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M8 and high ISO with the new firmware

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
What can I say other than I am impressed!

I shot the images below in my office right after loading the firmware and setting all my preferences. I find 1250 excellent now, at least when processed in C1. Note that the key here is processing in C1 --- for whatever reason, LR, ACR or Aperture do not appear to handle the noise any better than the they did with the previous firmware. But it is so good now with C1, my new normal preference setting for the M8 is Auto ISO with a 1250 max and 1/30 shutter min. (This is cool in that if you need more, the camera dips below 1/30th and the shutter speed blinks to alert you --- PERFECT set up for the way I shoot when in aperture preferred mode.)

But of course i wanted to see how well 2500 could perform, so I shot a quick snap. The first is the full frame for reference, the next crop is straight out of C1 with NR set to Lum 20, Color 70, the last is that file run through DFine on auto. Note the shadow area in the dark part of the bookcase:









Obviously I need to more testing in a variety of lighting, but I must say this looks *very* promising to me. If I can get a usable ISO 2500 out of my M8 like this, then I may not have any need or a DSLR --- Way cool!

:toocool:,
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
Hey Jack,
That looks encouraging,
Did you try the same shot in the same lighting conditions and processing with a non-upgraded camera?
thanks
-bob
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Hey Jack,
That looks encouraging,
Did you try the same shot in the same lighting conditions and processing with a non-upgraded camera?
thanks
-bob
Of course not. Only thought of it AFTER I had already loaded 2.0... :eek:

But I will say it is incredibly encouraging. I am going to do some "available darkness" shooting tonight and will report back tomorrow. Seriously, this firmware is such a huge improvement that I am really excited over the possibility I will not need to add a "high ISO" DSLR back into my gear cabinet!
 

TRSmith

Subscriber Member
Excellent! It's great to hear some positive reactions to the big L's evolution. I really don't want to buy a DSLR. Every reason not to invest in a new Nikon makes it easier to bank for an entirely different system... like MF.
 

ChrisDauer

Workshop Member
Excellent to hear! Since enough people are raving about the new firmware, I think I'll be downloading it tonight!

-C
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
My only advice is to do one body at a time, then launch it and set up all your new settings and make sure it actually works before loading up your second body --- just in case. :)
 

archiM44

Member
Jack,
I have exactly the same experience.
I now have two different configurations of the AUTO ISO saved as 2 of the 3 user profiles and find that this works perfectly well, one with shutter speed lens dependent and one with a max 2500 ISO and 1/125. Your combination seems good for my third user profile.
I removed Dfine from my intel Mac because I had to run CS3 in rosetta to use it, but looking at your crops it seems to handle the M8 files better than other alternatives.
Maurice
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Good point Maurice. I am thinking my high ISO set-up will be like yours, 60 or 125/2500 to force 2500 sooner, but maybe add the raw + B&W jpeg option for my low-light B&W mode :)
 

woodyspedden

New member
What can I say other than I am impressed!

I shot the images below in my office right after loading the firmware and setting all my preferences. I find 1250 excellent now, at least when processed in C1. Note that the key here is processing in C1 --- for whatever reason, LR, ACR or Aperture do not appear to handle the noise any better than the they did with the previous firmware. But it is so good now with C1, my new normal preference setting for the M8 is Auto ISO with a 1250 max and 1/30 shutter min. (This is cool in that if you need more, the camera dips below 1/30th and the shutter speed blinks to alert you --- PERFECT set up for the way I shoot when in aperture preferred mode.)

But of course i wanted to see how well 2500 could perform, so I shot a quick snap. The first is the full frame for reference, the next crop is straight out of C1 with NR set to Lum 20, Color 70, the last is that file run through DFine on auto. Note the shadow area in the dark part of the bookcase:









Obviously I need to more testing in a variety of lighting, but I must say this looks *very* promising to me. If I can get a usable ISO 2500 out of my M8 like this, then I may not have any need or a DSLR --- Way cool!

:toocool:,
Hey Jack

Is that a Vida Blue baseball in the case? Awesome

Woody
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Chuck: It's a long story on the burrow, will fill you in over a few shots of tequila next time we're together :)
 

archiM44

Member
Jack,
Thanks to your post I logged in to NIK software, upgraded to Dfine 2 (aperture and cs3) and find this to be a wonderful and flexible noise reduction program.
Thanks again
Maurice
 
3

35mmSummicron

Guest
Jack,

I would be interested to see your experiences shooting the new FW in darker lighting conditions.

to me it seems that 1250ISO is acceptable as long as lighting is good. But shadows and darker tones are VERY noisy (hence, shooting in the dark), to the point where I do not see any difference from previous firmware.

I am a longtime C1 user dating back to their original LightPhase 6mp back, and have had an M8 for 2 years. I long for better high ISO performence from the M8, but with respect, I'm not totally convinced this new FW is offering it.

andy
 

Riley

New member
gotta say that looks ok
ive watched M8 improve now for some years, and its very pleasing to see it come up on-song in iso performance. I would suspect that shooting to the right would probably help somewhat, and where M8 may have the capacity to cope with that pretty well.

I know by my E3, that underexposing/shooting to the left is going to accelerate the amount of noise i have to deal with, but unfortunately the DR curve isnt so helpful, in that it will easily blow the highlights in unevenly lit scenes. if M8 has more latitude in these circumstances, brother you have it made...
 

etrigan63

Active member
Jack,
I have exactly the same experience.
I now have two different configurations of the AUTO ISO saved as 2 of the 3 user profiles and find that this works perfectly well, one with shutter speed lens dependent and one with a max 2500 ISO and 1/125. Your combination seems good for my third user profile.
I removed Dfine from my intel Mac because I had to run CS3 in rosetta to use it, but looking at your crops it seems to handle the M8 files better than other alternatives.
Maurice
Dfine is now available as an Aperture plug-in, Maurice. BTW, I was doing some High ISO tests myself and found that Bibble Pro 4 does a kickass job as well with the new firmware. Will post some samples tonight.
 

robertwright

New member
Jack,

I would be interested to see your experiences shooting the new FW in darker lighting conditions.

to me it seems that 1250ISO is acceptable as long as lighting is good. But shadows and darker tones are VERY noisy (hence, shooting in the dark), to the point where I do not see any difference from previous firmware.

I am a longtime C1 user dating back to their original LightPhase 6mp back, and have had an M8 for 2 years. I long for better high ISO performence from the M8, but with respect, I'm not totally convinced this new FW is offering it.

andy
I agree it is an EV thing. 1250 is great at higher EV's, (try it in daylight, nice texture) there is a point going down where it is not so great. Even if we are talking about "good" exposures, ie; in a dark room with bright areas, you can have a "good" exposure in the light but the rest of the picture will exhibit banding (2500 mostly) and noise. I get these blue flecks which are very hard to deal with, except obviously in bw.

you could fashion a test to figure this out. it is simply at a certain point the signal to noise ratio is such that the noise is apparent. The example here looks acceptable in the shadow of the bookcase, but the EV overall is still high (2500 1/125 5.6 is just 320 1/60 2.8, not exactly available darkness) in comparison to where we usually break out the 1250.

...just sayin...

but C1 is really the only way to go here, Lr can't match this.
 

woodyspedden

New member
Dfine is now available as an Aperture plug-in, Maurice. BTW, I was doing some High ISO tests myself and found that Bibble Pro 4 does a kickass job as well with the new firmware. Will post some samples tonight.
Carlos

As I am sure you already know, Bibble is releasing version 5 of Bibble Pro in October. They really do make a wonderful converter. Wish they would support medium format files as well.

Woody
 

fotografz

Well-known member
Looked good in my nicely lit studio also. Didn't look so good at a wedding I shot in low light. D700 kicked it's ass. : -(
 
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