Hey Blue, i always appreciate your detailed responses...
But the example photos i found made it seem very clear cut that iso 160 was cleaner ? So would you say that this was only because those were frame grabs from a video ???
Also, although i had read that 160, 320, 640.... had less DR, i always felt that DR would never make any difference to me if were using multiple frames to cover my DR range. This still matters to you though ? Interesting. I would think that weather your camera was capable of very good DR or very poor (narrow) that i would be using an even narrower portion of that range, from each individual shot when processing for HDR anyway, and therefore their would be zero difference..... no ?
Geez, I thought I had made up my kind ☺ but your making me second guess myself now.....
I think I am going to have to try both iso 100 and iso 160 on an identical scene (same time and place) and just see for myself if I can see any noise differences.
Thanks again,
It really is something that mostly videographers do, they use the multiples. Because it pushes and pulls from the actual ISO. For example, ISO 50 on a camera that doesn't have a native ISO 50 is ISO 100 pulling down from it.
ISO 160 is ISO 200 but it's being pulled down, causing less noise. That's why you lose the dynamic range.
I also do HDR photography, usually 7 brackets if not more. I use ISO 100. However, if you're doing video and you're looking for the cleanest ISO 640 might look better to you than ISO 200.
Even though I bracket the images, I still want each bracket to have the maximum amount of DR.
I find that ISO 100 is more than enough clean.
The native base ISO is still 100 not 160. ISO 100 isn't being pushed or pulled. 160 is.
For photography, there really isn't a huge benefit, you might find that it's actually worse, because it'll cause a shutter speed which will blow out highlights more.
I'd say stick to the native ones. Even for video I stick to the native ones usually. I will use the 160 or 640 if that's right for the exposure and gives me the shutter speed I want. But I don't try to stay on them. I messed with it in real world applications quite a few years ago when I had the 5D Mark iii and it just wasn't enough to worry about.
I shoot in full manual with photography but video I allow the ISO to go into auto ISO and whatever it chooses it chooses. Because my shutter speed can't change, it'll be at 1/50 or 1/60 and my aperture is set, so whatever ISO gives the exposure it chooses.
Plus the annoying fact that if you use manual ISO in video mode whenever the light changes it shows you flicking the ISO up or down in the video and you have to edit that out.
Where as with auto ISO, it changes the ISO up and down and theres no flickr. I'm not sure why there can't be no flickr when doing it manually.
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Photos are my paintings. The camera is my brush.
DPreview gallery;
http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/5075216809
Yes, I do not worry about it. I prefer as much DR as possible. To the person that said it isn't true, I don't see how that's possible as it will blow out the highlights more.
In video I don't even bother to think about it but with video noise is more noticeable even at lower ISO's. However I don't mind the way noise looks at low ISO's. With video I don't even mind the way noise looks at fairly high ISO's but I don't like high ISO photos.
As far as there being a difference, it depends on if you want to get more shots. I mean if my 0EV exposure blows out the highlights more, I've got less dynamic range.
I set it to fire off 7 bracketed shots, which fire off from the 2 second timer after hitting the button once.
When I get into Lightroom and then use the Aurora HDR plugin, which lets you do raw not just .tiff form the plugin if you're interested, I usually end up using 6. The 7th is usually too bright.
Although my images are not stacked from 0EV. My regular exposure I put at -1EV and I get the other information from the +2 EV and up.
I find that mostly I'm shooting for quite a few dark exposures and I need one regular exposure, 0EV or -1EV and then 2 brighter exposures but 3 sometimes over kills it.
I set it up to do 7 just incase. There are situations where I've used all 7. I of course look at the Histogram and make sure I get the entire range of the scene. Almost every scene I can get in 7 brackets. Rarely do I manually add more. The only situation in which I would do that would be if the sun was in the picture. There would then be 8 or 9.
I'm not associated with Aurora HDR at all but if you enjoy bracketing and don't use it check it out. Photomatix was crap and I was disappointed I spent 100 bucks on it. Then Aurora HDR came out and it's amazing, plus it comes with the Lightroom plugin that spits out the raw files, doesn't make them into tiffs, and then you save in Aurora and it saves back to Lightroom as an HDR file.
It has made life so much easier as it has layers, brush's, luminosity mask. I used to have to go to Photoshop and do things to get Halo's out and now I don't.
Here are some examples of Aurora HDR. The one where you see a Halo is because that was like the first day I got it and was just testing it. Some are taken with the 6D, some with the A7R.
Just my dad's shed beside the house. I don't always go for this over the top look but it was a test.
Here is a photoshop one, again was comparing and testing, didn't get rid of Halo's
Photoshop HDR
Lightroom HDR test in my front yard
Lightroom
