Iso 800???

[NightRaven77]

Hello ...

I am pondering getting a new camera.....Im new at this stuff....so bear with me..

I dont know if its worth going after more megapixels or more ISO?

The new cameras coming out are really promoting the ISO 800......but does it really make a difference underwater?

Should I go for more ISO...or more megapixels..?


Help out an amateur will ya!

Nightraven77

 

[CompuDude]

Hello ...

I am pondering getting a new camera.....Im new at this stuff....so bear with me..

I dont know if its worth going after more megapixels or more ISO?

The new cameras coming out are really promoting the ISO 800......but does it really make a difference underwater?

Should I go for more ISO...or more megapixels..?

Help out an amateur will ya!

Nightraven77

Unless you are cropping the hell out of your pictures, or printing wall-size posters, anything over 5 megapixels is just icing on the cake.

Most advice I have seen re ISO here on the board, from the real experts, has been to set your ISO to [various settings between 50-200, depending on conditions], so I think 800 is higher than you are likely to ever use underwater.

 

[ClayJar]

ISO 800 is noisy. Who in their right mind would ever want to use ISO 800? Well, actually, that would be me, but only in certain circumstances.

I've got a decent point-and-shoot camera and housing (Canon PowerShot A540 and the Canon WP-DC2). Let's say I'm in some fairly decent visibility, but with enough particulates to make trying to use the flash impossible ("Look at all the pretty snow!"). Being able to push all the way to ISO 800 will obviously make the shot *much* noisier than ISO 200, but I'll be able to use a shutter speed four times faster (or twice as fast as the older ISO 400 camera the A540 replaces).

ISO 800 allows you to accept a noisier shot in order to bump up your shutter speed, and there are times when it is quite welcome. If I could justify a housing for my 20D and L-series lenses, I'd be set, but since I've spent all my money (and then some) on scuba gear, the A540 and housing were a decent compromise (add with a 2-gig SD card, and you're still under $500 from B&H).

 

[MarkH]

I often use ISO 1600 and wish I could get higher. Up here it's not like in the tropics where it's so bright it looks like a nuclear bomb just went off. If you want to get nice wide-angle, natural light photos down deep up here, you either need a tripod/looong exposures or ISO 10 million.

 

[mrtremere]

There are new camera's that can do iso 3200 in a Point and Shoot Body. So iso 800 should be as clean as older cameras iso 200. The new direction is higher and cleaner iso.

 

[justleesa]

True, it depends what diving you do....but if you have a decent strobe would you need to go that high? And if you took your pictures in RAW you could catch a lot with that.

FWIW I take all my UW pictures with ISO 64, day and night dives.

I recently took topside pictures w/o my strobe using ISO 800 and up (Canon 5D) and the pictures are noticeably grainier.

 

[kapula]

How do ISO adjustment work in digital cameras? I mean there's only one ccd. No way to change film or anything. So does adjusting ISO setting just make pixels bigger (picture grainier) and that way shutter speed faster? A bit confused and very tired

 

[mrtremere]

Are you printing you photos??? One shouldnt see any noise at 800 unless you printing huge format like larger than 8x11.

The iso issue is just a convienience. Lower is better. higher Iso I imagine the would include deeper background is the vis allowed. <--- is this wrong?

 

[justleesa]

no, I can see the difference on the screen.

 

[Grajan]

This is a brief but useful explanation.

The degree of compromise needed for higher ISO's is reducing all the time.

How do ISO adjustment work in digital cameras? I mean there's only one ccd. No way to change film or anything. So does adjusting ISO setting just make pixels bigger (picture grainier) and that way shutter speed faster? A bit confused and very tired