If you take your time and pick your subject normally, results improve considerably. But this is extremes we're talking about - like shooting a spot-lit band in an otherwise dim, but not necessarily fully dark, environment. the quality of light is poor, particularly when there is a very large contrast between the highlights and the shadows, I tend to avoid 6400 and set my uppoer limit at 4000 - otherwise you risk getting some nasty-looking banding in the shadows, especially when you pull them up, which is then difficult to fix. When shooting in extreme conditions, i.e. Hey Robin, nice post and nice cats! I've been shooting with an EM-5 for a couple of years, and I agree with your comments. And seemingly Robin knows pretty well how to compose a picture. So why even bother about letters on a menu card of a restaurant in the right upper corner of you picture?Īnd last, not least, the picture is not being taken by the camera, but by the guy behind it. Note: if you take a picture in a street at night at ISO 4000, you camera already sees better than your eyes do. ![]() To me, everything the M10 produces up to ISO 4000 is usable straight forward. OV3 does a better job, but is sloooowwww and I try to avoid for most. In can perfectly hold up against my previous APS-C DSLR even with JPGs out of the camera. I love available light photography and I recently got a M10. You should never look at 100%, and if you do or need to, get a high end full frame camera. Reduced to fit an HD screen, most noise is invisible, same applies to a letter size print. Next is image size and what you really want to do with it. (hey, there are even grain effects available in some software) The M10 is more one the grainy side, which to me can better be post-processed and looks nicer. To me, a picture of a live act and some grain go perfectly together. Some cameras produce a smeary kind of noise, others a more film like grainy one. Some care more about chromatic, some about luminance noise. There are different kinds of noise and they are perceived differently. Real world examples do much better show what to expect. Pushing ISO to max in a scene with plenty of light by increasing shutter speed, like many testers do, does not tell you much. High ISO tests in reviews only show half the truth. Shooting at high ISO might produce varying results. You gave a good summary in your write-up. The main message here is, many times, bad images were not caused by shooting in low light using high ISO, but actually due to poor lighting conditions on the subject, and amplifed by the effect of ugly noise introduced by high ISO.ĭid you really mean "low light does necessarily mean poor light" or should it read "doesn't"? Examples of poor quality light includes ugly green mixed fluorescent lights, casting very unflatteringly flat even distribution of light, without good shadow shaping, thus creating a dull, uninteresting and very ugly image. Quality of light here refers to the color, the direction, the dispersion and how the light envelopes the subject. The amount of light may be insufficient, yes, but the photographer must constantly be aware of the "quality of light". However, one very, very crucial point to consider here, low light does necessarily mean poor light. Why do we use high ISO in our photography? When the amount of light is low, without any aid in additional source of light (eg, flash, strobes, etc) we do need to increase the image sensor sensitivity, allowing the sensor to be able to "capture" more light. I was perfectly fine with E-M1's ISO6400 ouput, but showing the exact same image to a friend, he cringed even at the sight of some luminance noise (which I was perfectly fine with since it did not add any destructive effect to the image, instead adding "structure" which looked nice, in my own opinion). ![]() How tolerable the amount of visible noise in high ISO varies from person to person. Noise is present in image even at lower ISO settings, it is either the noise was smoothened out by in camera processing or too negligible to be detected with normal computer screen views. I always, always have been careful when it comes to touchy subjects like high ISO shooting, and I always mentioned my high ISO shots were "good enough" and noise was handled, or controlled well. I never mentioned that you do not see noise in Olympus high ISO shots, and surely I also did not mention that the shots were "clean" and "noise-free". ![]() ![]() Before we step any further in this subject, I would like to clarify a few items.
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