142 replies to this topic

[Merco_61]

I got an idea for an exercise that can make us all learn more about the limits of our cameras. Let's shoot some in available darkness now that the dark nights are here in the northern hemisphere.

Here are my ideas for rules:

1. Crank up the ISO.
2. Shoot in the dark.
3. No postprocessing other than correcting exposure if you expand ISO over max by underexposing and lifting in the computer.
4. Tell us what body and what settings you used.
5. Have fun!

Does anyone want to join in the fun? Let's publish our efforts in this thread.

[TBonz]

I'm game!  Sounds like fun!

[Merco_61]

I'll kick this off with three Hi 1 (6400 ISO) captures from the D300.

 

The underbelly of a Comet P-51 scale model.

1/40, f/5.6

 

A track pump.

1/15, f/5.6

 

My cat, Spökis.

1/6, f/5.6

 

Active D-lighting low and D2x mode 1 set in camera, jpegs SOOC, only watermarked, reduced in size and sharpened for screen in LR.

[Patrick9]

I'll play. Here is one taken at the wife's family gathering this week. Taken with available restaurant lighting. just resized for the web. 

D200 50/1.8 f2 ISO 100 ( forgot to change it when we went inside)  1/13 hand held. I do wish that my 2 Nikons did better with Auto ISO, or my memory was better.  I use that setting on my 2 most used Pentax bodies so I occasionally forget that my Nikons need to have the ISO changed since I don't use it with them. 

 

[deano]

Here is one I took at the Arizona Inn, Tucson.  This is one of the many fountains on the hotel grounds.  The photo was taken Dec 24 with the almost full moon.

D750, Sigma 24-105, iso 100, 8sec 2 f.4, @ 24mm.  This is the original photo (1), for the finish (2), in LR I took down the highlight and open up the shadows a bit,

Attached Thumbnails

• 
• 

[TBonz]

Didn't quite run into insanely low light...actually got more light than I had anticipated in early evening...but, I did give the D4 a bit of exercise at 1600 ISO...Here are two...dumped NEF to the Mac, imported into LR, exported to JPG...otherwise SOOC...taken with the 105 Micro...

 

 

 

 

[etphoto]

I would assume part of the challenge would be getting the image exposed correctly in low light.  I like this challenge, thanks Merco for starting it.  This image isn't really insanely low light but its low light.  Taken under a window when its gloomy and raining outside.  I'm a fan of dragging the shutter so . . . shot at 3,200 ISO, F4 at 1/30th, 200mm.  I shot it at F4 because I wanted both the eyes and nose to be in focus. Ran through LR with no filters (not a fan of filters anyway) because it was a RAW image.

 

[Brian]

I've posted this picture before- but really shows off the Df and low-Light.

 

Luray Caverns by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

 

Nikon Df ISO 12,800, Nikkor-O 35/2, wide-open at 1/30th second.

[TBonz]

Well, an opportunity presented itself, so I jumped on it...Less than an hour ago, we had some deer wander through our back yard...they come by regularly some times 1 and sometimes more, but lots of time it is at night or when I can't stop and take some pix...they normally move through slowly, but today they really didn't stop too long...in this case, 10 of them wandered through...I caught the last one through the window from our family room...

 

 

I moved over to the kitchen and shot through the door's window and the screen of the porch (outside the door) to catch more of the group...

 

 

There was no time to grab a different lens so I shot with the 105 Micro and my D4 at 12800 ISO, f2.8, 1/200...no modifications other than exporting as JPEG...

 

[Ron]

This is one of the first images I took with the D610. ISO is 6400. I used a Nikkor AFS 50mm F/1.4 lens set to F/4.5 and I used a shutter speed of 160th/sec. Aside from reducing the size in Lightroom and adding my copyright info, no modifications were done to this image. Unfortunately the image is a bit underexposed due to operator error. I never expected to be posting this photo online. And, no ... I don't have a release from the cat. Shhhh..... don't tell!

 

The D610 seems to have a bit more color noise at this ISO setting than my D7000. Noise structure is good though. We would have given our eyeteeth for this range back in the day.

 

 

--Ron

[Tony]

Here is my first attempt at night photography.  I used my Pentax K100D Super with the 18~55 mm kit lens.

 

EXIF Data:  f/4, 1/125s, ISO 200, 35mm focal length 49 mm.

 

Thanks,

 

Tony

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[Merco_61]

The first two definitely qualify as insanely low light... 1 hour and 15 minutes before sunrise...

1/25, f/10, ISO 25600, D700, 14-24@14

 

1/25, f/10, ISO 25600, D700, 14-24@14

 

These two are at the maximum calibrated ISO, 6400.

1/40, f/10, ISO 6400, D700, 14-24@24

 

1/100, f/10, ISO 6400, D700, 14-24@21

 

The banding at pinpoint lights because of internal reflections at the edge of the shutter curtain is one of the reasons the 12800 and 25600 ISO settings aren't seen as calibrated.

 

Active D-lighting low and D2x mode 1 set in camera, jpegs SOOC, only watermarked, reduced in size and sharpened for screen in LR.

[TBonz]

Nice images Peter!  The D700 continues to impress me as well!

[Merco_61]

I have to admit that I didn't get this kind of high-ISO behaviour when I started using a D700. They are very sensitive to underexposure. It is often better to raise the ISO and err towards overexposure, both for reduced noise and better DR. From what I have seen, the D600/610 has some of the same behaviour. Exposing to the right is not as necessary as it was with the D200 and D2X, but you still get even cleaner files at high ISO if you do.

 

The problem when going outside calibrated ISO is artifacts like the banding and that the lower DR removes all exposure latitude. I think I have about 6.5 stops of range at 25600, this is about the same as Kodachrome 64 had. This gives an exposure latitude of about +¹/₃/-0 steps, about equal to Kodachrome's +0/-¹/₃ steps.

[Brian]

Marine Museum by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

 

Leica M Monochrom, ISO 5000, Nikkor 8.5cm F2 wide-open, 1/40th second. Rangefinder cameras do not have the "slap" of the mirror, and do not need to cycle the shuter as does a mirrorless camera. No mirror black-out, easier to hold steady during the shot. Plus- the Nikkor lens is a solid piece of Brass and Glass- lots of inertia to hold in place.

[etphoto]

I like that one a lot Brian. The correct exposure and sharpness in the face area makes the image.  Very good contrast as well, image pops. 

 

Anyways. Because this is a cool thread, I decided to do anyone one.  Playing around when it got dark.  The only light source is the candle.  Shot at 5000 ISO (which is the limit I don't like to go over even though the camera will take it), F4.5 @ 1/25th Shutter speed.  No  adjustments in exposure made - auto white balance.  I think images like these need to be a little warm anyways.

 

[TBonz]

Peter,

 

I tend to agree that in general a slight over exposure is better than a slight under exposure in terms of grain and DR.  With the lighting on fields for sports, I have gotten my better exposed images when I'm at or slightly under exposed - keeping in mind that I am shooting wide open with fast shutter.  Of course, some of those fields I'm getting slightly under exposed on the meter even at 12600 ISO with my 200-400 f4.  But, if I can slightly over expose without jumping past 12600, I am all over it !  

[Ron]

One thing we haven't mentioned is reciprocity failure. I'm not even sure such a thing exists in digital photography or how it manifests itself but I know that in film photography, the longer the exposure, the more you had to compensate for reciprocity failure. Also, higher ASA (ISO) films were more prone to this problem than slower films... at least in my experience. 

 

--Ron

[Merco_61]

The sensor is more or less linear in response, but long exposure noise shows up instead. When you switch the long exposure NR on, the camera shoots a black exposure with the same time as the shot directly after the exposure and maps out the hot spots when the time is longer than 1 s. Another thing to remember is that the non-calibrated ISO settings often are slower than nominal.

[Jerry_]

Some excellent captures so far.

I thought I give it a more comparative approach by seeing what camerabodies are able to produce. This included the following camerabodies:
- D610 (FX sensor, 24MP, EXPEED 3 processor),
- D5300 (DX sensor, 24MP, EXPEED 4 processor),
- D5100 (DX sensor, 16MP, EXPEED 2 processor),
- Nikon 1 J5 (CX sensor, 21MP, EXPEED 5A processor)

All captures have been taken with the Micro Nikkor 60/2.8, the camerabodies being installed on a tripod, which was kept in the same place (i.e. Having an almost identical distance between the lens front and the balls)

As regards overall lightconditions, these captures were taken in the late evening (dark outside) with only few light shedding in through a window. The only - and dominant - lightsource was a single led as shown below, but whose lens focussed most of the light to the (white) ceiling.



Before starting with the low light captures, here are some taken with a flash (ringflash mounted on the lens) - this may also give some extra understanding of the crop factor resulting from the different sensors (FX, DX, CX)

D610 - full frame sensor so a crop factor of 1 (i.e. No crop)


D5300 - DX sensor with a crop factor of 1.5, making the 60mm focal length equivalent to 90mm


D5100 - DX sensor with a crop factor of 1.5, making the 60mm focal length equivalent to 90mm


Nikon 1 J5 - CX sensor with a crop factor of 2.7, making the 60mm focal length equivalent to 162mm



Stepping up the ISO started at ISO 100 and was doubled for each extra step (i.e. 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12800, 25600).

Captures have been taken with a 1s exposure and a 5.6 aperture (I didn't want to play with all the benefits of the 2.8 aperture, that the lens has, both to get into high ISO, as well as having some extra DOF). With the given lightconditions and these settings it was only starting at ISO800 that one can identify some structures on the non processed captures. So the first series shown here is at ISO1600.

ISO 1600
D610


D5300


D5100


Nikon 1 J5



ISO 3200
D610


D5300


D5100


N1J5



ISO 6400
D610


D5300


D5100


N1J5



ISO 12800
D610 (Hi1)


D5300


D5100 (Hi1)


N1J5



ISO 25600
D610 (Hi2)


D5300 (Hi1)


D5100 (Hi2)


N1J5
(ISO value not available on this camerabody)


All captures have been taken in RAW. No other processing than adding the watermark and converting to JPG was done.

Checking the different captures one can easily see when the different sensors start to add noise or loose DR. Overall, with no surprise, FX performs best as sensors, and so do more recent processors, even so the sensor is more important than the sensor.