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.
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.