ISO 6400 is a place where photographers often don’t want to or need to go beyond. But the truth is that for many years now, ISO levels beyond that have been good. The Sony a7s was the first to venture into nuclear high ISO levels — though at the cost of a lot of details. Since we reviewed that camera a decade ago, cameras with more megapixels have become more capable at high ISO levels. I remember the insane details that the Leica SL2 pulled out at ISO 6400 yet remained very clean. But these days, we can safely go beyond that if all we’re doing is keeping the images on screens.
The Phoblographer’s high ISO camera tests involve printing images at ISO 6400 unedited on 17×22 paper or some sort of equivalent size and ISO. Very few cameras are completely clean at this ISO. But we’re also at the point where we’d use cameras at a higher ISO level than this. The Nikon Zf was amongst the first cameras that we’d consider doing this with. When we tested it for street photography, we started to see how good the results were at night.
Recently with the Lumix S5 II, I’ve been using ISO 100,000 in combination with the Real Time LUT feature or Panasonic’s own color settings. It works well and I’m very satisfied. The image noise, while there, can look good in the right settings.
With all this said, ISO is pretty much becoming almost nothing else but a variability. That might’ve been the case for many photographers before, but now it’s really a thing. Shutter speed is pretty much just that for many photographers that only use the electronic shutter. Of course, that just means that people can more or less just let the camera do whatever it wants. But it also means that you as the photographer have a lot more creative possibilites — and that it’s a responsibility of yours to not let those creative muscles go unflexed.
When I was in my teenage years, I used to watch Dragon Ball Z all the time and I’d get really pumped at how strong Goku was. I remember a string of episodes where he’d exercise at many times the force of Earth’s gravity. I knew I’d never be able to do that, but it motivated me to do pushups, situps, etc. That show made me stronger. And in the years after it, I just stopped down pushups and situps every weekday. These days, I’d surely say that I’m stronger because I’m heavier and able to support my own muscles very well. But that’s because I practice and workout consistently. Shooting photos is just like that.
This is why we say that photographers should shoot film — because limitations like that make you realize those limitations. And they force you to make images and be creative. Ultimately, it makes you do things to achieve the final creative vision in any way that you can. When those limitations are removed, you are free to go back and forth between them. But the more brain power that you outsource to a camera, the more you lose those creative muscles.
All of this is being said to make readers realize that even though we can let ISO levels more or less go whereever they will, we should still apply our own sense of creativity to the scenes to see and not look when we’re shooting.
