There were two demonstrations starting at 5.30 in Westminster, so it seemed a good occasion to try out the Nikon D700 at high ISO working with available light, though I also took some flash pictures with the D300.
As the light fell, I started working at ISO 2000, and this shot at 1/60, f4 with the Nikon 20mm f 2.8 is very usable, although my normal Lightroom settings for noise reduction left a little colour noise on 1:1 viewing – easily removed by a small increase in the ‘Color’ setting from 11 to 15. There was also visible luminance noise, improved slightly by increasing the setting for this, although it wasn’t possible to remove it completely.
Most frames taken at 3200 were actually a little cleaner, suggesting that despite shooting on RAW, in-camera noise reduction is kicking in more strongly. Although there is a little noise, the overall quality is remarkable, and these images are fully usable. I wouldn’t anticipate having any problems even with the occasionally rather pernickety quality control on sites such as Alamy. The noise is actually quite attractive – rather like film grain – so long as you remove the colour component.
Here is a picture of two NOTRAG supporters in Whitehall, taken at 18:15, 1/80 f4.5 ISO 3200, again with the 20mm. In fact I suppose it is really at ISO 6400, as to keepthe highlights (except for actual light sources) I had to use a -1 EV exposure bias.
The main technical problem in this picture is not the camera but the colour and quality of the available light. Here’s a 1:1 section from the image
1:1 crop from ISO 3200 image on the D700
There is some noise visible, and a slight lack of detail compared with a low ISO picture, but overall the quality seems very usable. And in the city centre, ISO 3200 lets you shoot hand-held in available light, certainly with wide-angle lenses. Here are a few pictures I took later in the evening.
This last image shows what is now sadly the former Eurostar terminal at Waterloo (St Pancras may be fine for some, but the switch there and the huge sums spent on the high speed line from Kent to there have increased my journey times to Paris by on average 15 minutes.) And it’s a little of a cheat as a hand-held image because I was resting my hand holding the camera on a nice solid wall for the 1/6 second exposure. But the roof detail is great at the left of the picture. Surprisingly for a 20mm image it seems not to have sufficient depth of field to retain sharpness to the end of the structure. So a tripod would have been a good idea, allowing me to stop down and give a longer exposure, and doubtless the lens would also perform a little better stopped down. And it might even have been improved slightly by using a lower ISO.
Flash still has a big advantage in taking portraits in the street at night because of the poor colour spectrum of most street lighting, which makes it impossible to get normal skin tones. But I can see that on the D700 I shall be shooting flash at higher ISO to, to retain more of the surroundings.