The X1 at ISO 3200

[diogenis]

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Here is a pic from the Ice Palace in Dachstein Glacier / Austria. There is visible noise especially in the top-right corner, but in my opinion the noise doesn't harm this picture much when the colours and sharpness turned out so good.

ISO3200 F4 1/60sec

 

Thom,

Even though you photographed this palace using ISO 3200, don't expect to see noise because there is a lot of information on the illuminated subject. However take a shot of a dark object and then show us your pictures.

In short, there is enough light in there to cover the noise.

Allow me to give you 2 examples:

1. You are listening to classic music, say a very nice Violin. Outside your room there is rain pouring. You can clearly hear it even with the violin playing<- This is when you try to photograph a dark object

2. Rainstorm keeps going on but you are fed up with the violin and decide to switch to Iron Maiden!! Miraculously, even though rain still keeps falling, it has disappeared entirely!! <- this is when you shoot an strongly illuminated object

I am not sure here what you guys are trying to prove...

 

And 3. is this a crop of the photo?

[Jamie Roberts]

{snipped}

2. Rainstorm keeps going on but you are fed up with the violin and decide to switch to Iron Maiden!! Miraculously, even though rain still keeps falling, it has disappeared entirely!! <- this is when you shoot an strongly illuminated object

{snipped}

 

...and somewhat less aptly, perhaps, though the rain has "stopped" the overall noise level has increased immensely :eek:

 

(<--this is also equivalent to having a boring well-lit subject instead of an interesting darker one)

 

All joking aside, and I know it's hard to tell from these silly JPEGs, the noise levels at 3200 in the darker parts of the images don't look egregious, despite the overall illumination of most of them.

[thomsva]

Thank you all for comments! You guys know what you are talking about; As you suggest, my experience too is that noise becomes a problem at iso3200 when there is no decent light source for the main subject in the picture. As you can imagine many of the pics I have taken with ISO 3200 have had noise problems. A typical annoying problem can be noise on the darker half of a face. Unfortunately I don't have much interest to show my bad pics to anybody, and they usually just get deleted. Only have posted some of the ones I think are good here.

 

The comparison with music/rain pictures this well I think. The red iceblock I posted above is like Iron Maiden unaffected by noise. But isn't it also typical for high iso to have less vivid colour and lacking sharpness? I was surprised by the colour and the sharpness of this last picture myself.

 

I have also been thinking about high iso performance in terms of steps. I think the X1 a little less than one step better than my Nikon D200 in this sense.

[diogenis]

Thank you all for comments! You guys know what you are talking about;

Seriously I don't. I have never heard Iron Maiden from start to finish that is Neither Metallica

Anyway this is called SNR S/N ratio. S stands for signal, N for Noise.

It is a ratio, and it translates: how many times bigger or smaller is signal (whatever signal is, in this case light) from noise (whatever creeps in and you don't want it, like static). If they are close to each other you will definitely notice noise.

This is something one needs to consider while talking about noise comparisons.

Another issue is how important is to have some noise shown in our photos? We used to have a lot before when using films, so how come this became such a great issue now?

Which is why we have Sein Reid for these things.

[magnolio]

The Lumix DMC-GF1 with its APS-C small sensor starts to get ragged at iso 400 and just isn't going to hold up to the images of the X1

 

My problem as well. When I see some 3200 pictures from the new X1, I am beginning to ask me if I would not better sell my GF! with its 20mm f/!,7 and its 4/3 sensor.

But the question is: Where the hell am I going to buy a X1?

posted in Lima (Peru)

[mjh]

Allow me to give you 2 examples:

1. You are listening to classic music, say a very nice Violin. Outside your room there is rain pouring. You can clearly hear it even with the violin playing<- This is when you try to photograph a dark object

2. Rainstorm keeps going on but you are fed up with the violin and decide to switch to Iron Maiden!! Miraculously, even though rain still keeps falling, it has disappeared entirely!! <- this is when you shoot an strongly illuminated object

There is a serious problem with your analogy … The ISO value specifies how much light you need to achieve an optimal exposure – the higher the value the less light is required. But it isn’t just that you need less light when you select a high ISO value; rather you must not expose the sensor to more light than necessary as that would result in overexposure. So when you use ISO 3200 for a brightly lit scene, you need to stop down and/or choose a fast shutter speed.

 

To use your analogy, when you try to enjoy the solo violin you may need to turn up the volume (or as a long-time heavy metal afficionado you would adjust the amplification of your hearing aid), whereas one may have to turn down the volume to appreciate the finer points of an Iron Maiden track. In the end the volume will roughly be the same, namely a volume loud enough to enjoy the music, but not so loud as to damage your hearing.

 

Similarly the camera will use the aperture and shutter speed settings to control the total amount of light reaching the sensor. Bright light will require a small aperture and a fast shutter speed while dim lighting requires a larger aperture and a longer exposure time. In the end the amount of light will be the same, namely the amount required to achieve correct exposure at ISO 3200 (or whatever the ISO setting).

 

Actually the main reason why pictures of night scenes do often look more noisy than those of daylight scenes taken at the same ISO setting is not the amount of light, but its color. With incandescent light sources radiating more red than blue light, the sensor pixels sensitive to blue will be severely underexposed, and amplifying the blue channel to compensate for the lack of blue light will also increase noise. The high levels of noise in the blue channel are also responsible for the blue/yellow speckled artifacts one often sees in high ISO shots.

[jsrockit]

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My problem as well. When I see some 3200 pictures from the new X1, I am beginning to ask me if I would not better sell my GF! with its 20mm f/!,7 and its 4/3 sensor.

But the question is: Where the hell am I going to buy a X1?

posted in Lima (Peru)

 

Make sure you have the X1 before selling the GF1. I still think the GF1 is a very nice camera. I'd own one if the X1 didn't exist.

[Guest badbob]

Whenever I try comparing images from different cameras, comparing ISO and so on, it just gets too complicated to be sure I'm seeing the optimal differences between the two cameras. But with the X1, I can at least tell that I'm getting photos that wouldn't have been possible with less than a top-tier DSLR, or maybe an M9.

 

The real factors in noise seem to be the ISO, the brightness/darkness of the important parts of the image compared to the overall brightness/darkness of the image, the local contrast in the important parts of the image, and so on. I've gotten some good shots at ISO 3200 when the overall contrast is good, and when I don't have large areas of the image brighter than the most important areas.

[jsrockit]

Yes, the great thing about the X1 is that I don't hesitate to use any ISO setting and I can handhold to slower shutter speeds than most other cameras. It's just too bad the AF is slow in low light or this would be the perfect camera.

[magnolio]

offtopic:

As a comparison I also took some pictures with a tripod at iso100 and long shutter times. That's a different kind of fun for the occasions when you want to carry the tripod. The sharpness is on a totally different level. The X1 can be used in many different ways...

 

This is again a jpg from the camera resized in windows paint. I think this picture could be somewhat improved in lightroom. The shutter is 15 seconds at f=16. Sorry for the offtopic (this is iso100, not iso3200!!).

/offtopic

 

! ! Interesantisimo ! ! Thanks for sharing.

magnolio:)

[NZDavid]

One more: Hoechst area, Frankfurt, ISO 3200, 1/100 @ f/3.2. There is no doubting the X1's low noise at high ISOs puts it head and shoulders above small sensor cameras.

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