M8's and what is considered low light to the camera?

[markc2]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Hi All, 

 

What is considered low light to an M8, are we talking cloudy skies or smokey bars or...

Could you do outside portraits on a very cloudy day, just using natural light and not have grain? 

 

Thanks

 

Mark

[hepcat]

When I had my M8, fifteen or so years ago... I considered "low light" anything I needed an ISO higher than about 400 for.  I could sometimes go to ISO 800, but 400 is safe.  Consider it like shooting Tri-X or High Speed Ektachrome at box speed.  I had a Voigtlander 50mm f/1 for those REALLY low-light situations in those days.  The M9-P was a little better, but not much. 

And FWIW, it's not really "grain" per se, but more like "static."

Others may have differing opinions, but that was my experience.

Edited January 31 by hepcat

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[hepcat]

14 minutes ago, markc2 said:

Hi All, 

 

What is considered low light to an M8, are we talking cloudy skies or smokey bars or...

Could you do outside portraits on a very cloudy day, just using natural light and not have grain? 

 

Thanks

 

Mark

So here's an image I made with the M8 and a Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5 inside a fairly dark coffee shop.  Probably at f2 or f2.8 and ISO 320.  

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

 

 

[Stuart Richardson]

Just treat it like film. Keep the ISO at 160 or 320 max, use fast lenses at wider apertures and/or wider lenses. Or use a tripod/flash. But in general it is manageable. If you expose properly at ISO 640, there is finely textured grain, but less noticeable than something like Portra 160 for example. Even 1250 is perfectly usable. It is not like modern cameras that say they go to ISO 409,600 and look like absolute garbage at anything higher than 40,000 or so. Leica initially decided to limit the ISO of their cameras at what they thought was usable with tolerable image quality. After ISO numbers began inflating, they increased these numbers somewhat and put in higher ISO's that led to more problems. In the S2, for example, it had a limit of 1250 like the M8, but I found that it looked better than my A7S at 1250, even though the A7S went to ISO 409600. Certainly the A7S could be pushed way more, but fundamentally it was not like the S2 looked like the A7S did at top ISO. I was not quite the photographer then that I am now, but here are three images. The one of the dogs is ISO 640, and the other two are 1250. 2500 is like shooting Neopan 1600 or something, except that it has lower DR and some banding. None of these have any noise reduction other than a tiny bit of color noise reduction. I would say stay as low as you can and be careful about exposure. The difference is also that you cannot push your exposure five stops or your shadows to 100 like you can with some of the best current sensors. But otherwise it is totally usable. If you don't have one yet, however, I will say that as soon as I could I switched to the M9 and adored it. Having to have IR blocking filters on every lens and not having full frame was a bummer for me at least. I kept the M9 for six or seven years however, and still regret selling it.

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[dpitt]

Just like above, I like to keep the M8 in color below ISO 640. In B&W the grain/noise looks pretty film like, so you can get away with 1250.
Now, the best technique in low light with M8 and M9 are to keep shooting them at base ISO of 160 and use RAW. By using a manual mode that is 2-3 stops below what your meter says, you get an under exposed image that can be pushed in PP by 2-3 stops. This looks better than relying on the in camera processor to use ISO 640.

Also, this will preserve the highlights much better. I generally use the shadow and highlights sliders to lift the shadows only. If that is not enough, I add exposure with the exposure slider. This way, in some shots you can get away with +4 with the M8 and +5 with the M9, so effectively the shadows can be exposed at ISO 1250 while the well lit areas are exposed at ISO 320 or 640.

The nice thing about this is also that sometimes you think that you need ISO 1250 when you really don't. In that case you would have added noise for no reason, now with the RAW + push technique you can get the best result possible. I shot a visit in a cave, that was at places scarcely lit this way, my lens wide open at F2.0, camera at 1/15 because that is the lowest speed that makes sense hand held, ISO 160 and then shoot and hope for the best. When reviewing on the back screen, they almost looked completely black.

The modern AI enhanced tools can also clean up high ISO noise better than before, so maybe you could get away with ISO 2500 today.

Pictures below illustrate low light with this technique, without using modern AI noise canceling

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Edited January 31 by dpitt

[farnz]

I agree with Dirk, the M8's shadows have massive latitude so using minimal ISO and deliberately underexposing (when conditions dictate) and then pulling up in post-processing is fine and far preferably to upping the ISO when shooting.

Pete.

[jaapv]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I have used the M8 at ISO 1250 without problems. The trick is to expose liberally. With modern postprocessing it should do even better. 

[84bravo]

3 hours ago, jaapv said:

I have used the M8 at ISO 1250 without problems. The trick is to expose liberally. With modern postprocessing it should do even better. 

What do you mean by "expose liberally"?

[Al Brown]

Crop sensor  + CCD = keeping ISO below 800 for no major noise reduction need in post.

[jaapv]

14 minutes ago, 84bravo said:

What do you mean by "expose liberally"?

ETTR,
As close to clipping as you can. Noise is not caused by setting ISO, that is only a gain stage in the camera firmware. Noise is caused by the lack of photons hitting the sensor, allowing background noise to become more prominent. So the way to combat noise is to get as much light onto the sensor as possible. Take a test photograph and check the histogram.

Each step that you underexpose is one step up in ISO value as far as noise and dynamic range are concerned.

[84bravo]

5 minutes ago, jaapv said:

ETTR,
As close to clipping as you can.

Thank you!

[jaapv]

BTW, don't pay too much attention to Internet pundits on sensor noise. Most come under the heading of:"when in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout" Just bear in mind: maximum light=minimum noise.  And when you are really in trouble, DXO raw conversion or Topaz DeNoise AI will go a long way to mitigate the problem.

Having said that, on the M8 I always found that exposing bright sunlight at ISO 1250 or even 2500 gives a very pleasing film-like structure to the image.

[markc2]

Thanks All, so far, for the information and the shots that illustrate your points as well!!

 

Mark

[Al Brown]

56 minutes ago, markc2 said:

Thanks All, so far, for the information and the shots that illustrate your points as well!!

 

Mark

You are welcome.
I would like to emphasize a very important caveat of ETTR principle: exposing to the right ONLY works properly when the brightness range of the subject is smaller than your camera's sensor is capable of capturing.

This article might also be useful: https://www.joaquinbaldwin.com/blog/expose-to-the-right-ettr-isnt-always-right

A sample of clipped highlights doing ETTR with M8 is below - recovered to the max, the highlights on the right image that was ETTR beyond the sensor capability are unrecoverable. This is not so much a problem on , say, M11, but the M8 is a fragile thing in this aspect. Be very delicate with ETTR...

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Edited February 5 by Al Brown

[Al Brown]

To show a better example - one I show to my students - the detail on the phone below shows the better, noise free shadow detail when exposing to the right. But the other image showing the general scene shows the blown highlights of M8's CCD sensor upon recovery attempt when doing this. You have to find the perfect balance to capture the best of shadows and highlights, so ETTR is not always the best solution, as said before, use only when the brightness range of the subject is smaller than your camera's sensor capture capabilities. The BULLETPROOF solution to combat noise on a M8 will always be lowest (base) ISO + bracketing.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Edited February 5 by Al Brown

[jaapv]

Yes, but another thing is that there is a misconception that all highlights need to be rendered containing detail. That is clearly not true. Extreme example: if the sun is in your frame, there is no need to consider it a highlight that should not be clipped. Nobody expects to see sunspots. The same applies to night shots. Your exposure meter will consider the lights in the image and fool you into underexposure and thus into noise. The rule should be: don’t clip significant highlights. 
On that theme, it is obviously not possible on an M8, but using an EVF camera with histogram in the viewfinder will make  you aware that optimum exposure varies from -2 to +2 EV values. The subject is leading. Setting a camera to a blanket - ⅔ like some do will result in unnecessary noise and occasionally overexposed images. The photographer should understand exposure with a camera with limited DR as Al  explains. 
Experience with slide film will help.