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Tuesday, 9 October 2012

Nikon D600 autofocus: speed, accuracy, low light, and clustering

Posted on 12:00 by Unknown
10/11/12 UPDATE: Added Nikon D3 shots for comparison
10/22/12 UPDATE: Added shots showing AF speed

Nikon D600 + Sigma 50 1.4 @ f/2.0
Because my subjects often move, one of the most critical components of any camera for me is its autofocus system.  What's the use of a very high resolution sensor with extremely low noise if the shot I capture is blurry - not because of subject movement but because the subject is out of focus?

In this post I will discuss my experience regarding the Nikon D600's autofocus speed and accuracy.  I will also discuss the clustering of autofocus points.

(And even though you may not be in the market for a D600, you may be interested in reading about a couple of alternatives to focus-and-recompose.)


SPEED AND ACCURACY

I tested the Nikon D600's autofocus speed and accuracy using a Sigma 50 1.4.  If you've shot with a 50mm lens at f/1.4 you know the depth of field is razor thin, especially at the usual shooting distances of a full frame camera, i.e., closer than on a crop sensor when maintaining the subject size in relation to the frame.  I tried shooting at very wide apertures, such as f/2 and even f/1.4.

(Before testing the Sigma 50 1.4, I fine-tuned the AF using the moire method described here.)

When I shoot a subject that can move, I usually use AF-C even if the subject is not moving at that particular moment.  I also prefer to set my AF-C to focus priority instead of release priority, meaning the camera will do its best to get accurate focus even if it means that it will take longer to acquire focus.

a.  Subject not moving much.
With this method, I took a few snaps to test the D600's AF.  I found that the D600's AF was fast and accurate enough to capture shots when the subject is not moving much.  This one was at f/1.4 with the AF point on my son's near eye:
The focus was spot-on (click on it to get a high-res version).

This other one was only at f/2.0 but with my son so close to the camera, the DOF was very thin.  The AF point here was on the near eye (his left, camera right).
To me it looks a little bit behind - the far eye seems to be more in focus, but the focus was more than acceptable to me.

Here is a series of shots taken in bursts to give you an idea of the consistency of the autofocus.  These were at f/1.4.  The AF point on these were approximately on the near eye though because of subject movement, it sometimes got outside of that.

Here are the shots.  (Please excuse the garish colors on some of them.  It seems that Picasa is doing something automatically to some or all of the shots.)








As you can see, a few of the shots are not in focus, but the others have acceptable or even spot-on focus.  Considering that these were at f/1.4, I like the Nikon D600's AF performance.

LOW LIGHT
The D600's autofocus is designed to work in low light environments -- as low as -1 exposure value (explained here).  Last week I tried focusing on a subject lit only by a bedside lamp (the EV was around 4), and the camera focused accurately and with no hunting even though I was using a relatively slow lens with an aperture of f/4.5.  A couple of days ago, I was able to focus in an environment that required an exposure of 25600 ISO, f/2.8, 1/60 which is an EV of 1.  Again the camera focused quickly and accurately, with no hunting at all (I was using the Nikkor 24-70 2.8G).  I will post that sample soon.

CLUSTERING OF AF POINTS
The shots above were taken while the AF point was more or less where it needed to be.  The problem for the Nikon D600 is that its 39 autofocus points are clustered tightly in the middle, occupying only about 1/9th of the total frame area.  Essentially it appears that the AF points were carried over from the D7000 with no change, except that now the frame area is twice as large, so the AF coverage is much smaller:
Inline image 1
Nikon D600's 39 AF points*
*From the viewfinder display shown on the Nikon D600 product manual. I removed the surrounding grid lines.
On the other hand, the clustering of AF points is an issue with other Nikon full frame cameras as well, albeit to a lesser extent:

Inline image 2
The Nikon D800 AF points*
*From the product manual, also edited to remove the surrounding grid lines
I overlaid the two AF layouts to show the difference in extra coverage (shown in red).

Inline image 3

On one hand, the extra layer of AF points is not a huge difference.  On the other hand, the extra AF points allow the D4, D800 and other FX cameras (including those of the previous generation) to touch the intersections of the rule of thirds.

RULE OF THIRDS
Here is what the AF points look like when we overlay a grid that follows the rule of thirds.

Inline image 4 

We can see that the extra AF points are just enough to touch the intersections of the rule of thirds, so even though they aren't huge, they can have a disproportionately significant impact for someone whose composition often follows the rule of thirds (like me).

Solution 1: Golden Ratio
One solution is to consider using an alternative compositional aid, such as the golden ratio.  (Indeed, the rule of thirds is arguably just an approximation of the golden ratio.)  A golden ratio grid places the intersections just a tad closer to the middle of the frame:

Inline image 6

The intersections of the golden ratio grid are close enough to be arguably within the D600's AF coverage.

Solution 2: Crop
An alternative solution is to take advantage of the D600's 24mp resolution by shooting to crop.  If you don't need to make large prints, it might be feasible if you absolutely need to position the AF point at the rule of thirds intersection for a particular shot.  Here is an example where after cropping the AF points cover a couple of the intersections of the rule of thirds:
Gray area represents the area being cropped out
However, this solution might be ok from time to time but is probably not going to be satisfactory on an everyday basis.  Who would want to lose the use of a portion of their sensor?  Besides impacting your lens' effective focal length, this solution also has implications for noise (becomes more noticeable) and depth of field (may become shallower at the same viewing size).

Solution 3: Focus and recompose
Another solution is of course to focus and recompose.   This solution tends to work only for a slow-moving or stationary subject because when there is a very shallow depth of field, usually the subject moves out of focus by the time I recompose.  The D600 is a little better because you can choose an AF point that's a little closer to the subject, but the short delay is sometimes enough to get the subject out of focus.

ALTERNATIVES TO FOCUS-AND-RECOMPOSE
Because focus-and-recompose has its own problems, sometimes I use these alternatives:

Alternative 1: Equidistant Target

In this test shot, my wife's eyes were outside of the AF area:

I therefore focused on her mouth which is about the same distance from the camera as her eyes.  Focusing on her mouth therefore got her eyes in focus as well.


Alternative 2: Auto Area AF

Another alternative is to use Auto Area AF (I generally pair it with AF-C).  In this mode, the camera chooses the focal point.  I hadn't tried this before because I was reluctant to give up control over where the camera would focus.  However, when I tried it, it seemed that for some reason, the camera would focus on the right spot, sometimes even when the camera appears to choose the "wrong" focus point.

In this shot, I manually chose the focal point over my daughter's eye.

f/2.0
To me, the focus is pretty good considering that my daughter was being swung up and down.  Here is the same scene, but this time I used Auto Area AF:


Pinpoint precision (focusing on the near eye)!  Again, this was with our daughter being randomly swung up and down.

Now you may be wondering, how does Auto Area AF offer an alternative to focus-and-recompose?  Well, take a look at these shots:



In both of them, the eyes are well outside the D600's AF coverage, yet the D600 chose AF points that resulted in the eyes being in focus anyway (!)

Here are some bursts that show how the Auto Area AF performs with AF-C.  These shots were taken by my wife who doesn't know anything about photography.  Needless to say she doesn't try to confirm the location of the AF points.  Note that the eyes are sometimes outside the AF coverage yet they are still in focus.

Burst 1:



Burst 2:



Burst 3:






As you can see, Auto Area AF isn't perfect but it gets the focus right a surprising amount of the time.  When I reviewed the Nikon D3, I noted that the autofocus wasn't as 'magical' as Ken Rockwell claimed it was.  This one however, is eerily close (and perhaps I was too hasty to discount the D3's auto area AF last time).

Note: One issue with these alternatives is that they can throw your exposure off if you are in matrix metering mode because Nikon's matrix metering will give more weight to the AF point.  In the real world, I haven't found this to be a problem.

FAST-MOVING SUBJECTS
Sometimes subjects were moving fast enough that there was no time for me to select the AF point and position them over the subject.  Instead I had to use Auto Area AF and AF-C and hope for the best.  Here are a couple of shots with this method:

Nikkor 28-105 3.5-4.5D




Nikkor 24-70 2.8G:

Of course this method doesn't work all the time but the hit rate is surprising.  It doesn't usually result in critical focus (with some exceptions like the 24-70 shot above) but the majority of the shots show at least "acceptable" focus (which for me means usable at web viewing sizes or prints of 8x12 inches).

COMPARISON WITH NIKON D3
To give you an idea of how well the D600's autofocus system performs relative to another FX camera, below are some shots with the Nikon D3 that are somewhat similar - the lens is the same, the aperture is also wide, there is a similar amount of activity, and the shutter speed I used was comparable in one of the series.  However, one notable difference is that I used AF-S then whereas I use AF-C now.  Anyway FWIW:

Sample set 1 (f/1.4, 1/800 to 1/1250):





Sample set 2 (f/1.8, 1/200 to 1/400):






MORE SAMPLES
Here are more test shots.  They're just snapshots but they show how well the Nikon D600 can focus in real world conditions.

f/2.0

f/1.4

f/1.8
f/2.0

f/2.0
To conclude, the D600's autofocus is fast and accurate, even in challenging conditions such as low light, fast-moving subjects and shooting with a very shallow depth of field.  Even though the AF points are tightly clustered, there are alternatives that have worked well for me.

RELATED FOLLOW-UP POST HERE: http://betterfamilyphotos.blogspot.com/2012/11/nikon-d600-autofocus-with-fast-subjects.html

RELATED POSTS:
Nikon D600 Hands-On Review
A Miracle Happened Today (Canon 5DIII autofocus)
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Posted in accuracy, af point, autofocus, clustered, D600, low light, nikon, speed | No comments

Limits of Highlight Recovery With Lightroom and ACR

Posted on 05:00 by Unknown
I love many things about Lightroom, and one of them is that it is very good at highlight recovery.  However, the highlight recovery tool has limits.


Recently, I took a shot of the space shuttle.
Untitled

Blogged here.

This was how the shot looked before postprocessing:

The scene outside is very bright and is a little distracting. Moreover there is little visible detail in that area.

I tried using highlight recovery, applied via an adjustment brush.  I first tried using auto mask:

The highlight recovery was exaggerated for demo purposes, but you can see the result was not usable because of the very obvious masking borders.  I then tried just a regular adjustment brush.

Now there were no jagged edges.  And if you look at the histogram it looks amazing - no blown out highlights.  Or are there?  The reality is that there are actually no details that were recovered.  Here is the same section of the photo, this time with an exposure reduction instead of highlight recovery.


If you look at the histogram, there is a very tall spike and then no data whatsoever beyond it, a clear example of clipping.  Comparing the histograms alone, it may seem that the highlight recovery was able to recover some data where the exposure adjustment could not.  However, when the images are examined closely, we can see that the amount of data recovered in both cases is actually the same:


The highlight recovery (left) did not recover any more detail than was recovered through an exposure reduction (right).  So the histogram for the highlight recovery is a little misleading.

I'm not saying that highlight recovery is useless.  Depending on the effect I'm after, it is sometimes a more appropriate tool than exposure adjustment.  However, if I really want to know what data was clipped, then exposure adjustment is an easier and less misleading way to show the clipped highlights.

Among other things, to me, this emphasized the need to reevaluate the Fuji S5 and the D600.  I did just that and I'll be posting the results very soon.
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Posted in blown, clipped, clipping, highlight, lightroom, post-processing, postprocessing | No comments

Monday, 8 October 2012

Shooting Technique – Part 1 (mshafik)

Posted on 12:34 by Unknown
Self Portrait - Canon 60D, 35mm f/2, 580EX II

I never posted about my shooting or processing techniques, but according to our reader comments, this is a requested post, so here it is, this will be part 1, my own shooting technique, as a Canon user. Now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense to write about this topic, which is one of my favorite reading material, along with post processing and "what's in my camera bag?" posts.

Here's how this will go, in this first part, I will talk about the general camera settings I use, next, I will describe some different shooting scenarios (the most usual ones I face) with examples, and tell you how I handle them.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional photographer, i.e. I don't earn money from photography, not even this blog, I learn and buy photography equipment to take great photos of my growing up girls, and because I like it as a hobby. You could call me an advanced amateur/hobbyist.



GENERAL CAMERA SETTINGS


This will be described from a Canon DSLR point of view, Nikons or other brands for that matter, might have the same settings under different names, consult your user manual or ask in the comments and we'll do our best to answer.

These are my typical camera settings for 95% of the time, and the first things I setup when I get my hands on a new camera:

Back Button Focusing: check my detailed explanation here, but to make it short I don't want the camera to focus every time I press the shutter button. I usually use the middle (*) button for focusing, the AF-ON button is quite far away, and I set it for AE Lock instead.

Select AF Point Directly: because I don't focus and recompose, I change the AF point I am using all the time, I love to move the joystick (or press the 8-direction pad, for you 60D users) directly to change my AF point, without pressing any other buttons first. It is much more versatile this way, and a press in the middle chooses the center AF point directly.

Single Point AF: I don't focus and recompose ever, except in very rare shooting situations, with the shallow DoF of fast lenses and now full frame sensors, I never got pixel-level sharp results with focus and recompose. I always put one of the focus points on the near eye of my subject, and if required I crop the picture in post to get the desired composition. My 60D had 9 cross type AF points, so shooting like that was always accurate, the 5D Mark II however had crappy outer AF points, but I patiently used them anyway, and now with the 5D Mark III, I live in a 41 cross type AF points all over the frame, splendid!

AI Servo: this setting, in conjunction with back button focusing, is an excellent way to shoot kids. I select the required focus point, and hold the back button to focus, if my subject is stationary, it will act as one shot AF, maybe even more accurate, however if my subject is moving (which my kids always do), the focus point will track them, and that way I never change focus settings. The Mark III however seems to change all my focusing habits, I will report about that in my review, one thing I just discovered while writing this article, low light focusing, the 5D Mark III can focus down to -2 EV, so I tried to focus in very low light (ISO 6400, f/1.4, 1/15 sec) and it failed to focus although I could see through the finder, it just kept hunting, however I thought to try focusing using one shot AF and to my surprise it locked focus easily, weird, maybe I will be using AI Focus in the future (switches automatically between One Shot AF and AI Servo if the subject moves), we'll see how it turns out.

Hi-Speed Continuous Drive: since I am usually tracking moving subjects, I want the camera to be ready anytime for fast shooting, I don't understand the slow speed continuous drive, I can control that with my shutter finger. I don't want to miss a shot because I have to fiddle with some setting. Again, the 5D Mark III is changing my behavior, the silent mode is really silent, and I love being discrete, so I am using it at high speed, which in my case is 3 fps.

Evaluative Metering: I used to shoot center-weighted metering full time with my G11, 550D and 60D, I got the most consistent (not accurate) results that way, but it required lots of use of exposure compensation. However, I learned by chance that when using the evaluative metering on Canon DSLRs, it will give more metering weight to the selected AF point, I never knew that before, so when I tried it on the 5D Mark II, I found I could get more accurate results most of the time, and it certainly solved the always needed exposure compensation issue for me.

Aperture Priority Mode: I shoot in this mode 90% of the time, I select the suitable aperture for the required depth of field.

Manual ISO: rarely do I use Auto ISO, I select my own aperture, half press the shutter to see the resulting shutter speed, and adjust ISO as necessary, I use the lowest ISO possible most of the time. After a few years of shooting experience, I can now tell in certain lighting what will the shutter speed be based on a certain aperture and ISO.


RAW: I shoot RAW because I can tweak my white balance and carefully control the sharpness and details that I want, check this article for more details.

Auto White Balance: since I got the 60D, I have been an auto WB user, the camera nails it 90% of the time, it is really good except under tungsten lighting where I need my WB to be 2500k, and since I am shooting RAW anyway, I can tweak the WB in post.

Beep Off: I hate it, and it draws too much attention (event photographers, take note), if I'm using one shot AF, I can see the green dot in the viewfinder confirming focus.

LCD Image Review - Off: I don't like the camera to display every picture after I take it on the back LCD, and when shooting in the dark and the LCD turns on brightly, it dazzles your eyes. Some times I set it to 2 seconds when I want to have a quick look at the image or the histogram after I take the picture.

LCD Preview - Histogram: I don't judge the picture by how it looks on the back LCD, but rather use the histogram to determine if I'm correct or I need to adjust something.

LCD Preview - Blinkies: I also set the blinkies on, if you have blown out highlights they blink in the preview image, this way you can quickly determine if the blown out highlights are in an important part of the picture.

One Touch 100% Zoom: I didn't have this option before until I got the 5D Mark III, one press on the zoom button goes all the way to 100% magnification on the selected focus point so that I could judge the focus.

Custom Settings (C1, C2 & C3): I use one of these modes to store the following settings so that when I give my camera to someone else, they can get good pictures, I set the "focus on" to the shutter button, auto ISO, all AF points active, single shot drive, aperture priority and f/8. It works.



SHOOTING SCENARIOS



Before I delve into the examples, here's one more personal preference of mine, I shoot available light portraits 90% of the time, I find that carrying lighting equipment is a hassle, and I usually prefer to go out of the house with the camera and just one prime lens, The only zoom lens I currently have is the 24-105 L, and I only take it when I know I'll need a wide angle.


Available Light Portrait, 60D & 35mm f/2

Here's my first example, I used the upper middle focus point to focus on his right eye (left eye in the picture), and snapped away. I don't give any importance to the background blowing out in that case, as long as my subject is correctly exposed, let the background go to highlight hell, it's out of focus anyway.

Cute Girl, Canon 60D & 85 f/1.8

Another available light portrait, when shooting in direct sunlight, I try to keep my subjects standing in open shade, like this one, one thing to take care of, is to make sure the left part lit with the sun is not severely over-exposed, with experience, you'd be able to tell how much your camera will be able to recover. Focus was on one of her eyes.

Hair Spray, Canon 60D & 85 f/1.8

Here I did the same as above, but I knew I'd have to push the shadows open because of the high contrast, it works, I stopped down a bit for more depth of field, and chose a high ISO (400?) despite the strong light to get a high enough shutter speed to freeze the water droplets.

One thing I learned from shooting on a beach with the sea as a background, when shooting on aperture priority and evaluative metering, I usually increase the exposure compensation by 1.7 ~ 2 stops.

Happy Strawberry, Canon 5D Mark III & 100 Macro L

Same as the first picture, focus on the near eye, and the evaluative metering did the rest, that macro has some nice bokeh.

Contemplation, Canon 60D & 85mm f/1.8

Same scenario, but lighting is from an open window, I love it's softness and gradual transition from highlights to shadows.

Bad metering, Canon 60D & 85mm f/1.8

Solved with a Canon flash in the Lumiquest SBIII

Now we move to artificial lighting, as you can from the first picture, the camera's meter was fooled by the bright background, and our subject was living in shadows. In the second picture, I left my camera in aperture priority mode, and used my Canon 580EX (HSS active) with a Lumiquest SBIII to the camera left and fired away, the camera and the flash figured out the correct amount of light required using E-TTL. The speedlite was triggered by the camera's popup flash.

The picture doesn't quite scream "lighting", but rather a subtle effect, unlike the next one.

Obvious Lighting, Canon 60D & 35mm f/2

Here I wanted to express the lighting effect more, my friends did like it and their comment was "looks like it was shot in a studio", my camera was still on aperture priority mode with the same flash and Lumiquest softbox, but this time I dialed in a -1 exposure compensation, this, in Canon cameras, reduces the ambient exposure by one stop, and the flash did the rest of the lifting. What I really like here, is how soft the SBIII lighting is in relation to its small-ish size.

Old Man, Canon 60D & 35mm f/2

Now we move indoors, my favorite and most used technique is Neil VN's on-camera bounce flash technique, it is very simple, quick and effective. In these situations I use manual exposure mode, I set my desired aperture (for depth of field control) and shutter speed (less than or equal sync speed, depending on subject motion and ambient light level), then set any ISO and take a test shot without flash.

I usually try to keep the ambient 1 or 1.5 stops under exposed, this way it is still registering enough lighting, but not enough to decide the color temperature or the lighting position, then I turn on my flash on E-TTL and bounce it to the required direction (usually to my right or left, and behind my back), your new light source is the patch of light where your flash is hitting. set the white balance the same as the flash since this will be the dominant light in the final picture, if the flash power is not enough, I will increase the ISO or open the aperture a little.

If you look again at the picture, it is not that apparent I was using a flash, the secret is not to underexpose the ambient by much, and to bounce in an area reasonably far away from your subject, that it won't be totally obvious.

Would you imagine this was lit with flash? Canon 60D & 85mm f/1.8

Here I used the exact same technique, but underexposed the ambient very little, less than one stop, the flash is acting as a fill light.

Mr. Zizo, Canon 5D Mark II & 50mm f/1.4

Same as above, the flash was bounced from a far away ceiling. By keeping the ambient levels apparent, you make the picture more natural looking.

Smile! Canon 60D & 85mm f/1.8

The final bounce flash picture, same as above, but more obvious since the ambient was very low, and 80% of the lighting is bounce flash.

Jet Ski, Canon 5D Mark III & 200mm f/2.8 L

This final picture has no flash, but what's different is that I used manual exposure mode, which makes perfect sense in this scenario, the jet skis were moving fast and in different positions regarding the sun, and I wanted to get consistent exposures, so I switched to manual mode, adjusted the settings so that I got my histogram barely touching the right side, and then I blasted away at 6 fps. :-)



Well, that marks the end of part one, in part two Michael will tell us about his own shooting technique from a Nikon user point of view. I hope you've enjoyed this post as much as I did writing it, and I'd love to see any questions, suggestions, requests in the comments. Shoot away.

BTW, what do you think of the new layout, with the airy theme, larger pictures (no need for clicking anymore) and all?


RELATED POSTS

Canon 60D Review

Canon 35mm f/2 Review
Canon 85mm f/1.8 Review
Canon Speedlites Review
TTL Flash Tutorial
RAW vs JPEG
Back Button Focusing



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Posted in 5D Mark II, 5d mark iii, aperture priority, camera settings, canon, dslr, ettr, exposing to the right, indoor flash, shooting technique, speedlite | No comments

Saturday, 6 October 2012

Updated: A Miracle Happened Today

Posted on 20:00 by Unknown
Wheeeee! 5D Mark III + 100 Macro L @ f/4, click to see 1200px version

I took sharp, in focus, photos of my kids playing on the swings today, while they were actually swinging.

This is a shooting scenario that has frustrated me for a long time, I learned photography and bought nice DSLRs to document our life, especially my two girls growing up, and every time I see their ecstatic expressions while playing on the swings, I wish I could capture these shots, but I always failed, miserably, until today.

You know, the hard part is that you're standing in front of the swing and they are coming at you and moving away rapidly, I could never keep the focus point on their eyes no matter how I tried, and with the weak 9 point AF of the 5D Mark II, it was twice as bad. I tried wide angles and small apertures to get a large DoF, I tried standing far away, I tried pre focusing on a certain position and waiting for the swing to cross that position so that I fired a shot. All of it failed.

So what's new then? The 5D Mark III is what. I used my 100 Macro L at f/4 and tried a variety of AF tracking settings (there are like a bazillion settings, me thinks overkill), and guess what? Out of almost 70 shots, I got 50% success rate, I mean eyes-in-sharp-focus kind of success rate, that might seem low, but definitely better than 0% (not exaggerating, wasn't able to get even a single photo before). I am still learning how to use AF tracking effectively, but I am doing lots of things I never dreamed of.


BUT, THE INTERWEBZ CAN'T BE WRONG

That reminds me, remember all these 5D3 reviews which flamed Canon for claiming a two-stop gain in high ISO noise over the 5D2? They all said that the claimed gain was in JPEG, which didn't matter, and to be fair, they said that there were negligible noise differences in ISOs above 3,200, well I beg to differ.

I just finished my own real world testing, looking at RAW comparisons on the web is one thing, and shooting real world images and getting them into your usual processing workflow and seeing the difference yourself is entirely a different story. I myself believed that the ISO difference between the 5D2 and the 5D3 was negligible, and almost non existent, I scoffed the 5D3 to convince myself the 5D2 was as good, turns out it was macaroni.

I claim that the 5D3 has 1.5 ~ 2 stops of RAW noise gain over the 5D2!!!


I used to see noise at ISO 400 on my 550D and 60D, it was negligible, but there, ISO 1,600 was as far as I would accept on the 60D, ISO 3,200 was used very few times when all was lost, it is either the picture or not. The 5D2 was a huge step forward, I used ISO 3,200 pretty much all the time indoors, it is much cleaner than ISO1,600 on the crop sensor, ISO 6,400 was acceptable on the 5D2 for emergencies, and that was the maximum native ISO, I tried ISO 12,800 once and I hated every single image.

On my 5D3, I have been shooting ISO 6,400 pretty much all the time in dim conditions (testing & evaluating), ISO 12,800 got a fair share as well, and tonight I finished testing ISO 25,600, which is the 5D3's maximum native ISO, they all rock, and I would never hesitate at all to use ISO 12,800. ISO 25,600 is quite similar but has some chroma noise that you'd want to get rid off.

Below is the same picture taken with crappy ambient light at ISO 25,600, the first picture has zero noise reduction applied, the second one has noise reduction applied. Click on the pictures to see a 2500px version.

5D Mark III - ISO 25,600 - Zero Noise Reduction - Click to see 2500px version

5D Mark III - ISO 25,600 - Noise Reduction Applied - Click to see 2500px version
 
---------------------------------------------------------

You're going to ask me for samples, and I'll be happy to oblige, but all in due time, I will put all that in my 5D3 review. I am now working my way through the shooting techniques post, I hope to have it ready by tomorrow.

UPDATE: Samples added as you might have noticed.

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  • Sigma 18-35 1.8 Revisited; Where to Get It
    Back in April of this year, Sigma surprised everyone by announcing the Sigma 18-35 f/1.8 , the first zoom lens for a large sensor that had s...
  • Update: Nikon D7100 Lightroom raw profiles
    UPDATE: The raw profiles don't seem to work.  I'm trying to find a workaround. UPDATE 2: The workaround is here: http://betterfamily...

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Blog Archive

  • ▼  2013 (165)
    • ▼  December (5)
      • Olympus E-PL3 with 14-42 Lens $199; Moving from Ni...
      • Sigma 18-35 1.8 Revisited; Where to Get It
      • Speedlight Modifiers - 50% discount at Fotodiox
      • Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 Mini Review
      • Evening Portraits with Flash
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