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11-01-2015, 04:55 AM   #1
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Extending ISO range to 80

I thought it fitting to raise this question in a separate thread after a discussion was raised in landscape photography using my k5. Has anyone tried extending the iso range to 80? Is there a significant different in DR from 100 to 80 with your experience? I find it strange that the camera isn't set at this range in default. Is it a true iso, or does the camera tweak the sensor into a false range. I have heard that the native iso for the k5 is 200, but I have always set the camera at 100 obviously for landscape purposes

11-01-2015, 05:09 AM   #2
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QuoteOriginally posted by Mattox Quote
Extending ISO range to 80 I thought it fitting to raise this question in a separate thread after a discussion was raised in landscape photography using my k5. Has anyone tried extending the iso range to 80? Is there a significant different in DR from 100 to 80 with your experience? I find it strange that the camera isn't set at this range in default. Is it a true iso, or does the camera tweak the sensor into a false range. I have heard that the native iso for the k5 is 200, but I have always set the camera at 100 obviously for landscape purposes
I'm pretty sure that the K-5 sensor native ISO is 80. You won't see a difference between ISO 80 and ISO 100 unless you need to pull the darker areas of your images where you might see lightly less noise in the blacks at ISO 80 vs ISO 100. The difference in DR won't be better than 20% ( (100-80)/100 ).
11-01-2015, 06:59 AM   #3
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QuoteOriginally posted by Mattox Quote
I thought it fitting to raise this question in a separate thread after a discussion was raised in landscape photography using my k5. Has anyone tried extending the iso range to 80? Is there a significant different in DR from 100 to 80 with your experience? I find it strange that the camera isn't set at this range in default. Is it a true iso, or does the camera tweak the sensor into a false range. I have heard that the native iso for the k5 is 200, but I have always set the camera at 100 obviously for landscape purposes
See Sensorgen.info data for Pentax K5 Yes ISO 80 is "base" in that the camera is not doing anything odd like underexposing and pulling up.. Yes it can make a difference in that you have more photon capture capacity before saturation. Noise is the same (the difference here is within measurement error likely) and the DR is slightly better. The reasons to use ISO 80 really isn't the slight DR advantage which is pretty much the same as ~ 0.4 of a stop of DR is virtually unnoticeable for almost all cases , its the ability to have a more malleable file. If you shoot JPEG or don't do serious post processing manipulation you likely won't notice any difference between 80 and 100. On the other hand from the information at sensorgen (or DXO) you can see why that as a landscape photographer you want to stay at a low ISO unless you really need to go up. Even though the total noise is decreasing in quantity the percentage of noise to the electron count is increasing as the ISO is halved with each stop increase. And while a 0.4 stop difference between 80 and 100 likely won;t be noticeable to you I think the greater that three stop decrease between 100 and 1600 would be.
11-01-2015, 09:41 AM   #4
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Very interesting. Well that is what I hoped for so....looking forward to sucking the juice out of my k5 in its last days before the FF is released.

I will shoot these landscape shots in 80 from now on, as I tend to shoot at dawn and dusk with long exposures where the landscapes tends to have a lot of shadows to open up, so having that extra DR will help with less noise on those shadows

11-01-2015, 06:20 PM   #5
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I didn't do a scientific research. But when I'm making photos, again and gain I get the feeling that the shots in 80 iso have more dynamic range than the shots in 100 iso. Maybe it's just my subjectieve feeling but I don't care. I use the 80 iso as much as possible. (I'm an archaeological photographer: mostly landscapes, buildings and excavations).
11-01-2015, 07:10 PM   #6
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I haven't seen any significant difference between ISO 80 and ISO 100 on my K-5 II, but I often switch to ISO 80 when I'm in strong sunlight and using a lens wide open such as at f1.8 or even f1.4. That's when the camera starts calculating these astronomical shutter speed values. It does help a little.
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