As part of my duties at Mobile Magazine, I’ve been testing the Kodak EasyShare M853 digital camera for about the last week or so. Being accustomed to a larger, more powerful camera (Canon PowerShot S3 IS), the Kodak was a definite step down, but it was a lot more compact and made it a lot easier to bring around to take pictures at dinner and so forth. In fact, it was the camera that I used at Osaka Teppanyaki.
A full review will be posted up at Mobile Magazine soon, but before that happens, I’d like to illustrate a very simple point about consumer-level digital cameras. Many people focus on optical zoom and megapixel count, but the companies also seem to promote the highest ISO levels that the camera can handle. The Kodak EasyShare M853, for example, can be dialed up to ISO 1250 for low-light conditions. What I want to say is that high ISO may not necessarily be a good thing. Check out this picture of an apartment building I took in Yaletown.
The photo has not been edited or touched up in any way other than being resized to be blog-friendly. Check out all that digital noise!
With a flashlight (well the light from a camera phone) in tow, Susanne and I set out to take a macro shot of a spider near the same location. See how much of a difference more light can make?
I’ve never claimed to be a photography expert — I’ll leave that up to Ed and Stephen with their DSLRs — but you can quite plainly see the difference between the two pictures.
In the defense of other cameras that sport a high ISO, the Kodak’s haven’t been known to have good noise reduction at such high ISO’s. I think you should add that big numbers don’t add up to good quality sometimes. But generally, yeah, high ISO will be quite noisy. It is no substitute for a good flash, or proper lighting. However in cases where you can’t take a flash with you, it allows you to “Get the Shot”. There are plugins for Photoshop that allow you to totally remove the noise. I think one of them is called Noise Ninja.
Your also as the max ISO for that camera, correct? A better camera that will go to a higher ISO might still produce lots of noise at the highest setting, but then it would take better pictures at the same ISO as the above pictures. Sort of liking buying a powerful stereo not so that you can listen to it at the top volume, but rather so that you have great sound at a medium volume.