Although the megapixel fetish race is the one that gets the most attention, I think the ISO equivalent is also pretty amusing (in a “shakes head, looks baffled” kind of way).
Now, I should preface all this by mentioning that I don’t have a “genre” of photography. I just photograph whatever attracts my attention at any given time, and that can be day or night.
Recently I saw a camera review in which the reviewer was showing pictures captured at ISOs that would have been considered witchcraft even ten years ago. They looked like garbage - noisy as anything and generally an aesthetic mess. But apparently the fact that they were taken at stratospheric ISO levels means that the whole world must see them because, I don’t know, reasons.
Although I’ve used cameras that are well known for good high ISO performance, a look through my Google photos collection shows me that I almost never go beyond ISO 3200, and I would guess that less than 5% of my (tens of thousands of) photos are shot at that sensitivity. On a usual day, I find that if I have a fast lens (F2 or quicker), I can get almost anything I want to shoot without going past ISO 800, or 1600 in a pinch.
I’d be interested to hear from people who do use these 5-or-6 digit ISOs on a regular basis, and what they shoot that necessitates these ISOs. Let’s hear some thoughts.
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I shot youth sports for many years. Venues included indoor soccer arenas which are basically warehouses, small school lacrosse and soccer fields that have lousy non-LED lighting, and gyms. To freeze action that fills the frame, even at f2.8 in a long lens, requires a shutter speed of 1/1000, though I preferred 1/1500. To achieve that, ISO 12800 was necessary.
With newer cameras I could see using ISO 25600 if necessary. These days sensors can handle it well enough, and the newer NR apps like Topaz Denoise AI work really well. Sports is not fine art so there’s enough quality wiggle room.
Other than sports and events, I tend to keep things around ISO 100-400.
People will go through great lengths to not understand lighting.
I like comments which both make a valid point and also stir up a hornet’s nest!
I’m not sure why it’s quite so controversial to be honest. I’m not directly accusing people who use a high ISO of not knowing what they’re doing by definition. I’m just with you in that people will put a lot of emphasis on specs that they probably don’t need to.
You sound like a pretentious prick. I’m not demeaning you, just letting you know how you sound in case you want to change it in the future.
I’m not demeaning you,
I think you need a dictionary lol
I think you do
Damn you just got burned by that comeback. I’ll get some cold water
You sound aggressive and presumptuous. I’m prepared to stand by my statement.
Go on then. How do you “learn lighting” in an environment you cannot control?
I’m prepared for you to think that I’m a prick and not take any of my advice, but your post history tells me you’re perhaps a beginner so if you’d like to learn anything, I have a track record of very happy clients that I wear on my sleeve (or rather, link to on my profile.) I’m happy to share my experience.
You learn by doing and recognising. (I know, summing it up like that is a bit of a cop out.) You learn to watch people’s actions, by seeing contrast in what light is available and learning your own limitations of motions vs shutter speed vs what your subject is. (It’s not always formulaic.) You learn what makes a bad image and redirect your efforts to what you learn is a good opportunity. If you have to get the image under terrible conditions, because the client needs it, you just get it. If you don’t, you can safely pass it by. You introduce strobe lighting when you can - providing it doesn’t disturb the atmosphere of the job at hand (like a wedding in a church). And you invest in lenses before bodies, as always.
And sometimes, the thing you can control is ISO. If the choice is push the ISO or not take the shot, you push the ISO.
Going to be mighty difficult to adjust lighting in events you don’t control.
Bounce flash and direct flash with mods are valuable techniques. Sure. There are times when you’re shit out of luck and you’ll rely on those fast lenses and high ISOs. But there’s still a difference between low light and bad light and what a big difference in how to handle them.
The only circumstances in which I do care about ISO are those in which I am using a tripod on a stationary subject. In all other cases limiting ISO means not getting a shot. I can still delete the image later, if I cannot clean it. Noise can often be cleaned, blur not so much.
This said, there is such a variety of photographers around here that it is quite a futile exercise to generalise topics like this.
My camera is capable of shooting at different ISOs, not because I should use high ISO values all the time, but because there are times where I need to use high ISO shots. Especially in low light, because that is what the ISO values represent.
So frankly, I don’t care too much about the debate, I’m just happy that cameras are getting better and better.
Dunno yet I’ve had some shots at 8000 the have cleaned up OK with lightroom’s denoiser… It depends on the where the image is going. A 45mp image at 8000 or more when only being resized to an Instagram image will look fine after being denoised.
Sports and events. Even professional arenas and venues have poor lighting for the situation. In a well lit arena, I was still lucky to get ISO 3200 (at 1/1,000 2.8)
But smaller venues, high school sports, and dimly lit churches? 6,400 or 12,800 was normal. Sometimes even with a prime. And you had to nail that exposure or the image would look like pointillism.
Nowadays? Between DXO (amazing), Topaz (great for jpegs), or Adobe Denoise (built into ACR, and solid), we have it easy.
I’ve gone and looked at some of my old RAW files from a Canon 1D (2001 camera, 4mp) and a 1D II (2004 camera, 8mp) and its night and day how well they process and blow up now. What’s funny is that I thought the same thing 15-20 years ago and it was true because we all knew how “good” a file could be processed, so we accepted the levels of grain.
I still shoot with a pair of D3s (2009, 12mp) and it works great. Running files through DXO cleans them up, but my clients didn’t complain when I didn’t use it, so it’s really more for me to look at and go ooh and aah at the technology.
I will shoot at whatever ISO gets me the image that I need to get. Would I love to shoot everything at ISO 100 and freeze motion and get the lighting and colors I want? sure. But that would be too easy.
Most modern cameras are ISO invariant anyway. My Sony A9 gains nothing beyond ISO 800 compared to increasing exposure in post-processing, so I generally have my ISO set to Auto 100-800.
I am a low light event pro, and I regularly increase my exposure 3-4 EV in post, equalling up to ISO 12800 in-camera. With modern denoising software like DxO DeepPrime, the results are great.
Here’s an example. ISO 800, exposure increased by 4 EV (12800 equiv.) in post. Cleaned up with DxO DeepPrime XD.
> Most modern cameras are ISO invariant anyway.
Very few are truly ISO invariant as upping the ISO reduces the read noise slightly even with conventional sensors, plus many are dual gain which are never as there is one spot where the read noise collapses. Including your A9.
Interestingly, it was a long time ago when many cameras behaved in read-noise invariant manner (the CCD era). Some even only marked the ISO as metadata in the raw files.
> My Sony A9 gains nothing beyond ISO 800 compared to increasing exposure in post-processing, so I generally have my ISO set to Auto 100-800.
Sony A9 has read noise of about 2.5 electrons at ISO 800, it goes down to something like 1.2 or or 1.1 at the much higher ISOs. normally it indeed is quite irrelevant, thus I’d probably use the same ISO range myself that you’re using.
> I am a low light event pro, and I regularly increase my exposure 3-4 EV in post
Being a pro, I wish you’d teach the others better than this as you know that exposure and lightness are not the same and that one can’t increase the exposure in post. It would help the beginning learners to understand the fundamentals better and learn faster to make fewer mistakes.
Nice photo, btw.
Thanks for the feedback. I’ll admit I’m not the best with technical details, my brain spaces out pretty quickly when I try to understand the finer points of the technology involved. As a photographer, I rely on instincts.
There is obviously some need for technical understanding nonetheless, otherwise I’d be making lots of pointless mistakes. We are agreed on the practical implementation of the dual gain technology in modern sensors such as the one in my A9, which for me is mainly about preserving highlights; I am less likely to blow them if I limit my ISO to 800 vs. letting the camera bump it all the way to 6400 or 12800.
I haven’t used Canon or Nikon, but the Sony mirrorless cameras I am familiar with are prone to overexposing the scene when it is mostly dark, but has occasional bright flashes (such as is the case at fire shows).
I mitigate those tendencies by mainly relying on highlight metering, limiting my ISO range, and using S mode with significant (usually around -1 EV) exposure compensation when there are very bright flashes; that is usually enough for Sony mirrorless cameras to avoid blowing highlights (fire breathers are a notable exception, I have to key in everything manually in advance).
As for exposure vs. light, you are correct of course. For good and for ill, “increasing exposure in post” is how I have learned to express my Lightroom editing process, since the slider I use for that is called Exposure and I increase that value.
That’s a sick shot!
Thanks! I love fire photos.
This is great advise. Thank you!
I use both LR and DXO Pure Raw 3 for noise reduction (Fuji shooter) and I no longer have fear of high ISO’s. Sure there’s a few trade offs with AI NR, but at normal viewing sizes it’s pretty much imperceivable.
I try to keep it at a minimum to get the shot. But don’t care to bump it to absurd level if it helps. Better to have a noisy picture than no picture at all.
I shoot performances at dive bars, boy do I need high iso to get good shots.
Wedding photographer, 4000 iso on a Nikon z8 seems to be my go to recently. Though I will happily bump it way up when needed. I prefer a look that retains the feel of the ambient lighting, so its all situational.
As a very rough rule, 1 under the max standard iso range give useable images.
I feel like some people shoot high iso to cover up for their laziness… At least for street/ travel style photography, resorting to noisy high iso where you shouldn’t even be taking that photo in the first place as the lighting is shit.
At the end of the day, photography is about capturing light… if you don’t have any, you either create it, go long exposure, or leave the scene!
I definitely agree with this - although given some of the rather aggressive responses to this thread, it seems to be a minority opinion. The thing about these mega-high ISOs is that they can encourage people to shoot in practically zero light “because they can”, regardless of whether they should.
yep exactly… I mean if you’re on a job, fair enough… but even then I would never go for a commercial shoot without any lights regardless! And if you’re doing a commercial shoot, you generally have to plan for the lighting as well, i.e., end of day softer sunlight, rain/overcast, morning hard contrast etc etc.
It does seem we’re on the minority which is surprising, then again, remember this is only reddit/ many self proclaimed pros here! I am by no means a professional but if I know for a fact from many pro friends that if I were to just suggest ‘just max out the ISO’ to cover up for boring or lack of light, they would definitely chuckle ahahah
what the hell does this even mean?
I’m shooting basketball in a dim gym so need fast shutter speed and high iso. can’t use flash to blind players. so your solution is to not shoot anything?
I’m shooting a concert, singer is jumping around, low light, I can’t use a flash. so don’t shoot?
I’m shooting owl that only flys and hunrs when it’s dark. just don’t shoot it?
high iso enables use cases that are difficult to capture other wise. that’s the whole point
Sometimes though, you’re paid to capture something and using your own light is not an option for whatever reason. You might not be capturing anything worthy of a magnum portfolio but you still gotta get the shot.
If i dont want to print a poster, iso6400 is no problem. If you are watching photos on a normal screen, use it for social media or sth else, no „normal users“ will notice this.
This is weird. Noise reduction software has significantly improved and shots at “stratospheric ISO levels” are now usable, hence it being shown off.
Sounds like you don’t shoot in low light conditions.
A) high ISO helps mitigate shallow DOF in low light
B) high ISO helps reduce exposure time in low/no light conditions
When shooting at night 1600-8000 is common.
Generally I dont use above 1600, maybe because I rarely photograph in low light situations hand held. Sometimes I use flash
