K-7 6400iso ?

[eva2000]

Been searching everywhere and can't find info on enabling 6400ISO on K-7 menu system ? Anyone care to show me the way ?

thanks

George

[kittykat46]

Originally Posted by eva2000

Been searching everywhere and can't find info on enabling 6400ISO on K-7 menu system ? Anyone care to show me the way ?

thanks

George

Its on Custom Setting Menu 1 - Item 3 - "Expanded Sensitivity" - set it to On for ISO 6400.

[eva2000]

thanks kittykat, found it

[krs]

I would be interested in seeing some pictures at this setting!

[kittykat46]

ISO 6400 is strictly for "In case of Emergency Break Glass" - where the alternative is no handheld photo at all.
I'll try to cull a few presentable ones to post.

The only way I would use it would be
- Shrink it down to 2 MP or less.
- Turn on "Strong" Noise Reduction in-camera or Post process
- Expose to The Right i.e. setting compensation about +0.7 E/V will visibly reduce the noise
- Shooting in RAW helps a bit.
- Convert to Black & W. The B&W grain looks like High-ISO film

Its still quite amazing - you can shoot in lighting that's too dark to see any details, which means the camera is capturing details which human eyes cannot.

[mattdm]

Originally Posted by kittykat46

ISO 6400 is strictly for "In case of Emergency Break Glass" - where the alternative is no handheld photo at all.
I'll try to cull a few presentable ones to post.

The only way I would use it would be
- Shrink it down to 2 MP or less.
- Turn on "Strong" Noise Reduction in-camera or Post process
- Expose to The Right i.e. setting compensation about +0.7 E/V will visibly reduce the noise
- Shooting in RAW helps a bit.
- Convert to Black & W. The B&W grain looks like High-ISO film

Its still quite amazing - you can shoot in lighting that's too dark to see any details, which means the camera is capturing details which human eyes cannot.

I was playing with this last night in a poorly-lit indoor setting where I couldn't use flash. I agree with the advice to convert to B&W, but disagree with some of the above — there's actual detail there, so leave it at 14mpix, and turn noise reduction completely off to emphasize the grain-like appearance rather than smear it away. It also helps to use the green or red "filter" setting in the B&W mode, because the ugliest noise is in the blue channel.

The file select dialog box in Fedora Rawhide is broken right now (long story) so I can't easily upload attachments, but I'll add some here soon. I took one at EV -1 and then pushed it two stops in in-camera RAW development (because it came out a little dark yet) that I'm pretty happy with. I'd say the results exceed what I get shooting Ilford Delta 3200 with my K1000 as developed and scanned by the local camera store.

[kittykat46]

Just a couple of ISO 6400 examples, no artistic merit attempted

Taken in dim light, High ISO NR off. Exif still intact - f/4.0 (Slow lens DA 50-200mm) and shutter 1/40 secs.



I don't quite like the noise in the dark areas, but it looks quite OK in the well-exposed areas.
100% Crop - a lot of detail still in the photo, but the noise is very obvious.

Just as an aside, I had never found the DA 50-200mm to be a good low-light lens, but thanks to the K-7 fast low-light AF , excellent AWB and good High-ISO handling, its now quite usable in low-light.