ISO Settings

[mcflickr]

Hi All,

I'm shooting with a Nikon D7000. My house indoors is quite dark, with much of the light coming in from northern and eastern facing windows. That said, I often have to compromise with ISO when it comes to taking photographs (unless I'm relying on my flash - an SB-600).

My question relates to ISO, and the highest ISO level I should be shooting with for my camera. There are articles and reviews out there, but I have a tough time weeding out the noise (pardon the expression). Should I be aiming for no higher than 1600, 2000, higher? What are your thoughts. I try to aim for a shutter speed no slower than 1/125.

I'd appreciate any advice. Most often I'm shooting indoors with a Nikon 50mm 1.4, or a Tamron 17-50 2.8

M

 

[KmH]

Are you shooting Raw files or JPEG files?
When introduced the D7000 had about the best high ISO performance of any APS-C DSLR.
Shadow noise in Raw files is quite good.
Any time you apply noise reduction, be it in the camera or post process, you will lose some detail.
If there is any way you can avoid it and you want the best image quality, I would not advise using an ISO setting higher than ISO 1600.

The rule of thumb for shutter speed is no slower than 1/the lens focal length.
Since the D7000 has a 1.5x crop factor, for that rule of thumb a 50 mm lens has an FOV (field of view) equivalent to a 75 mm lens on a full frame camera, So 1/75 would be the slowest shutter speed a steadily held camera should be used at. Double the 1/75 - to 1/50- is even better.

Second, you need to check the histogram for the photos you are making to ensure they are not under exposed.
Under exposure makes image noise more visible.
Indoors you cannot avoid the fact some parts of a photo will be under exposed. But, you don't want your main subject under exposed.

Third, you want to be mindful what light metering and flash modes you use.

Fourth, using window light and inside lighting can cause color casts due to different light source color temperatures,
While your SB-600 delivers light that has a color temperature pretty much the same as direct sunlight, indirect light from the windows will have a somewhat cooler color temperature.
You can compensate having 2 color temperature light sources by putting the appropriate colored gel on the flash unit.

 

[CameraClicker]

I don't shoot with a Nikon and don't have any experience with a D7000. I do have a couple of generic thoughts about your question:

Get out your tripod and whatever light source you have available. Then pick a target with some black, some white and some colour. Start at the lowest ISO and keep increasing ISO while decreasing light or adjusting aperture and shutter to get even exposure. Examine the same part of your target for each photo. I can show you samples for a couple of Canon models here: CameraClicker: Digital Noise 5D Mk III

So far, DxO have the best noise software I have tried. The current package is DxO Optics Pro 9, which is a raw converter.

What you shoot makes a difference. On a tripod, with the mirror locked up and a remote release, you can shoot inanimate, stationary objects and get very sharp photos with exposures of several seconds or even minutes. Good slow exposure technique on a tripod will not help you at all with moving objects, unless you are trying for light trails or something similar. Flash or high shutter speed will stop most motion. Sometimes you need fast glass and high ISO to get enough shutter speed, and it comes down to do you get a shot with digital noise, or do you miss the shot. Knowing your equipment and what you can get away with is important if your photos are important to you or others.

 

[astroNikon]

On my d7000 I usually like to max out at 1600

 

[PaulWog]

Hi All,

I'm shooting with a Nikon D7000. My house indoors is quite dark, with much of the light coming in from northern and eastern facing windows. That said, I often have to compromise with ISO when it comes to taking photographs (unless I'm relying on my flash - an SB-600).

My question relates to ISO, and the highest ISO level I should be shooting with for my camera. There are articles and reviews out there, but I have a tough time weeding out the noise (pardon the expression). Should I be aiming for no higher than 1600, 2000, higher? What are your thoughts. I try to aim for a shutter speed no slower than 1/125.

I'd appreciate any advice. Most often I'm shooting indoors with a Nikon 50mm 1.4, or a Tamron 17-50 2.8

M

The wider you shoot indoors, the slower a shutter speed you can get away with. If you're shooting a moving target, that rule changes a little bit, but it still remains valid: wider = shutter speed can be a little slower. You may actually benefit from a 35mm f1.8 lens (or 35mm f1.4 if you're very concerned about low light and willing to shell out $1000). The difference would shift you from a portraiture field of view (50mm on DX is equivalent to 75mm on FX) to a normal field of view (35mm on DX is the same as 50mm on FX). That could help a lot with some things.

Your ISO settings really depend on what you're shooting. Sometimes I can shoot at ISO 6400, or even ISO 12800 on my D5200, and get away with it after reducing noise in Lightroom. Sometimes I don't want to go above 3200, or 1600. As a general rule, on my D5200, I try not to go above ISO 3200, and the lower the ISO the better. On the D7000, you'll get a little bit worse ISO performance, and it really is up to you: You might find 6400 is your absolute max, although I would expect anything above 3200 will look a little too rough on the D7000.

Those rules about 'don't shoot over this ISO setting' are just opinion-pieces. Shoot at each ISO and figure out what results you are okay with. Remember to shoot in RAW and do your own noise reduction... you'll get a lot better high ISO performance that way.

 

[jaomul]

ISO max is a personal choice and depends also on how well the image is exposed.
A well exposed iso 3200 image may look better than an underexposed 400 image brightened up. I have found that (some) printed photos that may look noisy onscreen look very well on paper. While it is common to zoom right in on a computer, it isn't really possible on a photo in your hand or a frame.

I am not as fussy as some with this and have is 6400 shots from a 7d on my wall and found the 1d mark 2 more than acceptable at its extended 3200 if exposure was good. Many here would rather burn an image at those settings, but read my first line

 

[Overread20]

Some great points raised already - jaomul's comment that its party personal taste is very key to note. What is too noisy for one is ok for another. This will also be affected by your workflow - if you're taking time to use noise reduction methods in editing you might well save shots that others would dump as they are performing far less editing.

Furthermore resizing for the net and printing will often hide a lot of noise - especially if you're using noise reduction software (esp on web-size - if you resize in a few stages and apply noise reduction at a few of them you'll remove al ot of it - BUT you have to be careful to avoid getting thick bands of monotone colour going through your background doing this - ergo banding).

 

[runnah]

I've found that ISO settings are like car speedometers. Sure my focus says it can go up to 150 but it's a bad idea for all sorts of reasons.

 

[mcflickr]

Great points raised - appreciating all of the responses.

I currently shoot RAW, and have adjusted my ISO sensitivity to cap at 6400 while maintaining a shutter speed of 1/200. I find indoors quite often my photos end up all the way at 6400, with the shutter speed lowered to compensate and attain the best possible exposure.

I know that while shooting with a 50mm lens, I could quite likely get away with a shutter speed of 1/100, maybe even 1/80 (taking into account the crop factor). I just find that my regular subjects (two fast moving little ones), result in photos that have motion blur.

From this thread I'm gathering that I shouldn't push beyond ISO 1600, so I may have to try capping at that level, and see how I do. Welcoming any additional feedback.

 

[CameraClicker]

This might be obvious but, if you want lower ISO and faster shutter speed, try adding light.

 

[dennybeall]

I don't know how you feel about it but the photojournalist in me wants to just GET THE SHOT!
If ISO jumps up to 12,000 to get the shot, so be it. I try to keep ISO at 100 or 200, don't worry too much about 600 or 1000 and above 1600 it goes into just "get the shot" mode. High ISO photos can look pretty bad in dark areas but not too bad in lighter areas.
Many, many shots do end up in the "snapshot" pile and others in the trash but some noisy ones have turned out to be keepers also.

 

[sifelaver]

If it truly is a dark scene, with not much light, try adjusting exposure comp a little to -.7 or -1. It will reflect the scene better in the photo.

 

[bc_steve]

With my D7000 I usually had ISO set to auto (but would switch it to manual if I had time to fiddle with it), and I set the maximum value at 6400.

I try to keep it as low as possible, but sometimes it's not worth fighting. Usually I'm pretty happy with the results if I don't really need to crop too much or increase the brightness in post (if you DO need to make your picture brighter, consider using a layer mask to exclude the shadows as that's where the noise is going to be the most obvious). It definitely beats motion blur or camera shake.

Here's a dark-ish one shot at 6400. The noise is apparent in the bokeh and the shadows but I don't feel like it ruins the shot:

red pandas by Steve Dinicol, on Flickr


just don't pixel peep!