Firstly I have to say I'm honored to win the latest CSC challenge. Thank you all so much for your votes.
This week’s challenge is: Maximum ISO…
We're all ingrained from the beginning of our photography journey not to go above ISO100 to avoid grain and noise. However, it's a fact of life that we are going to be stuck in low-light situations without flash or a tripod more often than we like. We have two choices - to crank up that ISO to max or not take the picture at all. I had taken the low ISO rule to heart and avoided all kinds of low light situations until recently. It's rule breaking time!!! But, to break rules, we must understand the implications and do it so knowing all too well what we are going to end up with. Some subjects may be ok with lot of noise, some may not. Black and white noise is so much easier on the eyes than the color noise. How much noise can you fix in PP? To understand all these technicalities, we must experiment. That's what this week's camera settings challenge is about.
Most cameras has maximum ISO upto 1600 with an option to expand it even further. Newer cameras can go upto ridiculous numbers. Check your camera manual/settings to find out what's the max ISO your camera allows and how to expand it if there is an option to do that. I recently found out that my Canon 5d allows to go above 1600 with a menu setting. Once you find out the max, find a scene where the max ISO is needed. Any indoor event in the night, your kid blowing a candle in a dark room, street scenes in the night with nothing but street lights, a night market/festival/celebration, or just evening light in the home are good places for experimenting.
Experienced photographers who are knowledgeable in this particular setting are encouraged to offer “kind and constructive” suggestions on the posted entries. Those entering this challenge want to learn and improve.
This challenge starts today TODAY, Thursday 29th July 2014 and ends on Wednesday August 6th. All photos must be taken during these dates to be considered. Enter as many as you would like- the idea is to practice & learn. TAG YOUR PHOTO CSC14-12 AND post your picture in this thread to receive feedback from other experienced photographers specific to this challenge.
Voting will take place Thursday 7th August (and remain open 24 hours) and the winner will be announced Friday 8th August. The winner of the challenge will select an experienced photographer to host a new challenge. It is the winner’s option on who they want to host the next challenge; it may be someone they follow whose work they admire, or someone who is active offering suggestions on previous CSC challenges. The winner may also select an experienced photographer for the list of photographers who have agreed to host future challenges as another option. Here is the link to that list: http://365project.org/myhrhelper/365/2011-12-12
Expect to receive constructive suggests on how to improve your skills.
How to post your photo on this link:
1) Go to your page that has the photo
2) Go to the lower right side of the page and find the word "sizes"
3) Click on the word that says "view all" and COPY the code for the large size photo - (use the longer code)
4) Go to the challenge page and "paste" the code in your discussion
Very few examples from my album that used reasonably higher ISO as I said I've avoided it with vengeance and thus not an expert on it. Hoping to experiment along.
Cool, this is a great challenge even for people like me who STILL haven't gotten around to buying a DSLR. My little Lumix has a max ISO setting of 3200. I'm interested to see what I can do with this.
Ha, my shot today was high ISO. I find it a real bother to edit. Will give it a whirl, but if I'm like the last challenge, I'll get it in a day or so late! Good choice for the challenge!
I thought I would share some photos from a couple of months ago that I could not have got without a high ISO. These were all taken at 3200, but I could have even gone a little higher. In post processing I use some noise reduction and sharpening to clean them up a bit. Don't be scared to up your ISO to get the shot you want :)
I have stacks of stuff shot at very high ISOs Kiran if you want me to post a few examples? I'm not saying I'm an expert … but low-light is essential to the stuff I want to specialise in, I'm still in the early stages of making this goal a reality though :)
I'm pretty sure that the picture I took last night (and still haven't uploaded) used ISO of 1600....and I took quite a bit with a high ISO when I went hiking in the evening over the weekend (I haven't uploaded those either!). I'm so behind on posting pictures...
@darylo Daryl, please do give it a try. High ISO actually should let you get the right exposure thus no need to edit. In fact, I find the quality of the picture goes down drastically if you bump up exposure in PP versus get it right in camera with as high ISO as possible. If any high ISO shooters have input on this point, please jump right in with your opinions.
@kiwichick Lesley, how beautiful! These are wonderful photos. I wouldn't have guessed they are high ISO if you didn't tell. Perfectly illustrates the point here. Thanks for sharing!
@aliha Alison, please please do share your examples. I would love to see them. Now I'm curious, what do you want to specialise in? I'm going to browse your project and guess. :-)
@ikamera Great timing, Kiran. I'm in Bangkok on business and the only time I have to go out with my camera is at night, so all the shots are going to be ISO 12,800 or more. Here are a couple:
@lambda Amit, I keep hearing 6D does exceptionally well at high ISOs. I see it's true now. Both shots are good, but love the composition and angle in the first one.
Ok, so here is a little comparison. Most folks know I like moving objects, so I took the ISO up to 6400 (highest mine can go), f/8, 1/1600. Low lighting situation. Hummingbirds. The one on the left is unedited (lots of noise, but I did get some great detail). The one on the right is only edited with luminance smoothing. Will practice more. Thanks for this challenge! Will really help with some "slower" subjects!
Hope this display helps (best if viewed large and on black to see differences):
It is my intention to participate in this challenge. I have a candle light wedding that I will be the photographer for in October and so I need to practice these type of shots. Thank you for the challenge.
I used the highest ISO possible (Hi1 for Nikon D90 camera) but still used a diaphragm of F11. Could give it another shot with a wider aperture. Forgot to bring that down... So difficult to get a sharp shot. is there another way then using trial and error? ;)
@myhrhelper Kathy, wow that's going to be a challenge, maybe not impossible at higher iso. Great idea to start practising. Looking forward to see what your experiments lead to.
@stimuloog Marloes, trial and error is still the best way to go, hoping the total trials go down as we improve.
I have a special request for you. You are the queen of color. Can you do a shot with loads of color and high ISO for us? Want to see how noise effects color pictures.
Today for reference have uploaded the image from yesterday straight out of the camera:
Not sure whether the image will highlight the noise?
Maybe B&W next?
@thistle Great shot Joyce! And on your first attempt too. You caught the sky at perfect twilight time, that gorgeous blue compliments the yellows in the night lights. You said you cropped it, I'm thinking a little bit more sky and foreground would make it perfect. I'm not an expert though just try cropping a little wider and see. Thanks for trying high ISO, please tag it so it is entered in the challenge.
@archielogical wow, this must be an alien cat from a different planet with his blue shadow. Lol! There is some noise but it works with this shot in my opinion. I like the wider uncluttered background in sooc shot, makes the cat stand out.
@ikamera Thank you so much for your helpful comments Kiran. I have looked at it again but all I had cropped was the road in front of the pub. I had taken the shot from the opposite side of the road and there was rather a lot of road and yellow lines! I will try to be around at the right time of day to get another shot. Thank you so much for your help.
@aliha Alison, fantastic pictures. My favorites are first and last one although all are great. I love the third one just the way it is so I think you are right in not bumping up the exposure. It made it more moody somehow. Did you use any noise reduction techniques especially the first one? At 8000 theysurprisingly noise free, at least I didn't notice any. Thanks for sharing!
@stimuloog I knew you would rise up to the challenge. :-) Thanks for clicking these colorful and very surprisingly noise free images at high ISO. These would make great abstract art on the wall. What are the lighting conditions? If it's indoor light in the night it's a miracle that it doesn't show noise. Color noise is what I'm afraid of most when I want to bump up my ISO. I salvage most shots by turning them into black and white.
@thistle Joyce, looking forward to see your re-attempt at this shot. I do that too, go to the same place and shoot it again to get it perfect. I would try to get a little bit more blue sky in particular to compliment yellows in this shot.
@ikamera The weather has changed so I can't replicate the light but this is another I took from the same spot on the same night so an unedited version and very crooked one!
The camera went up to 1600 for this shot in evening I cannot see any after effects. Am I not seeing something? or do you need to REALLY crank up the ISO to have it affect the image?
@ikamera Hi Kiran, I use Lightroom for all my editing. I should also add that I'm using a 6D (for the first three of these) which I bought especially for its ability to handle high ISO extremely well. Most cameras' shots won't look this good at ISOs this high.
The first was shot RAW and had some Luminance and Colour noise reduction automatically applied in LR (25 for each) and I bumped the Luminance NR up to 33. Likewise with the second shot, I bumped LNR to 31. The third was shot JPEG and is SOOC.
The fourth was shot on my 450D (and is a few years old). This camera doesn't handle high ISO very well at all and 1600 was max. This was shot JPEG and I was pretty heavy with the noise reduction - LNR 70 and CNR 76 for this edit.
Did this challenge go to a vote? Sorry, not getting on much but don't see if it finished officially. Loved the high ISO challenge. using it much more! Thanks, and hope I didn't miss anything.
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Shot at H2.0 - ISO 25600, post processing in Lightroom
Hope this display helps (best if viewed large and on black to see differences):
I used the highest ISO possible (Hi1 for Nikon D90 camera) but still used a diaphragm of F11. Could give it another shot with a wider aperture. Forgot to bring that down... So difficult to get a sharp shot. is there another way then using trial and error? ;)
This is my first attempt at a night time shot so any help would be greatly appreciated!
I have a special request for you. You are the queen of color. Can you do a shot with loads of color and high ISO for us? Want to see how noise effects color pictures.
Not sure whether the image will highlight the noise?
Maybe B&W next?
@8000
@5000
@2500
@1600 (the maximum this camera could do)
The first was shot RAW and had some Luminance and Colour noise reduction automatically applied in LR (25 for each) and I bumped the Luminance NR up to 33. Likewise with the second shot, I bumped LNR to 31. The third was shot JPEG and is SOOC.
The fourth was shot on my 450D (and is a few years old). This camera doesn't handle high ISO very well at all and 1600 was max. This was shot JPEG and I was pretty heavy with the noise reduction - LNR 70 and CNR 76 for this edit.
Not sure if this info of help to anyone!?