Usable ISO 3200

I will admit, I am really a newbie in shooting higher ISO's. I generally keep it no higher than 800...but have found a couple of times where I should've gone higher recently. So I recently took a test shot at ISO 3200 with my T2i and 135L. Without any post processing besides a little cropping below is what I got. My question is, is this what I should expect? Is this good high ISO IQ? I personally really think it is good and it printed 4x6 really nicely (which is probably all that matters). But, I would like to hear from others on it.

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Based on the image and you mentioned that you cropped it I would say that is about what you can expect. I don't know how much you cropped your image.

Does your histogram go all the way to the right? This looks a little under exposed and the dolls eyes looks soft. Looks like focus is on the chair. ISO 3200 will not be perfect, but it will show up more if your image is under exposed. A brighter subject and smaller image size will show less noise, but when you use high ISO and crop the image your making the noise stand out even more.

As far as exposure, I've noticed my camera under exposes with both of my lenses quite a bit. I've bumped it a 1/3, but should probably bump it another 1/3. Here is the SOOC image, as you can see, I did bump up the exposure on the first image I posted.

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It looks acceptable thought the image appears backfocused so it appears a bit soft. And if you apply any sharpening it tends to increase noise so it might venture into the unacceptable category.

The overall noise looks better in the second image, but I would bump it up another 1/3 and see how that looks.

I always shoot at +1/3 at high ISOs, then bring levels down a bit if needed. Sometimes I need to go an extra 1/3 depending on the type of light (stage colors).

So I thought I would do another test...ISO 3200 and 6400. I have my camera setup to shoot in AV with a EC of +2/3. The only difference between these shots were ISO and then one was shot at 1/50 and the other at 1/100. Both shot at f2.0.

In LR I decreased exposure -1.3 on both images and that is the only PP I did on them.

ISO3200

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To me, the noise looks fine. Now just do a white balance. This will give a better reading on the noise and will brighten up the picture to see how the noise would look once the picture has been edited.

the noise seems ok....however that doll is spooky!

I think it is awesome that we are even considering the IQ of those images taken at ISO 3200 and ISO 6400. It was only about 7 months ago that I upgraded from my 300D to my 7D and, let me tell you, I couldn't get photos that clean at ISO 800 with the 300D!

Tim