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Crazy high ISOs – When and why you might want to use them

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For most of what I shoot, high ISO performance isn’t really much of a concern. It’s rare that I need to go above ISO400, usually. But with today’s cameras having ISOs that go up into the multiple hundreds of thousands, what’s the point if going that high degrades the image so badly that it’s pretty much unusable?

That’s the topic that music and sports David Bergman explores in this video. Cameras and their crazy high ISO values, what’s the point of them and when and why you might want to use them.

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Check out the high ISO performance of the Canon EOS R5

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With a lot of the overheating controversy from the video crowd (which Canon has been working on), we have to remember that ultimately the Canon EOS R5 is primarily a stills camera. And it’s a rather good one, too. It has top-notch autofocus that even beats Sony in some aspects and plenty of speed when it comes to shooting.

But how does the ISO stand up in the real world? We’ve seen some tests in more controlled conditions, but out in the wild things can often be a little different. In this video, Lindsay Adler took her EOS R5 out for a spin on the streets of New York to do a night time fashion shoot to see just how well it handles.

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Canon’s ISO4,500,000 camera was used to shoot this documentary in the Amazon

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When a company like Canon, or, well, any company, really, produces a camera that claims to shoot as high as ISO 4,500,000, such as the MH20F-SH, it makes one wonder if it’s all just a marketing gimmick or if it’s actually really any good at the extremely low light levels that demand such high sensitivity.

Well, when Award-winning artist and director Lynette Wallworth released her documentary Awavena in 2018, which documented the Yawanawa in the Amazon and the Ayahuasca vision quest, it was met with much praise. The film’s director of photography, Greg Downing, has now spoken about some of the filming challenges and how the MH20F-SH helped to overcome them.

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Canon has developed a new sensor with 20-stops dynamic range that’s good down to 0.08 Lux

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Canon has developed a new CMOS camera sensor that offers a high dynamic range of up to 20 stops, with super high low light sensitivity. The LI7050 is a 1/1.8″ CMOS sensor is an impressive little beast, but this is just early days.

The sensor is quite small (measuring only 7.11 x 5.33mm) and captures only a mere two megapixels. It’s also a rolling shutter, not a global shutter. So, there is still a way to go before we might start to see this kind of tech in a full-frame camera, but Canon says it will go on sale to gear manufacturers as early as October.

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The milky way, a medium format camera and a f/4 lens – this is how it went

For several years I have believed that shooting with a medium format camera at high iso would yield a terrible result. I have thought that there is likely no point in even trying because the image will be ruined because of noise. However, this fall I brought my Pentax 645Z and the Pentax 25mm f4 out into the darkness where the zombies reign.

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Behind the scenes and some tips for shooting video in the dark at high ISO

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Shooting a wedding is a demanding task on its own. But add low light and no flash to the equation, and you get a bit more stress and challenge. In this video, Taylor Jackson takes you behind the scene of a wedding he had to shoot in very low light without the flash. He shows you his workflow but also shares a couple of great tips if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

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The new Panasonic S1 might just be the new low light video king

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There’s been a lot of buzz around the new Panasonic S1 full frame mirrorless camera. Some of it good, some of it not so good. People like to complain about the size and weight, and the fact that it doesn’t have a flippy out LCD like the GH5. But how about the good? Well, cinema5D has been having a play with the Panasonic S1, and when it comes to low light performance, they feel it could be the new king in town.

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Sony A7III vs Nikon Z7 vs Canon EOS R vs Fuji X-T3 vs Pocket 4K low-light shootout

Low-light high-ISO performance has become the new megapixel war, particularly when it comes to video. And this year, there have been a lot of new cameras released trying to push those limits.

In this video, YouTuber and filmmaker, Max Yuryev puts five of them to the test. He compares the Sony A7III, Nikon Z7, Canon EOS R, Fuji X-T3 and the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K to see which is the low-light king.

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How to remove or reduce high ISO noise in Lightroom

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Sometimes, when we’re out with our cameras, the light is a little lower than we’d like and we need to ramp up our ISO to compensate. But raising the ISO introduces noise. Potentially a whole lot of noise. And while you can never really get the image to look as good as it would have if you’d been able to shoot it at a low ISO, there are things you can do.

In this video, Unmesh Dinda from PiXimperfect shows us how to use the noise reduction tools in Lightroom to help reduce the impact of noise. This technique also applies to using Adobe Camera Raw. He then goes into Photoshop to illustrate how we can further bring back some of that lost detail.

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Sony takes on Galaxy S9 and Huawei P20 Pro with ultra-high ISO smartphone camera

Companies like Samsung and Huawei have recently brought some innovations to the world of smartphone photography. And now Sony has introduced Xperia XZ2 Premium, another smartphone aimed at photographers. This phone has the impressive ISO 12,800 for videos and 51,200 for photos and the company promises it will let you “reveal the unseen.”

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