ISO vs "Takes great low light photos"

unpopular · Jan 6, 2013

Kolia said:
Nothing is perfect. Not in most people's price range anyways.

What specific situation do you have in mind when thinking low light lag ? It's an honest question I'm not looking for a fight. I'm trying to see it your way.

It's not a matter of specifics. The way I see it is that if you say that there is no noticeable lag at night under partial artificial lighting (a dark street) then without first hand experience the only two things I can conclude is that 1) there is no lag or, 2) your tolerance for lag is less than what I would expect.

Technologically, I know that there must either be significant lag, significant noise or both in order to charge the EVF's sensor sufficiently to produce a picture inside the EVF. This has nothing to do with an OVF. But technologically speaking, because the sensor has a specific sensitivity either gain or exposure must be increased in order to compensate for low light. Unless Sony has created a tremendously sensitive sensor (i.e. avalanche diodes), then noise and/or lag will result to some degree.

Josh66 · Jan 6, 2013

Not to mention, that in a low light situation - any EVF is going to absolutely kill you night vision...

unpopular · Jan 6, 2013

O|||||||O said:
Not to mention, that in a low light situation - any EVF is going to absolutely kill you night vision...

That's an interesting point - I wonder if you can tint the display yellow or reddish to address this?

Josh66 · Jan 6, 2013

Now that would be a nice feature. I'm not sure if that is a currently offered feature at the moment though... (But I can't see it really being that hard to implement.)

unpopular · Jan 6, 2013

I'm thinking if it doesn't exist, it might as a kledge - certainly you can adjust the color quality of the EVF?

argieramos · Jan 7, 2013

o hey tyler said:
One of mine is going for $800. Not exactly 2-3x more. Or even close.

Are you talking about "used" 5D? There is no $800 Full frame not "used" camera

argieramos · Jan 7, 2013

unpopular said:
No, I said "IF the EVF was perfect". I don't know if the low light problem has been addressed. If the EVF really does measure up, I can certainly see the advantages.

To be fair, the darker the scene, the more noise you will see in the EVF. But in OVF, the darker the scene, the more unusable it becomes.
Like I said, EVF has disadvantage. Nothing beats the prism OVF, if you only looking at things through it. Everything just look better. But EVF beats OVF in functionality and benefits it gives to the photographer.

Kolia · Jan 7, 2013

unpopular said:
Kolia said:

Nothing is perfect. Not in most people's price range anyways.

What specific situation do you have in mind when thinking low light lag ? It's an honest question I'm not looking for a fight. I'm trying to see it your way.

Click to expand...

It's not a matter of specifics. The way I see it is that if you say that there is no noticeable lag at night under partial artificial lighting (a dark street) then without first hand experience the only two things I can conclude is that 1) there is no lag or, 2) your tolerance for lag is less than what I would expect.

Technologically, I know that there must either be significant lag, significant noise or both in order to charge the EVF's sensor sufficiently to produce a picture inside the EVF. This has nothing to do with an OVF. But technologically speaking, because the sensor has a specific sensitivity either gain or exposure must be increased in order to compensate for low light. Unless Sony has created a tremendously sensitive sensor (i.e. avalanche diodes), then noise and/or lag will result to some degree.

Yes some lag and noise in very low light is present. Quite a bit of noise actually.

In your opinion, how detrimental are those to you in the type of photography you would do at night ?

In my opinion the lag is a non issue to the extend that I don't really react to what I see when timing a shoot. Given the speed of a nerve impulse going to my trigger finger I must anticipate the moment regardless. So even with an OVF being inherently lag less, I wouldn't gain all that much.

It is more important to me to be able to see my subject in order to frame it. The EVF always works for that.

Honestly, if low light performance were so important to me, I would have gone with a Nikon camera. Not because of the view finder tho. Then again, I would really the ability to have access to all the camera settings in the view finder. How often do you take yours eyes off the action to make an adjustment on your camera ? How many shots missed that way ? How many wrong white balance from a previous setting ? What if you could confirm your settings before taking the shot ?

Long post... Cheers !

BuS_RiDeR · Jan 7, 2013

greenx said:
I am under the presumption that ISO was always a camer's sensitivity to light in its contribution to exposure but does that necessarily always correlate with taking great night time photos? Reason why I bring this up is that I always tend to hear that the Sony a77 is great in low light conditions but noisy at higher ISO levels....

Thanks!

Depending on your subject matter of course; a combination of a longer/slower shutter speed, a tripod and a wider aperture will allow you to maintain the lower ISO that you are looking for...