The power of ISO 6400 - Part 1

Shutter speed: 1/125 

Aperture: f5.6

ISO: 6400

Camera: Nikon D3

Since the purchase of a couple Nikon D3's this Summer, I have to boast that my photography has just gotten smoother.  Nikon's 'At the heart of the image' campaign is truly what it's all about!  Going out, shooting naturally, having fun and pushing limit's without being upset that your camera can't do this or it can't do that...boo hoo.

Some of you may not know what ISO is, but let's begin here; ASA was a common term describing film speeds and then suddenly ISO took over that term.  ASA defined in www.wikipedia.org

ASA(American Standards Association) photographic exposure system became the basis for the ISO(International Organization for Standardization) film speed system, currently used worldwide.  I'm not going to take you into the mud of things, instead I'm going to say that all ASA/ISO do is rate your film speed.  Film speed can determine the contrast and grain(digital noise) that we look for in different situations.  It also means slow or fast...so smaller(slow) numbers mean that we can shoot with less grain, but require lots of light.  Higher(faster) numbers mean we can shoot with more grain, but require little light.  Different settings for different applications.  The image I used in this article is an example of an exercise I conducted today.  I took a macro lens(105 mm) and used it to photograph my son's eye.  I ran into some sticky situations while hand holding the camera...I could feel the slight camera shake and I could see the softness in my images, while viewing and zooming in on them from the camera's 3" LCD screen.

And while I was at home on a Sunday and feeling lazy, I decided to push Nikon's flagship and do my own tests.  No flash, no tripod and no care in the world.  I cranked the ISO to 6400, knowing that I could have gone higher!  I was in the living room while Jackson was watching a little tv and I took his attentive spirit in cartoons to my advantage.  I sat on the floor and manually enabled the proper exposure settings, fitted for a ISO 64oo capture.  I normally shoot in manual mode...allowing me to have full control on exposure.

In conclusion, I was able to get some amazing close-ups of my son's eyes.  The detail is remarkable.  What anyone could do with the right equipment in a room filled with some late morning window light.  Hats off to Nikon for finally getting it right!  I spent years mourning over images that were taken at ISO 800 because I thought there was too much noise on my digital images. 

Note, that I only opened the image in Photoshop, viewed it at 100% and cropped it!