***WARNING!!!***

This will be a technical and likely tedious gallery to read and walk through! ONLY bother if you care about digital ISO and image quality!!

So, you've been warned!

Something that we in digital photography "inherited" from the film "world" is a fear of using a high ISO. With film, high ISO film emulsions were chemically more sensitive to light but to accomplish this a larger "grain" was used in the emulsion, literally leading to "grainy" images when printed.

With digital, though, the enhanced image brightness we get from raising the ISO is done by electronic amplification, and when people talk about "noise" at high ISOs, it is the result of noise in all digital photos being amplified and becoming noticeable because there is low light compared to a well-lit scene that would not require as much amplification.

So, I decided to set up a "scene" and a tripod where I could get two exposures of my "subjects", using three "older" cameras: the Canon EOS 30D, which does have a "reputation" for struggling with noise at high ISOs, the EOS 5D "Classic", which has a significantly better reputation, and a camera that is a bit newer, the EOS 1D Mk III, which has a better-still reputation, but still has its limits!

I wanted to test two ISO levels on the 30D and 5D: ISO 1600 is the highest "native" ISO for each, meaning it is the direct result of the electronic amplification, and then the "High" setting, in which an image was "underexposed", the ISO 1600 signal was collected, and then "boosted" in software to "simulate" an ISO 3200 shot, making it "convenient" to use ISO 3200 settings.

The 1DM3 has the adventage of one more "stop" of "native" ISO, meaning that it goes to ISO 3200, and then the "High" setting simulated ISO 6400. So, with the 1D3 I shot at ISO 1600, ISO 3200, and then the "High" ISO 6400.

I took two shots at each ISO setting: for the first, I picked an "approximately medium tone" and set the camera to expose that as "medium", meaning that the "subjects" have a pretty normal look. For the second shot, I upped the exposure by one "stop", opening the aperture to let in more light, making a brighter image without "blowing out" the brightest parts. The good news is that you can in your software "tame" that bright image to be more "normal", and, the important thing about this is that because you have let more light into your exposure, you will have less noticable noise -- the increase of light leads to a higher "signal to noise ratio". If you can pull this off, it's good news!

So, to start off with, I'm going to post the four shots from the 30D, then the four from the 5D, then the first four from the 1D3, so you will see the two ISO 1600 shots and the two ISO 3200 shots from each (I'll save the 1D3 ISO 6400 shots for later.

One thing you will notice right off the bat is that when viewing them "normally" they all look pretty dang good! In fact, at this point you should realize that if you get a good exposure, using a high ISO for viewing a Web-size image is really no problem!

Then, as we go, I will post some interesting crops of parts of the images where you will expect noise to show up -- shadow areas, for example, and fine details where you may expect them to suffer from some noise. And yes, you do see some noise! And, you see improvements going from the 30D to the 5D to the 1D3. These things matter to those of us who have to shoot at high ISOs and then crop closely or print large, but again, the thing to look back on is the full image and how big can you print/view before noise becomes a bother?

Well, it's a matter of the type of shooting you do and then how you present it, as well as personal preference. I like the "cleaner" images and so avoid the real high ISOs and I do like the "incremental" gains of the 5D and the 1D3, but you'll have to see and decide for yourself how much they are actually gaining and what it's worth to you!

So, on to the pics! Take the time to look, note the settings (they are below the images) and closely examine the crops. Each pic of the crops is a combination of one 100% crop from each camera at a given setting and then from a different section of the scene to allow close comparison regarding overall image quality, noise especially in shadow areas, and detail that I have included. No special processing has been done to any of them.

Have fun!