ISO 50 on Digital SLR

Hey,

 

I have a Canon 1DMKII and tested the ISO50 against the ISO100 a few

times. I can't really tell a difference. Does anyone take advantage

of the ISO50?

 

Just curious.

 

Thanks!

From what I read the noise at ISO 50 is greater than at ISO 100 on that camera. Probably

just a special feature in case one can't get a shutter speed low enough when using a fast

lens in bright light.

hey aaron,

 

the lower the ISO the finer those "detail" gets. But, with only 50 counts of less ISO rating i dont think the difference would be visible to our eyes.... i presume.

I think the limitation with ISO 50 is that the pixels have a limited well capacity, (you're trying to hold twice as many electrons in each pixel as you would at ISO 100). Highlights would blow out more easily, and you might get colour shifts where one colour channel saturates ahead of the others. Other than these clipping effects, noise should in theory be lower, but for normal scenes this might be hard to detect, even in shadow areas.

Take a 100 ISO RAW image, convert it using any RAW converter using -1 stop of exposure compensation and you will get the exact same result as ISO50 in camera, more grain, less dynamic range, less bits to work with.

Chasseur d'images tried the 50 ISO rating and wrote that it limits the dynamic range in the highlights, thus making fine adjustments easier. Haven't compared it yet.