Nikon D80 at ISO 2000

[Grandpaw]

I took this this evening of my grandson with my Nikon D80 at ISO 2000 and this is the middle third cropped out of the picture. It is also cut down from 4.54 MB to 227kb in size besides having 2/3 of the picture cropped out, Jeff

[Frog]

looks ok to me.

[starriderrick]

Pretty neat having a grandson...Grandpa. :O)

Rick

[another view]

Looks fine to me too.

Maybe a bit of a rant, but I think people's (not saying yours, Jeff) expectations in general for high ISO are crazy. A few years ago, think about what options you'd have - with film - at this speed. Delta 3200 at 1600 (or 2000) would have given a similar amount of grain/noise, but of course only in b&w. T-Max 3200 even at 1600 would be very grainy (although I thought it looked great, but it was hardly clean) and also b&w. ISO800 color neg films with any amount of underexposure had tons of grain. So, no problems with what's out today with DSLR's. Not at all. And they just keep getting better.

OK, maybe more than just a "bit" of a rant...

[adina]

i love grain/noise. it's my friend.

[Frog]

The posts Jeff made for 1600 made me less fearful of trying it and got some ok results in a building with horrible light so now I'm not so afraid to try it.

[Franglais]

I like grain/noise too. I like the pushing the limits feeling it gives. But that's not the case here. The picture looks normal and sharp and you have to look closely to see noise.

This picture is interesting because it indicates to me that the image processors have made huge progress in only three generations. I didn't realise this till recently

- The generation before this one (the D70) gave you noise at 1600 ISO that you could really see, it was rather like fast film
- This generation (D80/D200) the noise is still there but it's become very discreet
- The current generation (D60/D300) the noise just isn't there any more, I still have a 13x19 inch print done from my D60 at 3200 ISO and it looks really clean

[Grandpaw]

Just thought I would post the original and the crop to be able to look at both, Jeff

[another view]

- The generation before this one (the D70) gave you noise at 1600 ISO that you could really see, it was rather like fast film

My old Fuji S2 was really good in the high-ISO noise department, especially with raw. When the D70 came out, I was really impressed with how much better it was than the S2, and now I'm still pretty happy with my D200. I think our expectations (to generalize) tend to match the latest greatest, especially in terms of this.

What we thought of as good a couple of years ago might not be anymore. That's good in the sense that it keeps the camera design engineers busy, but OTOH I still think the photograph itself is so much more important...