KevinA Posted July 15, 2009 Share #1 Posted July 15, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) Just a question for my own amusement. I shoot mostly aerials I use 1DsmkII's and mkIII's. About once a year I do a night flight over London. I use 1600 iso and upto 3200iso and have a gyro attached. One problem I find is Canon lenses do not like working wide open, they are soft and any vignetting is amplified by any dark shadow areas in the corners. So I often stop down 2stops if possible.I know Leica very high iso is not a match for Canon/Nikon, but if I could get away with 600iso or 800iso on a wide open Leica lens the difference in real shooting shutter speeds would be small. So the crux of the question is, is 800 iso delivering professional quality and how does it cope with the extreme black shadows and extreme pinpoint highlights you get from a City lit by artificial light. On paper it would look like a good choice, better lenses and no mirror vibration, downside is only 10mpxl, of course 10mpx at top quality beats 21mpxl that are fuzzy. Kevin. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted July 15, 2009 Posted July 15, 2009 Hi KevinA, Take a look here M8 high iso at night ?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
jaapv Posted July 15, 2009 Share #2 Posted July 15, 2009 600 or 800 are not available, but 640 is quite good, some would match it against the 5DII, 1250 is still quite usable. The trick is NOT to underexpose, and switch off all sharpening in DNG conversion, and reduce the default noisereduction of the RAW converter quite drastically. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
farnz Posted July 15, 2009 Share #3 Posted July 15, 2009 Kevin, Another point to bear in mind is the latitude in the shadow areas in M8 raw files, which, providing that they're not underexposed, will allow extraction of significant detail during post processing. At higher ISOs, say, 1250 and 2500, noise can become a visible nuisance particularly with underexposure. Pete. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinA Posted July 15, 2009 Author Share #4 Posted July 15, 2009 600 or 800 are not available, but 640 is quite good, some would match it against the 5DII, 1250 is still quite usable.The trick is NOT to underexpose, and switch off all sharpening in DNG conversion, and reduce the default noisereduction of the RAW converter quite drastically. Does anything ugly happen in the shadows with noise or banding? Because of the nature of aerial night shooting there will always be areas that are underexposed and some areas over exposed, it's what happens in these extremes that matters. Thanks, Kevin. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted July 15, 2009 Share #5 Posted July 15, 2009 It can happen. On the M8 the point is to keep the shadows as well exposed as possible and let the lens handle the specular highlights. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
noah_addis Posted July 15, 2009 Share #6 Posted July 15, 2009 Others have given good advice. ISO 640 is very usable but only if you expose precisely. If you're under you'll have problems. I don't use 1250 but if you do, I think you'll find it has a very film-like look because of the noise. Regardless of your preferences, you MAY find clients wondering about the high noise and low pixel count. (Even though we all know the number if pixels matters little compared to other factors, many clients now expect high MP numbers.) I would strongly recommend renting one and trying it out. If it doesn't work for you, you have two other options. You could try out the Zeiss glass, which I believe is becoming available for Canon EF mount. Or you could use Leica R lenses with adaptors. Both options are manual focus, and the Leica glass will mean manually stopping the lens down, but neither are too much of an issue for aerials if you're shooting wide open and much of what you're shooting is at infinity. A quick story about aerials... I did some recently for a story I'm working on. I was going to bring the M8's but honestly I wimped out at the last minute and took the D700s instead. I thought I'd need longer glass (a valid concern) and I was worried about the sometimes slow buffer-write times of the M8, since air time is expensive and I didn't want to have to wait for the cameras to write the files. The shoot basically went fine, I had great light and no problems. Shot with two D700's, Zeiss ZF 28, 50 and 85mm lenses along with a few frames with my Nikon 180. I was in Brazil and had a translator so she swapped lenses and cards for me. But when reviewing the files, I found that I shot way too much. Many frames look the same and while I was worried about being able to shoot fast enough, in the end I shot too fast I think. I believe with the Leicas I would have had fewer frames but I'm sure they would have been as good or better. Next time I'll take the Leicas with a 24, 35 and 90. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJP Posted July 15, 2009 Share #7 Posted July 15, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) It works ISO 640, -1 EV, 28/2 ASPH, 1/30. Taken from a tall building - not flying but nearly. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
j_lir Posted July 15, 2009 Share #8 Posted July 15, 2009 i think you could get away with 1250. it's far better with the firmware updates i feel. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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