6D @ 25,600 ISO, I'm impressed!

[artlmntl]

Please read this as friendly, sort-of-technical discussion.

F16 is tiny aperture! From f4 down to f16, you lose about 4 stops of light, right? You would not use that in an actual event-shooting, low-light situation. If you open your f4 lens to something reasonable, like f5.6, you're not going to need iso 25600 for that shot. You're going to need about iso 4000, I think - Certainly not more than iso 6400. And if you took the shot at a more reasonable aperture with that much lower iso, I fully expect you're going to have beautiful results that hold up at a lot larger resolution than web size.

Thanks but no, I don't want your giant, noisy file. I have plenty of my own giant noisy files from shots I've taken in actual lowlight situations. And for those to work, it's imperative to have the right exposure! And it's sometimes tricky to get that; but that's the deal. I'm also saying, as you should well know, from 20 MP down to web size like that, a lot of flaws are going to disappear with the downsampling.

Does that make sense?

 

[artlmntl]

Light was a single 150 watt bulb in a lamp with a shade. Would make a small grainy print...are you serious? Here is the original full size file you can download and view on your computer.

http://www.pbase.com/davidjaseck/image/159404370/original

I lied. I looked at the file. It looks good - It's well-shot and well-processed.

 

[Dave Jaseck]

Are you just saying that to make me feel good? I do appreciate your comments. BTW...the file was not processed in anyway, straight of the card. Had it been in Photoshop, it would look a touch different. I never meant it to be a clinical study.

 

[Critt82]

Im not here to dispute you. The 6D is a good camera. Its my primary body right now, but its performance gets a little more credit than it deserves. You do realize 72dpi is newspaper print resolution? Right? Thats not standard photo print resolution (300dpi).

I've gotten a shot or two at 25,600 that I would have missed otherwise. But even when photographing the milkyway I limit myself and my f/1.4 lens to ISO 6,400.

 

[artlmntl]

Are you just saying that to make me feel good? I do appreciate your comments. BTW...the file was not processed in anyway, straight of the card. Had it been in Photoshop, it would look a touch different. I never meant it to be a clinical study.

No. For 25600, it looks good. It looks properly exposed, and that helps a lot. Having control of the shooting environment helps a lot, too. There are some artifacts, but you could still use a shot like that for smaller prints, the web or whatever. Even an 8x10 at 300 dpi is only 7.2MP. You could maybe wring more out of it shooting RAW with ACR in PhotoShop. Obviously, it would have been cleaner at lower iso.

I shoot some events at a hotel where the lighting is variable and the background has a lot of yellow. It's brutal! I get in trouble sometimes trusting too much to the camera's metering system. The biggest problem I see with shooting at high iso is getting shots that are underexposed. Lifting exposure blows out the shadows and the results are ugly. The available DR is just enough, but there's not a lot of play. I also have to watch my shutterspeed to avoid excessive motion blur. I'm planning to buy a light meter. It should help.

I already bought a flash. No way around it! Even with decent lighting, backlit subjects can be a problem. I think the extra light helps. I also need to buy some brighter lenses. Al Downie would tell me to buy primes. LOL! I may do that, but I like zooms. So that probably means a 24-70 2.8 and maybe a 70-200 2.8 as well. But those are expensive. I'll have to schedule them. That's probably more than you wanted to know, but that's what drives my thinking on high iso and all that.

I also think the 6D is outstanding. Happy shooting!

--
Hunter

 

[artlmntl]

Im not here to dispute you. The 6D is a good camera. Its my primary body right now, but its performance gets a little more credit than it deserves. You do realize 72dpi is newspaper print resolution? Right? Thats not standard photo print resolution (300dpi).

It deserves its credit. I find it to be a very satisfying camera for what I do!

I've gotten a shot or two at 25,600 that I would have missed otherwise. But even when photographing the milkyway I limit myself and my f/1.4 lens to ISO 6,400.

You're shooting fragile subject matter. Stars! Flood the picture with excessive noise and I'm sure your stars get lost. I think you have the right idea.

--
Hunter

 

[Dave Jaseck]

For what it is worth, I have cam set to underexpose by 2/3 of a stop, expose for the highlights (for the most part) if circumstances permit. When it goes into Photoshop I invariably run a quick shadow /highlight adjustment (slight amount, not PS default). This saves and tones down the highlights and still opens up shadow detail. Of course, this is a generalization but works for me.

 

[artlmntl]

For what it is worth, I have cam set to underexpose by 2/3 of a stop, expose for the highlights (for the most part) if circumstances permit. When it goes into Photoshop I invariably run a quick shadow /highlight adjustment (slight amount, not PS default). This saves and tones down the highlights and still opens up shadow detail. Of course, this is a generalization but works for me.

Thanks. You're shooting all jpegs?

 

[Dave Jaseck]

Yes pretty much jpeg, not that big a fan of raw, have been frozen in with cabin fever will take a shot of ash tray I am so anxious for weather to break here on go out and shoot. Besides, I am just getting my big Epson R1800 back in service so I can start printing some 13X19. For right now, I am pretty much into doing shows and really do not need all that resolution. The high ISO capabilities help me to snag a shot that I ordinarily might not get. The raw file that comes out of the 6D is not compatable with the version of my Photoshop. I have to run the raw file through Adobe DNG converter and convert the file to a DNG file format which will then open in my raw converter. So right now, not much need for it especially for my shows. If you have 2 minutes, here is a sweet little show I did for my son-in-laws son as he proposed to his finance "When I Fall In Love". If you choose to watch it, try to go full screen with sound on, it's HD. The shows can only use 1900 pixels so not even a need for 20MP. It shows well on a large 55 or 60" TV. BTW...there are a lot of lurkers on this forum, do you know that the file I put on pbase got almost a thousand hits/views from just this forum...Dave

 

[Khazaad]

You got at least 130 of those hits from me. I've been referring to it all night. Trying to come up with an argument for your OP.

My first instinct says it's not actually a very challenging image for high ISO. I would stand by this except I've been trying to produce something with awful IQ for hours with no success.

I have almost 32 gigs of horribly composed and uninspiring photos I captured tonight but they were just from my personal photography so that's besides the point.

The 24-70 deuce on the 6d appears to be immune to chromatic abberation in a way I cannot yet explain and I've exhausted myself trying. I will post images of this calculated catastrophe later as proof.

You should have warned us that your video was squishy and soft. A fine production but I watched the whole thing waiting for the train wreck and it never came. You play dirty indeed.

 

[artlmntl]

The video was nice, but the music was not for me. Looks like you had plenty of light there. I shoot RAW. I used to use ACR. I started processing with Photoninja. There are some tricks to it, but I like the results. I think it's well worth the license fee. It'll warm up soon and you can go out to shoot.

--
Hunter

 

[JSB_61]

While it looks clean, you can see how much detail is lost. The text all looks fuzzy and pixelated on some. I limit my ISO to 6400, and only bump it to 12,800 on specific situations.

I think it looks pretty dang good, with plenty of detail.

 

[JSB_61]

You do realize that you are on a forum where pixel peeping is an obsession, right?

LOL! Bingo!

 

[JSB_61]

I had a 20D with 3 nice lenses which I gave to my youngest daughter who wanted to learn photography. Believe it or not, the cam that gave me a lot of my favorites was my Panasonics FZ30 (RIP), now the FZ200 (25mm to 600mm at constant F2.8 Leica Lens, though small sensor). I thought I could live with that. But lust set in for the 6D after I found out I could afford it. I wanted to get back to the feeling I had when I went from medium format to Nikon F with fast lens shooting available light for pure pleasure. Hence the high ISO fascination of the 6D. I have several older White Lightening lights and had a bunch of Vivitar external flashes (one working now). I just want to be free with a great lens and shoot what interest me for fun and games. A lot of the photographs are in a couple of shows I did featuring ME...ego thing. Shows were just a vehicle to show some favorite personal stuff. If you care to watch them, turn your sound on and watch in full screen as they are in HD.

The Photography of Dave Jaseck I

The Photography of Dave Jaseck II

 

[Khazaad]

I had a 20D with 3 nice lenses which I gave to my youngest daughter who wanted to learn photography. Believe it or not, the cam that gave me a lot of my favorites was my Panasonics FZ30 (RIP), now the FZ200 (25mm to 600mm at constant F2.8 Leica Lens, though small sensor). I thought I could live with that. But lust set in for the 6D after I found out I could afford it. I wanted to get back to the feeling I had when I went from medium format to Nikon F with fast lens shooting available light for pure pleasure. Hence the high ISO fascination of the 6D. I have several older White Lightening lights and had a bunch of Vivitar external flashes (one working now). I just want to be free with a great lens and shoot what interest me for fun and games. A lot of the photographs are in a couple of shows I did featuring ME...ego thing. Shows were just a vehicle to show some favorite personal stuff. If you care to watch them, turn your sound on and watch in full screen as they are in HD.

The Photography of Dave Jaseck I

The Photography of Dave Jaseck II

 

[Dave Jaseck]

Appreciate your comments. In the last 3 years I have suffered enormous loss of my beautiful wife and oldest daughter. It has been photography that has kept me sane through this most difficult time of my life. The fact that I had a enormous history of family photographs to recreate a visual memory of our lives together has been priceless. So if you are torturing yourself if you should bu the camera or lens, don't, the payoff comes later in life. The cache of photographs has made it possible to create a snapshot of my wonderful 60 years with the most wonderful woman in the world for me as well as with my 3 daughters. Without any excuses, I offer as proof the links to 2 of my favorite shows. Keep shooting capturing those moments in time!

Girl Talk:

Our Love Story:

 

[artlmntl]

In the last 3 years I have suffered enormous loss of my beautiful wife and oldest daughter.

There are no words. It's good that your photography carried you through.

 

[Khazaad]

You're a lucky guy. You already know this.

I'm a pic hoarder and unashamed exploiter of the cloud for that exact reason. Unextraordiare pictures often become priceless at some point to the right person, though more likely it's what I tell myself because it feels good to do it.

Some people say you should only show your best pictures because people will remember your worse... or some crap like that.but that doesn't mean I can't keep them all. I sub to Google for 100 gigs as my main mover. I funnel anything, anyway, to my G Photos. Like I'm purposely trying to engorge a hungry piggy that's never full because makes me happy. Although I do mean everything and most certainly somethings, sometimes are only meant for me.

I'll bet your library would make mine feel like a newstand.

 

[Dave Jaseck]

Have fun with your camera, screw the rules...record those moments in time for your enjoyment. In the future, they will be priceless as everything becomes. Thanks khazaad...Dave