Dogs in High ISO

[rpcrowe]

I don't usually shoot at very high ISO; preferring to add some creative flash and keep my ISO at the minimum.

However, I have decided to play with high ISO from my Canon 7D camera and shot this image of my Goldendoodle, Holly, and one of our rescue fosters, Rudy, who is a Maltese + Terrier mix. It was shot at ISO 3200 which provided an exposure of f/5 at 1/160 second using my 70-200mm f/4 lens.



Of course, I could have reduced the ISO since I can easily get a hand-held image at 1/60 second and the lens will open to f/4. However, I shot this at 3200 just to see what the reslts would be like. I ran it through the Dfine noise reduction of my new NIK Software Suite at the Dfine default setting...

I will play some more using different ISO levels and with customizing the Dfine noise reduction.

BTW, Holly is like a therapy dog for our rescues. Rudy wasn't feeling well because we just had his teeth cleaned at the vet. He was cuddling with Holly...

This one was shot using ISO 1600 with provided an exposure of 1/60 second @f/4. The lens was at 155mm. Of course it was hand-held...

[Loose Canon]

They look good to me, Richard.

I take it from your settings description that you “zeroed” your exposure?

The reason I asked is that I recently did some shots in bad lighting and no flash. I went up to 6400, overexposed by about a stop, and pulled it back down in post. Pretty good results I thought.

Nice to know where the ceiling might be with ISO. I don’t always have the luxury of using flash.

[Otavio]

Hi Richard. I would say this is an ISO level that could be considered perfectly usable within your camera. The noise level is very low. This is a very good characteristic of the current dslr. I like shooting birds and very often (due to the need of high shutter speed) use 1600 to 3200 ISO, without visual noise. There is sort of a myth that we should stick to the low ISO settings, to avoid noise. That is not absolutely wrong, but we have to consider the technology is running fast to overcome these limitations to us, so that 3200 for most current DSLR is quite usable (and useful).

PS.: According to Snapsort.com, your camera can go up to ISO 854 without any detectable noise (http://snapsort.com/cameras/Canon/EOS_7D). Of course this is a lab test and you can go even higher (as you did above, using 3200), still with very low noise level!

Very nice job (and nice pets, BTW!).

Regards,

[rpcrowe]

What caused me to start investigating the ISO levels is my upcoming trip to Venice and Istanbul (mostly Istanbul). I want to shoot in the museums and wanted to see what ISO I would be comfortable with.

This is one of the images in the ISO 3200 series without Dfine noise reducton...



One of my projects will be photographing the Istanbul Military Museum. I am retired military and also an amateur historian. So much of Istanbul and Turkish history evolved arond military matters that I am surprised this is not a top attraction. IMO, this would be more interesting than visiting Roman and Greek ruins over and over again throughout the Mediterranean and gean areas! I will probably be shooting around ISO 1600 in the museum; unless I can use a tripod.

[Shadowman]

Richard,

You mentioned using higher ISO settings in previous thread. Highest ISO with Canon 7D... And I believe it was felt you could go as high as 6400 before quality issues began to set in. You proved it with these shots that within a certain ISO range, the 7D can produce very good images.

[Marie Hass]

May I also mention that, even at higher ISO's, the 7D manages to produce true to life color representation that you don't get when using a flash?

Lovely images, Richard. Very appealing.

[Mark von Kanel]

Hi Richard,

bit of an unfair test me thinks! because of the subject content the slightly softer image actually enhances the image in my opinion! your soft cuddly pooches are excellently represented with these settings, but would other subject matter?

personally if i were going to lokk at ISO comparisons i would take test shot of compositions similar to those i wanted to capture under those conditions.

Marie.

colour is not so much of a problem if the correct white balance is selected but shadow and contrast would impact on the images depending on how the light source was modified. (umbrella soft box ect)

[Marie Hass]

lol's at myself, Mark. I was being a very simplistic country girl and you called me out. (sigh)

Marie

[rpcrowe]

Actually, Marie, I can get some pretty nice imagery using flash and ISO 160 with my 7D...

Of dogs...







Of People...

[Marie Hass]

Ah, Richard, somehow in this mixed mess of a message, I was trying to pay you a compliment, which I did poorly. Please accept my apologies if I offended. The quality of one's work is based on the photographer, not the camera, which you have so amply proved. You are exceptionally talented and techniclly skilled.

(Which I am not, and sometimes I do tend to be a bit of a loose canon....

Marie

[rpcrowe]

Marie,

I was not at all offended! I just wanted to illustrate that I actually prefer to light my images (the above were shot with a single bounced flash) whenever possible, rather than to boost my ISO to exceptionally high levels. Lots of folks immediately equate single flash photography with the "deer in the headlights look" which we quite often get from direct flash. I guess that my advocacy of flash became a little overwhelming in my posted reply. I apologize if I seemed to be a bit terse in that reply...

However, realizing that there are times in which for one reason or another, it is not possible to use flash, I am beginning a series of tests to see just how high I can boost my ISO before the image is drastically negatively impacted.

I often will basically shoot available light but just add a bit of flash fill. This is almost like shooting outdoors and using fill flash; except that it is indoors.

Here are a couple of shots done with a Canon 30D which I was using at the time I acquired the two below images. The 30D is a nice camera but, is certainly not up to the higher ISO capabilities of more modern DSLR cameras. The really nice thing about shooting in RAW is that I always can return to my images for reprocessing if and when the Adobe folks or others like NIK come up with new algorithms for noise reducton, sharpening and other improvements. If I had more time, I could reprocess both these images to see if I could reduce the noise using the NIK Dfine software.

I also need to learn to use the Dfine beyond the default settings for noise reduction. The good thing about photography is that it keeps my brain in gear and hopefully will keep me lucid for many more years. I am fast approaching my 73rd birthday! During a pre-surgical exam by the "sleep doctor" prior to a minor surgical procedure to improve my vision; he told me that I was "a young 72"; which made me feel good...

I used the tiny Canon 270EX flash, camera mounted and bounced into a Joe Demb Photojournalist FlipIt for the fill light in these images. IMO, the FlipIt really increases the capability of the little 270EX flash.





I am going to a local swap meet this or next weekend in which the lighting which seems to be somewhat akin to the markets I will encounter in Greece and Turkey. I am going to experiment with high ISO combined with a just a bit of 270EX fill. The really great thing about that admittedly underpowered flash is its compact size and light weight. However, I wish that the Canon folks had come out with a slave capable 270EX from the start. The 270EX II would be a nice addition if I were to elevate it high using my left hand (or even asking my wife to hold the flash) and fire it with the master capability of my 7D's built in flash. I am considering giving my present 270EX to my son-in-law to use on his new Canon SX-50 HS bridge camera and picking up a replacement 270EX for my own use. I can think of many uses for a slave of this tiny size...

By the way, Rudy, our rescue Terrier-Maltese and the original subject of this posting, was adopted yesterday and I shared the ISO test images with his new "furever" mom and she loved them. I often think that I (we?) as a photographer (photographers), put images under a microscope looking for technical flaws when most people just look at a image.

[Marie Hass]

Yes. I looked at your dog images and got a visceral reaction to them, rather than wanting to give a technical analysis.

I appreciate your commentary about flash usage, and will have to try out the techniques you describe. I like the fact that you have no flash shadows. I have some questions to ask tomorrow.

Marie

[rpcrowe]

I almost always bounce my flash and modify it using a Joe Demb Flash Diffuser Pro. IMO, this combination provides very good lighting, especially in a run and gun set up.

I used to use several lights to shoot my rescue dogs.



However, I could not leave my lights set up in my house and walking out to my RV garage was a PITA, especially in the rain. I found out that the single flash did a very adequate job and since I need to shoot over 50 dogs a year, it was quite convenient.