Saturday, July 4, 2009

ISO 1600



I keep a guitar by my chair so that I can pick it up and practice at least a little bit every day.

We have two skylights in the den, and at a certain time each morning, about 10am right now, the sunlight comes through one of them to shine right beside me and has a lovely quality to it.

It shined right on the guitar and I snapped a shot at ISO 1600 with my new Nikon D90.

I have the camera set for "normal" noise reduction at high ISO within the camera, so this is a shot as it came off the camera.

Although my D70s still has a place in my heart, this kind of performance at such a high ISO leaves me breathless.

I keep thinking of how much grain is in a print made from ISO 800 film and then seeing this, I know I'm going to really be loving this camera once I learn all it's tricks.

As someone who shot thousands and thousands of 35mm slides on slow ISO (50, 64, or 100) film just to get the best quality, to see an image like this from ISO 1600 seems truly magical to me. I mean that.

I always longed for the versatility of being able to shoot at high ISO, but the grainy images turned me off completely.

If I'd had a slide or print film of ISO 1600 that had this kind of look, I'd have paid big money for each roll, and would have paid it gladly.

The viewfinder of the D90 is large and bright, a true pentaprism whereas the D70s is an electronic viewfinder.

The "eyepoint" (in Nikon-speak) of the D90 is 19.5mm, where the D70s is 18mm. This means that I can see the whole image inside the viewfinder while still wearing my eyeglasses with the new D90 and I just got in the habit of putting my glasses on top of my head when shooting with the D70s to see the viewfinder better. That will be easier, not having to pop my glasses up there to shoot photos, and pull them down for the rest of life.

I have two friends with the D300 and I envied their camera's low light performance, and now that same image sensor technology has trickled down to a lighter, easier to carry camera that I could afford.

Sweet.

4 comments:

CG said...

The D300 is so heavy too. Love the size of the D90

Blue Wave 707 said...

Neat shot!

I've got friends who picked up D90s, and they love it! The D300 may be heavy but I've always liked heavy cameras, whether still or pro video.

Ben Nakagawa said...

impressive. I'm sticking to low ISO (D200) as it does not good on high range. Well if I convert to B&W it is kind a good in some times as it mimic film grain noise (not exactly, but you know).

Enjoy new camera and I'm glad you are back in game.

Kerri Farley said...

I want one!!!!
Glad to see you back!!