What photographers are not thinking when they shoot high ISO

Baldy

I loved this article:

http://petapixel.com/2014/08/19/what-photographers-are-not-considering-when-using-high-iso/

I don't know many photographers who do flash well, but the ones who do make awesome photos.

You wouldn't think I used flash (I least I hope you wouldn't) for this shot, but the faces were mud without it:

Ivan

Very nice! Where did you setup the flash?

Baldy

Ivan wrote: »

Very nice! Where did you setup the flash?

Thanks. It was just on the hotshoe with a Gary Fong diffuser. When following grands around or shooting something fast like a wedding, I just keep it in the hotshoe and can turn it off or on whenever. Sometimes I'll put a second or third around the room somewhere to sync off the hotshoe flash.

pathfinder

Great image of a bunch of very happy girls! Way to go!

High ISO lets us shoot in places we never could have without flash before, but very low light tends to be flat and colorless, or "muddy" even. Once my ISO rises above 3200 I begin to think about shooting in monochrome, since the color can be less than great in very low ambient light. Adding some flash will help recapture that color that was lost in the low level ambient light.

High ISO really lets speedlites shine, because they have so much power for high ISOs, say >800 ISO. The linked article talked about using flash with a diffuser in a very large environment, like a stage setting. That way there are no reflections of the extra flash lighting coming back into the image. The other situation where flash can be quite useful is in smaller settings ( like in a home ) and bouncing the flash off a wall or a ceiling. With the newer radio controlled flash systems this can really work very nicely. I know some folks really like the new Canon radio controlled flash system with the 600EX-RT speedlite, for off camera flash uses. I have held off upgrading my Canon flash system, but the reports of the 600EX-RT are quite favorable, and the price has come down a bit since its introduction, so I am thinking of upgrading again. If I shot mostly people, it would be no question.

Baldy is quite correct, the best flash usage is usually not detectable by the viewer of the image. It just looks like ambient lighting.

I certainly would not have thought of this image as a speed light lit image.

I wrote a little thread about off camera flash usage for candids at Christmas family gatherings 6 years ago here - http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=49999 Today, I would consider using the wireless remote systems, but the older IR remote control systems work pretty well in houses

Baldy

Thanks, Pathfinder.

We bought a Sony A7s for Anton Lorimer to shoot videos with because he liked that it was so high ISO, and light enough to be carried by drone. Some of his videos lately use a lot of drone footage.

Anyway, I offered to break it in for him during an Alaska cruise this summer, because I am a nice guy and he would want me to put a few gentle miles on it to loosen it up. I shot in very low light because I wanted to test out the amazing high ISO performance at, for example, 80,000 ISO (!). It looked fine except....as Pathfinder said, the light had no character at those low levels. My hight ISO shots turned out to be very dull for the most part.

Sam

Baldy,

Nice to see you take a few minutes to post. I enjoyed poking around your website. You have some great images there.

One area I couldn't figure out was the Mac color gallery. No srgb profile, and with srgb profile. Yes I can see a color large change, but what does it mean? In CS6 I can convert from Pro Photo 16 bit to srgb, 8bit and at best with some images see a very slight difference. I am using a wide gamut monitor and can see well beyond srgb color space.

Sam