2023 big year for Fuji?

gdanmitchell wrote:

Truman Prevatt wrote:

michaeladawson wrote:

Strongly disagree. The camera that doesn’t easily allow me to choose my own ISO is the camera I don’t buy. I usually agree with you Truman, but not here. I’ll use auto-ISO at times when it fits how I’m working. Most of the time, no.

An ISO dial is a thing of the past. The only reason there was one on a camera is because there were different films available with different sensitivities. The ISO was tied to the film sensitivity in that to get a haven film density, the ISO programmed the light meter so that the appropriate exposure value would be used to render a neutral gray card to that density.

A photo sensor has a fixed sensitivity. One can not change the sensitivity of the photodetectors. Today if you shoot an XT5, your sensor sensitivity is fixed. That is X amount of light energy will result in Y photons captured by the photodetector. No amount of spinning an ISO dial or wheel will make it anything but Y.

ISO is really meaningless in modern digital cameras. It is little more than an amplification level for the amplifiers between the output of the photodetectors and the ADC. If one is wanting jpegs with a “standard brightness” out of the camera, then one needs to pay attention to ISO. In fact that is how ISO is defined in the standard - jpeg brightness. For raw ISO is more or less meaningless.

I disagree that it is a "thing of the past." Regardless of the theory about all ISOs being the same (not quite the case), the ISO dial lets the photographer make a determination of whether to prioritize better IQ performance (specifically for noise and DR) at the low ISO (thus lengthening exposure time and/or increasing ISO) or sacrifice that in order to keep shutter speeds short and/or apertures small.

ISO is not "meaningless" in modern digital cameras, though the specifics of what it means may be somewhat different. In fact, you would do better to try to make the case that the meaning has changed than to stick to the "Meaningless" stance.

All amplification associated with ISO takes place after the photons are converted to electrons.  It doesn't matter that such processing of the voltages or currents take place in circuits on the same chip as is the case of CMOS sensors or marched out of the photodetectors off chip for processing as done in CCD sensors.  The voltage contains signal and converted photon shot noise.  Photon shot noise is the limiting factor in imaging performance.  The ISO gain is nothing more than turning up the volume on the radio.  Both the signal and the shot noise are amplified equally.  It might make the EVF brighter - but it does not improve the Photographic DR.