How much ISO is sufficient?

[wolfgang]

Hi everyone

I am planning on buying a new dijital camera. The cameras I saw have maximum ISO of 200, 400, 1000, and upconverted 1600. The ones in my budget usually have max ISO of 200,400. I was wondering if this is sufficient enough or is it worth it to pay more for a 1000? And also in the same price range the cameras that have a high ISO (1000) don't have image stabilization, and the ones that do have only have an ISO of 400. Which one is more worth it?

[Ronnoco]

The point is not the maximum ISO, but rather at how high an ISO does the picture noise become unacceptable and severely degrade the photo. Photolab test results from Popular Photography will give you that kind of info.

Ronnoco

[Canuck935]

High ISO noise is something you should definitely consider. Also you have to determine whether or not you need the higher ISO's. For my shooting, ISO 400 is more than enough. My camera does up to ISO 1600, but I've never used it at 1600, and I've used 800 all of twice I think.

[wolfgang]

Thank you both very much for the help, it really helped me a lot I found few sites that have sample pictures for me to compare how much grainy it gets at a certain camera at which ISO.