Still loving the M6II, even more with new DXO

nwboater33 wrote:

Larry Rexley wrote:

My findings support what you both say: My feeling was that with DPP4 I could only go to about ISO 3200... I was getting pretty messy results at ISO 6400. With DxO PL4 and PL5's Deep Prime I felt that I could get consistently good results to about ISO 12,800 -- about two extra stops.

With PL6 I think you're right --- I'm getting usable full-resolution images at ISO 25,600 or so! Above that the shadows start losing too much detail --- although Deep Prime XD can still clean up the noise, amazingly, and if you're careful, you can still get images that don't look like they were shot at such extreme ISOs with an APS-C camera.

Hi Larry, With these super high ISO shots are you still setting the M6 mkii at 3,200, underexposing, and then "pushing" to your desired exposure?

Thanks very much for continuing to share the results of your testing and procedures!

Rod

Yes, for my high ISO shots I never shoot RAW with the M6ii at an ISO any higher than 3200, I have that value set as the max in the menu settings. I push to higher ISO in DxO PL6. I explain a little more about that in the post in the DxO thread:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66710955

When I shoot video (which has no RAW or high quality option) I allow the ISO to float to 12,800 for night videography. I shoot 4k video with f1.4 lenses, process video exposure, contrast, color, and image stablize aggressively clip by clip in Adobe Premier Pro, then export the image as a 1080p video for YouTube to maintain sharpness and reduce the apparent noise.

I believe my results are some of the very best night railroad video that can be found, much of it in extremely low light (streetlight lighting or worse) almost looks like it was shot in daylight!

Here's a link to my latest night video:

https://youtu.be/Uk-SIqsLOfY

I even created a special monopod 'rig' for shooting video with two fast f1.4 primes: one wide angle and one telephoto (here shown with the Sigma 16mm f1.4 and Rokinon 135mm f2.0 with Viltrox 0.71x speed booster making it a 100mm f1.4 lens). In extremely low light I can shoot at 1/40s which still gives steady images with the monopod, but I prefer 1/60 - 1/125 sec minimum when there is enough light to freeze the train better.

This gives me the ability to get a variety of shots with the trains and train crews with 2 cameras simultaneously, as at night I can't use the slow zooms! I can set up and break down this setup in about 30 seconds, and be off on my bicycle with it in my deep camera bag to catch the next spot the train will be! Works like a charm!

Sorry that's a bit off topic... sure wish there was something like DxO DeepPrime for video!!!