Testing, testing...

Warning: camera geek blip. If you're not a pixel peeper, you might not want to bother with this one :)

Yesterday I posted an ISO3200 image, and called it a low-light test. As Instography later pointed out, it wasn't quite a low-light high ISO test, more a fast shutter speed high ISO test. So today's blip is a proper low-light test.

This is a dark wood figurine, brought back from Indonesia last week by my friend Sean, under a desk in an office with no lights on. The only light is from a window 10 feet away. Pretty dark. I haven't done any noise reduction on this, either in the RAW conversion or afterwards in Photoshop, so you can see it warts and all if you view in large.

There is a lot more noise in this image, which I expected with so many shadows, though it's definitely not as bad as the 400D at ISO1600. To a certain extent I think it could be dealt with, though I think you'd lose a lot of sharpness and the colour noise is a problem. I'd probably stick to black and white conversions if I was pushing it this far. I'd appreciate any feedback from users of other cameras, 550D, 50D, 5D Mk II, even you Nikon people! :P

Let me know if it looks good or bad :)