Limits to high ISO

[MikePapple]

I shoot with Sony gear, and my 100-400 lens has an wide open aperture of f/5.6 at 400mm. This gives a good depth of field.

For fast action, I shoot with aperture priority and auto ISO. The max ISO is 12,800 and the min shutter speed is 1/2000s. Only if the ISO wants to go above 12,800 to get the right exposure, will the shutter speed drop below 1/2000s.

Manual with auto ISO also works, but when the max ISO is reached, the pics will start to be underexposed. Your brain then has to tell your right thumb to spin the rear dial to drop the shutter speed. This could take anywhere from a few seconds to the end of the day when you review your pics.

I also have a button near my right thumb programmed to reduce the shutter speed to 1/500s, for critters that stay still and pose.

 

[DRwyoming]

I also have my D500 iso set to a limit of 6400. I’m still experimenting with the z6ii. Let us know what you discover.

For the time being I have the ISO cap set to 20,000 in my Z6 II and I'm still not sure that images shot at that ISO are useable even after running them through Topaz DeNoise. As posted above there's just more chroma noise to deal with in my high ISO Z6 II images compared to my high ISO D5 images. As someone posted above it seems I can get away with ISO 20,000 on images where I don't have to pull any shadow detail but generally speaking if there's so little light I'm pushing the ISO into the stratosphere I'll probably have to do a bit of shadow pulling in post. Still playing with this but so far it seems I'm happiest keeping my Z6 II ISO cap between the D850 and D5 limits and of course like all the cameras trying not to hit that cap when possible.

 

[ronpier]

I use Auto Iso on all of my DSLRs. I have found that my maximum acceptable ISO limit on my D3400 is 3200. On my D90, D80 and D50 I set the limit at 1600. These are the limits that I feel produce acceptable results even though I can shoot higher if needed, especially with the D3400 and D90.

 

[markymark]

Is it me or does anyone else have issues with the D500 for noise at low ISO when you get them in Lightroom Classic?
If I was to take it to ISO 6400 as some of you lads above I‘d end up throwing them away!
What am I doing wrong?

 

[DRwyoming]

Is it me or does anyone else have issues with the D500 for noise at low ISO when you get them in Lightroom Classic?
If I was to take it to ISO 6400 as some of you lads above I‘d end up throwing them away!
What am I doing wrong?

I'm not sure what ISO you're talking about or how much noise you find objectionable but I don't find the D500 has bad noise at low ISO at all when processed in LR Classic.

Here's a 1:1 pixel level (100% Zoom) crop out of a D500 file shot at ISO 400. This is prior to any noise reduction or sharpening or really any processing at all other than opening it up and doing the crop. The visible noise is minimal to my eyes, very fine grained with very low chroma noise and very easy to deal with in LR or PS if necessary.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

That said, when I do push up near my high ISO limit with any camera but definitely with the D500 I'll be doing some noise reduction work either with LR and PS or often with Topaz DeNoise. Without expectation of extra noise reduction work my ISO limits would be lower for all my cameras.

 

[Drbobcameraguy]

I just bought a d3s. One of the best low light cameras still. Dynamic range is hardly an issue if the image looks like sandpaper. Lol. The D3s out performs the 850 until you downsampled. For the money for a old d3s you can buy it and use it for nothing but low light. My D5oo has the same feeling for me as you all 6400 is the limit with 12800 to get the shot. The old d3s kicks it's butt still has 9frames a second. Great investment until the d9 second gen comes out if you want the very best. The first gen always needs improvement. Lol.

 

[Roy]

Hallo everybody. I am relatively new on this forum and glad that I found it, because it gives me the opportunity to sharpen my photography skills. I started out with photography in 1978 when I bought a Nikon EM. Now I am in the fortunate circumstances to own quality gear: Nikon D500 and D850, Nikkor, 14-24mm and 500 PF, Tokina 24-70 f2.8 and Sigma 105mm f2.8 macro. Having this gear means that I cannot blame anything else but my own skills for shortcomings in my pictures.
I notice that a lot of people from the film era have a kind of shyness to use high ISO. In the days of film high ISO meant more graininess, but with the D500 and especially the D850 you can use ISO 800 without any problems. So for bird photography I use high ISO with fast shutter speeds, 1/3200 or so. I don't rely on VR and neither on tripods, because these are not remedies against blur due to fast flapping wings.
Living in Holland where skies are often cloudy, I often need an ISO setting higher than 800 to maintain a fast shutter speed. So what I would like to have your opinion about is: at what ISO level is there a turning point, for instance would it be better to use ISO 1600 and 1/1000 or ISO 3200 and 1/2000? (using a D500 and 500 pf for birds)
(I excuse myself for possible mistakes in my English, as it is not my mother tongue)

In low light apart from a fast lens Its better to use a higher ISO/ASA than risk too slow a shutter speed.
An ISO of 64 for the D850 and 100 for the D500 is optimal, but is the real world these often isn't as much light and a higher ISO prevents blur from too a slow shutter.
These days on good camares such as yours an ISO of up to 3200 is still usable...

 

[markymark]

I'm not sure what ISO you're talking about or how much noise you find objectionable but I don't find the D500 has bad noise at low ISO at all when processed in LR Classic.

Here's a 1:1 pixel level (100% Zoom) crop out of a D500 file shot at ISO 400. This is prior to any noise reduction or sharpening or really any processing at all other than opening it up and doing the crop. The visible noise is minimal to my eyes, very fine grained with very low chroma noise and very easy to deal with in LR or PS if necessary.
View attachment 18989

That said, when I do push up near my high ISO limit with any camera but definitely with the D500 I'll be doing some noise reduction work either with LR and PS or often with Topaz DeNoise. Without expectation of extra noise reduction work my ISO limits would be lower for all my cameras.

Thanks for the reply DRW, But I took my problem to Nikon who told me that both the D500 & the D5 files are noisy at low ISO once you get them into LC but I don’t see that in your image at all.

 

[Squawk]

Is it me or does anyone else have issues with the D500 for noise at low ISO when you get them in Lightroom Classic?
If I was to take it to ISO 6400 as some of you lads above I‘d end up throwing them away!
What am I doing wrong?

Have a look at the photons to pixels dynamic range shadow recovery chart and you'll get an idea of what's going on and why iso 400 is cool on the D500. Having said that iso isn't one size fits all. On some images 400 is about the best you'll find on a D500 before you start to compromise, but an image where your subject is to the right of the histogram can be pushed further. If it's a record shot you'll be often able to get more details with a higher iso than a lower shutter speed, but for your wall hanger you need better so beyond a certain level I'll put down the camera and enjoy the moment.

 

[Squawk]

Thanks for the reply DRW, But I took my problem to Nikon who told me that both the D500 & the D5 files are noisy at low ISO once you get them into LC but I don’t see that in your image at all.

D5 noisy at low iso? I'd suggest you talk to someone else as I suspect you got someone who's experience wasn't quite up to par. D5 will take you to 3000 and while you will lose dynamic range, if it fits on the histogram it'll be quite decent enough.

 

[O]

For the time being I have the ISO cap set to 20,000 in my Z6 II and I'm still not sure that images shot at that ISO are useable even after running them through Topaz DeNoise. As posted above there's just more chroma noise to deal with in my high ISO Z6 II images compared to my high ISO D5 images. As someone posted above it seems I can get away with ISO 20,000 on images where I don't have to pull any shadow detail but generally speaking if there's so little light I'm pushing the ISO into the stratosphere I'll probably have to do a bit of shadow pulling in post. Still playing with this but so far it seems I'm happiest keeping my Z6 II ISO cap between the D850 and D5 limits and of course like all the cameras trying not to hit that cap when possible.

I find iso levels are greatly variable and depend largely on what lens and light conditions you are experiencing.
On average the D5 is excellent to real 12800 iso, and yes you can go well above depending on your compromise level and lens your using.
The D850 is very usable to 6500 iso
The Z6 is ok pushed to 12800, ideally prefer maximum maximum 8000 iso, but its not as strong or tolerant as the D5..........I have no issue using the D5 to 15,000 or in special circumstance to 20,000iso.

I found my first D850 was replaced as, I was getting grain and or noise in shadows even at 800 iso and it was a now and then thing, I couldn't understand why the shadows were dirty or grainy from 500 to 1600 iso, it was discovered that there was something in the processor ???, I have seen this on some occasions on other D850s, anyway once they replaced it Bingo squeaky clean to 6400, in certain conditions I can even go above that.......

Only an opinion
Oz down under

 

[markymark]

D5 noisy at low iso? I'd suggest you talk to someone else as I suspect you got someone who's experience wasn't quite up to par. D5 will take you to 3000 and while you will lose dynamic range, if it fits on the histogram it'll be quite decent enough.

No, they didn’t say that the D5 or D500 had bad ISO performance, they just said that the file from both cameras can get noisy once imported into LC, both cameras are renowned for their high ISO capabilities, but the files seemed to be the issue.

 

[bleirer]

No, they didn’t say that the D5 or D500 had bad ISO performance, they just said that the file from both cameras can get noisy once imported into LC, both cameras are renowned for their high ISO capabilities, but the files seemed to be the issue.

Lightroom does not necessarily pick up the camera settings for noise reduction, so you have to dial it in yourself. Lightroom starts the slider at zero by default. Maybe what they were talking about. Look in the detail panel, you see sliders for luminance noise and for color noise. Under luminance noise two sliders for detail and contrast lets you claw back some of what is lost by reducing noise. Under color noise same idea but for details and smoothness.

 

[DRwyoming]

No, they didn’t say that the D5 or D500 had bad ISO performance, they just said that the file from both cameras can get noisy once imported into LC, both cameras are renowned for their high ISO capabilities, but the files seemed to be the issue.

As posted above, Lightroom does not make files noisy but it's true that if you have noise reduction options selected in the camera they are not necessarily honored by Lightroom unless you go into the Preferences and select Camera Settings instead of Adobe Defaults for Default Profile. Nikon's own raw conversion tools honors the camera settings without having to change any preferences so in some cases the files can look different as you start the raw conversion process.

But also as posted above all that means is that if you stick with Adobe Defaults then your sliders like Noise and Sharpening will start at different default positions, if you want more noise reduction or more sharpening you just have to move those sliders. There's not actually more noise in the image data it's just a question of whether any in-camera noise reduction (or sharpening, vividness, etc.) are automatically applied to the LR sliders when you initially open the file.

If you want the fastest post processing workflow that automatically reads the camera adjustments like sharpening then either select Camera Settings as your default profile in Lightroom Preferences or use one of Nikon's post processing tools that automatically reads all camera settings but it's also just fine to stick with the Adobe Default settings and just bump up the noise slider manually if you feel the file needs it, in the end those approaches do the same thing.

 

[bleirer]

As posted above, Lightroom does not make files noisy but it's true that if you have noise reduction options selected in the camera they are not necessarily honored by Lightroom unless you go into the Preferences and select Camera Settings instead of Adobe Defaults for Default Profile. Nikon's own raw conversion tools honors the camera settings without having to change any preferences so in some cases the files can look different as you start the raw conversion process.

But also as posted above all that means is that if you stick with Adobe Defaults then your sliders like Noise and Sharpening will start at different default positions, if you want more noise reduction or more sharpening you just have to move those sliders. There's not actually more noise in the image data it's just a question of whether any in-camera noise reduction (or sharpening, vividness, etc.) are automatically applied to the LR sliders when you initially open the file.

If you want the fastest post processing workflow that automatically reads the camera adjustments like sharpening then either select Camera Settings as your default profile in Lightroom Preferences or use one of Nikon's post processing tools that automatically reads all camera settings but it's also just fine to stick with the Adobe Default settings and just bump up the noise slider manually if you feel the file needs it, in the end those approaches do the same thing.

I wish Lightroom offered that for my camera. For some reason they stopped doing more recent Canon cameras. There is a caveat though. When Lightroom does this they read the camera settings off the raw file but they use their own methodology for approximating how that might have looked if done by camera maker. So the Lightroom profile 'camera standard' for a given Nikon camera is not going to use Nikon's proprietary profile. And Lightroom's sharpening and noise reduction is not going to be exactly the same as Nikons. Just Adobe's best approximation.

 

[Flyboy]

I shot some Gymnastics before the Covid madness, and had my D 7100's Max. ISO With my AF-s 70-300 4.5-5.6 set at 6400. (My personal max) and had my Noise Reduction set at Low. When I got to checking, one of my best/favorite photos was at ISO 2500, with little to no noise visible at 100%. Not sure what the rest were taken at...there didn't seem to be noise enough to worry about, so now my Max. ISO will be set at 3200, and will see how that does.
I was not happy with the white balance, which was just a smidge off, and totally by accident...IN the NIKON manual no less, a white balance setting a little different than any other, suited to the lights used in sports venues. Who knew?

 

[bleirer]

It's worth repeating that iso does not cause noise. Too few photons is the problem. Sometimes we could have maybe opened up the aperture a little or slowed the shutter a bit to let a few more photons in. If we have no choice because we need that stopped action or that particular depth of field, so be it. But if we rely on iso like it is the holy grail....

 

[O]

I wish Lightroom offered that for my camera. For some reason they stopped doing more recent Canon cameras. There is a caveat though. When Lightroom does this they read the camera settings off the raw file but they use their own methodology for approximating how that might have looked if done by camera maker. So the Lightroom profile 'camera standard' for a given Nikon camera is not going to use Nikon's proprietary profile. And Lightroom's sharpening and noise reduction is not going to be exactly the same as Nikons. Just Adobe's best approximation.

Have you tried Nikons own editing software NXII I think its called, I hear a lot of people talking about it and are slowly drifting to it for many but not all applications..........
I asked why, they say it dose certain things far better than LR especially with lenses etc.......

Many people also prefer to use Capture One and rank it to be the best, then finish off somethings in PS, lots of people are leaving LR for editing !......hey its feed back from hundreds of photographic cub members across a wide area.........its not a global trending now thing but hey.....listening is where it all starts.......

Oz down under

 

[bleirer]

Have you tried Nikons own editing software NXII I think its called, I hear a lot of people talking about it and are slowly drifting to it for many but not all applications..........
I asked why, they say it dose certain things far better than LR especially with lenses etc.......

Many people also prefer to use Capture One and rank it to be the best, then finish off somethings in PS, lots of people are leaving LR for editing !......hey its feed back from hundreds of photographic cub members across a brood area.........its not a global trending now thing but hey.....listening is where it all starts.......

Oz down under

I'm a Canon shooter but I get your meaning. I use Lightroom more as an organizer these days, I convert my raw in Canon's free software then open that file in Adobe camera raw (identical to Lightroom for the most part) then in Photoshop to finish and back to Lightroom to organize. Quite an around the block. For volume shooters, weddings and such, the Lightroom to Photoshop conduit can't be beat.

 

[O]

I'm a Canon shooter but I get your meaning. I use Lightroom more as an organizer these days, I convert my raw in Canon's free software then open that file in Adobe camera raw (identical to Lightroom for the most part) then in Photoshop to finish and back to Lightroom to organize. Quite an around the block. For volume shooters, weddings and such, the Lightroom to Photoshop conduit can't be beat.

Understood, yes for weddings etc LR sounds like the ticket for organizing. Its also none destructive.
Oz Down Under

 

[O]

Nikon’s NX Studio is actually quite good, and it’s free.

Like your camera system, simple cohesive, versatile and should have stunning image quality, less is more........

One of my Pro commercial photographers friends runs 6 such systems and just loves it, he sold all the FX gear/system cameras lenses the lot, he said he is so glad to see the back of the D5 like gear and heavy lenses. The colours and image quality out of this Z6 system he said is to die for, its the best he has ever seen in any brand.

Oz down under

 

[O]

NX II
maybe Steve could do a review if not all ready LOL

 

[bleirer]

Understood, yes for weddings etc LR sounds like the ticket for organizing. Its also none destructive.
Oz Down Under

Photoshop can also be nondestructive if you work at it.