Just got G9 and DxO PL... hallelujah!!

Jacques Cornell wrote:

Sundre wrote:

Jacques Cornell wrote:

Sundre wrote:

Not exactly. I'll need to go back to my low light photos and think about why DP doesn't help all that much with them

Maybe you dragged the shutter enough to cause motion blur. I used to do that out of fear of pushing ISO too high. No more.

, but it's not just about high ISO. It's something about shadow noise/detail...

Will contemplate it until I know what I mean

Check this out.

Looks good. I'm too busy to do it myself right now, but this is the one photo where I wasn't able to get the kind of results I hoped with DP... If you feel like having a look at the RAW file (from my Tresorit Cloud account).

Feels like no matter what I do, it feels noisy and not sharp enough.

https://web.tresorit.com/l/YTXwo#UbVI6AvPTfC4p2aQ8gFbzw

I gave it a go. There are four things that make this image really difficult.

1. Dynamic range is huge. In choosing to preserve the highlights, you drove the shadows into complete blackness.
2. The image is underexposed. Another stop of exposure (with a larger aperture) would have helped here, and you could probably have recovered the highlights.
3. There appears to be blur from subjects moving, and possibly from camera shake as well (the sign at right and the tree lights show this).
4. Focus appears to be in front of the primary subject, the woman in the foreground. The cobblestones about two feet in front of her are in sharp focus.

In short, while there is some loss of detail from the high ISO setting, I believe most of the detail loss is due to the four factors I described above. It may seem counterintuitive, but I think you'd have done better at ISO 6400 and shutter 1/100. f2.8 or f4 and ISO 1600 or 3200 would have been even better. And, nailing focus on the main subject, or focusing on the sign on the right, would have helped.

In short, the issues are related largely to exposure and AF errors. Sorry.

Two years ago, I reviewed some of my high-ISO event photos (I'm an event pro) because, like you, I felt that my ISO 3200 shots lacked detail. What I found was that I was using a too-slow shutter because I was wary of pushing ISO any further. I began letting auto ISO drift up to 6400 and using faster shutter speeds, and I immediately got better detail, especially with moving subjects. I think that if you do likewise, and use larger apertures when available, you'll see a noticeable improvement.

Thank you for taking the time to have a look and share your thoughts! I truly appreciate it. This sounds like a very solid analysis. Much to learn here