Sony NEX 7 High ISO in the real world

When I was looking for a new camera I was also a bit stunned by how good almost all of the cameras seemed to be.  To try and find the difference between them I started to look at the extreme end of all of the specifications trying to find some indicator of quality that I could possibly use to tell a camera where the engineers were able to do what they wanted, or where the bean counters had the upper hand.

I hate to say it but, high ISO is not very important.

I thought it was, my Cannon G9 lost me countless shots by not being able to produce good photos above ISO 100.  The quality really dropped off badly if you started moving the ISO dial. That camera was released five or six years ago though and the same problems aren't there for most of the ILS cameras that have reasonable sized sensors.  

The important point is that most of the time you will not really need to use those very high ISO settings. Lets pick a night time scene to illustrate what I mean.  I have seen these dancing plastic tubes mounted on fans in a number of countries so I think that most people will have a good idea of how, and how fast they move.  

This shot was taken at ISO 100 f2.8 and because it is night time the shutter time slowed to 1/6 of a second.  A general rule of thumb is that a shutter of 1/50 ~ 1/60 is the slowest you can hope to freeze motion with in normal situations.  You can see that we haven't done that at all here as the pink guys are looking a bit ghoulish.  Note that the old man on the bicycle at the bottom left came out ok.

 

At ISO 200 f2.8 we get a shutter speed of 1/15, not fast enough to freeze motion but not slow enough to give the impression of motion like 1/6 did.  I think this is quite an ugly result so lets move on quickly.

So lets jump a setting and go straight to IS0800 f2.8 and we get our desired shutter speed of 1/60 and things are almost frozen.  The finger tips off the pink guys are really moving very fast so we haven't quite gotten what we wanted at this sensitivity.

To ISO 1600 f2.8 and we get a shutter speed of 1/125 of a second.  The pink guys have been captured.  Job done.

I really think that anything above ISO 3200 is really just for marketing guys.  There are not that many people who have to deal with lots of movement in low lighting conditions.  I guess if you are doing some event photography in bad venues (the stage should be well lit if it is a good venue) or are taking photos at night clubs (where you could use a flash) then there might be a need for higher ISO.  However if you are a pro and working in those environments you probably have been doing so for a few years and have learnt all sorts of tricks to get the shots you need so that you can get paid.  Certainly you wouldn't be here taking advice from me as I am not any where near the level where people should be paying through the nose for my work.

For 99.99% of situations you will not need to used those ultra high ISOs,  if you really think that you will be shooting in the dark that much, perhaps you should look into a camera that can shoot infrared.

For those people who are desperate for unbiased advice on the low light performance of the NEX-7.  It works just fine and the ability to point the onboard flash at the ceiling does make the high ISO thing not too much of an issue.  I haven't had to shoot at ISO16000 in any normal situation in the street or indoors.