This morning, “Tuna” the cat went out hunting at 5am. And when she came back at around 7, we wanted to get up anyway to go out for some last grocery shopping. So I turned up the halogen light in the living room, set the ISO in my camera to the highest possible setting of 3200, and took this one of the cat:
Doesn’t look too bad in this reduced “web size”, but if you look at the original, it falls apart a bit. These newer cameras with their Sony sensors definitely have an advantage here.
Nonetheless I decided to take away the upper limit of 800 I set for auto ISO for the moment. It’s better to get a not-so-perfect but still good-enough-for-documentary photo than none at all, hm?
Ok. With the 20mm on the camera again (the upper one was the 45mm), and now with daylight and “only” ISO 800, I took this:
Like yesterdays picture which was also taken with ISO 800, this would make a nice A3 print, while the ISO 3200 one would be good for a postcard maybe. I didn’t change much in that last one, it’s pretty much like straight out of the camera. Both again confirm my thoughts that anything up to ISO 800 is perfectly usable, while anything higher I’d consider “for emergencies”. Which pretty much confirms what DxO think about those sensors (they rate this one with a usable ISO of 487, while they give 889 for the newer E-PL5; see here).
Thanks for viewing.
It gets even more interesting and falls in line with your results if you consider that Olympus ISO, according to DXO mark, are shown on the camera as almost twice the actual sensitivity. In other words: when your PEN says 200 you’re really closer to a “true” ISO of 100. So your 800 result falls right in line with the DXOmark score!
Similarly, I consider the E-M5 and E-PL5 (I have an E-PL5 now) as good to somewhere between 1600 and 3200 and I’ve made larger prints in good light over ISO 3200 but it’s very dependent on subject and lighting and nailing the exposure.
But the E-PL1 work you’re doing shows it can stand tall at in good light. It really is an excellent little camera.
John
Hi John,
thanks for your comment. About the ISO not being “real” ISO: I think there isn’t such a thing, and you cannot compare what the camera producers tell you to consider as, say ISO 100. ctein has written excellent articles about this, and also about what tests don’t tell us and why he considers the OM-D to be really good. See these articles of his:
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/09/why-iso-isnt-iso.html
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/10/raw-is-not-raw.html
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/03/what-tests-dont-tell-you.html
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/11/impressions-of-the-olympus-om-d-part-i.html and
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/11/impressions-of-the-olympus-om-d-part-ii.html
Congrats on your purchase of an additional E-PL5 by the way. Both cameras (OM-D and E-PL5) are on my wish list, tho one would of course be for Mitchie, my wife. But yes, for what I do I can live with the results of the E-PL1, and even the E-520. And since we never printed anything bigger than 30x40cm (about A3), they’re all good. Until…
well one can dream, right? More dynamic range is always better.
Thanks again for your kind words, and should you celebrate it, have a nice Christmas.
And a Frohliche Weinachten to you!
The E-PL5 actually has some features I want in the E-M5. The bracketing now has modes specifically to accomodate HDR (though I try to make it photo realistic) and it allows you to assign positions on the mode dial to “MySet” memories.
For instance, I never use the “Scene” setting on the mode dial so it’s my HDR setup now. I can twist the dial and instantly change the setup! Very desirable!
DXOmark has testing methods to determine a digital camera’s conformance with ISO standards. You can look up their test methodology. It allows them to make better comparisons between cameras and they are really pretty good.
Anyway, thanks and a Happy New Year as well!
John