Wednesday, February 1, 2012

High ISO photos

With my tax return being much larger than I expected this year, I've been contemplating buying a new camera body for my lenses.  Yes I know, I only got this camera last April, but now that I've been using a DSLR for several months, I'm finding there are some things I need that a higher-end body would be better for.

Namely? Indoor agility shots.  I can't complain at all about how my outdoor agility shots come out with this camera.

agility30


But my early indoor shots looked like this:

Flying high!

Ouch.  That photo was taken at ISO3200, the highest setting on this particular camera.  And needless to say, it came out so grainy it was almost useless.  I gave up on trying to get shots of dogs in the agility barn.  Someone recently pointed out, however, that I really wasn't giving my camera a fair shake.  I had it set to Program mode, which came up with some weird settings now that I look at the photo (f/8?  Why on earth would I want it set to f/8?).  Last night I decided to try for some higher ISO photos.

The basic set-up I used was my 50mm lens, set wide open at f/1.7.  I shot in RAW instead of JPG.  Here's my favourite shot from the night.  This was taken at ISO1600 and processed in Adobe Lightroom.

dahlia7 


This one was taken at ISO3200.  Quite a difference from the one up above!

 dahlia6 


I still plan to get the A580 (unless something newer and better comes out), but at least I know this camera isn't quite as bad at taking higher ISO photos as I thought it was.