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ISO Frustration! Help with D5000? :( C&C

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Nikontario

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Grrrr!

Does anyone out there who owns a D5000 have a terrible time with the camera choosing ridiculous ISO speeds for what should be fairly low speed shots?

Take a look at this pic here - marvelous pic when taken, but fairly useless when seen up close.

Is there some setting I'm missing? I've set the ISO constraint to 200, but I can't seem to lock that down because the maximum ISO constraint won't go lower that 400.

Is there some way to force the camera to use a selected ISO speed no matter what?

I just came off 1-2 years using a Lumix FZ28 and I spent the whole time with it set at ISO 80 to avoid the noise issues typical of point and shoots - and never had a problem.

My choice to go to a DSLR was partly based on better ISO performance - but if you look at that pic up there, that really doesn't seem to be the case.

Any help would be much obliged.

--
Don't call me crazy. I prefer the term 'mentally hilarious'.
 
Sound strange you can't chosse a ISO lower than 400?!

On the noise issue in the photo, too me it looks a bit under exposed which could explain the noise.

--
Harri - My blog: flatulated.blogspot.com
 
Is Auto ISO on?
It might be worth not using auto iso if you understand ISO.

I am not sure about the d5000 but you may have very little control in the full automatic mode - try shooting in "P" instead if you aren't already :D
--
A poor photographer blames his tools.
 
As suggested, use P mode. And set the ISO sensitivity to your preferred sensitivity in the Shooting Menu and turn ISO sensitivity auto control off in the same menu if you want to control it yourself. Not sure though why you want to limit the ISO if as you said you wanted to benefit from the camera's ISO performance. To shoot at ISO 200 only you could have used pretty much any DSLR. If you really cannot use ISO lower than 400 there must be a problem with your camera although I assume you did choose 200 but auto control bumped it up to 400.
 
Ravncat said:
Is Auto ISO on?
Click to expand...
Amen, turn that off. I'd say something else is amiss here - lens? Camera? Image setting (size/type). The D5000 is pretty darn good up to 1600, @ 400 you shouldn't see any noise.

This is @ 1000 & doesn't have much of any noise:



 
You should be able to choose to disable auto iso and set to whatever you want. I don't know anything about any of the program modes, so can't say if it is an option or not in those. And to the sample, did you do some post processing, or was it shot in raw and converted? ISO 400 for sure shouldn't be that noisy from a D5000.
 
RAL said:
ISO 400 for sure shouldn't be that noisy from a D5000.
Click to expand...
Although they have excellent high ISO characteristics, from everything I've seen and read on this, the 12MP CMOS sensor cameras produce more low ISO noise in blue skies than the 6MP or 10MP CCD sensor cameras.

--
Patco
A photograph is more than a bunch of pixels
 
One of the advantages of RAW is the ability to deal with the blue sky noise. I prefer setting ISO myself rather than leaving it to the camera's computer.
Patco said:
RAL said:
ISO 400 for sure shouldn't be that noisy from a D5000.
Click to expand...
Although they have excellent high ISO characteristics, from everything I've seen and read on this, the 12MP CMOS sensor cameras produce more low ISO noise in blue skies than the 6MP or 10MP CCD sensor cameras.

--
Patco
A photograph is more than a bunch of pixels
Click to expand...
--
OK, not so purely a hobby.
 
I'm still new at this but could the noisy sky result from the focus being in the foreground?
 
Use PASM modes. Set the lower ISO value and set the ISO auto to whatever maximum ISO speed you want and put a minimum shutter speed, for S and P modes, for ISO Auto to kick off.

If you understand the ISO speed parameter and the operation of the ISO Auto you'll find that is a valuable feature of Nikon cameras.

Also it is possible to have Vivid Picture Control that accentuates the noise.
--
Victor
Bucuresti, Romania
http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m268/victor_petcu/
http://picasaweb.google.com/teodor.nitica/
http://picasaweb.google.com/vpreallize/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/v_petcu/
 
Nobody thus far seems to have viewed the EXIF, showing that the camera was in Manual:

http://regex.info/exif.cgi?b=3&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fg3.img-dpreview.com%2F63842879BCA94D7AA06F8E36BF5E07CF.jpg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fg3.img-dpreview.com%2F63842879BCA94D7AA06F8E36BF5E07CF.jpg

So basically, this is the product of the "firmware defect" that KR moans about. That is, despite your intuition, going into M mode doesn't instantly disable AutoISO. If you want to fully lock down the exposure, dialing over to M isn't enough -- you also have to go to the ISO menu & turn AutoISO off.

The inexplicable part to me is how you managed to navigate the ISO menu to check the lowest "Max sensitivity" without noticing the "Auto control On/Off" directly above it.

--
http://www.benseese.com
 
Shot in Manual mode... no Auto ISO in that mode.

Sun was a few degrees out of the frame, so was shooting with an f stop of 8 - but my shutter was a bit quick - however, noise still shouldn't have been that bad.

Plus, the D5000 noise engine only kicks in ISO 800 and above or on prolonged exposures.

--
Don't call me crazy. I prefer the term 'mentally hilarious'.
 
Shot in Manual.

ISO sensitivity auto control is set to 200 and Max ISO is set to 400 as it can't go any lower.

Am I forgetting some of the theory here? sigh
--
Don't call me crazy. I prefer the term 'mentally hilarious'.
 
Amen, turn that off. I'd say something else is amiss here - lens? Camera? Image setting (size/type). The D5000 is pretty darn good up to 1600, @ 400 you shouldn't see any noise.

I only shoot in RAW and process thru Bibble 5. Used the kit lens - 18-55mm - with both a skylight and polarizer filter... which contributed to the underexposure a bit, but really shouldn't cause that much noise.

Meh. I gotta get back to film basics - the FZ28 was bad for me, LOL.

The sensitivity of the D5000 mazes me sometimes, but other times (like in this instance - where the whole photo trip was nearly a wash) it frustrates me.

--
Don't call me crazy. I prefer the term 'mentally hilarious'.
 
Photo was shot in RAW and then processed through Bibble 5.

Tweaked the exposure as usual with marginal fill light - nothing unusual for the D5000.

I've taken great pics with this thing before - see my gallery - so I generally have nailed the post-processing workflow for it... but this photo trip was nearly a wash.

I think I'm going to turn off the constraints and just let it pick whatever since it wants to do that anyhow, LOL.

I keep thinking it's the two physical filters used (skylight and polarizer), but that doesn't make sense to me - never bothered my old Sony DSC-V1 prior to the FZ28.
--
Don't call me crazy. I prefer the term 'mentally hilarious'.
 
Nikontario said:
Shot in Manual mode... no Auto ISO in that mode.
Click to expand...
Are you sure about that?
From the D5000 manual, page 149:
"❚❚ ISO Sensitivity Auto Control
If Off is chosen for ISO sensitivity auto control in P , S, A, and M
modes, ISO sensitivity will remain fixed at the value selected by
the user (74). When On is chosen, ISO sensitivity will
automatically be adjusted if optimal exposure can not be
achieved at the value selected by the user (flash level is adjusted
appropriately)."

--
Patco
A photograph is more than a bunch of pixels
 
ISO noise is generally universal when you shoot in RAW. If I had my galleries set so you could see the pic in full size, you'd see that the noise is total from top to bottom.

I'm beginning to think it was my shutter speed, though I don't think it was necessarily out of whack for the time of day and the fact that the sun was just off my right shoulder - didn't want the sun to wash out the sky.

Also used to filters on the lens: skylight and polarizer, which I'm sure contributed to darkness - but I wouldn't think that the ISO noise would jump over that.

--
Don't call me crazy. I prefer the term 'mentally hilarious'.
 
Nikontario said:
I only shoot in RAW and process thru Bibble 5. Used the kit lens - 18-55mm - with both a skylight and polarizer filter... which contributed to the underexposure a bit, but really shouldn't cause that much noise.
Click to expand...
Noise gets worse the darker an area is. Even slight underexposure that is corrected in processing can bring out noise. Also, remember the sensor is less sensitive to reds and blues than it is to greens, which generally means more noise in the red and blue channels relative to the green channel.

In most situations, it's best to either expose correctly or overexpose as much as possible without blowing important highlights.
 
Was in Manual... but yeah, Vivid was on - so maybe should set to default on that menu.

I'm really beginning to think it was either the shutter speed or the two filters stacked on the lens (skylight and polarizer) or both.

However, I chose a quick shutter because the sun was about 90 degrees out of frame off my right shoulder - so I didn't want the light to blow out the blue sky on the right side of the frame.

I could have gone to a higher f stop as the 18-55 kit lens will go up to 30 something, but I also have to keep in mind that I have bad hand shake that will blur photos if the shutter is too slow.

--
Don't call me crazy. I prefer the term 'mentally hilarious'.
 
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