Surprised by high ISO performmance

[Dazzajl]

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Everything I've ever read or heard about this camera says that the ISO needs to be pretty much nailed to the bottom steps and forgotten about. Especially for colour!

So that's pretty much what I've done without even trying for myself. A few quick forays up to 320 but that's it.

Today I thought I'd have a little play around and I'm really surprised by what I've found. This is a crop to about half of the frame, shot as ISO 1250 and while I wouldn't serve this to a client, it's definitely more than good enough to capture a feeling, relive some memories or make some "art" 

 

 

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[AceVentura1986]

The M8 and M9 models are very ISO invariant, meaning that the ISO is fairly much just a software command increasing the sensor's gain. When understood this way, it really mitigates in favor of using the lowest ISO possible when shooting raw and then adjusting he ISO in Lightroom or another raw converter. Although I haven't shot an M8 in ages, I tried this with my old ME (M9 variant) and M9M. I found I can push the ME photos three stops without any degradation and the M9M four without any degradation. Give it a shot. Might be a gamechanger for you.

[jaapv]

With good exposure I used to shoot the M8 up to 1250 and 2500 in a pinch.

[farnz]

The M8's Kodak KAF-10500 sensor retains a lot of detail in the shadows owing to the algorithm that was used to drive and bias the ADCs (analogue to digital convertors).  This means that if you underexpose quite severely you can extract shadow detail by pulling up the exposure in post production.  This makes using higher ISO values less important because underexposing during shooting using, say, ISO 160 when the ambient light is low can be rectified in PP.

There are plenty of threads about this on the forum.

Pete.

[AceVentura1986]

11 hours ago, farnz said:

The M8's Kodak KAF-10500 sensor retains a lot of detail in the shadows owing to the algorithm that was used to drive and bias the ADCs (analogue to digital convertors).  This means that if you underexpose quite severely you can extract shadow detail by pulling up the exposure in post production.  This makes using higher ISO values less important because underexposing during shooting using, say, ISO 160 when the ambient light is low can be rectified in PP.

There are plenty of threads about this on the forum.

Pete.

Exactly 

[Dazzajl]

Thank you all.

Naturally, having been given the benefit of your collective wisdom, I had to check for myself. And of course the shot taken at ISO 1250, compared to the same frame/exposure shot at ISO 160 had identical noise levels and patterns. 

[farnz]

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1 hour ago, Dazzajl said:

Thank you all.

Naturally, having been given the benefit of your collective wisdom, I had to check for myself. And of course the shot taken at ISO 1250, compared to the same frame/exposure shot at ISO 160 had identical noise levels and patterns. 

It's important to remember that the M8's KAF 10500 sensor is a CCD (charge-coupled device) and cannot compete with today's CMOS (complementary metal-oxide silicon) sensors that have on-board dedicated noise-reduction circuitry behind each sensel ('pixel'). 

The CCD's pay back is that the noise (or "grain") more closely resembles analogue film grain because it hasn't been 'smoothed' with CMOS noise reduction.

Where it's likely that you'll notice a difference in the M8's ISO values is taking a picture in low light at ISO 1250 and the same picture in the same light at ISO 160* and then pulling the underexposed ISO 160 shot up four stops in LR or Photoshop, or whichever processing software you use, and comparing it with the unprocessed ISO 1250 picture.  You should see much less grain in the ISO 160 picture that's been pulled up four stops.

*You might need to use a tripod because the shutter speed is likely to be low enough for camera-shake to creep in.

Pete.

[markc2]

I did a couple ISO 1250 shots and was like hey I was expected trash and this is nowhere near trash.