ISO question

[rawill]

Thank you for the replies on ISO and panning.

I do mainly side shots, panning to get the car in focus, but with blurred wheels and blurred background.

So I am not trying to 'stop the clock'.

Anyway, you have answered my question, but the comment about lo light at the end of the day is helpful, maybe an alternative to the EV setting changes.

I am photography novice.

[William W]

And becoming un-noviced quickly: just keep asking questions - and making photographs - and then analysing them.

cheers for now.

WW

[AB26]

Hi John,

I can only share what I have experienced. This might not be the norm.

I have been a firm believer in shooting at low ISO settings. Keep it low to keep the noise down. Then Richard posted a shot that was taken with a Canon at ISO 6400 as he was very impressed by the way the Canon was handling the high ISO settings.
I did a few tests with my ancient Nikon D200 and realized that camera reviewers can cheat to impress with how a camera can handle high ISO settings.

What I found was that high ISO settings are not to be feared when the dynamic range in the image is low. The lower the dynamic range the less noise is visible at high ISO settings. The higher the dynamic range in the image the more noise will show up in the darker areas of the image. The worst noise seems to show up in white shaded areas in the image.

On a flood lit sports field where the whole scene is brightly lit you can use high ISO settings without any fear. Very little noise will show up in these images. When there is a shaded area in the scene you will notice more noise in the shaded areas. If the shaded area is white, noise will be worst in that area.

It seems to me that dynamic range determines how much noise will be visible in the image when using high ISO settings.
I have overcome my “fear “ of high ISO settings depending on lighting conditions. I still use as low an ISO setting as possible and whenever possible.

In reviews I have not yet seen any camera rendering good images at ISO 25000, it might be acceptable but it is not good.

[yauman]

Just to assure the OP not to fear using hi ISO, here's a gallery of photos I took earlier this year with my daughter's Nikon D60 and kit lens with max F3.5 As flash are not allowed at table tennis tournaments, I had to shoot all the pictures at ISO 1600 and 3200 and with shutter speeds of 1/250 or faster to catch the action. All photos were then de-noised using Lightroom 4.1 without any plug-ins. As you can see they are more than acceptable for web-posting images sizes. Certainly I don't want to make poster size prints with them!
http://yauman.smugmug.com/Events/USA...0651588_KzPdKt

[Ken MT]

I normally use the lowest ISO that I can but in the following image of a Kiwi in a sanctuary in the dark, I had to use ISO of 25600, at 1/6 sec at f4
The main problem was that the camera would not focus, due to low light, and I could not see the bird, so I used manual focus (outside to get an approximate distance) then took a number of images where I thought that the bird was. Not all were successful (no bird, or movement blurred), so this is the best one that I got. (I took both RAW and Jpeg, and this is the unaltered Jpeg)

[jcuknz]

Now I have a camera with near ISO like that I might return to Orana Park ? Out of Christchurch ....as it was (2004)with my Nikon 5700 and 800 ISO fastest mine was an 8 second f/4 and of course I didn't have a tripod on a family outing ... but I did have Contrast Detection focusing so the blur is from 8 seconds hand held .... not focusing

CD might not pick up the contrast in the brown bird's feathers but would click-in as usual elsewhere on the foliage from experiments I have done in low light. It was very hard finding an area with no contrast to stop AF working ... quite amazing I thought at the time.

But more in keeping with this thread there is this shot I took with my MFT Panasonic G3 at 6400 ISO "Waiting for her runner" [Highburn 100mile race 2am in morning] which suprised me and removed any hesitation on using high ISO when I need it ... 1/10 f/6.3 becuase my lens is f/4-f/5.8 [ 1/10 with 98mm lens so OIS was doing its job AOK for me ]

[Ken MT]

Try Willowbank, not Orana Park

[jcuknz]

Thanks Ken for bringing me up to date but at $49 I doubt if I will visit
I doubt if I would have visited Orana except my grand daughter was visiting from the States.