ISO 3200

I leave today to fly to KL. Then tomorrow to Siam Reap and Angkor Wat. So no post this week, unless I find a WiFi connection somewhere. I will be giving the 5D a real shake down there as well a the new Think Tank Shape Shifter (I told you I had some more goodies coming). Until then I leave you with these thoughts about the Auto ISO feature on the 5D.

I already wrote how I really liked the auto ISO feature of the 5D. This is something that Nikon came out with on their latest camera first and then Canon followed suit. My guess is this is going to be one of those “love it or hate it” features. I love it, though it can be dangerous, bouncing your ISO  all over the place without you knowing it. But with the new Digic 4 processor in the 50D and 5D the higher ISOs are hardly an issue unless you are printing quite large.

I was asked by some monks on Saturday to take their picture.  I had been shooting something else and had my aperture stopped down to f/14. With out thinking (I think most of you can relate) I snapped of a few and then realized I needed to open it up. So I then shot them at f/1.8. Later in Lightroom I was amazed at how the camera at handled the situation. I shoot almost exclusively in AV (aperture priority), so when I changed my aperture to f/1.8 the camera changed the ISO from 3200 to 100 and my shutter from 1/100 to 1/200.  Check out several things below.  First, the dreamy bokeh at f/1.8, really smooth. Also, how quick the depth of field drops off. But, more importantly for this conversation, look at the 100% enlargements of the eyes. ISO 3200 never looked so good!

View the images at 100% by clicking on them to load them in Light Box.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 12:14 am and is filed under Blog, Photography, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.