The folks at Magic Lantern are no stranger to adding new features to Canon DSLRs, courtesy of their EOS Camera Tool software. Their latest creation, Dual ISO, increases the dynamic range of the 5D Mark III and EOS 7D by four stops, bringing the total dynamic range to 14EV. This allows you to pull detail out of the shadows with a lot less noise than with the ‘stock’ firmware. Click through for more details.
For more tutorials on digital photography, visit: www.imagemaven.com What is ISO? Set your ISO on your digital camera according to the brightness in the scene. 100 or 200 ISO for sunny days, and 400 for cloudy days. In really low light situations, use ISO 800 or 1600. The trade off for using high ISO is, the higher your ISO the more noise you will have in your photos, so it’s best to keep it as low as possible for better quality, less noisy photos. I suggest you test your camera(s) to figure out when the noise bugs you. That’s what I call your noise tolerance. You’ll have to open up your files on your computer and look at them at 100% to see the noise. The larger the sensor the less noise you will have. You’ll get a lot more noise with a point and shoot camera or your cell phone camera, than you will with a full frame sensor dSLR. For example my noise tolerance of my point and shoot is 400 ISO, but with my dSLR it’s 1600. That’s quite a difference. But sensors are getting better and less noisy all the time so you will probably have different tolerances than me. Another thing about ISO. If you double your ISO, say from 100 to 200, your sensor becomes twice as sensitive. Same with going from 200 to 400 ISO and 400 to 800, and 800 to 1600. Each doubling of the ISO results in doubling of the sensitivity. See the blog post www.imagemaven.com Video Rating: 4 / 5