1D Mark II ISO Shots (bored)

Oh and all the above were at f/4.0, ISO 3200 and shutter speed from 1/125 to 1/800 seconds, handheld.

Now I think I'll have some of that mango lol

BogongBreeze wrote in post #4881870
Well, you don't have to convince me. Your post motivated me to do a quick and dirty high ISO test at 3200 with 40D and 17-40L. The snaps were taken handheld in RAW, and converted to jpeg from in Lightroom.

Those examples illustrate something else, too: the downside of overexposing and pulling back in post. Look at the blown highlights in the lettering in the background of the overexposed shots. Notice you don't get that with the properly exposed shot.

Sometimes you end up having to put up with a few blown highlights in order to get better noise control.

Normally I'd suggest another interesting experiment to perform: overexpose an ISO 3200 image by one stop, and compare that to a properly exposed ISO 1600 shot. But the OP has already done that for us! Here are the shots:

• ISO 3200, overexposed and pulled back: http://farm3.static.fl​ickr.com …50035429_1b16f1​63e2_o.jpg
  
• ISO 1600, properly exposed: http://farm3.static.fl​ickr.com …50015791_570b39​6e7b_o.jpg

kcbrown wrote in post #4881897
Those examples illustrate something else, too: the downside of overexposing and pulling back in post. Look at the blown highlights in the lettering in the background of the overexposed shots. Notice you don't get that with the properly exposed shot.

Yes, I certainly noticed the blown lettering, but given what it is, it would be easily toned down in photoshop if I wanted to.

Agree.

Agree wholeheartedly if there's a choice. But at the limits, say, of handholdability or stopping motion, sometimes the choice isn't there. In practice I prefer to stay at or under ISO 800, but am prepared to go higher for the shot.

I'm interested as well. After I become proficient with the 40D I might even add one of the 1D series to the photoswag

There's clearly chroma noise in the 40D 'proper' shot when I look at 100%, but only in the dark shadow areas behind and below the mango. If the 40D shot was as light throughout as the MkII shot, there'd be no discernible noise either. So I've no reason at all to doubt the OP about not applying any NR.

BogongBreeze wrote in post #4881912
Agree wholeheartedly if there's a choice. But at the limits, say, of handholdability or stopping motion, sometimes the choice isn't there. In practice I prefer to stay at or under ISO 800, but am prepared to go higher for the shot.

That's not the tradeoff I was talking about.

If you have to choose between overexposing at a higher ISO and using a normal exposure at a lower ISO in the same situation, it appears you should always use the lower ISO. In terms of the shutter speed and aperture combinations available to you, they'll be identical, so overexposing at higher ISO doesn't confer any advantages whatsoever.

For instance, ISO 3200 overexposed by 1 stop is the same as ISO 1600 without any overexposure in terms of the shutter speed and aperture combinations available to you. If you think about it, it makes sense. If you were at f/5.6 at 1/125 sec at ISO 1600, you'd be at f/5.6 at 1/250 sec at ISO 3200 if you wanted both exposures to be "correct". To overexpose the ISO 3200 shot, you'd bring your shutter speed back down to 1/125 sec -- the same as what you used to get the ISO 1600 shot.

As for using high ISO in general, I have no issues at all shooting my 40D at ISO 3200. Its built-in noise reduction is so good that I'll happily use the JPEG images straight out of the camera at ISO 3200. I shoot RAW+JPEG just in case I want to adjust the RAW images in post later on (for instance, when I want to equalize the white balance across a series of shots taken with a flash in challenging lighting conditions).

BogongBreeze wrote in post #4881939
There's clearly chroma noise in the 40D 'proper' shot when I look at 100%, but only in the dark shadow areas behind and below the mango. If the 40D shot was as light throughout as the MkII shot, there'd be no discernible noise either. So I've no reason at all to doubt the OP about not applying any NR.

I have no doubt that the OP wasn't applying any NR, but his Lightroom program may have had other ideas.

Seriously, though, it's quite clear some chroma NR was being applied in some of the shots, because otherwise there would not be such a stark difference in chroma noise in the same colored area of the same subject (and if anything, there would be more chroma noise in the ISO 3200 shot than in the ISO 1600 shot, while the opposite is what actually happened).

kcbrown wrote in post #4882009
That's not the tradeoff I was talking about.

If you have to choose between overexposing at a higher ISO and using a normal exposure at a lower ISO in the same situation, it appears you should always use the lower ISO. In terms of the shutter speed and aperture combinations available to you, they'll be identical, so overexposing at higher ISO doesn't confer any advantages whatsoever.

Okay, now I understand what you are getting at, and agree with you on that. This point comes up from time to time in discussions about 'exposing to the right'. Not really a lot of point to ETTR at anything but low ISOs, and with the 40D you're hard pushed to get chroma noise at low ISO in any case

BogongBreeze wrote in post #4882222
Okay, now I understand what you are getting at, and agree with you on that. This point comes up from time to time in discussions about 'exposing to the right'. Not really a lot of point to ETTR at anything but low ISOs, and with the 40D you're hard pushed to get chroma noise at low ISO in any case

Yeah, that's true, but oddly enough I've seen chroma noise at ISO 200 when pushing an underexposed shot! So even at low ISOs, it's important to get the exposure right.

ETTR at low ISOs is for an entirely different reason, namely to get you more shadow detail to work with during postprocessing, as well as finer midtone gradations.

So then LR must do it anyways even when I have everything zero'd out. I wonder if anyone else can confirm this?

I will shoot some more today and import into Capture One (demo) and see if there is a difference.

open them in DPP


.

^^

Couldn't you just import the same images you already have into another program besides LR? That way you can compare the same images.

will have to install that. I will try and get some posted sometime today.

If you don't have it for some reason (lost, whatever)

Download this base program (v1.0 or something) and install

http://web.canon.jp/Im​aging/sdl/data/dpp100-e.exe






Then go here and download the update (and install)

http://www.usa.canon.c​om …egoryid=314&mod​elid=15653
(its the same for every camera)

.