60D Useable ISO?

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I've read the 60D will go to 12800 ISO, but is this a useable setting?

If not what level can you go to before image quality is drastically reduced?

Cheers
 
60D is the same sensor s a 550D and 7D. I've found 3200 to be quite usable. Especially for gig photography however I wouldn't go over that unless its for really small prints or web use.

This is the main reason I just upgraded from a 550D to a 5D mark II. The low light performance of the latter is staggering for such a large amount of megapixels.
 
Thanks,
It was gig photography which has raised this question!

Cheers
 
I set my maximum ISO Auto to 3200 when shooting in darker conditions and the resulting photos are definitely usable, even more so with a tad of noise reduction in LR.

I once left my old 500D on 12800 ISO in M mode when shooting stuff, the results were'nt that bad to be honest - one posted below for reference.

IMG_1896.jpg
 
It was the thing that impressed me most upgrading to a 60D from a much older digital....having 3200 ISO being usable makes such a difference to flexibility for low light
 
Shooting in RAW will give you a few more options for reducing noise in post processing.
 
My friend uses a 1ds mark something and he never likes to go over iso 100 -_-

I use the 400d and think the iso is fine till 400d for normal use, after that its too much for me.

I'm considering upgrading for low light improvements only! Big deal maker for me.
also I got a 50mm 1.8 lens for low light which is awesome.
If your thinking of upgrading for the low light for gigs.
I would upgrade to one of the newer ones
 
I think it comes down to personal preference in the end - I shoot at 6400 on my D5000, and tbh I think the results are excellent. There is just grain, whereas in the shots above, there tends to be a lot of banding/colored noise.
 
^ Agreed about the type of noise, if I push my camera too far you still don't get blotches of colour etc, you just get very evenly distributed, almost film like results, it can be run through Nik DFINE and it looks good.
 
The robin pic may look a little noisier as I sharpened it in pp and did no noise reduction. The reality is that it does pretty well up to ISO 6400. The top pic is on a 500D at ISO 12800, which is actually ISO 3200 pushed TWICE, hence the coloured noise. The newer 18MP sensor is better in this respect.

One other thing to remember, shooting shadows in darker environments will always test the camera the most i.e. most cameras perform OK even at their highest native ISO in good light.
 
I've been forced to use 6400 at a rugby match. I shot in RAW and PP'd in Lightroom so was able to clean them up a bit and they were passable.

I think it all depends on what you're shooting and what it's for.

For example, shooting the rugby match at 6400 was the only way I was going to get pictures with my camera lens combo and they were only for the club's website so something that was a little grainy but captured the action was more than acceptable ;)

I suppose at a push I could've shot at 12800 if I'd needed to.

My view is that I'll always try and use the lowest ISO, if I have to push it to 3200 or above I may have to accept that some of the images might not be that usable.
 
Interesting topic this :)

Last night I was shooting at ISO H on my 40D (which is ISO 3200) and although the images were noisy - by turning Noise Reduction quite high (IIRC I had it on Luminence 75, detail 25) nearly all the noise went! It needed a little sharpening, which brought back SOME of the noise - but I still cant see the noise unless zooming into the picture - when looking at it on full view the noise isnt apparent.

I think peoples definition of "useable" is significantly different. I have printed on A4 a picture taken at ISO 3200, with high noise reduction applied in Lightroom - which reduced the image's sharpness - but on an A4 print you couldnt tell at all, it just looked fine - no evident noise or softness.
A3 might have pushed the boundaries a bit more....but Im confident it wouldnt have looked that bad tbh!

It all depends on the intended use of the picture IMO.
 
Not a 60D... but here's a 40D at ISO 1250 (max native is 1600) just to show how much you can reduce noise in Lightroom.
This was noise reduced 16pts in LightRoom 3.3 and sharpened 38x1.5 radius


IMG_6983.jpg by futureal33, on Flickr


100% by futureal33, on Flickr

Not bad and on print you cant see any of that noise whatsoever
 
I think it's a question of what you're prepared to put up with and how big you're going to be viewing the output. That said, in general I try to stay under 1600, but 3200 is definitely usable with a little bit of cleaning up. By 6400 things start to get a bit ugly, but it's OK for small images. This will obviously vary a little depending on subject matter and PP.

I don''t know if everyone would agree with this but I think that one of the nice things about the 60d is that the noise is less ugly than on some of the older cameras - to me it seems a bit more random, with less pattern noise.
 
I think for viewing on a monitor anything is suitable tbh - even ISO H can be cleaned up to look respectable on a monitor - unlesss you zoom to 100%..but what would you expect?

If printed bigger than A4 you might get issues... but Ive printed A4 ISO H before and not noticed any/much noise!

Im more than happy using ISO H (3200) on my 40D in good light situations... however when it is dark aswell it can get a bit too noisy
 
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