# What will be the standard high ISO levels 6 to 8 years from now?



## pedro (Sep 1, 2012)

Hi,
Just picked up the 5D3 this week and got some time to fiddle with it last night.
Upgrading from a 30D I am overwhelmed by the results as I went for the high ISOs 6.4k-102.4k!

*a) My first impression:* 
The 5d3 vs the 30D delievers about 4 stops better high ISOs in RAW, which to me is a huge step!
51.2k without NR still seems to look better than ISO 3200 on a 30D, both exposed to the right.
ISO 12800 is a no brainer now! Even without NR, if well exposed.
Even a 102.4k image is kind of "doable", although with some heavy NR, but I am geared toward Robert Capa and Robert Frank Style photography, so there is no problem with some noise for me. I do everything in DPP and convert b/ws using an old CS2.
The 5D3 is absolutely worth its money from my point of view and a tremendous camera!

Therefore:
*b) What will be the standard high ISO level after the 2 next bodycycles of the 1 and 5 series?*
Is it likely, that my extended ISO 102.4k will be the ISO 12.800 or 25600 6-8 years from now, then we would talk about extended ISOs on a 5Dwhatever up to H1 204.8 (like 1Dx now) and H2 409.6k
A 1Dwhatever would even break the million mark by then going up as high as ISO 1.638.400!
Whoever will benefit from such a high ISO... 
Does all that seem likely according to porbable upcoming sensor tech improvements or is that too much of wishful thinking?

I am not too much into tech. So, what do you think? Any corrections and contrary/more realistic input is highly appreciated.

Anyway, the 5D3 rocks! 8)
Cheers, Pedro


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## sandymandy (Sep 1, 2012)

Hopefully ISO wont go higher but will deliver better quality


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## pedro (Sep 1, 2012)

Oh yeah. That's a good argument. So, let's hope for a RAW ISO 51.2k/102.4k equivalent to the 25.6k today, within the next eight years. As the 1Dx due to its 18MP stands about 1 stop above the 5D3 at 22MP. This could seem quite likely to be reached. Either way, I love my 5D3. 8)


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## canon816 (Sep 1, 2012)

If we are going to see a revolution in high iso improvement then we are going to need some new sensor technology, especially if we want to see higher megapixel cameras. 

With current tech less is better in the MP battle in regards to high iso. Nikon D3s is still the best out there and only has 10mp. 

Without a breakthrough in sensor tech we probably will only see marginal improvements in high iso noise performance. 

One thing I will add is that it's not all about noise at high iso. Resolution is a big part of it. While my 5diii is not much better at noise then my 5dii or 1div, the detail retention is far better. This allows me to have better noise management when I push the iso.


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## pedro (Sep 1, 2012)

canon816 said:


> If we are going to see a revolution in high iso improvement then we are going to need some new sensor technology, especially if we want to see higher megapixel cameras.
> 
> With current tech less is better in the MP battle in regards to high iso. Nikon D3s is still the best out there and only has 10mp.
> 
> ...


Detail retention is paramount. Good point. BTW My impressions about my first test shots are based on MRAWs. As my PC is kinda old. So I only go for full resolution if needed (e.g. nightsky) Therefore my conclusions might be slightly biased. So we may just hope that within the next two (second seems more likely) Canon deliever new sensor tech. Or at last, an improved design according to the 1Dx sensor.


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## M.ST (Sep 1, 2012)

I only use ISO´s from ISO 50 to ISO 3200. To 90 percent in the range ISO 50 to ISO 400.


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## Rienzphotoz (Sep 1, 2012)

Don't know what will be the standard for high ISO levels in 6 to 8 years from now ... 8 years from now if we can get ISO 52100 to give the same results as ISO 100 than that wold be AWESOME ... wishful thinking? or possibility? only time will tell.


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## elflord (Sep 1, 2012)

pedro said:


> Hi,
> Just picked up the 5D3 this week and got some time to fiddle with it last night.
> Upgrading from a 30D I am overwhelmed by the results as I went for the high ISOs 6.4k-102.4k!
> 
> ...



It seems that any new camera body is two stops better than the previous one, but these "improvements" don't apply additively (e.g. 3 generations of camera doesn't bring a 6 stop improvement). 

More realistically, DxOMark shows the 5DIII as about 2 stops better than the 30D. The 5DIII gets an extra 4/3 of a stop because of the larger full frame sensor, so technology has only moved by about 2/3 of a stop. 

If it were the case that technology has really improved by 1.5 stops or more, the new APS-C bodies would have better image quality than the 5DC. 

So to answer your question, I'd say 6 years from now, another 2/3 of a stop improvement in ISO performance. In terms of how much ISO can be turned up, it wouldn't surprise me if you can more or less turn it up as high as you want.


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## Fotofanten (Sep 1, 2012)

I would much rather see ISO 25 and less, without any loss in highlight range.


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## Rienzphotoz (Sep 1, 2012)

Fotofanten said:


> I would much rather see ISO 25 and less, without any loss in highlight range.


Hmm, interesting!


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## pedro (Sep 1, 2012)

elflord said:


> pedro said:
> 
> 
> > Hi,
> ...


So in terms of real improvement, this would at least give us almost ISO 51k equivelant to today's ISO 25.600. This being the new "native" ISO range, 4 to 6 years frow now, would be very impressive! According this pace an 1Dxish body by then will have a probable extension to insane ISO 408k, or as it was stated abe, have nicely improved ISO 204k. Time surely will tell.


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## Rienzphotoz (Sep 1, 2012)

pedro said:


> So in terms of real improvement, this would at least give us an almost 51kish ISO 25.600. So, this might be declared as the new "native" ISO range, 6 years frow now, which would still be very impressive!


Despite all our "oh I wish I had that feature" comments, the current technology itself is already awesome ... imagine what an Ansel Adams would have done with the current cameras/lenses ... who knows 6 - 8 years from now there could be some very revolutionary advancements that could very well surprise us.


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## pedro (Sep 1, 2012)

*
"Despite all our "oh I wish I had that feature" comments, the current technology itself is already awesome ... imagine what an Ansel Adams would have done with the current cameras/lenses ... who knows 6 - 8 years from now there could be some very revolutionary advancements that could very well surprise us."[/quote]*
Yes. And as I stated: I am absolutely crazy, about the capacity of this cam. Due to rain over here, I cannot go out to do nightskyphotography. This is the next step at ISO 6400 and 12800. 8)


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## CharlieB (Sep 1, 2012)

Spoiled we are, indeed......

We've got ten stops (or more) of digital ISO range, and we're not satisfied.

What happened to the days of "choose between Panatomic-X through Tri-X", with the odd roll of 2475 thrown in at an amazingly granular ISO of about 1000 (or maybe 1600 pushed a bit). Rating Pan-X at ISO 12-16 was not uncommon to get some decent shadow detail. So, jumping through hoops we had 8 stops of ISO. Normally, we'd be at ISOs (or back then ASAs) of 32, 125, and 400 - thats it.

Sensors will improve. Six years ago todays sensors could not be imagined. They tricked the actual sensors, the tricked the optical component of the sensors (microlenses), and tricked the firmware, and will no doubt trick and tweak and evolve and invent improved technology as time marches on.


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## pedro (Sep 1, 2012)

@CharlieB: I used to shoot the Tri-X Pan back in 1982 with my contax 139 Quartz. And it was awesome. Always was in the low light-high ISO camp. That's why I went 5D3 now. And that is plenty of camera for me! Yes, we are spoiled, therefore looking back to the filmdays gets things in relation to real world situations...Good point


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## Rienzphotoz (Sep 1, 2012)

pedro said:


> Yes. And as I stated: I am absolutely crazy, about the capacity of this cam.


Me too ... my wife keeps telling me that I act like an excited kid when I buy a new camera or lens. I don't think even my kids get as excited as I do when they get new stuff. 
What a joy it is to be a photographer (hobbyist or pro), we enjoy what we do ... the images, we take, make us happy ... I think technically we should live longer than the rest because we a happy bunch of people. 
But once in a while, the camera/lens manufactures destroy my happiness by introducing some really neat toys, than all of a sudden we are not as happy with our gear, until I get the new toy ... once I order it online, the anxiousness of waiting for that new toy (in my case my 5D MK III) almost kills me ... then I start thinking, maybe I won't live as long as I thought as I did. ;D


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## Rienzphotoz (Sep 1, 2012)

CharlieB said:


> Spoiled we are, indeed......
> 
> We've got ten stops (or more) of digital ISO range, and we're not satisfied.
> 
> ...


I agree


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## Ryan708 (Sep 1, 2012)

Fotofanten said:


> I would much rather see ISO 25 and less, without any loss in highlight range.



I wish we had better acess to very low ISO's as well. I would have a lot of use for ISO 10 for creatuve shooting on brighter days. Even with my ND and polarizing filter on I want a lower ISO often


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## Rienzphotoz (Sep 1, 2012)

pedro said:


> @CharlieB: I used to shoot the Tri-X Pan back in 1982 with my contax 139 Quartz. And it was awesome. Always was in the low light-high ISO camp. That's why I went 5D3 now. And that is plenty of camera for me! Yes, we are spoiled, therefore looking back to the filmdays gets things in relation to real world situations...Good point


I didn't even hold a camera in 1982 let alone own one ... back in 1982 if someone were to ask me "what is an f stop?", I would've thought it is some new bus top  ... I actually touched a camera for the first time in 1985 and fell in love. But coming to the point of spoiled, yes we are ... I've seen some of the SLR cameras of 70s & 80s they were small but I haven't heard anyone complain about their size ... now people hold a 650D & D3200 DSLRs and complain that they are "tiny", as if these people are the size of Hagrid of Hogwarts.


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## Rienzphotoz (Sep 1, 2012)

Ryan708 said:


> I wish we had better acess to very low ISO's as well. I would have a lot of use for ISO 10 for creatuve shooting on brighter days. Even with my ND and polarizing filter on I want a lower ISO often


ISO 10? ... WOW!


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## pedro (Sep 1, 2012)

Rienzphotoz said:


> pedro said:
> 
> 
> > @CharlieB: I used to shoot the Tri-X Pan back in 1982 with my contax 139 Quartz. And it was awesome. Always was in the low light-high ISO camp. That's why I went 5D3 now. And that is plenty of camera for me! Yes, we are spoiled, therefore looking back to the filmdays gets things in relation to real world situations...Good point
> ...



LOL...Just realized after posting this, that the shutter of my first DSLR finally ceased to work after 18-19 years (!). But by then by 2001, I didn't realize what the cause for it was... : So by 2002/03 I went digital buying a Sony DSC-P 30 (?), a 3.2 MP cam. I took about 50.000 pictures before it retired. By 2005 I bought a Sony DSC-F 828. Only to break it within a year while slipping off on ice. About a year later I went back to DSLRs via 30D and so, here we are again, going FF after 30 years...Awesome.


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## canon816 (Sep 1, 2012)

CharlieB said:


> Spoiled we are, indeed......
> 
> We've got ten stops (or more) of digital ISO range, and we're not satisfied.



Am I spoiled? Maybe
Am I not satisfied? Quite the contrary... I'm extremely satisfied
Am Looking forward to whats next? Definately

For me... more features + better technology = more fun. ;D


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## Rienzphotoz (Sep 1, 2012)

canon816 said:


> CharlieB said:
> 
> 
> > Spoiled we are, indeed......
> ...


Yup ... fun it surely is!


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## pakosouthpark (Sep 1, 2012)

Ryan708 said:


> Fotofanten said:
> 
> 
> > I would much rather see ISO 25 and less, without any loss in highlight range.
> ...



indeed that would be really cool! long exposures during the day!


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Sep 1, 2012)

Fotofanten said:


> I would much rather see ISO 25 and less, without any loss in highlight range.


Thats easy to do with a ND filter. Unfortunately, there is no filter to increase light sensitivity.


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## keithfullermusic (Sep 2, 2012)

For low ISOs I would assume that cameras might start having built in nd filters like the canon video cameras instead of lowering the ISO.

For high ISO I wouldn't be shocked if stuff started look amazing all the way up to 25,000 and still useable up to 200,000+


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Sep 2, 2012)

Getting the quantum efficience much higher is going to be difficult. The big issue with the high ISO's is the noise. Removing it also removes detail, and at very high ISO's, noise drownds out much of the detail.
There are many tricks that can work around noise but require a lot of processor power. As processors get more powerful, we will see reduced noise and some of the other tricks being used. However, short of a technical breakthru, sensors are onl going to improve in small increments.


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## TAF (Sep 2, 2012)

_Therefore:
*b) What will be the standard high ISO level after the 2 next bodycycles of the 1 and 5 series?*
Is it likely, that my extended ISO 102.4k will be the ISO 12.800 or 25600 6-8 years from now, then we would talk about extended ISOs on a 5Dwhatever up to H1 204.8 (like 1Dx now) and H2 409.6k
A 1Dwhatever would even break the million mark by then going up as high as ISO 1.638.400!
Whoever will benefit from such a high ISO... _


We are approaching the point where the camera records more than the eye can see.

If you follow the link (I can't seem to get the actual imagine to imbed), you'll find a section from a shot I took with my new 5D3 out the living room window in the dark of night, handheld, at 102K. Nothing terribly interesting (and rather noisy, although as someone who used 2475 Recording film for years, I don't find it objectionable) unless I tell you that the gap between the tree and bush seen on the left side of the photo was _not visible_ to the naked eye.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/7909554934#

I hope they put more effort put into improvement in noise and IQ than ISO for a while before continuing to ever more sensitive sensors (which I also look forward to...we're almost to night vision; I look forward to full daylight regardless of the available light level).

_More realistically, DxOMark shows the 5DIII as about 2 stops better than the 30D. The 5DIII gets an extra 4/3 of a stop because of the larger full frame sensor, so technology has only moved by about 2/3 of a stop. _

That doesn't seem right; if that's really what DxOMark shows, then it isn't as credible a tool as it is given credit for.


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## cpsico (Sep 2, 2012)

pedro said:


> *
> "Despite all our "oh I wish I had that feature" comments, the current technology itself is already awesome ... imagine what an Ansel Adams would have done with the current cameras/lenses ... who knows 6 - 8 years from now there could be some very revolutionary advancements that could very well surprise us."[/quote]*
> Yes. And as I stated: I am absolutely crazy, about the capacity of this cam. Due to rain over here, I cannot go out to do nightskyphotography. This is the next step at ISO 6400 and 12800. 8)


If memory serves me correct, angel Adams didn't even use the top tech of his hey day. You dont need to spend tens of thousands to take a creative picture


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## bdunbar79 (Sep 2, 2012)

cpsico said:


> pedro said:
> 
> 
> > *
> ...



No, but I'm taking pictures now that I couldn't have taken just 3 months ago. So nice to be able to leave your shutter speed at 1/2000 at night at a football game and not have to open up wide. So nice.


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## Policar (Sep 2, 2012)

bdunbar79 said:


> cpsico said:
> 
> 
> > pedro said:
> ...



I think that's exactly the trajectory we're following. 8x10 still beats any digital capture; if Adams were shooting today (who am I to speculate? whatever...) I think he'd still be shooting 8x10 or with a tech camera and MFDB, but would be using photoshop and possibly stitching, hdr, etc. 

Cameras aren't getting better at taking pictures under controlled circumstances...view cameras are still better at super high quality landscape and studio stuff. But in terms of shooting photos under bad circumstances (low light, fast fps, etc.) progress is incredible.

I think we'll be seeing more of a shift toward photography and video coming together. Super high speed with pixel binning, 24fps full frame, pellicle mirrors, etc. I would like to see lower read noise on Canon sensors and a better body for tilt/shift work to replace a view camera...but that's unlikely. The shift from strong bayer filter arrays with RGB to some sort of orange/green/blue thing that's more light sensitive but less color accurate explicates the trend pretty clearly: IQ isn't what's getting better, flexibility is where we're going.

I don't think high ISO will improve that much since we're reaching the limits, but read noise and highlight rendering are huge. After working with Alexa footage I can't believe how bad the clippy 5D III seems, particularly in video but also for stills--rough highlights and bad noise patterns.


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## 87vr6 (Sep 2, 2012)

ISO? Where we're going we don't need ISO...


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## pwp (Sep 2, 2012)

Wouldn't it be nice if "Moore's Law" applied to iso performance? It sort of does up to a point already...

The marketing departments at Canon & Nikon and the rest would be putting pressure on their respective R&D departments to give them a "bigger number" iso setting to trump the opposition. I think the high end will keep pushing out a few more stops. Wouldn't the marketing dudes love to pitch a million iso Rebel? Just a few years ago 102,400iso seemed just as ludicrous as a million looks today. 

On my 1D Mk2n 3200iso was reaching into degraded and professionally compromising territory, for emergency use only. Compare that to a 1DX where 6400iso is the "new" 400iso. Up at the stratospheric level, I'd expect to see the six figure iso settings become entirely usable for day to day work with acceptable noise levels and useful DR. 

At some point it's going to plateau out, but we're in the middle of a high iso revolution, so expect developments that would have been science fiction just a few short years ago.

-PW


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 2, 2012)

pedro said:


> Hi,
> Just picked up the 5D3 this week and got some time to fiddle with it last night.
> Upgrading from a 30D I am overwhelmed by the results as I went for the high ISOs 6.4k-102.4k!
> 
> ...



I think you may be slightly overdoing the progress that has been made since 30D but yeah 5D3 is surely better absolutely no doubt.

Sadly, they are pretty close to the theoretical limit for any sort of tech close to what they are using and even with some crazy tech there actually isn't that much farther to go. So I wouldn't at all expect what you are hoping for.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 2, 2012)

Rienzphotoz said:


> Don't know what will be the standard for high ISO levels in 6 to 8 years from now ... 8 years from now if we can get ISO 52100 to give the same results as ISO 100 than that wold be AWESOME ... wishful thinking? or possibility? only time will tell.



wishful thinking, not possible even with best possible technology 

don't forget that light itself is noisy, even if you captured 100% of all of it 100% perfectly with no losses for color filters or anything at all you'd still not get ISO51200 anything like ISO100 of today because the cameras are already so good at this point, something like 50% basic efficiency already.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 2, 2012)

Where canon does have room to improve many stops is actually at low ISO for dynamic range. They have room to become many stops better in that regard. Nikon/SONY have already largely accomplished that. But at high ISO, as I said, Canon/Nikon are already doing amazingly well, just not too much room for them to get all that much better, basically a single reasonably noticeable nice jump better and that is likely it forever in that regard (unless they go even larger than FF).


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## agierke (Sep 2, 2012)

i shoot alot of weddings and events so you would think that i would be in favor of even higher ISOs but i am actually not....

noise aside, bad light is bad light....higher ISOs will let you get good exposures in very low light but more often than not the quality of light is horrendous. because of this, i always use a Speedlight bounced behind or to the side WITH a radioed strobe head bouncing to bring up the room light. that way i can dial in the quality of light i want and i typically dont go past ISO 2000 with this method. usually i am running between 800 and 1600 and dragging shutter to bleed in any ambient.

i can foresee a High ISO frenzy developing where quality of light considerations are abandoned simply due to the novelty of being able to shoot a ridiculously high ISO. just because you can doesnt always mean you should kinda thing.

dynamic range (only to a slight degree) and better quality ISOs in their current range are much more interesting notions to me than simply "How high can we go?"


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## kaihp (Sep 2, 2012)

pwp said:


> Wouldn't it be nice if "Moore's Law" applied to iso performance? It sort of does up to a point already...


When it comes to sensor/ISO performance, it's rather Amdahl's Law than Moore's Law that applies.

Essentially Amdahl's law is the law of diminishing returns applied to parallel computer performance, while Moore's Law dictates exponential grow (of number of transistors on a single integrated circuit).


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## Rienzphotoz (Sep 2, 2012)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> Rienzphotoz said:
> 
> 
> > Don't know what will be the standard for high ISO levels in 6 to 8 years from now ... 8 years from now if we can get ISO 52100 to give the same results as ISO 100 than that wold be AWESOME ... wishful thinking? or possibility? only time will tell.
> ...


You just murdered my dream ;D


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## Marsu42 (Sep 2, 2012)

pedro said:


> Whoever will benefit from such a high ISO...



I think there will be a significant iso gain in the future, that's because Canon cut IS from their new 24-70ii - and that lens is designed to be sold for a long time to come as it's their new "standard" zoom. And the Canon techs will have more knowledge of future possibilities than us mere mortals.


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## And-Rew (Sep 2, 2012)

I suspect this situation will be down to what the R&D/ Marketing bods consider to be the most important feature for that time.

At one time, it was all about fps, AF and/ or megapixels. Now it seems to be about IQ, DR and ISO.

Without a doubt, the current 61pt AF seems to have satisfied most people - and most are happy with the 18-22mp range (note i said 'most' not 'all').

DR, IQ and ISO seem to be very much about the capabilities of the sensor combined with the light processing software used with the sensors. 

The ability to improve the sensitivity of a sensor seems almost a given, working on how technology seems to improve. So, that would imply that the software needed to maximise the effectiveness of the newer sensor technology will be the guiding factor.

Will we see ISO listed at 408k or even 816k? I think we will - as H1 & H2 settings on the current 1D series model(s), because ultimately - for some strange reason - a whole load of people seem to want the ability to photograph a black cat in a coal cellar without a tripod or flash.

I like to push the ISO envelope as much as the next person (having spent most of my life doing shift work and using a camera at 3am frequently), but even in film days I found I could push a roll of 3200 to 12800 and hand hold at 1/60th second without too much effort. ISO 6400 on the 5D2 produced a much more acceptable image noise/ grain wise and with the IS on some of the lenses, allowed me to shoot as slow as 1/20th hand held.

So I'm more than happy with what is currently available - but I wouldn't complain if I were offered more


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## Rienzphotoz (Sep 2, 2012)

Marsu42 said:


> pedro said:
> 
> 
> > Whoever will benefit from such a high ISO...
> ...


Interesting view point ... could very well be true.


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## dr croubie (Sep 2, 2012)

Policar said:


> I think that's exactly the trajectory we're following. 8x10 still beats any digital capture



Interesting you should say that.
Read this, it pretty much says the opposite (although yes, 8*10 doesn't cost more than a car). Seems the biggest problems are in the lenses, LF just doesn't resolve as much as MF or FF lenses. But if that's all you can get, that's what you have to compare...


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## Viggo (Sep 2, 2012)

Rienzphotoz said:


> Fotofanten said:
> 
> 
> > I would much rather see ISO 25 and less, without any loss in highlight range.
> ...



+1000 I've been thinking that for quite a while now. To use my large apertures in any light would be great. shoot at 1,2 and the 1/8000s goes out pretty quickly and to fiddle with ND's craps out the VF and focus. I have NEVEREVER used above ISO 25600, and that was only to test it out, 12800 is more than enough for me, and that leaves 4 stops available iso on my 1d. I would very much like to trade those in to have iso 3 ;D


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## pedro (Sep 2, 2012)

TAF said:


> _Therefore:
> *b) What will be the standard high ISO level after the 2 next bodycycles of the 1 and 5 series?*
> Is it likely, that my extended ISO 102.4k will be the ISO 12.800 or 25600 6-8 years from now, then we would talk about extended ISOs on a 5Dwhatever up to H1 204.8 (like 1Dx now) and H2 409.6k
> A 1Dwhatever would even break the million mark by then going up as high as ISO 1.638.400!
> ...


Good points here. Quality improvement at high ISOs is paramount. If improvement manages to produce 25600ish ISO 102k within 6-8 years, that'd be great.


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## pedro (Sep 2, 2012)

And-Rew said:


> I suspect this situation will be down to what the R&D/ Marketing bods consider to be the most important feature for that time.
> 
> At one time, it was all about fps, AF and/ or megapixels. Now it seems to be about IQ, DR and ISO.
> 
> ...


soulmate. 8) I'm coming from film days as well. Had a Contax 139 Quartz back in 1982 and later on a short flirt with a Zenza Bronica 6x6. ISO 400 on it looked awesome, and yes I dared to push Tri-x pan to let's say ISO 1600 or 3200. I'm a black cat in a dark cellar type of photographer...The kick lies right there...So I am looking forward to much more improved ISOs in today's range by 2018 and the one or maybe even the other additional H1 and H2-stop... :


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## elflord (Sep 3, 2012)

pwp said:


> Wouldn't it be nice if "Moore's Law" applied to iso performance? It sort of does up to a point already...



"Stops" are a log scale -- if performance goes up by 1 stop every N years, that is an exponential trajectory. 

This does seem to be how it is working -- sensor performance is going up by maybe about a stop every 5-7 years.


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## jrista (Sep 3, 2012)

To the OP, if we take a look at Sensorgen.info data on quantum efficiency, we see it increases about 7-8% for every additional stop of ISO. If we follow that trend, assuming Canon can keep increasing Q.E. by about 8% per stop of ISO, and if they can maintain the rate of Q.E. improvement of 16% per 4.5-year cycle...then every 4.5 years we should see two more ISO levels. That would put the next generation at a native ISO 102400 on a sensor with about 57% Q.E. for the 5D IV, and if current statistics hold true, a native ISO of 204800 with about 60% Q.E. for the 1D XI.

Now, the real question is how usable that ISO will be. I am not sure a sustained linear increase of 8% per stop is really going to make an ISO 204800 usable. It'll be better than a digital boost ISO, but dynamic range is going to severely suffer and noise will still be horrendous. I would suspect that we won't see usable ISO 204800 until we are in the 80% Q.E. range, which would greatly improve S/N ratios even in the shadows. I don't know if we can really achieve that level of efficiency in a consumer-grade device, though...to date, its always required far more rigorous constraints on manufacturing quality, and usually requires some kind of active/thermoelectric cooling. Sony Exmor technology, combined with a backilluminated sensor and...really for honest usability...ungodly fast lenses...might make it a possibility. Either way...that would put usable ISO 204800 a good 8-10 years away at the earliest, or about two to two and a half product cycles.


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## Andy_Hodapp (Sep 3, 2012)

Fotofanten said:


> I would much rather see ISO 25 and less, without any loss in highlight range.



YES, I do like having ISO 12,800 on my T1i but all the time a need slower ISO speeds either so I can shoot wider open or have longer exposures for waterfalls. I know you can use ND filters but they can be annoying and even at ISO 100 I would like the images to be cleaner.


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## keithfullermusic (Sep 3, 2012)

i'm not sure why people keep saying super high ISOs like 200K that will will look good won't be possible. I'm sure there are advances in science and technology that none of us have any idea about. they just made a camera that can capture light moving, and i bet everyone would have said that no way will that ever happen like a year ago.

i seriously doubt that anyone here is an optical engineering expert with a multi-billion dollar firm to back our research, so its hard to take any argument (including my own) seriously.

I know its fun to guess, and i understand that people are making valid points, but the honest-to-goodness truth is that no one here knows nuthin'.


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## Marsu42 (Sep 3, 2012)

jrista said:


> Either way...that would put usable ISO 204800 a good 8-10 years away at the earliest, or about two to two and a half product cycles.



Btw: "usable" is very vague, because the dynamic range decreases with higher iso speeds. So even if the noise is still acceptable, with the current models you can get blown out highlights much faster. Happened yesterday to me when using the 60d @iso3200 for action shots in bright sunlight and hard shadows, even 100% recovery in Lightroom doesn't help all the time. Last not least, color rendition gets worse, too.


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## pedro (Sep 3, 2012)

jrista said:


> To the OP, if we take a look at Sensorgen.info data on quantum efficiency, we see it increases about 7-8% for every additional stop of ISO. If we follow that trend, assuming Canon can keep increasing Q.E. by about 8% per stop of ISO, and if they can maintain the rate of Q.E. improvement of 16% per 4.5-year cycle...then every 4.5 years we should see two more ISO levels. That would put the next generation at a native ISO 102400 on a sensor with about 57% Q.E. for the 5D IV, and if current statistics hold true, a native ISO of 204800 with about 60% Q.E. for the 1D XI.
> 
> Now, the real question is how usable that ISO will be. I am not sure a sustained linear increase of 8% per stop is really going to make an ISO 204800 usable. It'll be better than a digital boost ISO, but dynamic range is going to severely suffer and noise will still be horrendous. I would suspect that we won't see usable ISO 204800 until we are in the 80% Q.E. range, which would greatly improve S/N ratios even in the shadows. I don't know if we can really achieve that level of efficiency in a consumer-grade device, though...to date, its always required far more rigorous constraints on manufacturing quality, and usually requires some kind of active/thermoelectric cooling. Sony Exmor technology, combined with a backilluminated sensor and...really for honest usability...ungodly fast lenses...might make it a possibility. Either way...that would put usable ISO 204800 a good 8-10 years away at the earliest, or about two to two and a half product cycles.


*@jrista: *Thanks for your insightful comment. It seems like I was "intuitively" on track. As said earlier...If ISO 102k within the next 6 to 8 years gets improved in quality according to your post, it will be a big leap for every photographer. Fiddling with my 51 k and 102k these days I'd be even happy with some 25.6kish ISO 51200 about 6 years from now. It would be about a 2/3or one stop improvement, which I would highly appreciate. I guess it depends on one's type of photography. Coming fromTri-X pan film days, gearing towards Robert Frank and Robert Capa style, I feel pretty happy even at nowadays 51k on my 5D3. The 1Dx, as its said to be one stop better due to less MP, seems to be there already. That is plenty of improvent! Cheers and thanks, Pedro.


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## jrista (Sep 3, 2012)

keithfullermusic said:


> i'm not sure why people keep saying super high ISOs like 200K that will will look good won't be possible. I'm sure there are advances in science and technology that none of us have any idea about. they just made a camera that can capture light moving, and i bet everyone would have said that no way will that ever happen like a year ago.
> 
> i seriously doubt that anyone here is an optical engineering expert with a multi-billion dollar firm to back our research, so its hard to take any argument (including my own) seriously.
> 
> I know its fun to guess, and i understand that people are making valid points, but the honest-to-goodness truth is that no one here knows nuthin'.



One need not be a certified optical engineer with a Ph.D to understand the concepts. Its pretty basic, and boils down to total light per time interval. At ISO 204800, the time interval is generally going to be VERY short (there are exceptions, such as say night sky or astrophotography). The shorter the time, the more impact the random nature of light is going to have on the final image. People talk a lot about read and electronic noise...however in the grand scheme of things, it is photon noise, or photon "shot" noise as I prefer the term, that completely dominates. The reason photos appear noisy at high ISO has nothing to do with the amount of electronic noise generated in the sensor...by the time you pass ISO 400 electronic noise results in 2-3 electrons per pixel, vs. a maximum saturation level of thousands to tens of thousands of electrons. Its a minuscule percent.

If you think of light passing through a lens and onto a sensor as a "rain" of photons, then we can use real rain as a corollary. If you watch a flat surface, such as a dry, flat concrete slab made up of small one foot squares (pixels), during a rain storm. Assuming a constant and moderate amount of rain, under a short observation, say 5 seconds, you will have a widely dispersed pattern of infrequent drops visible on the slab, and maybe a few strikes per square. Under a longer observation of say 5 minutes, you will have a much denser dispersal pattern, with the infrequent dry spot but mostly a wet slab, and just about every square will have at least one drop. As another corollary, quantum efficiency would be the rate of photons that strike an actual concrete square in our slab, and not one of the gaps between concrete squares. If our concrete slab has 3" gaps between each square, were going to lose a fair number of rain drops. Some drops may strike a concrete square, then drain off into one of the gaps. The "quantum efficiency" of our concrete rain catching slab is not ideal. We could improve it by reducing the size of the gap between each square, to say 1/2". We can also improve it by say creating a small ridge around the edge of each square to hold more of the raindrops that strike it. Our quantum efficiency is a lot higher now. To throw in an extra factor, a heavy rain would be like having a wide aperture, where as a light rain would be like having a narrow aperture.

A high ISO photo is like the concrete slab for 5 seconds. From a "total light captured" perspective, it doesn't matter how large the pixel size is when talking about very high ISO...the random nature of light and discrete nature of photons will mean that few, rather than many, pixels will actually encounter a photon at all, and for those that do, the total amount of photons will be low. A wider aperture increases the rate of photon "rain", so you can improve the number of pixels that encounter photons by using a faster lens. But even doing that, the grand total amount of light is still going to be considerably lower than a lower ISO setting in more light...because were working with a "light photon rain", rather than a "heavy photon rain". 

The only way you can really make a high ISO setting produce the same kind of image quality as a much lower ISO setting is to increase the amount of available light. This can either be done by increasing the illumination of the scene, or using a faster lens. In the case of ISO 204800...a MUCH faster lens with near-perfect qualities at apertures we have yet to hear of. We can also improve quantum efficiency, however the thing about Q.E. is that it will only matter if we are actually "losing" photon strikes to heat or reflection. If we had a latticework of wood laid over the top of our concrete slab to represent readout wiring, any rain drops that strike the latticework can't be counted as a captured rain drop on our slab. Same deal with a sensor...there is a lot of electronic wiring for each pixel that can get in the way, converting a photon to heat. Photon strikes at the right angle of incidence can even reflect off of the surface of the sensor that is not actually part of a photodiode, and even with a microlens, just as with any lens, the right angle of incidence can cause reflection of a photon rather than capture. With backilluminated sensors with multiple layers of microlenses, and say potentially even nanocoated microlenses to avoid reflection, along with all of the advanced electronic noise reduction present in Sony Exmor sensors, we might be able to push 60-70% Q.E. To get much farther than that, we would need to start applying active cooling to reduce the temperature of our sensors to well below zero, improving electronic efficiency and making photon capture and conversion into electrons more effective. We might be able to push 80% or more at that point (much like scientific-grade CCD sensors.) 

If we can surpass 80% Q.E. in a commercial-grade image sensor, we might see usable ISO 204800 with acceptable IQ for regular use. It will never offer the same kind of IQ as much lower ISO settings, such as 1600 and less, but it could theoretically be useful. It will still be noisy, particularly in the kinds of situations where one would actually need it....say photographing the auroras without such long exposures that the fine, helical filamentary nature of them become blurred into nothing (and even then, we might actually need ISO 819200 or higher to REALLY capture an Auroral discharge in full detail.)


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## RLPhoto (Sep 3, 2012)

A Usable ISO 51,200.


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## pedro (Sep 3, 2012)

RLPhoto said:


> A Usable ISO 51,200.



As mentioned in my recent post, I kinda heard or read about the 1Dx being one stop better at high ISOs. How usable are ISO 51k on the 1Dx? My 5D3 looks promising...yes there is some NR needed, but not that much, well exposed to the right. Anyone?


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## bdunbar79 (Sep 3, 2012)

pedro said:


> RLPhoto said:
> 
> 
> > A Usable ISO 51,200.
> ...



Not really useable. When you fire at that ISO level, ANY highlight you see in your frame will be blown badly. The 1DX's useable limit as I've found in real life situations is 25,600.


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## RLPhoto (Sep 3, 2012)

Well, A Usable ISO 51,200 for Color Images. 

On the 5D3 I can use 51,200 as my limit for high-speed B&W. ISO 25,600 is my limit for Color Images.


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## mb66energy (Sep 3, 2012)

I think it will be one stop better than today with the same pixel size. Quantum Efficiency of CMOS and CCD is very high - something around 30-50 percent of the incoming light is converted to charge. perhaps you can nearly double it. More is physically impossible.

A possible development might be the collection of 4 or 8 times the charge without increased noise. This would be an improvement in Dynamic Range by lowering the ISO value - I think Sony/Nikon have some advantage in it. As mentioned above ISO 25 or ISO 12 would be welcome if I had REAL Dynamic Range of 16 bits ... similar to good B&W film.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 3, 2012)

jrista said:


> To the OP, if we take a look at Sensorgen.info data on quantum efficiency, we see it increases about 7-8% for every additional stop of ISO. If we follow that trend, assuming Canon can keep increasing Q.E. by about 8% per stop of ISO, and if they can maintain the rate of Q.E. improvement of 16% per 4.5-year cycle...then every 4.5 years we should see two more ISO levels. That would put the next generation at a native ISO 102400 on a sensor with about 57% Q.E. for the 5D IV, and if current statistics hold true, a native ISO of 204800 with about 60% Q.E. for the 1D XI.
> 
> Now, the real question is how usable that ISO will be. I am not sure a sustained linear increase of 8% per stop is really going to make an ISO 204800 usable. It'll be better than a digital boost ISO, but dynamic range is going to severely suffer and noise will still be horrendous. I would suspect that we won't see usable ISO 204800 until we are in the 80% Q.E. range, which would greatly improve S/N ratios even in the shadows. I don't know if we can really achieve that level of efficiency in a consumer-grade device, though...to date, its always required far more rigorous constraints on manufacturing quality, and usually requires some kind of active/thermoelectric cooling. Sony Exmor technology, combined with a backilluminated sensor and...really for honest usability...ungodly fast lenses...might make it a possibility. Either way...that would put usable ISO 204800 a good 8-10 years away at the earliest, or about two to two and a half product cycles.



You are being awfully generous there about actual progress made over those years if you are talking about middle gray SNR (they have cleaned up banding and ugly noise character and such a lot, which at times, can you lead to a larger usable increase in stops than the change in middle gray SNR alone would imply though, however even in that regard they have now made pretty huge strides so it will be hard to continue that trend now) which is leading to changes in stops being paired with changes in Q.E. that don't make any logical sense. 

One thing with an almost ISOless sensor like Exmor you can capture using extreme under exposure at low ISO and then lift and get nearly as clean an image as shooting at a higher ISO but shooting low ISO with large underexposure means you still have the top end not chopped off, raising ISO a stop chops off a stop each time so if you applied some fancy warped tone curve maybe you can get some more DR out of things. I don't know how easy it is to do extreme tone mapping like that, I'm sure with careful work you could make it reasonably natural to an extent to definitely help a bit.


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## wsmith96 (Sep 3, 2012)

We'll probably get to a point where ISO values are no longer relevant, similar to the way CPU's have stopped focusing on their clock rates. I agree that the focus would most likely shift to more of a low light quality rating. Remember that a high ISO number doesn't mean you'll want to keep the picture as it would most likely remind you of painted sandpaper. My crystal ball stops there.....


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## fotomancb (Sep 3, 2012)

I'm certainly not an engineer. But in real, I can't believe my eye terms, the ISO settings will increase greatly with the advances of the D1X.

We are a lab. We get to play and compare at all sizes on photo paper up to 20x30. The quality at 32K, 40K and even 51K are absolutely amazing!

Under Little League lights, shooting action 3 weeks ago, I shot test shots at 16K,32K, 51K 105K and 210K. All the lessons we've been taught and learned the past 50-60 years as far as grain/noise will be thrown out the window. I've never ever seen quality on enlargements at 8x10 on all of the above ISO's. Only 210 (H2) was not usable for our action. But it wasn't needed. I was able to shoot at 1/800th @ 3.2 and the key to all of this at 2/3rd's of a stop overexposed at 16,000 ISO. It finally allowed me after 16 years of shooting at this same park and never being able to at night get any exposure on batters eyes under their batting helmet. To get any light in the past it was 6400 ISO, 200-250th @2.8. But 250th doesn't cut it when a 14 year old swings a bat. Meaning you get head and hand movement which translates to soft photos to parents. Can you imagine 800 ASA film, pushed 2 stops to 3200 just a few years ago? Which by the way is what 210K reminds me of!!!!

I did another test. Because I thought maybe I was blowing this out of proportion in my giddiness. I shot with flash inside our office with flash of a yellow spray can sitting on a shelf with a few other items. Nothing special. I shot at 400/800/1600. We made 8x10's. The following week we had a meeting with about 15 of our photographers who shoot in our business with us. They were shown the prints. EACH thought that the 1600 was the nicest shot! Yep 1600 ISO!

Now last week I shot 2 high school football games. I've shot 7 Super Bowls in my career. You haven't been able to shoot HS at night like a regular NFL game. Until now. I couldn't wait to shoot the 400mm f/2.8 with the 2x extender, giving me a 800mm f5.6. When the ambient light went down, I was at 32K, 800th at between 2.8-3.5, TV mode. Again the key is to be able to overexpose enough to see eyes inside the helmets. It worked. Not only did it work, it worked extremely well. We made a 20x30 poster of a kid going up to grab to make a catch. Just awesome at that size. No cropping needed. He was baout 30-35 yards away. Sharpness and noise held even at 32K ISO. Proof is in the pudding! You've got to see it to believe it.

Hope this was helpful. Thank you Canon! You do owe us one for the 1D Mark III debacle!


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## pedro (Sep 3, 2012)

RLPhoto said:


> Well, A Usable ISO 51,200 for Color Images.
> 
> On the 5D3 I can use 51,200 as my limit for high-speed B&W. ISO 25,600 is my limit for Color Images.



You are right. Color looks way to strange. But converted to BW it just looks decent. The tad of noise stands for a 21st century "filmdays" effect 8)


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## jrista (Sep 3, 2012)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > To the OP, if we take a look at Sensorgen.info data on quantum efficiency, we see it increases about 7-8% for every additional stop of ISO. If we follow that trend, assuming Canon can keep increasing Q.E. by about 8% per stop of ISO, and if they can maintain the rate of Q.E. improvement of 16% per 4.5-year cycle...then every 4.5 years we should see two more ISO levels. That would put the next generation at a native ISO 102400 on a sensor with about 57% Q.E. for the 5D IV, and if current statistics hold true, a native ISO of 204800 with about 60% Q.E. for the 1D XI.
> ...



I'm not just thinking about Canon, I'm thinking more about the industry as a whole. In that same time, the Sony/Nikon alliance has made considerable strides in noise at all levels, and their Q.E. is already up to 57%. Assuming Canon is not just a dud these days, and that they are internally innovating, within a decade (a non-trivial long period of time), and an amalgamation of technological advances across the board (whatever Canon did to achieve native 51200, Sony Exmor tech, active/thermoelectric cooling, backillumination, and who knows what other advancements) I think we can see some pretty amazing things. 

I think within the next decade or two we'll encounter some of the same problems the PC CPU industry had not too long ago...where they started making gates so small they had to start REALLY innovating to keep improving, doing things like stretching silicon, switching to copper wiring, improving their optical etching technology to produce a cleaner, finer beam, etc. I don't think it will be long until were at a similar level of advancement with digital sensors...they will hit a wall of physics, probably with ISO levels, that forces them to radically reinvent and hyperinnovate to either prove the problem is a physical limitation and nothing can be done about it, or work around the problem and improve in other ways.


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## Aglet (Sep 3, 2012)

Charge multiplication could become a technical factor in providing black cat in a coal cellar shots.
CM in a solid state device like an image sensor could potentially deliver multiple electrons per incoming photon.

Charge multiplication won't do much to improve overall high-sensitivity SNR or DR but could provide a beefier signal that's easier to work with and would reduce the effect of read noise at those very high sensitivities.

As it is, QE is already reasonable, some mfrs already have really low read noise and, as some have explained in previous posts (good analogy of watching raindrops on concrete), we're already playing with individual photons and electrons so high ISO images are going to look noisy unless there's a clever processing ability to smooth out that randomness for cleaner looking output. That has its limits too since DR naturally reduces as sensitivity increases, to the point of it becoming a matter of a pixel being ON or OFF.

There's a lot of areas for incremental improvement in the present image sensor paradigm but ultimately physics limits what a sensor can sense and the remainder of the improvements will come from signal processing methods.

Useful imaging will likely top out around a million ISO at some point but how "print-worthy" this will be depends on how it can be processed and there won't be much DR. Sensing abilities of multi-mega ISO could provide basic rough (B&W) images.


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## pedro (Sep 3, 2012)

Fiddled a bit more with my 5D3
Here are two samples
51k, some NR
http://www.flickr.com/photos/guatitamasluz/7925036148/#in/photostream
102k, NR: Brightness 11, Chroma: 20, darkened a bit
http://www.flickr.com/photos/guatitamasluz/7925050234/#in/photostream

B/W at these ISOs works quite well.

All I was looking for. Plenty of camera.

If we get some 25kish 51k some 6 years down, that'd be awesome! 8)


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## TAF (Sep 3, 2012)

keithfullermusic said:


> One need not be a certified optical engineer with a Ph.D to understand the concepts. Its pretty basic, and boils down to total light per time interval.
> 
> LARGE SNIP




Thank you very much for one of the most concise and detailed explanations of how the imaging process works at the sensor level!


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## jrista (Sep 3, 2012)

Pedro's black and white shots bring another factor to light (sorry for the pun). I've been thinking about overall sensor efficiency so far, but we also have to factor in per-pixel efficiency. So long as we are involving color in our photographs, there will be some rather significant limits on how much light we can really capture. If we think about sensors more from the angle of astrophotography CCD's, many of which cost a couple thousand dollars (for what is basically a sensor and some readout electronics...far from the advanced machinery we get in a full DSLR), such sensors are often already pushing 80% Q.E. and often require cooling. Part of the reason they achieve such high resolutions and sensitivities is they are monochromatic devices. 

In a Bayer sensor, we have a color filter over each pixel, which really limits how much light each pixel can receive, and intrinsically limits the total light the sensor can record. We might be able to achieve 50-60% Q.E. today on per-color basis, but 100% Q.E. for a red pixel...which ultimately means that a red pixel can convert every single photon that strikes it into an electron...is actually still 33% of the total light incident on that pixel. We would have to drop the color filter, and preferably drop any kind of low-pass filter and as much other filtration above the sensor as possible, to really push both per-pixel as well as overall sensor Q.E. to their maximums. With say multi-layered microlenses, low-noise electronics, efficient readout electronics that introduce little of their own noise, unity gain to eliminate quantization errors, backilluminated sensor design, in a monochrome sensor...well now we are really talking. Not only are we maximizing the surface area of the sensor for optimal light sensitivity, we also maximize resolution, or alternatively allow the use of pixels with four times as much surface area as a color sensor. With pixels twice as large, we can now gather four times as much light per pixel at effectively the same resolution as we had with a color sensor, so extremely high ISO at low signal levels should be much more viable. One could also design a sensor that could either alternate color filters over the sensor to record and blend a full color image at full resolution, or even use some kind if prism to split light to three sensors simultaneously to capture full color, full resolution images for the same exact exposure.


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## jrista (Sep 3, 2012)

TAF said:


> keithfullermusic said:
> 
> 
> > One need not be a certified optical engineer with a Ph.D to understand the concepts. Its pretty basic, and boils down to total light per time interval.
> ...



Welcome.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 4, 2012)

jrista said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > jrista said:
> ...



In terms of QE in capture and conversion of the photos they can't do much better, it's not possible to get 1 stop better by improving QE 8%. That's only a fraction of what is needed to do one stop better in that regard.

I guess they could improve read noise more than I was first thinking though and bump DR at high ISO up a fair amount still which would help some scenes. So while they can't ever improve high ISO all that much more for the middle and brighter tones in a captured image they probably still have more room to clean up the darker tones and make them look a good deal better. It might be tricky to improve read electronics that much but would be possible at least.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 4, 2012)

Aglet said:


> Charge multiplication could become a technical factor in providing black cat in a coal cellar shots.
> CM in a solid state device like an image sensor could potentially deliver multiple electrons per incoming photon.
> 
> Charge multiplication won't do much to improve overall high-sensitivity SNR or DR but could provide a beefier signal that's easier to work with and would reduce the effect of read noise at those very high sensitivities.
> ...



Yeah, I think they already have some stuff that can kick out more than one electron. So yeah there is still probably more to go in terms of making the dark parts of high iso images not look at ugly than I had said, but as you say for mid to upper tones you won't see that get much better and even lower mids will be tricky to fix up much. 

They have made good strides in fixing the dark tones and still have quite some theoretical room there. ISO 3200 on 20D had any dark parts like large garbage, 5D2 had them look borderline-okish, 5D3 has them looking decent, D4 has them looking pretty decent. If you image has lots of darker areas they may be able to improve the usability some number of stops more over time. If the image is mostly mid and upper tones there is not so much room to get much better.

So i guess it will be a weird situation where many shots the high ISO might only become 1 stop better than the 5D3 but for others, in terms of usable look, maybe it could become 2.5-3.5 stops better. Already we see some of this in that for many shots the 5D3 looks only modestly better than the 5D2 at very high ISO and yet for others, the 5D2 gets so much junk in some parts, that even though main tones are only a little more noisy the overall look is ruined and the 5D3 may be 1-2 stops more usable for particular tricky shots than the 5D2.


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## jrista (Sep 4, 2012)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > LetTheRightLensIn said:
> ...



Well, according to DxO data (which is what Sensorgen.info is and data I believe you revere), Canon has achieved approximately 1-stop of native ISO improvement per approximately 8% Q.E. improvement. Read noise only affects most digital sensors at low ISO. At ISO 100 its usually very high, at ISO 200 its high, and at ISO 400 it is pretty low. Beyond that, "read" noise is minimal to barely registering, and for Canon is as good as read noise in any Exmor sensor at any ISO. Read noise is not a factor at ISO above 400, the very very vast majority of noise at those ISO's comes from photon shot noise, more so at a lower image signal level than a higher one. When your at ISO's as high as 12800 and beyond, assuming your saturating (and if not, you should be using a higher ISO!!), improvements in read noise will only have a minimal impact the overall results. They are already only a couple electrons worth, and with cooling, that couple electrons could drop to a fraction of an electron (well below the levels currently achieved by Sony Exmor, which achieves the same 2-3 electrons worth that Canon sensors do at ISO above 400.)

At extremely high ISO, what really matters is signal-to-noise ratio, S/N. In this respect, I think we are on the same page...what really matters is boosting the S/N for low signal. If you are already at a rough floor for electronic noise, which so far demonstrated seems to be 2-3 electrons worth unless you use extreme cooling (i.e. -80°C), then it doesn't really matter what your dynamic range is (the ratio of saturation luminance to average noise signal). The only way to improve that, in a given short time interval, is to increase the number of incident photons that actually reach the sensor into electrons representing image signal. Thats quantum efficiency. Larger pixels, backilluminated pixels, monochromatic pixels all improve the ratio of incident photons that actually get converted into electrons. And that helps improve S/N at low signal in particular. If we can capture one photon out of 2.5 right now, and convert it into an electron, and we have a gain at high ISO of some small fraction...say 0.4, then we convert each converted photon into 2.5 digital levels. A non-unity gain will always introduce quantization noise (which is a small factor of noise, but one that can be eliminated with care). We'll be lacking tonal fidelity and detail definition. What if we could capture 2 out of those 2.5 photons? Or 3 out of every 4 photons? Or 5 out of every 6? Quantum efficiency at high ISO is all about improving LOW SIGNAL to NOISE ratio, since all you have is low signal. A higher Q.E., in the face of minimal room-temperature read noise, is the only thing that is going to improve the quality of high ISO.

If we throw in cooling and reduce consumer-grade sensor tech to sub-freezing temperatures, that will certainly help as well. It will not only reduce dark current in the circuit by a significant degree, but it will improve the conversion efficiency of the photodiode as well (which seems to peak at -80°c), meaning fewer photons will convert to heat instead of an electron. That also helps boost Q.E. The dynamic range achieved by Sony Exmor is only a great feat at low ISO settings. The only reason it does anything to dynamic range is it reduced read noise at ISO 100 and 200 from many electrons to the high-ISO norm. Instead of wasting the extra bits their 14-bit image processing engine offered, they stopped wasting and put them to good use. But the waste didn't exist in the first place at high ISO, so evoking Sony Exmor as the solution to the high ISO problem won't take us very far. We need to stop wasting incident photons, and put more of those incident photons to good use just like we stopped introducing too many non-signal electrons.


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## qwerty (Dec 5, 2012)

Going from a quantum efficiency of ~50% (where we are today) to 100% yields a 3 dB reduction in noise at a given ISO (measured by standard deviation) for a given image size (1). Alternatively you could bump the ISO by one stop and have the same amount of noise. So, to answer the OP, _raw files will get at most one more stop at high ISO, or about the difference between the 5D classic and the 5D III._ This is the decrease in noise coming out of the sensor. Image processing will also give a benefit; I can not even begin to guess how much. Any image processing geeks out there who can chime in on that? 

As was mentioned before, read noise and full well capacity are not the dominant contribution to noise at high ISOs. However, as a sidenote if you can get read noise low enough (full well capacity high enough) you have a sensor where ISO is basically meaningless (2), as you can just underexpose and push (pull) in post (as Canon does for H1 and H2) as opposed to using an amplifier. That doesn't help with noise at high ISOs, but it means setting the ISO is one less thing for the shooter to worry about.

(1) The photon shot noise SNR will scale with the inverse square root of the number of detected photons. I am also not taking into account the light blockage by the color filters; you can trade off color accuracy and SNR. I think that the sensorgen numbers for QE are such that 100% QE would result in a black & white image with a Bayer filter, but am not sure.
(2) Yeah, you still have the potential for discretization error since you have a fixed number of bits to represent the signal, so you might not be able to do away with ISO entirely.


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## jrista (Dec 5, 2012)

qwerty said:


> Going from a quantum efficiency of ~50% (where we are today) to 100% yields a 3 dB reduction in noise at a given ISO (measured by standard deviation) for a given image size (1). Alternatively you could bump the ISO by one stop and have the same amount of noise. So, to answer the OP, _raw files will get at most one more stop at high ISO, or about the difference between the 5D classic and the 5D III._ This is the decrease in noise coming out of the sensor. Image processing will also give a benefit; I can not even begin to guess how much. Any image processing geeks out there who can chime in on that?



There are some pretty amazing things being done on the wavelet deconvolution front for noise reduction. There are papers and patents covering gaussian, poisson, and banding noise removal with wavelet deconv algorithms. The banding noise removal is some of the more amazing stuff...when images are decomposed into component wavelets, it is pretty amazing the things you can identify and subtract, with little impact to the other aspects of the image. I foresee a small revolution on the noise removal front once wavelet deconvolution denoise algorithms hit the mainstream. It might not matter a wit how much noise our images have...if we have software that can identify and/or predict the noise patterns and distribution, and eliminate it with minimal or no impact to useful image data...the world will be bliss. 



qwerty said:


> (1) The photon shot noise SNR will scale with the inverse square root of the number of detected photons. I am also not taking into account the light blockage by the color filters; you can trade off color accuracy and SNR. I think that the sensorgen numbers for QE are such that 100% QE would result in a black & white image with a Bayer filter, but am not sure.



I would agree, 100% Q.E. would effectively necessitate no CFA...otherwise, each pixel is only getting about 1/3rd of the light potential at each photosite. You might be able to futz with the meaning of "Q.E."...as in redefine 100% Q.E. to mean all of the light of a certain frequency range, but that is ultimately cheating IMO.



qwerty said:


> (2) Yeah, you still have the potential for discretization error since you have a fixed number of bits to represent the signal, so you might not be able to do away with ISO entirely.



Quantization error (which I believe is the official term for discretization error) or Quantization noise, is pretty minimal. You usually get a fraction of an electron's worth of noise every few pixel reads. Given that, I think the notion of an ISO-less sensor where read noise is a sufficiently inconsequential fraction of S/N (a state which I think Sony Exmor sensors are fairly close to) would still be possible despite quantization noise.


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## jrista (Dec 6, 2012)

hjulenissen said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > There are some pretty amazing things being done on the wavelet deconvolution front for noise reduction. There are papers and patents covering gaussian, poisson, and banding noise removal with wavelet deconv algorithms. The banding noise removal is some of the more amazing stuff...when images are decomposed into component wavelets, it is pretty amazing the things you can identify and subtract, with little impact to the other aspects of the image. I foresee a small revolution on the noise removal front once wavelet deconvolution denoise algorithms hit the mainstream. It might not matter a wit how much noise our images have...if we have software that can identify and/or predict the noise patterns and distribution, and eliminate it with minimal or no impact to useful image data...the world will be bliss.
> ...



Take a look at one paper that covers extremely clean banding noise removal with wavelet deconvolution:

http://lib.semi.ac.cn:8080/tsh/dzzy/wsqk/spie/vol6623/662316.pdf

I've never seen any denoise tool that could deband that well. I am not sure how wavelet deconvolution might compare to a filterbank (which I assume you are referring to analog filterbanks for, say, audio processing), all I do know is that some of the papers I've read demonstrate some amazing things like the one above. I've also got bookmarks somewhere to papers that describe how to remove photon shot noise via a predictive poisson algorithm that is able to nearly eliminate the most common form of noise in just about any photograph taken at any ISO setting.

So, wavelet denoise algorithms may not sound super cool like a filter bank or FFT (although FFT's are used in the article above to produce waveforms), but people do seem to be doing super cool things with them.


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## K-amps (Dec 6, 2012)

Marsu42 said:


> pedro said:
> 
> 
> > Whoever will benefit from such a high ISO...
> ...



So true. 

Also as to who benefits from better high ISO? All of us... 

It basically boils down to faster shutter speeds to freeze action by using cleaner higher ISO's... 

Jrista... great explanations of the basics... even for a technophobe like me. I have a question...


1) What if they had a prism in front of 3 sensors splitting the beam into RGB and it hitting 3 sensors each without color filters, but capturing one color each and then all 3 colors are processed into an image. The Prism will absorb some light but could this be offset by the specialty sensors operating at 70-80 QE?

or 

Can they make sensors that are natively wavelength band limited... ? With this arrangement no light robbing prism is needed, just smaller sensor, 3 (One for Red one for G and one for B etc) laid next to each other using the same/ similar processing algo's....

I think people smarter than my self would have thought of this by now.


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## jrista (Dec 6, 2012)

hjulenissen said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Take a look at one paper that covers extremely clean banding noise removal with wavelet deconvolution:
> ...



Hmm, odd that people don't understand non-linear signal processing. I mean, any polynomial would be a non-linear function. I think maybe the trick is figuring out how to apply non-linear functions in a useful way...linear is easy. Non-linear can take on an infinite variety of forms, continuous or non-continuous, etc. I think its just that non-linear processing is more complex and requires more effort to effectively apply.


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## Dark Reality (Dec 13, 2012)

All this tech info is beyond me, but it sounds like many people are saying, "it's as good as it's going to get basically." But that has been said countless times in history. Someone will figure out a way to fix current problems or work around them, and I certainly think that we will be seeing major improvements in iso. Maybe a stop better per year until people just don't need it.


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## Trovador (Dec 13, 2012)

In 6 to 8 years you won't even need to take the lens cap off!


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## bdunbar79 (Dec 14, 2012)

Trovador said:


> In 6 to 8 years you won't even need to take the lens cap off!



Unless there's a light leak issue .


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