Wind versus ISO

[Jim Lloyd]

Prompted by a comment Andrea made in another post I have done some quick experiments outside with a light breeze blowing to see what can be done by increasing ISO (hence shortening exposure) to combat wind movement.

 

Subject was some kind of flowering current bush

 

D3200 full spectrum conversion

UG1 2mm + UG40 2mm

Nikkor EL 80 mm (N)

f/8

Outside late afternoon with some light cloud, so UV levels relatively low

Tripod

Processed in Lightroom

 

I first experimented with aperture and found f/8 was the widest I wanted to go before the lack of depth of field was making focusing too difficult. Then at ISO 100 found time to give good exposure based on histogram just reaching right hand end. This was 30 seconds - then roughly halved time and doubled ISO up to 12800.

 

I will show one image and summarize my findings

• No chance of anything decent at 4 seconds or longer exposure
  
• At 2 seconds and shorter with luck motion can be OK
  
• Even at ISO 12800 it may be worth taking the image
  
• Up to ISO 6400 (0.5 sec in this case) can produce decent results
  
• Noise reduction in LightRoom helps high ISO
  

Example image:

 

1/2 S exposure ISO 6400 with noise reduction applied at 50% level - 3500x3500 crop of 6000x4000

 

 

I know there are many variables - most importantly probably purpose of photograph and how it will be displayed, but I was curious to know how far others push the ISO setting?

 

Also I understand that in the Nikon D3200 the in-camera noise reduction just applies to jpeg not RAW - is that right?

[Andy Perrin]

RAW is unprocessed so no noise reduction or anything else (except for Sony, which lied and compressed the RAW for a while). The highest I can push ISO on my Sony NEX-7 is 3200.