Originally posted by Wheatfield Absolutely, I'll take it too, for the very few occasions where I find myself shooting in almost total darkness.
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It doesn't have to be total darkness at all.
(Rupert, if you're reading this, I'm going to borrow a link to one of your squirrel shots.)
In the shot below, Rupert did a pretty good job handheld at 500mm, 1/125s, ISO 3200. Noise looks OK, like a modern ISO 3200 in fairly good light.
One wonders how his keeper ratio is at 500mm, 1/125s, handheld, though. I'm a pretty steady shooter, and that would be a problem for me. I imagine I'd blur a good percentage of shots, maybe missing a real great one here and there.
But if he could take that same shot at 1/500s, with the equivalent noise of (current) ISO 400, that would represent a 5 stop improvement in ISO. And that's not a shot of a black cat in a coal mine, it's not a science-fiction scenario, it's just an appropriate shutter speed and a good clean image in a slightly-lower light situation, outdoors.
I don't know about you, but I'm shooting handheld telephoto at those modest EV levels all the time, and I'm also shooting shorter FLs at EVs 3, 2, and 1 quite a bit too - with lots of subject movement. A 4 or 5 stop improvement over current isn't something I'd have any trouble finding a use for on day one.
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Last edited by jsherman999; 05-18-2011 at 10:48 PM.