ISO100 vs ISO200 Canon 5D Mark III

James Hope

James Hope

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Hi everyone.

Does anyone know which is the best ISO to set on a Canon 5D Mark III when light isn't a problem? I always used 100 but on a course my professional photographer said ISO 200 was the best for Canon as well as Nikon now. He said ISO 100 for Canon cameras had been a marketing error and people now agreed 200 was the best base ISO. Does anyone know if this is accurate as I can't find anything online to back this up.

Can I also say I realise there will be no real world difference for the vast majority of pictures. However i'd still like to be using the optimal settings where possible.

Thanks and hope someone can help.
 
The lower the ISO the better. He probably said that because he is a Nikon user!!
 
Ploddles said:
The lower the ISO the better. He probably said that because he is a Nikon user!!
Click to expand...

1 response and this will now be a :nikon: vs :canon: debate. Lmao

Agree lower ISO the better but OP hasn't stated what he likes shooting. Plus if you can't see a difference is there a difference? No need to threat. Go with the settings you are most comfortable with.
 
http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Canon/EOS-5D-Mark-III---Measurements

DXO measurements suggest that ISO 100 yields the best results, which is unsurprising since the Canon sensors do actually have a base ISO of 100. This is of course different to Nikon who have an extended ISO 100 which is in fact ISO 200 overexposed and pulled back.
 
I like shooting lots of different things. Im talking about situations like landscape shots in the day. Situations where until today, unless you were purposefully trying to introduce noise into an image (and im suggesting that isn't what I want to do) there was no earthly reason to use an ISO other than optimal. I always knew this to be 100 on Canon cameras as this is the lowest native. I just want to know if anyone else has heard of this 200 thing as it seemed very odd to me. I appreciate the DxO link, that suggests my previous thoughts were correct.

I really don't want to discuss Canon vs Nikon in this thread.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.
 
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Someone said it about the sigma Merrill too, greater dynamic range, but idont think that's true
 
Just to point out that on most new Nikons (if not all) the base ISO is now ISO100, but on most older generation Nikons it was indeed ISO200

So either your tutor was shooting with an older Nikon, or was a Canon shooter and not up to date with all his info
 
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Everything I have ever read says go with the lowest ISO you can. (i.e 100 on most cameras). These reviews state that as you increase ISO you increase noise. Personally I have never noticed any difference between 100 and 200 but who am I to argue with those who write reviews and books and have more expertise than I ever will.
 
It depends what you're trying to optimise. The best ISO for widest dynamic range, often called the base ISO, may not be the best for the least noise, which is often a bit lower. Some people disregard a lower ISO which is produced in camera by overexposing and then pulling back the exposure when generating the file. They regard such an ISO as a cheat, not really an ISO. But it's there for a purpose, and if your primary objective is noise reduction and more shadow detail then such a lowered ISO, lower than "base", may offer that.
 
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I wen't to a session recently with someone from the Canon Professional network who said that 100 is the lowest native in response to someone who said they had been told to use 50 for landscapes. As he put it 50 is simply chucking away data from the RAW file.
 
James Hope said:
Hi everyone.

Does anyone know which is the best ISO to set on a Canon 5D Mark III when light isn't a problem? I always used 100 but on a course my professional photographer said ISO 200 was the best for Canon as well as Nikon now. He said ISO 100 for Canon cameras had been a marketing error and people now agreed 200 was the best base ISO. Does anyone know if this is accurate as I can't find anything online to back this up.

Can I also say I realise there will be no real world difference for the vast majority of pictures. However i'd still like to be using the optimal settings where possible.

Thanks and hope someone can help.
Click to expand...
Sounds like, no, is, complete BS.
 
Those of you who have a camera, why don't you just do some simple tests and find out what it actually does? Lots of people told me that the noise of my camera was virtually the same at ISO 200 as 100, no point in going down to 100. And 50 was just a cheat, "throwing data away", just there to make it easier for people who wanted to shoot with wide apertures in sunlight. But when I tested it I found that I could definitely see more noise in the shadows at ISO 200 than ISO 100, and a bit less noise at ISO 50 than ISO 100, although you got it at the expense of dynamic range -- that's the "throwing the data away". But since I very rarely need all or even most of the camera's dynamic range, if I can get the exposure right ISO 50 gives better image quality.

But I only found that out by experiment. It was contrary to all the advice I'd been given. So don't take my advice. Or anyone else's. Just take some photographs and look carefully at them. If you can't see any difference then that difference doesn't matter. The reason there's so much silly advice in the world of photography is that so few people test the advice they get.
 
your mate is talking a lot of pish. In summary, everything up to ISO 400 will provide very clean, perfectly usable output for well-exposed shots, however ISO 100 is very certainly the best. You are also advised to avoid ISO125, 250, etc, whereas 160, 320, 640 etc are pretty clean and especially recommended for video work.
 
I have used ISO 50 since way back in 2004 with my 1D MKII & now also with the 1D MKIV.
I use this as often as I can to keep noise as low as possible.
I work for a printing firm & have to keep images as clean as possible due to having to enlarge the images because we print large format.
By large format I mean we regularly print at 5 metres wide by over 30 metres long.

Noise at these sizes can be a nightmare & we check for as much DR as possible and have found when shooting sky this helps keep CA out of the image as much as possible.
Although the 1D MKIV will go much higher with ISO I don't go beyond 3200 or need to in fact.

Checking out the difference between ISO 50-100 when sky is a large part of the photo makes quite a difference.
Any DR lost is offset more than enough with the CA being kept to a minimum where the sky meets the edges of trees, buildings, anything in fact.
Enlarging as we do shows CA & causes too much work/time editing it out.
 
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