Guy

I agree with you guys. The high ISO is nice.   And you guys seem really happy with those high ISO results and that's all that matters. But I guess I'm too fussy sometimes.  I shot this at a wedding reception on auto ISO and it turn out to be ISO 4500.  I like the results and the fact I didn't need a flash but at that ISO already the flesh tones are getting compressed and don't have as smooth transitions as it could be.  I went to a flash shortly after that.

There is a big difference between pushing film 1-stop to ASA 800 and pushing to ASA 6400. Grain gets bigger.

Yes. That's a big push. Now that ISO 10K shot you posted.  IMHO, you'd have to be in pure desperation to find the tonal scale in that shot acceptable for a BW image.  What, about  5 or less stops of light is all that was captured? Pretty bad.  I'd never shoot over ISO 6400 because of that.  But I guess if you needed the image bad enough then it is a successful shot; otherwise, it's a shot that would end up the my computer's trash can.  And small format images also suffer the most in area of film pushing. That's my main point. If all a person's film experience has been with is small format, then I feel a person doesn't have all the info they need to make generalized statements about pushing film.

Here is the new Portra 400 shot at different exposure indexes and developed normally (not pushed).  You can see this film's latitude is huge. And if it was pushed you could go even higher.  I'm not saying it will ever be as noise free as digital, but currently can compete on tonal scale and light capturing ability. 

With film- Push Processing meant bigger grain. "Grain so big you can count it!" as one of my friends said in the 1970s regarding Tri-X pushed to max out the Nikon F2as ASA dial. You are trading resolution for dynamic range and sensitivity.

I'd like to note that the inference of hug, perhaps unacceptable, grain from pushing film is not always true.  There are exceptions. Variables such as developer used and film format make a difference.  Here are two examples of pushing film.

The first is 400TMY (T-Max 400 - a tabular grain film) and the second is on the older  generation of expired 320TXP (Trix-X Pro - a classical cubic grain film).   To get DOF on the first one I really had to stop the lens down and hence a slow shutter speed and stiff poses.  It was shot at EI800.  Same on the second one too.  The second one shows more grain but each could make a decent size print and grain probably would not enter the viewer's mind.  Well, perhaps except for the digital measurebator types.

I once ported some Fortran over to C for a project.  I was surprised how compact the Fortran code was compared to my C version.  But today, unless every clock cycle counts, I'll take the convenience and rich data types available in more modern, high level languages over Fortran any day.

I'd think playing around with the last couple bits is a point of diminishing return and still does not add any significant amount of light to the scene then what the camera's sensor already captured. It may, however, aid color fidelity.

I could rewrite my Fortran code that processes DNG files to bin 2x2 matrix of 14-bit pixels into a 16-bit value. That will give a 6dB gain. The present routine in the code converts each individual to a 16-bit value using a Gamma curve, so will not be hard to modify.

 

 

That sounds like people who make "HDR" pictures from a single exposure  You cannot add more light in post ( unless its painted in) than the sensor already captured.