.3bbb1172/68
Here's an excerpt written by Jeff Schewe:

"...is the linear nature of digital and the fact that SO MUCH CRITICAL data is recorded in that brightest stop."

and

"A 1/3 or 1/2 or 1 stop reduction in exposure will have an impact on the quality of the resulting image. In the old days of digital capture, there was a need to pull exposures because of video chip blooming-a result of extreme highlights effecting areas around bright highlights. Often this video blooming meant you HAD to reduct exposure to save not only the highlights but surrounding areas. . .these days the sensors are far better at containing blooming and the need to artificially reduce exposure to fix the blooming isn't really required.

The whole point of this exchange is to highlight the fact that digital exposure _IS_ different than film exposure and needs to be treated differently. Yes, exposuing digital is somewhat like exposing chrome reversal film except for the fact that film does NOT have the ability to capture nearly the amount of usable detail near total white. Digital does. That brighest stop contains a TON of data that can be used and manipulated with curves. . .film doesn't. "

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@617.9WqceFGEKWE.22@.3bb6a869.3bbb1172/83

Excerpt from above link by Bruce Fraser:

"Correct exposure is always desirable, but when you're at all concerned with shadow detail, underexposure is always a much greater sin than overexposure—that's inherent in linear capture. When one also takes into account Camera Raw's extended highlight recovery, depending on your camera you have a safety margin of somewhere between 1/4 stop and a stop. There's no safety margin at all on the shadow end, and relatively far fewer levels to play with, no matter what the bit depth.

It's always going to be safer to capture the shadows lighter than you want them in the print, and stretch that invisible highlight detail down into the midtones and shadows, than to underexpose and try to stretch the few levels of shadow data up the tone scale.

That doesn't mean I'm advocating overexposure. I'm advocating correct exposure, and the key component of correct exposure in digital is where you place the highlight. Most of this thread has been devoted to figuring out how to do that reliably."

Here's more links to read:

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@617.9WqceFGEKWE.16@.3bb6a869.3bbb1172/76

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@617.9WqceFGEKWE.16@.3bb6a869.3bbb1172/77

There are more interesting posts to read on that thread....but I gotta get to work.

Basically what they are saying is expose to the right so the highlights almost clip - but not quite. Also they are saying the right side of the histogram contains - holds - the most image data...so it's better to record a shadow or midtone with a lighter expsoure and darken it in Photoshop to the proper values, than expose it darker and lighten it as there will be much less chance for noise to show.

Hope this helps.

John V.

[Rbrti]

Hey guy's watt about dot size at 1600, just look Jonny V picture for reference. I think more you increase ISO mor you decrease sharpeness of your picture

Rbrti

[FScott]

oh wow!!! that is so cool!!!!! i can email you the full raw image tonight if you like?

Muscleflex,

I sent you a PM.

-- Scott.

[Johnny V]

Hey guy's watt about dot size at 1600, just look Jonny V picture for reference. I think more you increase ISO mor you decrease sharpeness of your picture

Rbrti

The tight shots - from the knees and waste up - are crops - like 1/3 the frame. On those shots I did kinda over sharpened them but they still look good to me. I did run Noise Ninja on a couple of images as a test and it did improve them for sure. But I just didn't think it was necessary for the web presentation.

On the shots not cropped there was no need to run Noise Ninja.

[griff2]

What is the link for imagenomics?
Clicki here (http://www.imagenomic.com/download.asp) to go to their download page.

[electra]

I was taking photographs all day today for 6 hours. Most of the pictures were shot at ISO-1600. Some were at ISO-3200. I try to use lower ISOs if I can because of the noise it makes. But like most photographers here suggested, if you need a higher ISO, then use it.

...

[CorruptedPhotographer]

Whenever I need to :)

Look at it this way, there are a lot of programs that will adjust noise, but nothing will adjust a blurry or very low light shot. Better to have a grainy image which can be fixed later on than a blurry one that goes into your Recyle Bin . Hell, i even go up to ISO3200 if need be.

[Jon]

Hey guy's watt about dot size at 1600, just look Jonny V picture for reference. I think more you increase ISO mor you decrease sharpeness of your picture

Rbrti

Pixel size won't change with increasing ISO. The sensor cells are a constant size. What happens is that you get more noise in the picture as the sinal for each pixel is amplified. Programs like Noise Ninja, Neat Image, etc., in trying to reduce noise, look for anomalous pixels and try to average them with their neighbor. Depending on just what algorithm is used, this may result in some loss of sharpness. For the same (or a mirrored) reason, you shouldn't generally sharpen a picture before you reduce the noise level - you'll just make the noise stand out more, too. Of course, this makes it easier for you to go in and manually kill noisy pixels, if you want to.

[Anders Östberg]

How often? Basically every time I shoot indoor sports, small venues tend to have lousy light. ISO 1600 is great on the 1D Mark II, easily cleaned up using Neatimage.

For birds however, I don't like to go above 800, the noise masks too much detail in for instance feathers.

[The Zman Abides]

When I was down in New Orleans in the French Quarters I found myself using it a lot at night.

[Kennymc]

As it gets darker I adjust my ISO higher. I have my camera set up on a tripod looking at a bird feeder. Should I stop at ISO 800 or push it further?

You need to push it to achieve the desired shutter speed and aperture to capture the image you are after... Over doing it when there is no need will increase the noise, so unless you are after that effect keep it as low as possible...