Another Reason to Avoid Shooting at High ISOs

Today’s higher-end cameras are getting better and better at shooting at high ISOs with very low noise, and today, with my Nikon D3S, I routinely shoot at 4000 ISO for nighttime or indoor sporting events, and people always comment that they can’t see any noise. It’s true. You can hardly tell there’s any noise there at all, and what’s there is absolutely minimal—less than shooting at 400 ISO on a film camera. So, if you can hardly see any noise at 4000 ISO, why do I hate shooting at 4000 ISO? It’s because at 4000 ISO (or almost anything above 2000 ISO), you lose color saturation, your image has visibly less contrast, and you lose some detail, too. Sure, you don’t have all that noise, but you don’t have as good a quality photo as you’d have a....