High ISO Speeds

Here's yet another abandoned house from my abandoned home collection. This photo was taken at sunset. Don't you just love the color of the home (robin's egg blue).

I took this photo at 1000 ISO, that is at a film speed where you can get clear photos in limited light.

Many point-and-shoot cameras are coming with ISO controls. They tout it too, advertising that they have films speeds of up to 3200 ISO.

What they don't tell you is at that film speed, you're going to get tons of noise. Noise happens when you get those tiny multicolored dots in your image. You can really see it if you blow up your photos to full size on your monitor.

To see your photographs at full size, all you do is type in 100 in the bottom left of the window.

By looking at your photos in this way, you'll see all the little aberrations that appear when you print out copies of them.

At any rate about the highest film speed you can go is about 1000 in order to not get much noise.

Some cameras are better than others at not having noise at high ISO speeds. Canon really does a good job. When you take a picture at high ISO speeds with one of their dSLR cameras you get hardly any noise whatsoever, like in this photo above.

Canon 5D--Great shots at High ISO Speeds

Wize.com, a new consumer product rating site, rates the Canon 5D an "88" (88/100), not an item you'd "buy with confidence" according to the site, but one that "might meet your needs."

One doesn't need to go far to get some commentary about the 5D.

To Buy or Not to Buy

Over at Photojunkie, the decision on the 5D turns out to be a waiting game. He is waiting for either Canon to announce a newer model full frame sensor (sensor is 35 mm, like film) camera or for the prices of the 5D to drop.

No Noise at High ISOs; but Blur at Low Depths of Field

The story at "The Image is Found" photoblog reads like an equipment lust tale. The guy's got everything--low f-stop, fixed focal length lenses with a couple of tilt-shift lenses, coming along with his Canon 5D body.

His test results with the 5D and all those fine lenses:

1. No noise at high ISO speeds.
Images taken at ISO 3200 look like those taken on a Nikon D2X at ISO 800.
2. Inaccurate focus system at hairthin depths of field (f/1.2 and f/1.8), at least compared to the Nikon D2X.

An Image from a 5D

No commentary on a camera would be complete without an image taken with one. This image was taken with a 5D with a Canon 24-105 f/4 mm lens attached at a shutter speed of 1/60 second, f-stop of f/9 and ISO 50 speed.