Although I haven't used any scientific methods for testing, I really
don't see that much difference in the high ISO's of the D200. Has
anyone performed any real tests and found a decent working hi ISO? I'm
interested in the optimum working ISO for shooting low-light,
specifically wedding photography in a church without flash. Any
suggestions?
You might take a look at Uwe Steinmueller's D200 Diary. He provides samples of images shot at different ISO values. It looks like up to about 800 works pretty well.
I don't know or care, I try to keep it between 100 and 800 for weddings, but I am happy enough to go to 1000 or occasionaly 1600 if I have to (ie in a dark church etc)
All that matters is how the images look when printed, I think we all get carried away with looking at the images at 100%, and yes 1600 looks crap when viewed like that! But more than acceptable when printed up to A4.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Understood... was just curious if users found that, in low light, it was better to use a higher ISO and overexpose a little, or shoot at a lower ISO, but be underexposed? So in other words, does an accurate exposure at a higher ISO provide better results than a lower ISO that is underexposed.
I would expect that you'd do better at high ISO. If you're underexposing then you have fewer bits in each pixel and thus less differentiation between tonal values. Each stop you underexpose costs you a bit (thereby halving the amount of data that you can store). If you're shooting JPEGs that could start hurting pretty badly.
Have to add this to the list of things to experiment with.
I definately agree with Doug, you will really start to introduce more noise if you under-expose at a high ISO. I think that the higher the ISO you use the more accurate you have to be with your exposure.
When I first bought my D200's I thought that above 800 was not usable at all, until I realised that the exposure has to be spot on!
Oh, and shooting RAW makes a difference (Capture NX also seems to be better than ACR at converting high ISO RAW files, although I have only been playing with it for a week)
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Thanks guys... I'll be trying it out today and tomorrow - but bringing along my trusty D1x just in case. The odd thing was, when I tried it last time, my exposure readings were way off - very underexposed - and I couldn't figure out why. This was shooting manual and setting exposure based on the meter (I forget what mode it was in). I thought I may have had compensation dialed in, but I didn't.
Optimum high ISO for D200 
Linear Mode
