Fear ISO? Or not?

Here’s the 1Dx, a photo I shot yesterday at, wait for it, 12800 ISO:

Looks good. Now of course when you look at it real size, you see some grain at this high ISO. You can click through twice in order to see “original size”, that is real pixel size.

But with Lightroom noise cancellation you get this:

Either way, completely usable!

Now your camera may not do QUITE as well, but nevertheless I urge you to try. Go to your highest ISO setting, then back off a stop or two, and now try the same.  You will be surprised at how high a modern camera can go without awful noise. And.. grain is always preferable to motion blur.

 

 

 

1 thought on “Fear ISO? Or not?

  1. A Rebel T2i (550D) can get quite good images at ISO 6400. With the same light a 5D Mk III can get similarly good results at ISO 12800.
    Some shots with a 5D Mk III are even acceptable and mostly noise free at ISO 25600!

    Images generally look better when printed. Remember when you look at a photo on your monitor, the dot pitch is 96, so your 5000 odd pixel wide image is being shown about 6 feet wide and you are viewing it from about 18 inches.

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