high iso and reduce noise or dark photo

[ohok1973]

yes i will take some photo and show.

i suspect its the build in NR that is not good enough to handle noise.

from the picture posted here, it is a huge difference from what i have taken.

its either because i shoot in Jpeg and noise was more obvious or the lousy in build NR.

anyways will experiment and feedback.

thank you all for kind feedback:thumbsup:

 

[darrrrrrrrrr]

While on a recent shoot I was wondering why the image on my camera screen was so soft, wondering if it was my 70-200 that was spoilt. But then I realized I had set my K20D's in-camera NR to 'strong'. I turned it to 'off' and immediately the images on screen were so much more crisp and detailed than before.

I shoot exclusively in raw so my earlier photos weren't ruined as I could apply the proper NR in LR3. Not sure if you guys think that the images below are too noisy for your liking, but to me they appear perfectly fine. Shot with K20D, ISO1600, f/2.8

Regarding the original question about whether to use high ISO or intentionally underexpose and boost in post-processing software, firstly I assume that this is going to be done in raw, since using JPEG will discard all the shadow detail in the underexposed shot, of which you'll need every last bit of.

From what I've read (such as: http://dpanswers.com/content/tech_iso.php), for most of the ISO settings, the voltage in the photon wells are amplified on the sensor before being sent to the analogue/digital converter to form the raw file. On my K20D, that stops at ISO3200.

Beyond that, to get to ISO6400 on K20D, Pentax calls this "Expand sensitivity". This works by effectively underexposing an ISO3200 shot and then boosting the exposure by 1 stop in-camera. In this case, one is better off simply underexposing the ISO3200 shot and then boosting exposure in LR to take advantage of the better processing power and control over the exposure/brightness/fill light boost.

On the K-x, this "Expand sensitivity" is probably at a higher ISO. You'll have to check it out, but the same reasoning probably holds as well.

 

[pinholecam]

I actually agree with ohok1973. I also use a K-x and compared the different iso levels and found 800 border line okay and 1600 not acceptable. Think I was using default noise reduction settings (strong?) and jpg output then (have learnt enough to change those, but never retested).
I personally don't like flash, instead I prefer to use better equipment such as upgrading to the K-5 (definitely better than K-x, although K-x is gd for its class) or getting lenses as fast as possible

As I've said its an expectation issue and so it will be personal what each persons tolerance to it will be.
That saying, the reality is that we do have to note that if Kx can't do it for user, it does mean that most APS-C cameras won't make it as well and we are at the limit of what current 2009-2010 APS-C sensors can give.

A camera with better ISO performance is not a solution until the day ISO6400 has the same qualities as ISO100 now (dynamic range, noise, details, colors). Will it come? No one knows. Film never got there.
Though high ISO does give a new paradigm to shooting with ambient lighting, its not a complete solution. As we know we get noise, detail loss, dynamic range reduction and loss of color fidelity.

The best work arounds have already been mentioned, so I won't repeat them here.
I'd just like to suggest that flash is not as much the 'ambient' destroyer that its made up to be.
The following are some photos taken using flash.

 

[Nanoo]

Hi guys. Here's what i got when shot in iso1600, medium NR.
Find it quite acceptable leh. Maybe the exposure is good, maybe not set to high NR. :dunno: But this is jpeg straight.