[Leica] Don Dory - Don't read this!

[Jim at hemenway.com (Jim Hemenway)]

I know that you will, so I have a confession but Pentax digitals still 
rock and rule! :-)

The Pentax isDS tavern photo which I showed you a week or so ago, and 
which I maintained was shot at 1600 ISO, and which showed no noise, was 
discovered by someone looking at the EXIF data to be shot at ISO 400.

http://www.half-fast.com/TavernRoom.jpg

At the time I took the photo in April, that room was so dark that I 
distinctly remember setting the ISO to 1600 in order to get a decent 
result.  I even considered 3200 at the time but settled on 1600.

So this was a big surprise to me and gave me a red face, but not having 
ever bothered to learn anything about EXIF, I couldn't argue with the data.

I set out yesterday to try to determine what happened and shot these at 
around 6:45 AM EDT in my living room, with lighting approximately the 
same as that in the tavern room.

The photos are at ISO 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200... running left to right.

http://www.half-fast.com/ISO-Tests-isDS/

Here's the ISO 400 tavern photo again for comparison:
http://www.half-fast.com/TavernRoom.jpg

All were shot with manual focusing, (on the book case) and with manual
exposure.  The camera was on a tripod for all the shots.

The photos are unfooled around with, that is, they were shot as RAW and
then converted to Photoshop PSD files and then into jpegs.  No
sharpening was applied and no Photoshop adjustments were made.

I still don't know a lot about EXIF, but I now know that when I use the
Web Photo Gallery creator in Photoshop, that the EXIF data is lost. 
Accordingly the JPEGs with EXIF data are here.
http://www.half-fast.com/ISO-Tests-isDS/VariousISO-JPEGs/

I don't know how the data can be seen without opening them with 
Photoshop, but I suspect that there must be some software out there 
somewhere to see it online:

Yesterday afternoon I went out to the Hartwell Tavern in Minuteman 
National Historical Park.

As I thought, the natural lighting in the room has changed since April
as it was a bit brighter. And, the room was inhabited.

The gentleman seen in the photos is one of the staff in period dress and
he was busy giving narratives to the visitors to Hartwell Tavern
whenever he wasn't working on a pair of buckskin "britches".

I learned that the 19 year old wife of Mr. Hartwell had five children in
four years, lost all of them within thirty days in a diphtheria
epidemic, but then went on to have nine more children who all survived
into adulthood.  http://www.half-fast.com/TavernRoom-ISO-Tests-isDS/

Here's the old ISO 400 tavern photo again for comparison:
http://www.half-fast.com/TavernRoom.jpg

As with the photos of my living room in the morning, all of these were
shot with manual focusing, and with manual exposure... but I wasn't
allowed to use a tripod.

Please let me know if you see any noise in any of them.

Even though I really wanted to correct the perspective, do a little
dodging on the furniture in the background, and apply a bit of
sharpening... as in the morning photos, these are also unfooled around with.

The JPEGs with EXIF data are here:
http://www.half-fast.com/TavernRoom-ISO-Tests-isDS/TavernRoom-VariousISO-JPEGs/

NOTE:  I think that I now know why I had thought that the tavern photo
shot in April was ISO 1600.  While shooting the others this afternoon I
noticed after "changing" the ISO to 800, that it hadn't changed.

When I want to change the ISO, I need to press the up/down button to
switch between the five ISO settings, and then I have to press the OK
button.  I think that I must have not pressed the OK that day in April,
but assumed that it was shot at ISO 1600, and then never noticed that it
was really ISO 400 because I hadn't looked into accessing the EXIF date.

At any rate, I continue to maintain that there's almost no noise in the 
photos from the isDS digital, especially when compared to Canons and Nikons.

It appears to me that since "I am amasing a nice assortment of Super 
Tacky's in advance of purchasing one of these puppies.", that you 
perhaps agree with me now. ;-)

I'm beginning to like this EXIF stuff, but nevertheless, I apologize for
not getting things right the first time.

Jim, "You can call me Mister EXIF" Hemenway