Who cares about Hi ISO!

"Who cares about Hi ISO! "

I care: I like to shoot sport and yesterday evening I was asked to take pictures of a cycling event.
There was just no way I could shoot the finish as it was just too dark.
Here is one of the last pictures I could take.

With better High ISO I could have gone on for longer.

Also my a700 just cannot keep up with tracking for subjects coming towards me at close range.
Hope the a77 does better both in high ISO and tracking.

I'll wait for the post-production software until I make a judgement regarding the quality.

Sigma - 70-200mm F2.8 II EX DG APO MACRO HSM, shot in RAW.

Exactly! Kind of like a terrible beginning guitar player wanting a $5,000 guitar, when a great professional guitar player can play a $500 guitar and make it sound like a million bucks!!!

People need to start looking at themselves in the mirror psychologically speaking, and determine why they are spinning this high iso thing the way they are - are they really those people who get images rejected by the royal conservatory of imaging standards for published or whatever it's called???

dw73 said:

Exactly! Kind of like a terrible beginning guitar player wanting a $5,000 guitar, when a great professional guitar player can play a $500 guitar and make it sound like a million bucks!!!

Click to expand...

What a cliché... Don't forget you need sensibility and educated ears to spot (and understand) the differences (on the guitar player and the instrument)!

dw73 said:

People need to start looking at themselves in the mirror psychologically speaking, and determine why they are spinning this high iso thing the way they are - are they really those people who get images rejected by the royal conservatory of imaging standards for published or whatever it's called???

Click to expand...

I can only speak for myself, and what I say is that this new 24MP sensor - according to the available photos and when compared to the one year old 16MP - shows bad IQ from ISO 100 up; after 800 it even gets worst.

This has nothing to do with high ISO, but yes, many times I need to use ISOs on the 1600-3200 range. And yes again, I think this is a much inferior product compared to the one year "old" one, which unfortunately wasn't chosen (or improved) for these new cameras. And yes, once more, this is a product to sell to the "More-Megapixel-Is-Better" crowd, who actually rule the market and spoil what could have been an excellent product.

This was surely a marketing&sales decision, which of course is totally understandable - sales speak higher - but which has, from its creation/drawing board, crippled these new models from a photograph&engineering approach, IMO.

Of course, everybody is entitled to his own opinion, but please don't mix only high ISO (1600-3200) problems into the average/bad performance of this new «Sony» sensor.

I will patiently wait for the final/production firmware release and some RAW files I can analyse with my actual photo work flow, but again, I'm not putting too much hope on this product, unfortunately.

As I said before, I don't trade megapixels for IQ, even if that means only printing till A3, which can be perfectly done with good 12-14MP sensors; unless you crop too much, 24MP is more than enough for A2 work, if (big if) the quality of these pixel is up to the job. IMO, these 24 million will never be able to claim this honour...
Time will tell.

Best regards,
Pedro

or video or smile shutter?

tom

I am not concerned with high ISO at all to be honest. My first priority is handling. After using the a700 for over a year I really cant imagine to going to a camera with less control. IMO the difference between the best DSLR cameras on the market and the entry level DSLR's from an IQ stand point is so small it aint worth fighting over. I dont print 100% crops so I see no need to look at them on the internet. Handling however cannot be debate be post processed, or manipulated to work better. It is what it is, and I hope the a77 iss equal to the a700 in this regard. At first glance I am a little concerned but will reserve judgement until I play with one myself.

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Sony a700 - minolta 50/1.4 - tamron 17-50/2.8 - minolta 28-135/4 - tamron 70-200/2.8 - extension tubes - Kenko teleplus300 1.4TC - HVL42 (x3) - nex3 - 16mm - 18-55 - m42's
http://photogenykstudios.blogspot.com/

NumberOne said:

dw73 said:

Exactly! Kind of like a terrible beginning guitar player wanting a $5,000 guitar, when a great professional guitar player can play a $500 guitar and make it sound like a million bucks!!!

Click to expand...

What a cliché.

Click to expand...

Sometimes people turn things into a cliché because those click and resound.

NumberOne said:

I can only speak for myself, and what I say is that this new 24MP sensor - according to the available photos and when compared to the one year old 16MP - shows bad IQ from ISO 100 up; after 800 it even gets worst.

Click to expand...

cRAW compresses every channel to 256 levels. It has nothing to do with sensor technology, but it does not help image quality.

Universally usable cameras are not available too. My D3 being excellent low noise camera is hardly my first choice for low ISO. My a900 being a great low ISO camera is not something I use for low light fast shutter.

To compare 16 mp to 24 mp, have you printed both at same size?

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http://www.libraw.org/

Iliah Borg said:

NumberOne said:

dw73 said:

Exactly! Kind of like a terrible beginning guitar player wanting a $5,000 guitar, when a great professional guitar player can play a $500 guitar and make it sound like a million bucks!!!

Click to expand...

What a cliché.

Click to expand...

Sometimes people turn things into a cliché because those click and resound.

Iliah Borg said:

I can only speak for myself, and what I say is that this new 24MP sensor - according to the available photos and when compared to the one year old 16MP - shows bad IQ from ISO 100 up; after 800 it even gets worst.

Click to expand...

cRAW compresses every channel to 256 levels. It has nothing to do with sensor technology, but it does not help image quality.

Universally usable cameras are not available too. My D3 being excellent low noise camera is hardly my first choice for low ISO. My a900 being a great low ISO camera is not something I use for low light fast shutter.

To compare 16 mp to 24 mp, have you printed both at same size?

--
http://www.libraw.org/

Click to expand...

As it's easily understandable, English is not my mother language.

Nevertheless I can't understand what cRAW has to do with what I expressed on that post!?
The same goes to "universally usable cameras".

I agree with you that you should use the right tool (setup) for the job, and yes this includes your use for the D3 and A900.

However, I still believe I can look at a picture - technique and aesthetics apart - and distinguish a good from a bad sensor. («Sony», surely didn't supply defective (or bad) lens or firmware, I suppose...)

From what I saw until now, this new 24MP is a bad in per pixel sharpness, noise, dynamic range, to mention just a few; although I don't care a bit (should I say "Pixel") about, the jpg engine is so bad it can't be described here - pixelating, exaggerated edge sharpening, vanished detailing, etc., etc.; good enough for me, I don't remember using jpgs, ever...

I know I don't have all the data regarding the pictures I gathered, but I still trust my eyes (specially) and some of the sites and professionals that worked hard to give us this first information regarding the new «Sony» cameras (which by the way «Sony» distributed).

I will have a final opinion as soon as I can work some RAW files, and definitively will do some prints.

Finally, as the English say, horses for courses. So besides keeping/archiving a superior original, I don't see - to a certain extend - the advantage of using a 24MP sensor for printing an A3 size; the same way I would not use a 12-16MP file to print to A2 size... (Academically, and to answer your question, I could surely - but wouldn't recommend - printing both old + new sensor files to one size for comparative purposes, in this case A3).

Best regards,
Pedro

cRAW is a lossy compression. It does not improve image quality, to say the least. Apart of loss of the information it adds to channels disbalance, affecting not only colour fidelity but demosaicking too - it causes additional artifacts and reduces usable resolving power.

--
http://www.libraw.org/

Iliah Borg said:

cRAW is a lossy compression. It does not improve image quality, to say the least. Apart of loss of the information it adds to channels disbalance, affecting not only colour fidelity but demosaicking too - it causes additional artifacts and reduces usable resolving power.

--
http://www.libraw.org/

Click to expand...

... And again what's the relation to my previous post and comments?

Best regards,
Pedro

NumberOne said:

Iliah Borg said:

cRAW is a lossy compression. It does not improve image quality, to say the least. Apart of loss of the information it adds to channels disbalance, affecting not only colour fidelity but demosaicking too - it causes additional artifacts and reduces usable resolving power.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

NumberOne said:

... And again what's the relation to my previous post and comments?

Click to expand...

Here is one example: "new 24MP sensor - according to the available photos" - and what I'm saying above is that the image quality is not solely defined by the quality of sensor alone. All else equal, how data is digitized and processed before "raw" is recorded also matters. By the way, raw recording mode can be to a large extent changed through firmware.

--
http://www.libraw.org/

Lyle From Canada said:

I am not concerned with high ISO at all to be honest. My first priority is handling. After using the a700 for over a year I really cant imagine to going to a camera with less control. IMO the difference between the best DSLR cameras on the market and the entry level DSLR's from an IQ stand point is so small it aint worth fighting over.

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I agree, but I'm somewhat surprised over the current IQ issue. I hope that any IQ issues are due to pre-release firmware.

Lyle From Canada said:

I dont print 100% crops so I see no need to look at them on the internet. Handling however cannot be debate be post processed, or manipulated to work better. It is what it is, and I hope the a77 iss equal to the a700 in this regard. At first glance I am a little concerned but will reserve judgement until I play with one myself.

Click to expand...

Again, I agree. Since the Maxxum 7, my camera choices have been based primarily on handling (with film, IQ was essentially independent of camera body.) I have some concerns about the A77. I also experience some confusion regarding the addition of a non-customizable "?" button on that level camera, while the 3 customizable buttons are primary control buttons for me and not really ones I would want to customize to something else.

I am withholding judgment until the production cameras are released and I've read the instruction manual to find out how I would have to operate the camera. If I'm still interested, then I'll have to find a store that carries one with charged batteries to see how it actually handles (including the EVF experience).

tom

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Thanks,

Digitalshooter

I have to agree with you. The High ISO debate is the Silliest thing there is in photography. I use an a700 and a900, both are suppose to be so poor at High ISO. And I think this is a joke. I print 15x11.5 in Senior Albums and with about half of the images in them shot at 800 or 1600 ISO and some still pushed a stop, when shooting action shots of marching band. And NO ONE has yet mentioned noise.

As a matter of fact I was hosting a SmugMug at a camera store in town, and every photographer who saw our Senior Albums and the store employees all talked about the image quality, detail of the prints and how CLEAN the files were on these 15x11.5 enlargements.

So, of course if ISO 3200 or 6400, there may be a Few instances where is would be useful. But one someone asked me about High ISO, I always ask them "What is the Fastest FILM you use to use on a regular basis?" So now why is 2-3 times higher ISO an issue.

And the fact is, a cheap or slow lens is not going to due 24 meg cameras any justice. So you are going to have to buy faster and better glass. I don't worry about High ISO, because I use excellent and fast glass.

Plus COMMON sense would say that the sample files have NO RAW converter and have not been ran through Noise Software. Which is what I would do in a REAL World application.

The ONLY REAL NOISE ISSUE is all these folks complaining about a camera that they have not even made a Print from. Now that's noise.

I want to salute Sony for making the entire Camera industry better, since they are going to have to try and meet and top the Sony Standards.
--

1Co 13:13 But now we still have faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is LOVE!!!
http://www.flbdig.com

flbdig said:

I have to agree with you. The High ISO debate is the Silliest thing there is in photography. I use an a700 and a900, both are suppose to be so poor at High ISO. And I think this is a joke. I print 15x11.5 in Senior Albums and with about half of the images in them shot at 800 or 1600 ISO and some still pushed a stop, when shooting action shots of marching band. And NO ONE has yet mentioned noise.

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I don't get your point, really...

So you own the "best/state of the art/most expensive" «Sony A900» FF camera, and it is supposed to have noticeable noise at 800-1600 ISO on 15x11.5 prints?!

flbdig said:

As a matter of fact I was hosting a SmugMug at a camera store in town, and every photographer who saw our Senior Albums and the store employees all talked about the image quality, detail of the prints and how CLEAN the files were on these 15x11.5 enlargements.

Click to expand...

,,. And what's the point, again, with an A900? You still have enough resolution to go double the pint size...

flbdig said:

So, of course if ISO 3200 or 6400, there may be a Few instances where is would be useful. But one someone asked me about High ISO, I always ask them "What is the Fastest FILM you use to use on a regular basis?" So now why is 2-3 times higher ISO an issue.

Click to expand...

Depending on your work conditions, indeed, you may not need to go to higher ISOs on the 1600-6400 range. This doesn't mean others don't!

The argument about the film era is another thing I will never understand! You are in the 21th century with better gear/conditions, but you want to use worse technique form last century?

As for "fast films" used 10/20 years ago you had some good option on the 800-3200 range, if I still remember correctly... I'll give you a hint - slide!

flbdig said:

And the fact is, a cheap or slow lens is not going to due 24 meg cameras any justice. So you are going to have to buy faster and better glass. I don't worry about High ISO, because I use excellent and fast glass.

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Slow and cheap are not always directly tied, and again you don't have faster glass today that you couldn't buy 30 years ago - You can't change optic laws, you surely know...

flbdig said:

Plus COMMON sense would say that the sample files have NO RAW converter and have not been ran through Noise Software. Which is what I would do in a REAL World application.

Click to expand...

The only valid argument till now, although I don't believe that a technical firmware miracle will improve dramatically a bad sensor design/performance choice.

flbdig said:

The ONLY REAL NOISE ISSUE is all these folks complaining about a camera that they have not even made a Print from. Now that's noise.

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Another valid point, although the print will just be the (final physical) proof of what has been done before - Simply put, much before on your photo work flow you are already able to spot what's going to be the final product... And from what I saw on several released photos, this 24MP sensor doesn't look promising. It's as simple as that. (... And of course, I'll report back my final judgement as soon as I can analyse/process some RAW files on my photo work flow. IMO, this is more than fair, and the same goes to my previous analyses, sorry.)

Hope this helps understanding what some of us are saying...

Best regards,
Pedro