Eos 5D markII and iso 25,000

<p>Hi everyone. I read about the H1 and H2 speeds that this camera is capable of using and how noisy they were. quite a few people said that the 12,500 and 25,000 iso speeds are pretty much useless. I tried an experiment to see if I could find a use for those speeds(esp. the iso 25,000). I shot my local courthouse(built in 1910 and a nice old building) and the old Armory/USO building(now a museum) at 1:30am in really lousy light using the 24-105is lens hand held at 24mm wide open, at iso 25,000. Sure enough the images were horribly noisy. BUT: I transferred the RAW images into Apple Aperture w/o any noise reduction, and then ran Noise Ninja at it's default over the image. It looked better, but not really usable. Then I used Aperture to convert the image to B/W and filter it like I was using film with a yellow filter(it's an available setting). It was unbelievable! The images are rather like an orthochromatic print: not really having all the colors represented as gray's. But the noise is almost completely gone, and there is nice texture and detail in them. Better than any film could do at that speed, and less grainy than tri-x ever was on 35mm. The images are too big to post here, so e-mail me if you would like the full size image mailed to you. This makes still life's really doable in what is little more than shadow lighting. Please try this approach if you can, it's great!<br>

David</p>

 

<p>David, please post some some example photos. Tnx.</p>

 

<p>Here is a pic done by my method, but be aware that the size limits here do not show the detail, so ask and I can mail the full size pic to you:</p>

<p>Let's try this again...</p>

<div></div>

<p>Another:</p><div></div>

<p>I have not tried that yet, but your results look fantastic! When I was waiting for mine to come in one of the workers at the camera shop suggested pretty much this approach when working with H1 and H2. Glad to see he was onto something. I wonder if IR does anything?</p>

<p>Here are 2 more:</p><div></div>

<p>Now, a 100% crop from the glass-in area just to the right of the base of the tree:</p><div></div>

<p>You can even read the name of the courthouse on it. Like I said, it has uses as a b+w medium, not useless at all! Another crop:</p><div></div>

<p>You can even read the 'EXIT' sign...</p>

<p>I wonder too about IR, anyone here know?</p>

<p>Just curious... how do these look in color?</p>

<p>(Not buying a 5D II in the near future so if you don't want to post them just ignore this request.)</p>

<p>By the way, though they contain enough detail for some uses they look pretty eery to me. (Strange contrast / strange light?) Would that be because of the yellow filter, did it just look like that in real life too, am I mistaking or what?</p>

<p>TIA, Matthijs.</p>

<p>David,</p>

<p>This is quite remarkable actually! Only a fool would expect no noise at ISO 25,000. I actually like the look of the noise, it is a pleasant sort of noise instead of the harsh horrible noise usually associated with digital. Can you imagine the result if you had tried pushing a roll of Ilford Delta 3200 to 25,000? It wouldn't be a patch on this.</p>

<p>Now you've mentioned IR, I personally think these shots already look like similar to infra-red. It would be interesting to see what a facial portrait would look like under these conditions.</p>

<p>I am still waiting for my 5D2 and I originally wouldn't have dreamed of using the high ISO settings. Now, I won't hesitate if they end up like this. Very well done indeed my friend, this is good stuff!</p>

<p> </p>

<p>

<p >Hi</p>

<p >I have done this before, not with a D5 MK11 but with my wife’s 5 MP camera phone </p>

<p >It makes a unprintable noisy colour image quite nice </p>

<p >Dave</p>

</p>

<p>Since someone asked: This is a re-sized JPG from the in-camera RAW with no noise reduction other than what the sensor gives:</p><div></div>

<p>After noise ninja only:</p>

<p>I can read the time off the clock, recognize the exit sign... That's perfectly useable. Last resort sure, but better this then no shot. Thanks David for providing a real world test with samples!</p>

<p>After noise ninja only</p><div></div>

<p>A word about the lighting. These are limited spectrum floods at night, not like a regular tungsten or fluorscent light, so there is less chroma noise because the lighting just does not produce as many colors. Jaime, I also wonder what a facial portrait would look like, perhaps like the ones done during the american civil war by Matthew Brady? Those pics were not full Panchromatic either.<br>

David</p>

<p>And please remember something here, If printed at 100% this print I think would be nearly 6' wide! My 13x19" prints have an astounding amount of detail, and are very smooth because the ink jet printers tend to smooth a little(I use a Canon i9900).<br>

David</p>

 

<p>Here is a 100% crop that was done in lighting 4 1/2 stops darker than the courthouse: 24-105Lis lens, done at 24mm, f4, 1/3 sec. I fired 5 shots and took the sharpest:</p><div></div>

<p>David, <br /> I am wondering how the above can be a 100% crop of the origianl image up in the thread, the width of the full image is 3.3 times the width of the crop, your crop is only 700 pixels wide which means the full image is 2310 pixels wide. A 5DII image is 5616 pixels wide. Can you elaborate what happened? </p><div></div>

<p>The 5dII is pretty friggin' horrendo from 6400 on up. But your technique seems to work almost miraculously well! Thanks for sharing.<br>

<br /> Now... as to how to do it all in CS4 (I don't have Aperture)...</p>

<p>I was half asleep, that's what happened! Like I said on the orig. post, you really have to do this yourself to see how good it works, so if you want I can send you the whole file. This is the last one I am going to upload, everyone here gets the idea now.</p><div></div>

<p>It is an amazing camera, I am very happy with mine.</p>