DXO uh-oh?

[Loswr]

Oh my, what on earth did people do to take photographs before these cameras were capable of 12800 ISO?

We have over a century of photography that is useless as nothing could go to such a high ISO.

Thank the lord for the last 2 years of technology or our world would go on un-photographed.

More tiny red herrings. Thank the Lord for the internet and Google. How did anyone do research and learn new information before the technological tools of today? Well, they went to a library, used a card catalog with the Dewey decimal system, and hoped the library had the relevant book. Sure, it worked. But it could take several hours (or days, if the book had to be transferred from another library) to get the relevant information that we can find in a couple of minutes today. As a result, the average person can learn more, and learn it faster, and kids today know a lot more (fact knowledge, which is different than experience) than adults did when photography was young.

From an artitistic standpoint, photos from several years ago have merit. Pick up an old magazine, and look at the technical quality of the ad photos...do you think images with that level of technical quality are acceptable today?

 

[Don Haines]

Irrelevant, and a niche example: most photography is not done at 100 ISO in a studio, is it?

Studio photography is irrelevant?

This just got stupid. Most magazine photography, most product photography, most commercial photography period is studio.

And most landscapes are done at base ISO too.

If you add the up the dollar value of commercial photography, which is a huge part of the photography worlds income, it easily eclipses everything else.

And it's done with strobes and at 100 ISO.

What is your job exactly to be making claims that it's niche?

Chuckling to myself

Studio photography is a niche. A niche is a subset of the whole.

Nobody said that it was small. Nobody said that it was unprofitable.

 

[Don Haines]

My Dad was a police photographer. He did not have the option of saying "let's keep the debris and bodies all over the highway until a bright sunny day comes along". Sometimes you have to shoot NOW! with what you have under the conditions you are dealt... and you have to make do with the equipment you have. Setting up studio lighting is not always an option either.....

But he had a flash right? You know, those things that make a sudden bright light and your photos a lot lighter?

I think they've had them for a century now, but I may be wrong

And he didn't just start doing this job in the least 2 years since 12800 was actually usable?

What did he do in 2005 exactly? What about 1995?

The poor police must have no photos of anything that ever happened after sunset before 2012.

Come on, don't take this to the level that makes every one laugh, for pity's sake.

You can only do so much with a flash. I suggest you go outside on a rainy night and try illuminating a couple hundred meters of roadway...

And he shot from 1950 to 1985.... I think that predates digital photography.

 

[Don Haines]

Studio photography is a niche. A niche is a subset of the whole.

A niche is specialised small market. Studio photography is not a niche, it is the main place commercial photography is taken.

Say it's 50% of the income of the worlds photographers (I'd guess it's a lot more). Is 50% a niche?

Not on this planet.

Thanks, you made my day. I was going to watch a comedy tonight, but don't need to now.

I don't think you know what that word means......

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/niche?show=0&t=1406726074

niche noun \ˈnich also ˈnēsh or ˈnish\

: a job, activity, etc., that is very suitable for someone

: the situation in which a business's products or services can succeed by being sold to a particular kind or group of people

 

[Sporgon]

Anything in a studio is shot at 100 ISO, and that counts for a lot of paid work in this, or any other world.

Irrelevant, and a niche example: most photography is not done at 100 ISO in a studio, is it?

Since when did you not have full control over DR in a studio ? It's amusing to see zigzag's argument for "kills it" difference beginning to unravel.

Likewise posting an example of lighting failure and recovering a picture from it continues the gravitational pull on his arguments.

I still see nothing that couldn't be done on a 2005 5D never mind the latest generation Canon FF.

I take the likes of zigzags posts to be personally insulting; the inference is that those of us who are Canon low ISO shooters should know better, and are missing out big time, yet I know that the difference is much more marginal than these guys - and the DxO scores - make out.

Looking at Raw files at 50-100% on a high quality, calibrated screen is one thing. The final picture is another. I remember when the 5DII came out and I compared files with the 5D back to back, and thought: "hell - Ill never use the 5D again". But when it comes to the picture as a print on canvas, art paper or whatever, or viewed on a normal monitor, there is very little difference. Same with the D800. If your pleasure is in viewing files at 100% on a good monitor I suggest you get one.

As Neuro asked, and got a waffle response; do zigzag's clients see the difference ?

 

[Loswr]

You can only do so much with a flash. I suggest you go outside on a rainy night and try illuminating a couple hundred meters of roadway...

And he shot from 1950 to 1985.... I think that predates digital photography.

And predates 12800 ISO, completely negating your whole point.

He seems to have done his job fine without studio lights and 12800 ISO cameras.

What was your point exactly?

I hear the smell of rotting herring can be distracting, making it difficult to focus one's mind on a concept. I believe his point was that, unlike the BBC/NatGeo documentaries where the film crew can spend weeks on location waiting for ideal conditions (or recreate the natural environment and shoot on a sound stage, as was revealed a while back), sometimes you have to do your best in suboptimal conditions. I'm sure the result was often grainy and dark, but it was the best possible under those conditions. The difference is that today's 'best possible under the conditions' is a lot better.

 

[Orangutan]

Can we please desist with the snark and ad hominem!

As much as I disagree with many of zzz's arguments (not his personal experiences), he's trying to be sincere and honest. Let's not treat him like a troll.

 

[Don Haines]

You can only do so much with a flash. I suggest you go outside on a rainy night and try illuminating a couple hundred meters of roadway...

And he shot from 1950 to 1985.... I think that predates digital photography.

And predates 12800 ISO, completely negating your whole point.

He seems to have done his job fine without studio lights and 12800 ISO cameras.

What was your point exactly?

my point is that you make do with what you have and do the best you can with what you have. When a better tool comes along, you use it. For some conditions, ISO12800 is a better tool. using it when the conditions require it does not make you a bad photographer, but ignoring it when you need it does.

Go back to my picture of the lady playing the fiddle... it was taken with a 60D and this was pushing the camera to the absolute limits. ISO did not go any higher, faster lenses were not an option, and even this shutter speed was not enough to stop blur. Right now I can take the same quality with a 5D3 at ISO51200.... but 6 years ago I could not have pulled it off because my camera at that time produced absolute garbage above ISO800.... I would have had to shot at 2/3 of a second exposure and the motion of the bow would have been extreme.

If I were shooting that same venue today, I would be shooting at ISO 25600 and 1/100th of a second. Once again, my choice of ISO does not make me a bad photographer, but my ignoring the tools available to me would.

 

[Joe M]

12800 wasn't even a possibility not long ago, and in film, an impossibility, and now we have photographers with such a low skill level they require it simply to get their shot.

OK.... I accept that I have a low skill level. Now tell me what I should have done here. This is the unedited jpg out of the camera, and yes, I do shoot in RAW....

ISO12800, F1.4, 1/25th of a second, in a venue where flash or other lighting is not permitted. What should I have done to have avoided using ISO12800?

There is nothing else you could have done because I know, as many others who shoot wherein you don't have control over the lighting, that you have to work with what's given to you and make the best of it. And it was a pretty good capture too. Nice timing.

 

[Joe M]

12800 ISO to get a shot, "actual skill" will not and cannot make the difference. If the light is crap, and you need a high shutter speed, a high ISO is the only option once you're "out of lens".

Oh my, what on earth did people do to take photographs before these cameras were capable of 12800 ISO?

We have over a century of photography that is useless as nothing could go to such a high ISO.

I suppose supplementary lighting (and today still can be used otherwise Canon wouldn't be selling us flash guns) was used while now, we can let things happen naturally and remain unobtrusive. I do however remember many, many years ago attending night time concerts and shooting transparencies that I push processed, twice, in order to get the shutter speed needed to hand hold my 70-210 lens with a 2x converter on it. I'm not saying that it ought to have been a regular procedure for every style of photography but the results were amazingly usable.

 

[scyrene]

Hey, I think the discussion has become a lot more reasonable and that's good. But I have to point out (as a fairly disinterested party - i.e. decidedly NOT a fanboy) what I perceive to be a double standard here. From what most people are saying, the low ISO difference (in most situations) is not that big.

So glad you posted this as I had an interesting shot today and i can illustrate it perfectly for you.

I shot a photographer today that I mentor, for his promo shots, and I had him lit as I wanted in my head. Here's the shot as I intended it, unprocessed. This is the 2nd shot with both strobes firing.

http://client.deanagar.com.au/correct.jpg

But, the first time, the camera right strobe didn't fire and I got this.

http://client.deanagar.com.au/misfire.jpg Useless?

When I looked at the misfire on the big screen, Rob and I thought it looked kinda cool. Extreme for sure, but he and I really liked it.

Is there anything else in there he asked? He's a Canon 6D, and 70D shooter, and we love each other in a male bonding type way, so my love of my Nikon d800 does not prevent me from loving dearly Canon owners.

After all, I was a Canon boy for a long time and have fond memories

I raised the shadows in Aperture and it looked washed out. Oh well, no harm.

So then I tried raising the exposure in Aperture to +2.8 stops, and it looked pretty good.

I exported a 16 bit Psd of the original misfire, and a 16bit version of my raised exposure version, and did some blending.

I then messed with it in Silver Fx, added structure and lot of other stuff, then added a colour overlay in PS, to bring back colour to my now B/W shot.

I never intended this shot, I'll happily admit that, but it's the one he's going to use.

That DR and clean shadow detail at 100 iso is so useful in so many situations, even when the other equipment misfires.

You may or may not like this shot, but it wouldn't exist if I'd shot on a Canon today.

Here is an image of all three.

Top is the strobe misfire. Pretty useless one would assume. A reject if ever there was one. 2nd is the shot with both strobes as I intended.

Bottom is produced entirely from the top misfire shot.

http://client.deanagar.com.au/allthree.jpg

I quite like the shots, but that's by the by. It's an interesting story, but peripheral - occasionally I've liked shots that were mistakes, but you can hardly recommend a system on that basis (I think the big guys here would say something along the lines of "how often do you need to pull up a shot by X stops?" - this is a legitimate example, but surely rare). Plus, although I don't know anything about studio work, couldn't you have achieved the third shot by having just the one strobe fire, but much brighter?

But of course we're talking about two different worlds. I don't doubt your choices are excellent for studio and landscape work, and your results (photographic and financial) speak for themselves. But if you're telling me I should jump ship to Nikon for what I do (birds and macro above all) and if so I'll see a magical difference in my shots - I simply don't buy it.

 

[Loswr]

If I were shooting that same venue today, I would be shooting at ISO 25600 and 1/100th of a second. Once again, my choice of ISO does not make me a bad photographer, but my ignoring the tools available to me would.

To break my voluntarily silence, I'll bite.

The skill of shooting musical performance (my daughter is a professional dancer) in low light, is to shoot on the beat.

Cars don't stop for you, dancers and musicians etc do.

A dancer, a violinist, etc, stops on a beat, on a stroke, and it's a moment. Not long, but long enough to catch.

That's when you shoot, and it doesn't take some astronomical ISO to do it. it helps, but that's not the point.

Lol, sorry but silence would have served you better.

Did you actually look at the shot of the violinist? The performer's face was reasonably free of motion blur, meaning she wasn't actively moving, which would certainly have been evident at 1/25 s. There's a little motion blur on the bow, which I think adds to the shot by showing the action of playing the instrument. So...the shot was well-timed. The light was just really, really dim (~1.33 EV, if you want to put a number on it). Please explain again how better technique can overcome dim light? You say you don't go above ISO 1600...so, you'd have shot that violinist in that setting with a 1/3 s exposure? How would that have worked out, do you think?

By the way, I know many people in a variety of fields who are very well compensated for what they do...and suck at it.

 

[Don Haines]

If I were shooting that same venue today, I would be shooting at ISO 25600 and 1/100th of a second. Once again, my choice of ISO does not make me a bad photographer, but my ignoring the tools available to me would.

To break my voluntarily silence, I'll bite.

The skill of shooting musical performance (my daughter is a professional dancer) in low light, is to shoot on the beat.

Cars don't stop for you, dancers and musicians etc do.

A dancer, a violinist, etc, stops on a beat, on a stroke, and it's a moment. Not long, but long enough to catch.

That's when you shoot, and it doesn't take some astronomical ISO to do it. it helps, but that's not the point.

Every classic performance photo you've ever seen was shot with a lot less than 12800 ISO available.

There's a moment, you dance with it, you follow it, and you hit that moment of a performer when everything stops, just for a 100th of a second, and you get it.

Do astronomical ISO's make it easier? Sure, but then someone with true skill and astronomical ISO's available to them will catch something even better, than the guy who needs 12800 to catch a frozen moment on the beat because he doesn't have the skill to get it any other way.

Learn how to do a job right, then use the current tech to improve it and go to new places and take photos that weren't possible before.

Be rest assured, what you're saying you need 12800 for to avoid motion blur has been done and it's been done well, on 400 ISO film, by people who took pride in practising it over and over again.

Don't use current tech to make up for not knowing what you're doing.

Do you do this for a living?

you did notice that she is paused at the end of a stroke? ? ? ? ?

and if I had the option of changing the lighting conditions, I would have gone back out to the car and brought in a studio flash or used the 600EX-RT that was sitting in my bag.

 

[scyrene]

...
I'm sure people took some great shots of birds on film John, I've seen them in books when I was as kiddy windy.

The BBC doesn't shoot their nature docos in HD at 12800, I'm pretty sure of that, as I have the blu rays and on my 65" TV they look mostly noise free

The main difference here is that the BBC and National Geographic photographers aren't idiots that think ISO12800 is going to make up for shooting when the conditions favour the photographer. They're also patient in that they wait for the weather to give them the light they need or plan their photography so that the odds are in their favour.

I don't pretend to understand why neuro thinks it is a good idea or useful to shoot flying birds in cloudy conditions (or worse) but it sounds to me like he's confined his shooting to a corner where nobody can produce a better camera system for what he does than the one he owns (or so he thinks.)

Why would anyone want to shoot birds flying when it is cloudy I don't know. Any colours that might be in/on the birds are going to be greatly subdued and unless you're shooting B&W, isn't the goal to get good colour?

That's the 'I don't want to shoot what you shoot, so why should you?' non-argument. Shooting under cloudy conditions is one example - not the only one (in dense woodland is another I've given). Shooting in overcast conditions can actually be more visually appealing, depending on a lot of things - it's lower contrast (we don't all like high contrast all the time) and the colours are generally less tinted (the light being whiter than direct sunlight, especially at the ends of the day). That's obviously my opinion, but your statement is just as subjective. Basically, we don't all have the same tastes, so if some of us want cameras to do something better for what we want, who are you to call it invalid?

 

[jrista]

*sigh* ???

 

[Don Haines]

*sigh* ???

Congratulations Jon..... you are the first person to say anything intelligent in this thread.....

Perhaps the thread title should be changed to DX-DOH!

 

[scyrene]

By the way, I know many people in a variety of fields who are very well compensated for what they do...and suck at it.

Lol, I was about to get riled by the "if you don't get paid for taking pictures, your opinions are invalid" falsehood, but you summed it up better and made me smile

What it seems to boil down to is this: the original premise was that Nikon's sensor superiority to Canon is so overwhelming that jumping ship is a no-brainer. Then some people pointed out that for what they do, it makes no sense, that Canon is as good or maybe even better for that. The response has been 'you're idiots, your technique sucks, you don't even get paid for this so you're talking rubbish'. But we're the irrational fanboys. Hmm.

 

[Loswr]

That's the 'I don't want to shoot what you shoot, so why should you?' non-argument. Shooting under cloudy conditions is one example - not the only one (in dense woodland is another I've given). Shooting in overcast conditions can actually be more visually appealing, depending on a lot of things - it's lower contrast (we don't all like high contrast all the time) and the colours are generally less tinted (the light being whiter than direct sunlight, especially at the ends of the day). That's obviously my opinion, but your statement is just as subjective. Basically, we don't all have the same tastes, so if some of us want cameras to do something better for what we want, who are you to call it invalid?

Does anyone shoot flying birds in cloudy conditions besides me? A few other photographers, apparently, and some in more interesting locations than places to which I can drag my three kids. But, they shoot for NatGeo, so what do they know? :

 

[Loswr]

Would I for performances? Yes, and I have, but 12800 as a requirement to get good shots? Are you kidding me?

A requirement, for all performance photography? Who suggested that? Don Haines posted a shot, and asked what you would do to avoid using ISO 12800 under those conditions. So, as the expert, highly compensated photographer you claim to be, what would you have done in 1.33 EV of lighting at f/1.4, with your shutter speed already down to 1/25 s? Your pithy answer? "Learn how to do a job right... Don't use current tech to make up for not knowing what you're doing." Nice. Helpful, too.

I still haven't seen your work, your site

Is one mouse click really so challenging? That's a pretty sad excuse.

I have a job to do, and I'lll get back to it.

Where have I read that before?

All the best.

Same to you.

 

[jrista]

@zigzagzoe: You know, when you first posted in this thread, I thought you had some interesting things to say. I agreed with some of them, didn't agree with all of them, and I tried to reasonably counter those points (once even with some visual evidence...you blew right past that one, and I'm curious why...because it PROVED my point? The same point others are making?). However you have devolved to the same level as everyone you've been belittling and are now insulting. You are absolutely no better than anyone your trying to make fun of.

I had some respect for you personally at first, but the last few pages of your responses, you've done nothing but try and personally attack one particular guy. He may have misinterpreted your initial post, and I believe his response was not, in my opinion, an appropriate response. You could have walked off while still on the high ground...but you stooped. Your now at same lowest point, in hand to hand combat, using the same pitiful, spiteful word-weapons, as Neuro.

I dunno man, hard to keep respecting you as I first did after the last several pages of spitfest. :-\ You may be a "pro", but that does not automatically make you right in every single statement you make. The D800 may have been excellent for your work, and based on your work, you certainly seem to have skill. However, as has been said, your either missing, or simply refusing to acknowledge, a number of other angles on the subject here, which isn't any better than anything anyone else may be doing in regards to the benefits of using cameras with Sony Exmor sensors.