It’s taken me a while to break the 400 ISO barrier, but it turned out the hurdle was in my head. Let me explain… photography and I go back a bit: we have history. Ilford HP5 was my fast film of choice, usually at 400 ISO. I could push it faster, but it got grainy and contrasty. My ideal would have been wide-aperture lenses, but I couldn’t afford them. I had a fairly fast fifty at f1.7 but the widest that any of my other lenses got was f2.8. My longer lenses were worse – I had the usual 80-200 zoom but that was f4.5 wide open. Most sports were out of reach, unless I could get close or it was sunny.
When I finally dig’ed-up it was to an APS-C camera. Delightful though it was (and is) the sensor got pretty noisy above 400 ISO. The crop factor was useful though, as it made my big lenses longer. If I’d put a x1.5 teleconverter of my zoom to get a 300mm, I would have had an f9 maximum aperture. Pop the lens on the digibox and it stayed at f4.5. At 400 ISO and needing a shutter speed of at 1/500 or faster, that made a difference. My exposure table says that’s EV11, so plenty of room for the occasional cloud.
Even so, I was hitting a limit above 400 ISO. Grain or noise in mono images can be part of the effect, but noise in colour images is less pleasant. I was struggling. A day came when I was planning to take pictures at a race track and needed the longest lenses I owned and the fastest shutter speeds I could get. And then a more modern digital camera strolled up and said “hold my beer”. So I put the camera onto shutter priority and turned on the auto-ISO. And it worked. I was getting good, as in not noisy or grainy, pictures at ISO figures bigger than my phone number. So it’s not all advertising hype – modern sensors really can do high ISO.
The benefit of this is that I can use smaller or cheaper lenses. I had a 35-70 zoom that would previously have stayed at home, as it was only f3.5 at the wide end. It would have meant slow shutter speeds or being difficult to focus with a dark image. But now there’s no problem in using 800 ISO, it lives on the camera as it’s compact and a useful range. I was recently at a camera fair and found a 70-210 zoom that I would previously have ignored, as the aperture ran from f4 to 5.6. But this also meant the lens was not huge: it’s about the size of a soft drink can. Stick it on the camera and it’s not too heavy or unwieldy.
And yes, I understand that without wide apertures I’m losing the effects of bokeh and background separation. But I’m gaining sharpness by being able to use faster shutter speeds. Besides, a bit of panning will blur the background nicely when I’m shooting action.
So really it’s a confidence thing. Back in the day I could push film above 400ISO but the results weren’t great. Same with my APS-C digital. But a more modern sensor will do much higher ISO without degrading into noise and fuzz. I’m learning to trust it. This old dog is learning a new trick.
PS Between writing this and posting it I found Joe Edelman’s explanation of why we should not fear the reaper grain. So now I’ve got another little project on to determine the maximum useable ISO of my cameras.
Fup Duck Photography 