Potential amp glow on X-E3

Monicaa wrote:

Erik Baumgartner wrote:

If you're going to abuse your RAW files like that, you should expect them to look like crap. The X-Trans III files color fidelity holds up pretty well to around ISO 25,600 or so if you process carefully. much higher than that and the color will be somewhat unpredictable. My X-T2 and X-T20 (same sensor) will tend to go green in the shadows if you get ridiculous with the brightness gain (correctable), but I don't get any significant purple glow like in your example, so I don't know what's going on there. Was your sensor hot? Did you take lots of images prior to this one? Maybe your camera does have an issue, maybe it doesn't How does it look at ISO 12800 with normal processing?

I shoot in very low light with some regularity and it has to be VERY dark indeed for me to have to go to black and white with my X-Trans III cameras. I have not encountered a better performing APS-C sensor at high ISOs than this one and have always been able to manage a halfway decent looking image in almost any light. I think you may have some unrealistic expectations about what an APS-C sensor can do, If you've got no photons to work with, photography will become problematic with any camera.

Thanks for the reply,

I of course understand that the sensor isn't meant to do this, and that realistically it is asking a lot - but on other cameras I've owned I've never experienced this kind of... whatever it is. They have had a lot of noise at these ISOs but never as uneven an strange to me as this is. I'm fully expecting noise that makes the image totally unusable by around 50-100k, but the fact is that almost all of the frame is not unusable at those ISOs (depending where you draw the line of usable), except for the purple bar at the bottom. It is interesting that your cameras do not do this. Regularly at 12800 you can't see the purple from what I can tell, but with some slight exposure correction in curves and white balance tweaks its entirely possible that it becomes visible.

If you have a second and wanted to do me a favour, would it be possible for you to take a picture with the body cap on at 12800 and then add a couple of stops in lightroom? This is what I get when I crank it +5 (clearly not desperately unreasonable based on my OP. Note different AF patch has different noise pattern):

Thanks

I don't have a camera at hand, but this was shot during a play when all the lights went out, ISO 12800 pushed 5 stops in Lightroom. You can make out the AF patch, but no purple at the bottom. The sensor would have been good and toasty here.

ISO 12800 pushed 5 stops is going to be several bridges too far for any kind of reasonably decent result. This is a more reasonable ISO 12800 pushed 1 stop in post (ISO 25600, Lightroom NR only), and is about as far as I go before B&W starts to look like a great option.