serendipidy said:
I am always fighting the exposure triad of shutter speed+aperture+ISO. I would love to always shoot BIF at a ss of 1/2000s with an aperture of F 8-11 (for greater depth of field) and ISO 100-400. But due to frequently overcast low light conditions here, I have to compromise. I am finding I don't like high ISO due to the noise (which I am not good at reducing in post processing) and so I don't like to use an ISO over 800-1600 max.
I find comments like this interesting because I was watching Andy Rouse's review of the 1Dx2 where he took a shot of an otter at 50,000 ISO and said it was sellable. That is a professional talking. Someone who relies on image quality to make a living. And the 1Dx2 has maybe 2 stops benefit over a camera like the 7D2.
Many comments about 'ISO above 1600 being too noisy' are often from amateurs - I am not disparaging the standards that such people may set (it is, after all, a personal opinion), but I sometimes wonder if the ability to zoom in at 100% and criticise any noise that they see means that people are losing sight of the important thing. That is, the image. You only need to look at the comments on what are often quite apalling shots (oof, poorly composed etc) to realise that the vast majority of people out there do not give a monkey's fart about image noise.
I have many images that I have that I would rather get again with lower noise, but that does not mean they will be discarded as 'failures'.