essential skills: digital photography in available light
The digicam is used to photograph in unfamiliar territory. Fuji FinePix s9500, 80 ISO, 1-second exposure
The Fuji again tries to suppress the excessive noise generated using the 1-second exposure leading to ragged lines
and posterization (stepping of tones). The noise starts to build in the Sony image but image quality remains high
Photographs by Ricky BondLong exposures
When the ISO of prosumer digicams is raised differences become more obvious and the digicams
start to lose any comparison with an image produced from a DSLR at the same ISO setting. It
is not just the matter of raising the ISO that wakens the sleeping monster called noise. Duration
of exposure also leads to increased noise. At normal hand-held shutter speeds this is never a
problem, it is only when the camera is mounted on a tripod and the photographer is photographing
in low light that noise again becomes an issue. The Fuji s9500, Sony DSC-R1 and a Canon EOS
20D were tested using shutter speeds between 1 and 5 seconds and this served to highlight the
relative merits of the different sensors. The Fuji FinePix s9500 is equipped with a PC sync terminal
and cable-release socket to aid studio-based photography whilst the Sony is equipped with neither
(the Sony R1 gives you quick access to a self-timer but a threaded cable release would have also
been useful). When using the Fuji s9500 at exposure times of a second, even at the base 80 ISO
setting, image quality begins to suffer.