What is your personal ISO limit (with your current gear)?

[jrtrent]

It is about available light. For handheld shots 2-3 EV100 is about the limit for me.

Your post title says this is not about ISO, but how do you determine what you can hand-hold without taking ISO into consideration? For the pictures I normally take (scenics with deep depth of field), my older 1.5X crop factor DSLR is good down to about EV10--I usually need f/8 to ensure getting the depth of field I need at my favored 35mm focal length (50mm equivalent), I can avoid excessive camera shake fairly reliably at 1/50 second or higher, and I like my camera's output at ISO 400. With a Nikon P7100 compact, though restricted to ISO 100 for clean results, I could get to EV 7 thanks to its image stabilization and great depth of field even wide open at f/3.5 (at the same 50mm equivalent focal length). Had I liked its output at ISO 400, I could have shot handheld down to EV5.

One of the interesting things to me is the very low light levels that people in these forums regularly shoot in. The exposure guides I remember from my film days typically covered EV16 (bright sun on sand or snow) to EV12 (heavy overcast or open shade), and some guides would go to EV11 (deep shade). One of my favorite books is Brian Bower's Lens, Light and Landscape. Like most of my picture taking, the book consists of outdoor scenes mostly under daylight conditions, Of the 121 example photos in the book, 115 were taken at EV11 or higher (in fact, 112 of them were within the three-stop range of EV15 to EV12). EV11 is about as low as I need to go outdoors, and when I'm indoors (such as for a birthday party), I'm happy to use flash, just like I did with a film camera loaded up with ISO 100 Fuji Astia.

 

[Julia Borg]

It is about available light. For handheld shots 2-3 EV100 is about the limit for me.

Your post title says this is not about ISO, but how do you determine what you can hand-hold without taking ISO into consideration?

you do know what ISO is doing, right? you know that changing ISO 2x and setting shutter speed 2x faster, you decrease exposure 2x?

 

[Gandolphi]

Hello,

I've seen many posts on here talking about ISO and maximum usable ISO so I was interested in what you currently consider to be the maximum usable ISO with your current gear. Of course it also depends on the use case.

I'm currently using a Nikon D810 and try to avoid going over 3200, 6400 if really necessary?

Before that i had a Sony a99 and I thought the limit there was 1600 for general usability. Even further back a Sony a900 where ISO 800 was often already kinda pushing it.

So what is your limit? Just being curious.

I am old school and need to be pinched with a red hot pincer to force myself to set the ISO above 800. That said, I agree with all the comments which suggest a bad shot is better than no shot and a grainy shot is better than a blurred shot.

 

[Gandolphi]

It is about available light. For handheld shots 2-3 EV100 is about the limit for me.

Your post title says this is not about ISO, but how do you determine what you can hand-hold without taking ISO into consideration?

you do know what ISO is doing, right? you know that changing ISO 2x and setting shutter speed 2x faster, you decrease exposure 2x?

 

[Julia Borg]

It is about available light. For handheld shots 2-3 EV100 is about the limit for me.

Your post title says this is not about ISO, but how do you determine what you can hand-hold without taking ISO into consideration?

you do know what ISO is doing, right? you know that changing ISO 2x and setting shutter speed 2x faster, you decrease exposure 2x?

 

[Gandolphi]

It is about available light. For handheld shots 2-3 EV100 is about the limit for me.

Your post title says this is not about ISO, but how do you determine what you can hand-hold without taking ISO into consideration?

you do know what ISO is doing, right? you know that changing ISO 2x and setting shutter speed 2x faster, you decrease exposure 2x?

 

[Julia Borg]

Doesn't an ISO increase the gain

not always.

and therefore the sensitivity

no. sensor sensitivity is not changed. you can see sensor spec sheets do not even mention variable sensitivity.

 

[Gandolphi]

Doesn't an ISO increase the gain

not always.

and therefore the sensitivity

no. sensor sensitivity is not changed. you can see sensor spec sheets do not even mention variable sensitivity.

--
Julia

Two questions: if sensitivity isn't enhanced, what does happen? What is the alternative, change the shutter speed and leave the ISO alone?

A third question: why bother with an ISO control if it's use is not benificial?

 

[Julia Borg]

if sensitivity isn't enhanced, what does happen?

ISO can be described as a push-processing.

What is the alternative, change the shutter speed and leave the ISO alone?

that's the matter of experimentation with your camera and personal preferences.

why bother with an ISO control if it's use is not benificial?

it is beneficial, to a certain point, often called 'ISO invariance'. with some cameras it is base ISO (rare), with some it is 1 stop above base ISO, and may reach 4-5 stops above base ISO. set a scene, shoot it varying ISO only, and see how your combination of camera and raw converter performs when pushing. what they call "exposure compensation" in raw converters is that push.

 

[Bill Ferris]

Hello,

I've seen many posts on here talking about ISO and maximum usable ISO so I was interested in what you currently consider to be the maximum usable ISO with your current gear. Of course it also depends on the use case.

I'm currently using a Nikon D810 and try to avoid going over 3200, 6400 if really necessary?

Before that i had a Sony a99 and I thought the limit there was 1600 for general usability. Even further back a Sony a900 where ISO 800 was often already kinda pushing it.

So what is your limit? Just being curious.

I'm curious: For everyone who has a personal ISO 'limit', what do you do when you exceed that limit...? Do you just not take the picture? I'd personally rather have a grainy picture than no picture.

I adjust exposure (f-stop and/or shutter speed) to manage ISO. Instead of making an image with great depth of field, I may make an image with a shallow depth of field. Instead of freezing action, I may emphasize action by capturing motion in the photo. Best of all, it's creatively challenging, which is fun.