Soccer again last night and a gloomy evening as well. By 5pm the light was poor, by 6 it was genuinely grim.
My longest fast lens is the 150 f2.8, which nets me a bright 300mm full frame equivalent and I am convinced that the 40-150 f2.8 is slightly faster than the numbers suggest.
ISO 12,800 is not a pleasant place to play, even with an EM1x (even a full frame). There are newer cameras in M43, but very few cameras are happy in this space.
Cropped in to compensate for the lens limit (the 200 f2.8 would be about ideal), it is still fine for print, but starting to show the signs of high ISO degradation.
A quick pass through ON1 No Noise (2022) and the noise cleans up, the sharpness stays, maybe looking a little “perfect plasticky”, but for print, perfectly fine. The colour is an issue, but the lighting does not give you much to work with.
Very high ISO settings are always a compromise, and M43 sensors are logically going to be more effected. Bigger sensors, all things being equal, are going to have bigger pixels which gather more light. If the larger sensor is packed with more pixels, there is still an advantage, because the noise is relatively smaller, less visible. Having said that, a full frame 300 f2.8 or 150 f1.8 for that matter are either fiction or out of reach, so the M43 “equalising” factor are at work again.
So, the limit?
First up, it is always better to go up an ISO higher than you are comfortable with rather than over hopefully hanging around a lower one, knowing you are under exposing. Noise is in the shadows, more light reduces that. ISO 12,800 with the EM1x properly exposed, at 1/500th and f2.8 are capable of handling almost any action well enough for my needs. I just need to trust that. I do need to check the G9’s also.
ISO 12,800 on an EM1x is my new benchmark, something I never thought I would say, but after respectable results at the mirky indoor pool recently and my third trip to the light sink that is Prospect Park, I am increasingly more comfortable than I have been.
Ed. I looked at the printed file in the next days paper and directly above was another togs shot, a full frame image taken at a different match on the same ground, showing clearly more noise and movement blur. Maybe I am keeping up.