SL3 , am I the only one ?

[FlashGordonPhotography]

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4 hours ago, Photoworks said:

The left dial has different functions for AF and MF.

It just trades aperture (AF) for magnification (MF). Another function best done with your right hand.

Gordon

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[Ken Abrahams]

I really like the ISO dial especially for street photography and moving from different lighting intensities. I go from 100 iso to 400 and then 1600 in a matter of minutes. The method is to avoid clipping when shooting 1.4 and shooting in shaded city streets. I haven't tried floating ISO I dont like it and I am surprised that some photographers will have it set. I can change ISO and see it on the top screen as I shoot from the body/hip. I am used to this method with the M10M and often it is a quick step between exp compensation, and iso to maintain exposure up around 1000/sec. Manual lenses of course, usually the 35 M Summilux, 28 M Summilux or 21 SEM. Using some kind of L bracket enables me to grip left side of camera and change the dial with right hand. The mechanical shutter on the M1oM benefits from 3 stop ND filter to avoid clipping at 1.4.  

     

[SrMi]

9 minutes ago, Ken Abrahams said:

I really like the ISO dial especially for street photography and moving from different lighting intensities. I go from 100 iso to 400 and then 1600 in a matter of minutes. The method is to avoid clipping when shooting 1.4 and shooting in shaded city streets. I haven't tried floating ISO I dont like it and I am surprised that some photographers will have it set. I can change ISO and see it on the top screen as I shoot from the body/hip. I am used to this method with the M10M and often it is a quick step between exp compensation, and iso to maintain exposure up around 1000/sec. Manual lenses of course, usually the 35 M Summilux, 28 M Summilux or 21 SEM. Using some kind of L bracket enables me to grip left side of camera and change the dial with right hand. The mechanical shutter on the M1oM benefits from 3 stop ND filter to avoid clipping at 1.4.  

     

By floating ISO, do you mean Auto-ISO?

What do you dislike about Auto-ISO? I use it almost always when lighting changes quickly, hence I do not use the left top dial. Auto-ISO is best used in M mode or in A mode when assigning Auto-ISO settings to a button so that you can quickly change the slowest shutter speed allowed. With Auto-ISO you avoid clipping by applying negative EC which affects ISO, not the exposure.

 

Edited April 17, 2024 by SrMi

[Ken Abrahams]

15 minutes ago, SrMi said:

By floating ISO, do you mean Auto-ISO?

What do you dislike about Auto-ISO? I use it almost always when lighting changes quickly, hence I do not use the left top dial. Auto-ISO is best used in M mode or in A mode when assigning Auto-ISO settings to a button so that you can quickly change the slowest shutter speed allowed. With Auto-ISO you avoid clipping by applying negative EC which affects ISO, not the exposure.

 

Yes, Auto iso. I never liked something making decisions for me but understand the technology has greatly improved over twelve years when I first encountered floating iso on Fuji X 100 camera. I often shoot longer exposures and difficult, contrasty lighting. I need to maintain higher shutter speeds for street so if it can do that I am willing to test it, I guess I am less willing to change my system by managing all the information and the only thing relatively constant is aperture.

K   

[LocalHero1953]

2 hours ago, FlashGordonPhotography said:

It does include auto ISO. Just to get there is different than a button assignment for ISO. It's one extra step with a different dial (or joystick). Blech!

Gordon

Thanks, yes, I knew there was some irritating extra step to get to AutoISO.

[LocalHero1953]

1 hour ago, Ken Abrahams said:

Yes, Auto iso. I never liked something making decisions for me but understand the technology has greatly improved over twelve years when I first encountered floating iso on Fuji X 100 camera. I often shoot longer exposures and difficult, contrasty lighting. I need to maintain higher shutter speeds for street so if it can do that I am willing to test it, I guess I am less willing to change my system by managing all the information and the only thing relatively constant is aperture.

K   

Pedant alert - Floating ISO is not the same as Auto ISO. Floating ISO adjusts ISO when using a zoom lens with variable aperture, which changes the aperture when zooming e.g. the 24-90 and 90-280 zooms. Change the zoom length and the ISO changes. Auto ISO adjusts ISO for correct exposure for any lens while keeping aperture/shutter at your specified values or within your chosen range.

Just to avoid confusion when the argument gets heated......

Edited April 17, 2024 by LocalHero1953

[hansvons]

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2 hours ago, Ken Abrahams said:

I really like the ISO dial especially for street photography and moving from different lighting intensities. I go from 100 iso to 400 and then 1600 in a matter of minutes.

I reckon the SL3’s sensor is invariant at least until ISO 1600. That means that regardless of what ISO you set there’s no amplifying going on, thus shooting on ISO 1600 just means underexposing by 3 stops compared to ISO 200. Conversely you could set the camera to ISO 400 as a meaningful hight light-protecting middle ground and underexpose by 2 stops without further thinking delivering the exact same result as ISO 1600 without losing time while fiddling around with the camera. 

I presume a raw workflow. For JPEGs, the ISO must be set correctly. 

[pf4eva]

Additional dial is completely unnecessary IMO, there are much more important things which are missing.

[Ken Abrahams]

1 hour ago, hansvons said:

I reckon the SL3’s sensor is invariant at least until ISO 1600. That means that regardless of what ISO you set there’s no amplifying going on, thus shooting on ISO 1600 just means underexposing by 3 stops compared to ISO 200. Conversely you could set the camera to ISO 400 as a meaningful hight light-protecting middle ground and underexpose by 2 stops without further thinking delivering the exact same result as ISO 1600 without losing time while fiddling around with the camera. 

I presume a raw workflow. For JPEGs, the ISO must be set correctly. 

Thank you Hans - Yes, invariant is good. Especially on the colour camera. I like the grain on the M10M camera at 1600. The SL3 however shows amazing detail with malleable files and as you say "invariant". I do like colour street work to mix with the black and white images. I think my systems of post processing and stylising colour street images will have extra latitude with the SL3. and be similar to what I am achieving with the SL2S.  Its the colour abstract work the SL3 will shine and the long exposures I use for train "light blurs".  The 20x24 prints I picked up this week showing abstract train blurs (shot on the SL2S} were absolutely amazing. So I am hoping the SL3 can top that and then I will be in seventh heaven.  

I was using 64 iso the other day and it reminded me so much of 64 Ectachrome or kodachrome. I like to choose that setting for myself for particular images and then later choose another ISO depending on the scene or if there is some impression I want to achieve later in post. I will give it a go and as long as it maintains shutter speeds of 1000/sec upwards. Maybe I can use auto iso for some christmas shots or other  events?   

[SrMi]

2 hours ago, hansvons said:

I reckon the SL3’s sensor is invariant at least until ISO 1600.

Like most cameras, SL3 is invariant a bit after the DCG point. I would say at ISO 640 and higher (up to 6400 at least).

Edited April 17, 2024 by SrMi

[SrMi]

22 minutes ago, Ken Abrahams said:

Thank you Hans - Yes, invariant is good. Especially on the colour camera. I like the grain on the M10M camera at 1600. The SL3 however shows amazing detail with malleable files and as you say "invariant". I do like colour street work to mix with the black and white images. I think my systems of post processing and stylising colour street images will have extra latitude with the SL3. and be similar to what I am achieving with the SL2S.  Its the colour abstract work the SL3 will shine and the long exposures I use for train "light blurs".  The 20x24 prints I picked up this week showing abstract train blurs (shot on the SL2S} were absolutely amazing. So I am hoping the SL3 can top that and then I will be in seventh heaven.  

I was using 64 iso the other day and it reminded me so much of 64 Ectachrome or kodachrome. I like to choose that setting for myself for particular images and then later choose another ISO depending on the scene or if there is some impression I want to achieve later in post. I will give it a go and as long as it maintains shutter speeds of 1000/sec upwards. Maybe I can use auto iso for some christmas shots or other  events?   

I would avoid ISO below 100. The histogram is not quite right and there seems to be some tricky non-linearity involved.

[Ken Abrahams]

2 minutes ago, SrMi said:

I would avoid ISO below 100. The histogram is not quite right and there seems to be some tricky non-linearity involved.

Thanks for the iso tip but I will have to look up "non linearity". As I explore the camera over time, I will likely see what you are saying. And give up the ISO under 1600, one less thing I have to think about!  

[LocalHero1953]

3 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

Pedant alert - Floating ISO is not the same as Auto ISO. Floating ISO adjusts ISO when using a zoom lens with variable aperture, which changes the aperture when zooming e.g. the 24-90 and 90-280 zooms. Change the zoom length and the ISO changes. Auto ISO adjusts ISO for correct exposure for any lens while keeping aperture/shutter at your specified values or within your chosen range.

Just to avoid confusion when the argument gets heated......

Excessive pedantry alert: I was not quite accurate in my description of Floating Aperture. It happens with all zoom lenses, not just those with an aperture number that varies between the long and short ends. It adjusts the ISO to compensate for the fact that the aperture measured as focal length / diameter changes as the focal length changes by zooming. 

[SrMi]

10 minutes ago, Ken Abrahams said:

Thanks for the iso tip but I will have to look up "non linearity". As I explore the camera over time, I will likely see what you are saying. And give up the ISO under 1600, one less thing I have to think about!  

Why would you give up ISO under 1600? Why would you give up IQ?

[Ken Abrahams]

17 minutes ago, SrMi said:

Why would you give up ISO under 1600? Why would you give up IQ?

You or Hans said it was invariant, so doesn't matter what you put your ISO  on

[SrMi]

26 minutes ago, Ken Abrahams said:

You or Hans said it was invariant, so doesn't matter what you put your ISO  on

Hans said it and he is wrong. Even if it were invariant, you want to maximize the exposure (shutter speed and aperture) and that can happen only at lowest ISO. 
Of course, real constraints may not allow you to maximize the exposure, but you do not want to add unnecessary constraints by keeping the ISO higher than necessary.

 

[Dr. G]

55 minutes ago, SrMi said:

Hans said it and he is wrong. Even if it were invariant, you want to maximize the exposure (shutter speed and aperture) and that can happen only at lowest ISO. 
Of course, real constraints may not allow you to maximize the exposure, but you do not want to add unnecessary constraints by keeping the ISO higher than necessary.

 

Good point, but sometimes underexposing means you can use a higher shutter speed when needed.  If the sensor is truly invariant up to 1600 this is advantageous.  I think mathphotographer did a video on ISO invariance on the Q3 (I could be very wrong about this, but I remember watching something about it) and the resulting images after exposure balancing was pulled up were identical.  

However, it has been explained to me here on the forum that there is no difference in noise with a properly exposed photo and an underexposed photo that is exposure corrected in post.  I shoot in very dark places at times and used to underexpose to keep my ISO at or under 6400 (in a situation where I didn't necessarily need to keep my shutter speed higher) and I was told that it make no difference if I shot 1 stop underexposed or at the proper exposure, the files would show the same amount of noise once the underexposed image was corrected.   I mistakenly believed that by underexposing at 6400 I would have the noise advantage of not shooting at a higher ISO.  

[Photoworks]

1 hour ago, Ken Abrahams said:

You or Hans said it was invariant, so doesn't matter what you put your ISO  on

I must disagree with Hans on this one. Most camera files look best when exposed correctly. Pushing files in post does not improve the image, it will show more noise and artifacts. Plus you are reducing DR quickly.

I think you have to see what the relationship is between the sensor and the software of each camera. and I would suggest testing it for yourself. All SL cameras are not created equal, the SL3 is better than SL2 and SL2s in any iSO.

Ken needs to nail the exposure in the M10M otherwise the highlights are gone. The SL3 is in color, so I can recover a bit more, but don't overexpose too much.
For Ken, I would try setting auto ISO and limiting the Auto ISO setting, with the combination of Highlight metering it should resolve in good images.

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[BernardC]

3 hours ago, Ken Abrahams said:

I was using 64 iso the other day and it reminded me so much of 64 Ectachrome or kodachrome.

 

50 minutes ago, Photoworks said:

must disagree with Hans on this one. Most camera files look best when exposed correctly. Pushing files in post does not improve the image, it will show more noise and artifacts. Plus you are reducing DR quickly.

I think you are both arguing the same point, using different language. The reason why ISO 64 looks like old slide film is because it behaves like old slide film: you are at the threshold of blowing-out highlights.

Hans didn't counsel against proper exposure. He said that the sensor is invariant in each of its gain stages. Depending on the specific camera, the "base" gain is applied between minimum ISO and approximately 1200, and the next gain stage kicks-in above that. Knowing that, you still need to expose correctly, but your exposure decision mostly affects the distribution of dynamic range above or below middle grey. For instance, at ISO 64 there's very little latitude in highlights, but you can lift the shadows by five or more stops. On the other hand, at ISO 800, your highlights have lots of slack, but the shadows are "noisy" (which is another way of saying that you have less shadow range).

Long story short: you need to match your exposure to your subject brightness range, which is what Ansel Adams recommended with the zone system decades ago.

There are two main ways of doing this: you can shoot at the lowest ISO that won't blow your highlights (AKA "expose to the right"), of you can pick a middle ISO and trust that there's enough DR in both highlights and shadows. Those are two different ways of approaching the same issue, and that issue is the sensor's exposure invariance.

[Photoworks]

Considering that the base ISO on this camera is 100 for photos, ISO 50 is -1 stop pull and will reduce your highlight DR.

The SL3 sensor has dual gain, it is not specific in the manual but my impression is that it is at 100 and 400 ISO